Designed by Death

by Melody Rose

  It was then that I realized it wasn’t dirt at the edge of the cliff.

  It was clay.

  “Phae!” I shouted. “Give me your hand!”

  The goddess flailed her arms out wildly, desperate to grab onto something solid. Careful not to put my own body in the mud, I stood on the edge, still in the grass, and reached out for Phae. Our hands clasped together, and the weight of her body strained my arms as I held on for dear life.

  The clay and I played tug of war with the goddess’s life. I felt my feet slipping forward inch by inch towards the dangerous clay.

  “It’s okay!” she called out to me, making sure I could hear her over the waves. “Cheyenne! Let me go!”

  “Are you crazy?” I shouted back, my own voice pushing to its highest volume. “You’ll die!”

  “I’m immortal,” she replied with a weak smile.

  “No, you don’t get it!” I insisted. “This is Prometheus’s clay. You won’t die, but you’ll be trapped.”

  “Holy shit!” Phae’s golden eyes went wide when I finally identified the substance.

  “We need to heat it up so we can break it,” I cried, remembering back to the other times I’d fought this substance.

  Phae’s panicked gaze quickly transformed into one of determination. I could tell she had an idea brewing behind those glowing eyes.

  “Cheyenne,” she said, her voice lowering but just barely. “Don’t let go, you hear me? Whatever you do, don’t let go.”

  “Wasn’t planning on it,” I grunted as I tried to regain some ground, but Phae’s shoulders were now completely submerged and soon, so would the rest of her head and arms.

  “You might want to close your eyes,” Phae warned.

  In the space of a blink, the daughter of Helios’s eyes lit up with fire. The flames freaked me out at first because they were so vibrant and shone like lasers. Then I remembered her advice and quickly closed my eyes.

  Even from behind my eyelids, I could see the radiant outline of Phae’s body. It was like looking through a heat sensor. Her body lit up like a Christmas tree, a swirl of reds, oranges, and yellows. They pulsed beneath my fingers, and I squeezed even tighter, reminding myself not to let go.

  Then came the cracks. Like ice breaking, cracks rippled through the air. Sharp tings ripped against my skin, and the pain nearly caused me to let go of the goddess. But I kept my grip firm, and my eyes closed as I witnessed the brilliant radiance of Helios’s daughter. The heat bouncing off her immediately solidified the clay and caused it to break apart.

  For a brief moment, Phae’s body grew heavier as she hung over the edge of the cliff. But then she kicked against the rocks, and I pulled back, giving her more room to haul her body up. Once all four limbs were back on solid ground, safely in the grass, I released her.

  Together, the pair of us laid on the grass, chests heaving from the effort and the urgency of the situation. I rolled over on my side to face the goddess who I could still see the outline of from behind my eyelids. I went to open my eyes so I could see how she was doing since the outline that shone through my eyelids didn’t let me see her expression. But there was a gentle touch across my eyes.

  “Not yet,” Phae said breathlessly. “I have to cool off first.”

  “You know, my boyfriend explodes too, and I’ve seen him, so I think I’ll be okay,” I said as I put a hand on her wrist to move her hand out of the way of my eyes, but Phae only pressed harder.

  “Cheyenne,” she said, her voice serious, “no offense, but he’s only a demigod. I’m the literal god of radiance. Just give it a minute.”

  “Gotcha,” I relented. I squeezed my eyes shut, and Phae released me. We laid there for another minute as the goddess diffused.

  My thoughts ran around in circles. I couldn’t believe that Esme was all the way in Italy. What was she doing at Arges’s villa? Did she follow me here? How did she even know I was here?

  Once again, that all too familiar tune slipped into my racing mind. It was like the carousel music of my worried thoughts. As the most recent prophecy repeated itself to me, I reached up and slapped my forehead in dismay.

  “Uh, Phae?” I said through a groan.

  “What?” she asked, drawing the word out into two syllables as though she knew whatever I had to say wasn’t going to be good.

