Designed by Death

by Melody Rose

  “I think you should tell her Darren,” Ansel said, his voice returning to that soft, coaxing tone he used with me before.

  “Tell me what?” I demanded, my gaze snapping from my friend to my boyfriend like a ping pong match.

  Darren didn’t speak. He shook his head again and swallowed audibly.

  “Darren, I swear to the gods, if you know something that you’re not telling me…” I trailed off, unable to think of a reasonable threat or promise. My words stuck in my throat like a chunk of peanut butter. It was hard to swallow, hard to hold back the tears as I looked at the son of Asclepius for an answer he clearly didn’t want to give.

  “You have to do it,” Benji said without looking at Darren. “Especially if she’s threatening to go to the Underworld. You have to tell her.”

  Violet hugged herself, but she nodded her agreement.

  I waited with my breath lodged in my throat, heavy puffs coming in and out of my nose like bullets. I sounded like a bull, ready to charge. Finally, Darren licked his lips and opened his mouth.

  “I worked with Ruby over the summer on her treatments,” Darren began, looking anywhere but at me. “We originally shortened the treatments to twice a month, but then we quickly had to go back to every week last semester.”

  “I didn’t know that,” I whispered, my anger quickly diffusing at the thought that Ruby was hurting from her Parkinson’s last year and didn’t say anything.

  “She didn’t want anyone to know,” Darren said, defending his decision not to say anything and her request of him. “Then, over the summer, we had to increase the treatments even more, to every single day.” My friend closed his eyes and inhaled sharply before beginning again. “One of the last times I saw her, she told me she wanted to stop the treatments. She said they were interfering too much in her daily life, and they weren’t really working anymore.”

  “What?” I balked, but Darren continued over me, no longer responding to my commentary.

  “I told her that I didn’t recommend that, but I would respect her decision,” Darren confessed. “We decided to stop treatment, but then she came and visited me a couple of days later. She looked in a bad way, deteriorating faster than I would have thought.” The healer sat on the couch again, as if the weight of the story was too much for him to bear. “I thought she was coming for help, but it was a help I wasn’t willing to give. She said it had gotten too much for her to take. She couldn’t do it anymore, so she asked me… she asked if I would help her end it.”

  I gasped, just as Violet had done a moment before. Sensing my distress, my former roommate came to me and wrapped her arms around me. For the first time since we arrived, I let someone touch me, and comfort me.

  “I told her I couldn’t,” Darren said with a weak voice. “That went against the very nature of who I am. I’m a healer. I couldn’t do what she was asking. Luckily, she said she understood and gave me a pat on the shoulder. Ruby asked me not to say anything, and I begged her to reconsider. She said she would, but I knew she wouldn’t.” Darren gulped and tucked his legs beneath him, in a crisscross fashion on the couch. He held on to his ankles as though they were a life preserver. “The General found her two days later.”

  “No,” I said as I bit the inside of my cheek. “She wouldn’t… she wouldn’t do that.”

  “She did, Cheyenne, I swear,” Darren urged me. “I wouldn’t lie to you. And I don’t think she would have even considered it, but it was getting back to a point where even my powers couldn’t give her comfort.”

  I put my head in my hands and shook it. Violet rubbed little circles around my back as I took in Darren’s words.

  No wonder none of them believed me. If they knew Darren’s side of things, it would make perfect sense as to why Ruby would do what she did. I must have sounded like a raving lunatic. Maybe Ruby didn’t have the strength to put her tools away, or maybe she was shaking too much near the end to write a note, especially if it was as bad as Darren said. Maybe she had lived so long without Alexandria that she figured it wasn’t worth the pain of her time in the mortal world.

  No one knew what she had been thinking, but very quickly, all my arguments were being shut down. I ran out of evidence. I ran out of conviction.

  As though it could sense my distress, the Eternal Flame popped out of its jar and zoomed towards me. It blared with light beyond my fingers, so I opened my hands to look at it. It floated inches from my nose, so I had to go cross-eyed in order to see it clearly.

