Olympus Academy: The Complete Series

by Raine, Eliza

  ‘What’s going on over here?’ Chiron’s voice boomed cheerfully across the crowd. Everybody scattered as his horse hooves clopped towards the fountain, except Arketa, her shining eyes still fixed on my face.

  ‘Titans should be killed at birth,’ she hissed at me. ‘You’ll pay for what you’ve done.’ Then she whirled, her hair whipping as she vanished into the crowd.

  ‘Making friends, Pandora?’ Chiron said, reaching the fountain as I stared after her.

  ‘No,’ I shook my head. Her words had made my skin crawl. What could I, or even Titans, have done that could make her want me dead?

  ‘Oh. Well off you go, that’s what the dances are for!’ He beamed, pouring himself a drink. I considered telling him about what Arketa had just said to me but decided against it. It would likely just make her worse to be around.

  ‘Gods, I can’t believe she said that about you and Icarus,’ said Zali as soon as Chiron had trotted off.

  ‘Did you hear what she said to me afterwards?’ I asked Zali.

  ‘No, but it can’t have been as bad as that. I mean, Icarus is good looking, don’t get me wrong, but how could anybody fancy someone that moody?’ She paused, and looked hard at me. ‘You don’t fancy him do you?’

  ‘He’s less moody than he used to be,’ I answered, hesitantly. Zali’s mouth fell open.

  ‘You do!’ she shrieked, throwing her hands to her mouth.

  ‘Shhhhhhh!’

  ‘Sorry! That’s so exciting though!’

  ‘You just said you couldn’t see how anyone could fancy him! And anyway, did you see his face? He was furious. That was more embarrassing than when I spat blood at everyone.’

  ‘I think he was just unhappy about the attention being on him,’ Zali said. ‘I’m sure he likes you too.’

  I wasn’t so sure.

  22

  Things were super awkward with Icarus after the dance. He barely even looked at me in each of our classes, and I was too embarrassed to say anything so I just ignored him back. Dasko was getting increasingly impatient with us, reminding us both constantly that we had to find the box. I tried to tell him about the cave we had found but he just shook his head in frustration whenever I spoke about it, telling me I was speaking in the Titan language. I spent every spare moment I had in the library, trying to work out what kind of snake we had seen, and how I might get past it, but nothing I found was any use. A number of times I thought about going back to see if I could get into the cave, but going without telling anybody felt like too much of a risk, and the only person I could tell was Icarus.

  I tried to take solace in my classes, hoping that perhaps, if I was a good student - not powerful, but not weak - Zeus might let me stay without the box. Flying and swimming were my favorite lessons, by a long way. I could feel myself getting stronger with all of the exercise, and as a result I was starting to get better at the physical classes too. I was much more skilled at archery than sword fighting though. Agrius wasn’t a very good teacher, picking his favorites, like Vronti, and spending ages helping them improve and ignoring the rest of us. Tak and I usually had a laugh and we often came out of class with an equal number of bruises, but I never learned anything. I regularly caught the twins, Astra and Vronti, staring at me in my lessons. But I convinced myself I was being paranoid. After all, most of the kids stared at me when they thought I wasn’t looking. My admission at the dance hadn’t made any difference, they all still avoided me like the plague.

  My elemental classes were getting a little better, other than electricity with Agrius, of course. The giant man would just lean against the wall, muttering about Zeus letting in Titan scum the whole time Icarus and I were stood around the metal ball, trying to manipulate electricity. It was by far the most awful few hours of each week, trying to avoid looking at those green eyes opposite me as well as trying not to lose it and punch the unreasonable teacher.

  Water was going well though. I was now able to maintain the tiny whirlpool in my palm for a few minutes, as well as draw out spindly currents from the water wall. And I was starting to be able to make flames flicker, a tiny bit. Earth was a total waste of time though. And air… The only time I thought I could ever make a connection with air was when I was soaring through it on Peto. But as soon as I was in the air room in the elemental building, I couldn’t get anything to happen at all.

  I couldn’t shift either, and whilst it was quite fun watching the others, I knew that if I survived the end of the semester I wouldn’t be carrying on with the class. Magical Objects, however, I really wanted to carry on with. In contrast to the exhilaration of racing Zali through the ocean and tumbling through clouds on Peto, staring at the Phoenix feather was the most peaceful part of every week. The longer I twirled it in my hands, stroked the strands, took in the rich color, the more I felt like I needed it. And perhaps it needed me too.

  One afternoon I was sitting on the floor in the Magical Objects room, my back against a bookcase and my eyes closed whilst I held the feather. My fingers were gently brushing the edge of it as I tried to imagine for the hundredth time what the bird it came from might have looked like, when suddenly I heard a voice, coming from deep inside my head.

  ‘More magnificent than that,’ it said tersely. I sat up, my eyes snapping open. I looked up and down the row of bookshelves but there was nobody there. ‘I was much bigger, and my tail plumage was every color you’ve ever seen in a flame,’ the impatient voice said.