  “I have something I have to tell you,” I winced. “I think Arges’s land is in danger.”

  19

  “I need you to explain to me why you didn’t think this was important to bring up before now,” Arges said sternly, like a parent scolding their teenager for sneaking in after curfew.

  In a way, I didn’t mind his tone. I knew I deserved it. The minute I set foot on the villa, I should have told Arges and Phae about my mom’s prophecy. It wasn’t as though it had been one of those riddles like fortune cookie prophecies that were super vague. This one was ridiculously clear.

  “Because I honestly forgot until we were attacked,” I defended, even though I knew my argument was weak. “Look, I’m sorry, but I’m telling you now. That’s got to count for something.”

  “Yes, you’re telling us after we’ve already been attacked,” Arges countered.

  We sat poolside with the cyclops soaking in his massive pool that dripped over the edge of the cliff. I sat on a white lawn chair with my back to the cliff, a decent distance away from the edge. Erich floated over by the door, his fingers turning over each other nervously. Phae had finally simmered down enough for us to be able to look at her without the sight burning out our eyeballs. That said, her skin still had a faint shimmer to it, not completely normal yet.

  It was an unusual place for a meeting, ruining the serenity of the picturesque landscape, but when Phae and I ran up to him, our explanations and story had come out too fast for him to get out and dry off.

  So we sat in this weird arrangement as Phae and I explained what happened on the edge of the property, and I mentioned the fact that my Seer mother predicted that the villa was in danger.

  “What did the prophecy say exactly?” Phae asked me for the third time.

  I rolled my eyes but recited it all the same.

  Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  Oh my daughter dear

  Overseas you are bound

  Lessons of defense

  Are set to confound

  But while you are there

  You need to be aware

  A threat is on its way

  To the Cyclops lair

  Oh la de dah de dah de dah, la de dah de dah

  “Well, that’s exactly no help at all,” Erich said unhelpfully.

  I shot my half-brother a glare, and he replied with a shrug as if to say, “You know it’s true.”

  “It was only helpful had we known about it ahead of time,” Arges grunted. He reached up and stretched his arms out wide, pushing out his chest. He rested them on the tile edge of the pull and looked out to the seemingly endless ocean as the sun sank behind the horizon.

  “I’m really sorry,” I said for what felt like the thousandth time. “But now you know, and now we can be prepared. It seems like the villa is pretty secure already, what with Phae’s advanced phone security system thing, but can we get more guards or more technology or something?”

  “I plan to do all of those things,” Phae announced, “but it would help if I knew a little more about this supposed threat. You knew right away that it was Prometheus’s clay. How?”

  I opened and closed my mouth before deciding to let out a big breath of air. “I don’t even know where to start.”

  “At the beginning,” the goddess demanded.

  “Right,” I sighed, “So Esme is the daughter of Prometheus, and she is a traitor to the Academy, set on making the Ultimate Weapon herself. She kind of hates me because she thinks I took her spot in the prophecy, and she hates the Olympic gods, so she is planning to use the Weapon not only on the immortal monsters but also against the gods. Or so we think.”

  “
You think?” Arges said as he stuck his neck out. “How long has this been going on?”

  “Two years?” I said, having to do the mental math. “Last year she stole Eros’s bow and arrow and infected campus with it. Or infected some apples, we’re not really sure how that love potion got to the Academy, but yeah. We ended up freeing Harmonia from her necklace, and she said Esme trapped her in there and made a new bow and arrow for Eros, so that’s all settled now.”

  “Do any of the other gods know about this threat to their livelihood?” Phae asked, her voice as hard as stone.

  “That’s above my paygrade,” I answered honestly. “I always figured the Olympic Officials told them, but it’s not like we always have a lot of communication with the gods.”

  “Says the girl who’s met five of them,” Erich said from his corner.

  “Who are the other two?” Phae asked. “Me, Eros, Harmonia, and?”