  When I looked at the Flame, it suddenly changed color. It went from the bright blue to a deep, glowing red. But it wasn’t the normal angry red that I’d seen it give off before. This was a new color. It gleamed like a jewel, vibrant and stark. It took me a second, but I finally figured out the name of the color.

  Ruby.

  The second I thought the word, a new fire lit up in my belly. As much as I trusted Darren, something about this whole situation was wrong. I knew what I knew about Ruby, and I wasn’t going to give up on her. At the very least, if everyone was right, and she did take her own life, I needed to know why. If there was a way for me to get answers, I was going to take it.

  I straightened up and lowered my hands. Violet stopped her rubbing, surprised at my sudden movement.

  “Thank you for telling me, Darren,” I said, keeping my voice as straight as I could. “I know that wasn’t easy, but I appreciate it.”

  Darren only offered me a nod, but I could tell he believed my statement. I did a sweeping gaze around at the rest of the group.

  “I think I need some time alone,” I said, “I promise I won’t go making anything or ruining anything. Maybe I’ll just soak in the bathhouses for a while.”

  “Are you sure you want to be alone?” Violet pressed. “That might not be the best--”

  “I’m sure,” I cut her off before she could give me a reasonable excuse. I went to the door and rubbed the back of my hand against my eyes. “Thank you all for being here for me.”

  “We always are,” Ansel said with a half-smile.

  “I’ll come to find you guys tomorrow for breakfast?” I said as an olive branch.

  “I’ll make you whatever you want,” Violet offered sympathetically.

  “Thanks,” I reached out for her hand, and she offered me hers. I gave her a quick squeeze and then blew a kiss to Ansel. “Since Khryseos and Argyreos can’t come in the bathhouses, can they hang out here for a bit while I go and soak?”

  “Absolutely,” Ansel said. “Whatever you need.”

  “You boys be good,” I told the dogs. They settled in together, Argyreos finally joining his brother by the couch. Then I picked up the Eternal Flame’s jar, which it had dutifully returned to. “I guess I’ll return this before I go and take a bath.”

  “Don’t drown,” Benji said by way of a joke.

  “I won’t,” I assured him with my own half-smile and then left the apartment.

  I had no intention of heading for the bathhouses. And I had no intention of returning the Eternal Flame. I knew that it had sent me a message before when it shined that ruby color. As much as I hated lying to my friends, they had lied to me.

  So, when I exited Ansel’s apartment building, instead of heading for the bathhouses like I said I would, I headed out of the main quad, towards the cemetery.

  6

  Night had fallen quickly. When I stepped outside, the sky was a navy blue sprinkled with stars. It was unnaturally clear with the constellations easily visible. I didn’t know the exact location of the Academy, and I couldn’t point it out to my mom on a map when she asked. Ansel told me it was something I would learn upon graduation, but as I looked up at the stars, it didn’t seem possible that the Academy would be anywhere in the United States. The sky was just too pure, untouched by any sort of pollution or contamination.

  Nyx was definitely showing off her skills that night, I thought to myself. A smile pulled at my lips as I thought about the possibility of Ruby being up there, joining the infinite sou
ls that lived in the sky.

  Before I discovered that the Greek gods were real, along with all of their subsequent myths and legends, I always believed that dead people joined the stars. Mom was never religious and let me perpetuate this belief. It gave me comfort when an older teacher of mine, Mrs. Miller, passed away. Or when a classmate committed suicide my freshman year of high school. I looked outside my bedroom at night and thought about all the people that lived up there watching over us.

  It hurt my heart to think like this because now I knew the truth. The lore of the Underworld was real, and Ruby now resided down there, for better or worse, along with Mrs. Miller and the junior from my school.

  It was a weird and somber thought. So much so that I wanted to reject the whole idea. I wanted to believe they were all up there, regardless of how they had passed. The idea of an eternal punishment never appealed to me.

  But the idea of getting to speak to Ruby again, to ask her what actually caused her death, did appeal to me. It was the one thing I was grateful for when it came to learning that the Underworld was real.

  I inhaled deeply and yanked my eyes away from the sky, refocusing them on the path ahead of me. I held the jar with the Eternal Flame in two hands, with the care of an overflowing cup. I knew I had to find a way to put the Flame back. There was no way I could bring it down to the Underworld. It was too dangerous of a weapon, and I didn’t know what I was getting into down there.

  There were multiple depictions of the Underworld in Greek mythology. There was even confusion about where it was located. Some stories said that it was at the edge of the ocean where the water met the sky. Now, modern-day science told us that this was impossible, but the alternative was beneath the depths of the world, which was also impossible according to physics. Though, according to science, I shouldn’t be able to touch fire or other things that are upwards of three hundred degrees.

  Another possible way to get into the Underworld was to follow one of the six rivers. Styx was definitely the most famous of all of them, but there was also Acheron, the Lethe, the Phlegethon, the Cocytus, and Oceanus. But the last one encompassed the whole of the oceans, so I wasn’t sure how much that one counted. Each one had a different purpose when escorting the souls to hell. Either they helped them forget their time in the mortal world, or they burned them for punishment. Others were rivers of pain or rivers of wailing. The basic notion was that none of them were pleasant.

  Even though there might have been several options for entering the Underworld, I didn’t know where I was supposed to find any of them. I thought about the heroes I knew who had traveled to the Underworld, like Orpheus, who followed his song. Being a muse’s son, he was able to use his talents with music to navigate down there. I wasn’t musically inclined in the slightest, so that option was out.

  Most of the women who ventured down there, like Persephone and Psyche, were brought against their will. Unfortunately, angering a god enough to send me down to the Underworld didn’t guarantee that I would be alive when I went down there.

  Finally, all of the other male heroes had been sent there on a quest and had been sent by a god or goddess. Since I didn’t have that kind of patronage, I didn’t know if that would be an acceptable route either.

  I reached the edge of the quad, and the air deflated out of my lungs. I didn’t know if I actually was going to be able to accomplish this plan if I didn’t even have the slightest notion of how to get to the Underworld. Short of offing myself, which wasn’t an option, I didn’t know what to do.

  My eyes gazed up towards the outskirts of campus where the cemetery was. Then, I looked behind me, back towards my dorm, considering both options. It was late and had been a hell of an emotional day. Maybe the best choice was to give up and move on. Go to the bathhouses like I told my friends I planned to and get on with the year.

  Something about those defeated thoughts didn’t sit well with me. It put a nasty taste in my mouth, so much so that I had to stick out my tongue and try to get it out. I clacked my jaw a couple of times until I could refocus.

  Suddenly, there was an intense heat coming from my hands. It was a foreign sensation to me, one that I hadn’t ever felt before. But instantly, my brain recognized what it was and involuntarily reacted.

  I dropped the glass jar carrying the piece of Eternal Flame. It shattered loudly on the cobblestones, scattering about. It fell into the cracks and flew into the grass. I froze, staring at my hands, which burned red from the heat. The sharpness bothered me, and I wanted to dunk my hands in the nearest cold substance.

  There was a fountain in the center of the quad, and unthinkingly, I dashed for it. Immediately, I stuck my hands in the pool. I bent into a crouch and sat with my knees against the stone basin while the freezing water soothed my palms.

  A sigh of relief escaped my lips as I relished in the sensation from the water. But then another sensation overtook me: anger. My eyes darted up, and I moved my head around wildly, searching for the little flame that decided to give me a scare.

  Panic filled my chest as I thought the thing might have made its final escape. It truly abandoned me and was now out in the world wreaking havoc. I thought about the potential destruction it could cause, and my blood turned cold. Or that could have been the water, I wasn’t quite sure.