  “Hades and Persephone,” Arges supplied. He lowered his arms into the water and brought a cup of it up to his head, letting the drops run down his neck before he spoke again. “You mentioned that you made a deal with Hades for the helm, so you met him, too, right?”

  “Yes,” I said slowly, not realizing until right then that I had met more gods in the last two years than some demigods ever could hope for.

  “Did you also happen to notice that this daughter of Prometheus is stealing powerful weapons from across the Greek myths?” Arges said sagely with his eyes closed as he dipped another handful of water over his bald head.

  Once again, I was stunned by his intuitiveness. “You think Esme took the helm of invisibility?”

  “It lines up with her pattern,” Arges reasoned. “First the bow and arrow of Eros, then Harmonia’s necklace dipped in crime, and now Hades’s helm of invisibility. It cannot be a coincidence that all of these items are going missing.”

  “And that you are the one repairing them,” Erich pointed out too.

  All the information hit me at once, as though I’d been pierced with a dozen arrows. I had to blink several times in order to straighten out my thoughts. While everything the three of them were saying made sense, it baffled me that I hadn’t thought of any of this before now. Esme was after the Ultimate Weapon to destroy the gods. Now she was taking all of their weapons to ensure that they couldn’t fight back.

  But I was standing in her way. I kept getting in the way of her plan by repairing all of the items she was working so hard to destroy.

  Another thought occurred to me just then, and I stuttered out a string of incoherent sounds.

  “Spit it out, Shy, you can do it,” Erich said as though he were encouraging a puppy.

  “Do you think that’s why my dad’s missing?” I said, my voice sounding foreign even to my own ears.

  “It’s entirely possible,” Phae reasoned. “The daughter of Prometheus might have realized that Hephaestus was the one who could defy her plan, so she disposed of him somehow.”

  “A demigod dispose of a god?” Erich scoffed. “I know there are myths about a mortal tricking the gods, but making one disappear for twenty or so years? I don’t think so.”

  “He has a point, Phae,” Arges agreed with the ghost. “It is a near-impossible feat. That said, I do not believe that it is a coincidence that Hephaestus is missing during this time.”

  I swallowed, but it still felt as though there was a rock in my throat. “If she really is after people who can rebuild the weapons she’s stealing, then wouldn’t you be a target too?”

  “Yeah,” Erich said as he pushed himself forward and consequently became more involved in the conversation rather than just the peanut gallery. “What if this has nothing to do with Cheyenne? What if Esme was after the original blacksmiths?”

  “That thought occurred to me as well,” Phae said softly. She turned in her chair and addressed Arges directly. “I know you don’t want to, but if this danger is a real threat, like the prophecy says it is, then you should reach out to your brothers.”

  “Absolutely not!” Arges said, smashing his fish into the edge of the tile. The shout accompanied with the crack in the floor made Erich and I jump. We had never seen the cyclops like this, releasing an ounce of his strength. For the first time in weeks, I was reminded that Arges might be a gentle giant, but he was still a massive monster, capable of destruction and death.

  The air grew thick as the cyclops gathered himself. Phae didn’t move a muscle as she watched her employer calm back down. Erich and I shared a wary glance, but neither one of us moved for fear of angering the cyclops once more.

  “I’m sorry but I cannot, I will not reach out to them,” Arges said.

  “What happened between the three of you?” The words left my mouth before I could think them through. Phae’s head snapped in my direction with a glare that could kill, and I was fiercely reminded of her warning on the initial car ride to the villa. I wasn’t supposed to ask about Brontes and Steropes.

  I prepared myself from another explosion from the cyclops. My knuckles went white against the arms of my plastic chair. Instead, the light in the blacksmith’s eye dimmed, and his face fell.

  “We worked for your father after he was born and declared the god of fire and blacksmiths,” Arges began in a low voice.

  “Arges,” Phae said urgently. “You don’t have to talk about it if you don’t want to.”

  “It is a part of her history too,” Arges defended. Then the cyclops pointed to the ghost, droplets of water cascading down his elbow as he did so. “And his. It involves their father, so it involves them as well.”