  However, my worry soon lessened when the annoying little flame came and appeared in front of my face. It pulsed with impatience, glowing a maroonish color. If the thing had arms, I was sure it would be crossing them, maybe even tapping its toe.

  “What the hell?” I hissed at it. “I didn’t even know you could burn me.”

  It zoomed once around my head and then flew over my shoulder. I followed it with my eyes until it got too far out of sight. Against my better judgment, I pulled my hands from the fountain water and wiped them on my pants as I darted forward to follow the little bugger.

  It stopped on the edge of campus, where I had been contemplating my decision to abandon the whole quest. The Eternal Flame paused to let me catch up, and then it surged with that same level of impatience once more.

  “What is your problem?” I asked as I spread my arms out in frustration. “What do you want?”

  In response, the Flame sped out towards the hill on which the cemetery resided. I raised my eyebrows, finally understanding.

  “Seriously?” I voiced aloud. “You knew I was hesitating, so you decided to give me a wake-up call?”

  This time it didn’t reply directly. Instead, it just moved a little closer to the cemetery, a little farther away from the quad. The shuffle looked like a taunt, as though it were teasing me to come and catch it.

  I rolled my eyes and shook my head, knowing that this whole situation was absurd. “I’m following a sentient piece of fire to a cemetery full of fallen demigods,” I muttered to myself. “I think I’ve officially gone insane.”

  Despite my reservations, I took several large steps towards the Flame to let it know I was coming. However, it never let me catch up to it. Instead, the Eternal Flame kept inching away from me, as though I was a horse, and it was a carrot. I knew I couldn’t let the flame go on without me. It needed to be supervised, specifically by me, because I felt an obligation having been the one to let it out of its cage in the first place. But now the dumb thing had taken control of what was supposed to be my mission.

  Another thought struck me as I trekked up the hill towards the graves. Was the Flame trying to tell me something other than I should go on this quest to the Underworld and find Ruby? Was there something else that I was missing?

  The farther away we got from campus, the darker it got. Luckily, the Eternal Flame brightened its light, though it never changed from that annoyed maroon color. I followed it, though there were moments when it darted so far ahead, it felt like chasing a firefly.

  Finally, the pair of us reached the cemetery which felt increasingly creepier at night. Because of the scattered trees, with their big branches and full head of leaves, the night sky disappeared, the
stars blinking in and out of view. The only source of light was the Flame. More than once, I tripped over a headstone and had to struggle to regain my footing. One time, I swore that I heard someone laugh at my clumsiness, but I quickly hoped that it was just my imagination and not some ghost… or maybe it was one of Oliver’s nymphs spying on me from behind one of the trees.

  After my knee collided rather painfully into another gravestone, I stopped moving. Fed up, I called out to the Flame. “Alright, enough! What are we doing? Where are we going? I can’t see anything, but you’re obviously leading me somewhere.”

  The Flame came face to face with me and changed colors. It went back to its happy light blue, surrounding the area in a similar glow. Instead of a reddish tone, the whole graveyard was illuminated as though it were underwater.

  The Flame retained that bright glow as it jumped from headstone to headstone like it was playing leapfrog. I quickly realized it was pointing out where the graves were, so I no longer ran into them. I didn’t know what convinced the Flame to have a change of heart, but I was eternally grateful.

  I continued to follow the Flame, with a little less reluctance this time. As we continued on, I noticed that the graves were getting older and older. Some were coated in moss, while others were chipped and cracked with age. The small glimpses I got indicated that these demigods passed away nearly a hundred years ago.

  My curiosity instantly piqued. We were far from Ruby’s grave, that much was clear. So what was the Flame doing?

  After what felt like an eternity, the blue flame stopped at one grave and waited for me to catch up. It didn’t move ahead but stayed on the top. Because of its gift of light, I was able to read the inscription on the headstone.

  Erich Thompson

  Son of Hephaestus