  Phae looked between Erich and me before giving Arges an approving nod, sadness appearing in her eyes as well. The cyclops took a large breath before hauling himself out of the pool. He sat on the edge of it, keeping his feet in, and stared out, once more, to the sea. The glaze that crossed over his eye told me that he lost himself in a memory, one that he didn’t visit too often.

  “We worked in these mountains, throughout the caverns we built,” he continued as he waved his hand out, indicating the vast landscape. “We worked in tandem rather well, the four of us, with Hephaestus in charge. He was a great leader, nothing like the stories made him out to be. While he had a hothead, he was fair and delegated well. He believed in all of our abilities and trusted us with various projects.”

  Arges lowered his shoulders and hung his head, stealing his gaze away from the horizon. “I’m sure, with your knowledge, you know the story of the first altar.”

  “I mean, yeah,” I said, unsure if I really should be answering the question. I checked with Phae before saying anything else, especially after her own warnings when I first arrived. She nodded me forward, so I continued. “The three of you made the altar that the Olympic gods swore their allegiance to Zeus and became the twelve Olympians on. Then the altar was placed in the sky for all of the gods to see and remember their oath.”

  I reached out and looked at the newly arrived stars. Since the sun had fully set behind the sea’s horizon, the stars were out in full. In the bright, clean Italian sky, we could see the various constellations perfectly. I oriented myself and managed to find the constellation of Alta. I traced it out with my finger.

  “It still stands there today,” I whispered, the words having new meaning now that I knew the gods still existed.

  “The truth,” Arges said with a massive sigh, as though his lungs were chained to a heavy weight of guilt, “is that I stole the project from my brothers and Hephaestus. I heard of the great honor we’d been asked to give the gods, and I wanted to find favor with them. So even though we were supposed to build it together, I snuck away and made my own project.”

  Erich held up a hand to his mouth to hold back a retort. I offered him a sympathetic smile, knowing how hard it was for him to remain silent and not offer a sarcastic comment.

  “There was a section of the altar I couldn’t figure out, but I pushed through and wanted the glory for myself, knowing that my design was the best,” Arges said
with a pitiful shrug. “So, when it came time to deliver the altar, I switched out mine at the last minute. They swore their allegiance, but in mid-declaration, the table broke.”

  This elicited a gasp from my lips so loud that I had to cover my own mouth. I couldn’t imagine the embarrassment of having something I created break so openly like that.

  “They railed in on Hephaestus, threatening to kick him out of the Olympic Twelve, but I couldn’t let them attack him like that, so I admitted to what I had done,” Arges said as he rapped his knuckles against the tile. “They let Hephaestus fix the altar and proceeded on with the ceremony. Afterward,” Arges closed his eye and squeezed it shut, “Brontes and Steropes left the mountains. Hephaestus soon followed, leaving me with the important lesson that I should have let others help me. If I had, none of that would have happened.” I heard the cyclops swallow and then cough slightly, as though he was holding back tears. “Now I stay here, alone, forging on my own, and I haven’t spoken to my brothers since. I lost their trust, and I don’t believe there is anything I can do to earn it back.”

  The cyclops pulled himself fully out of the pool and took a towel off a lawn chair. He slowly dried his body off, taking his time while the rest of us watched in silence.

  My mind turned the story over in my mind. I wanted to help, to say something encouraging, but it felt useless. This happened thousands of years ago. There was nothing I could say, nothing I could do that Arges hasn’t thought of doing himself. I was sure of that much. He had just let the guilt and separation fester until he created a wound that would never heal.

  I watched the cyclops open the sliding glass door that led into his home when I found myself standing up and shouting at him. “I need your help.”

  Arges paused in the doorway, his meaty hand wrapping around the frame. Even though he didn’t turn around, I could tell he was listening to me.

  Erich waved his hands at me and hissed at me, a warning. But I brushed off my half-brother and took a step forward.