  ‘Where… who are you?’ I whispered.

  ‘You know who I am.’ And he was right. Much as it defied logic, I knew I was talking to the phoenix.

  ‘Why have you never spoken to me before?’ I asked, as quietly as I could. The last thing I needed was to be going mad. I could just imagine the gossip if anyone caught me talking to myself.

  ‘You can talk to me in your mind, silly child,’ he snapped. ‘I haven’t been able to up until now, you needed to bond with my feather first.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘Honestly, the nonsense in here, where do you come from? I don’t even recognize half of the things in your head!’ he tutted.

  ‘Then stop going through my head!’ I exclaimed. ‘And I don’t recognize half the things in Olympus,’ I added defensively.

  ‘Hmm. At least you have a little fight in you,’ he replied.

  ‘How… how are you talking to me?’ I asked. I heard him sigh.

  ‘My conscious lives forever, but if no new bird is born to replace me, it’s trapped. I’ve been in this feather for centuries,’ he grumbled.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  ‘Ha!’ he snorted. ‘You wouldn’t be able to say my name with years of practice.’

  ‘You don’t know that!’

  ‘I do too. You can barely speak Greek! For the sake of ease, you can call me Nix.’

  ‘As in, short for phoenix?’

  ‘Exactly. Now. I see you have need of me.’

  ‘I do?’ I asked.

  ‘Well unless you know how to get past a lethal water snake in order to find a box that will lead to the whereabouts of your lost Titan ancestor and allow you to gain Zeus’s trust, then yes. You need me.’

  My mouth fell open and a rush of excitement pulsed through me.

  ‘You can help with that?’

  ‘Pandora, is it? Olympus has been without Titan power for too long. I will help you. And that other Titan boy who’s eyes you’re obsessed with.’

  I blushed.

  ‘I’m not obsessed,’ I said, quickly.

  ‘Then you can’t see what I can. Honestly, how did I end up in a teenage girls head? Typical. Years of silence, then moody green eyes everywhere,’ he muttered.

  ‘Nix, I thought you said you could help me,’ I said firmly.

  ‘Yes. Yes. You were on the right track with the library. There is a book that will help you with the snake. It’s a book about plants native to Aquarius called Aquarius Fyta, and it’ll show you what you can use to bait the creature. But be warned, if those breath
ing bubbles don’t show up again, you won’t be able to hold your breath.’

  ‘Where do they come from?’ I asked, thinking about the little turquoise bubbles.

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t think you created them though, your powers aren’t strong enough.’ I scowled but said nothing. ‘They might be a part of the test.’

  ‘They must be.’ I projected confidence into my mental words. ‘I’ll be fine.’

  ‘You can’t go alone. You must go with the green-eyed boy.’

  ‘What if he doesn’t want to go with me?’

  ‘Then you will fail. Oceanus himself devised this test, and I don’t believe he would allow it to be beaten by one individual. That was not his way.’

  ‘Did you know him?’ I asked, feeling another jolt of excitement at the prospect of finding out more about my ancient ancestor.

  ‘Yes. But I will not speak of him now. You have work to do.’

  The gong sounded and I looked up, surprised.

  ‘Well, thanks, Nix. Talk soon, I guess,’ I said, standing up and staring at the feather in my hand.

  ‘If you survive,’ he said.

  ‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ I rolled my eyes, then carefully placed the feather back on the shelf where it usually lived. I felt a small, reluctant pull as my fingers left it.

  I raced through dinner that night, barely listening to my friends chatter, desperate for the temple to change into the library. I didn’t tell them about the bond with the feather and Nix. It was probably normal, probably the whole point of Magical Objects class, but I didn’t want to risk giving anyone any more reason to think I was weird. And even by Olympus Academy standards, an ancient phoenix talking to me from inside my head seemed weird. As soon as the room shifted I made an excuse about needing a book for Dasko’s class and darted off to the geography shelves. I scanned the titles quickly, hunting for Aquarius Fyta.

  ‘Aha!’ I exclaimed, spotting it. I pulled out a large hardback book, with a drawing of a spindly, reedy plant on the front that looked a lot like what had been obscuring the entrance to the cave. I sat down cross-legged on the floor, opened the book in my lap and began to flip through quickly. My elation sank fast. It was all in Greek. The whole thing. Not wanting to give up, I read as much as I could, working out that Fyta must mean plant. But beyond that, I was struggling. Scowling, I stood up, tucking the book under my arm. I shared my Greek Language class with Icarus. And as a native citizen of Olympus, he was much better at it than I was. I would have to go and find him, I realized with a sigh.

  23

  I found Icarus where I’d often seen him before, sitting alone between the bookshelves, reading.

  ‘Err, hi,’ I said. He looked sideways up at me, then back at his book. ‘Look, I’m sorry if I embarrassed you at the dance. But we’ve only got a week until Zeus visits and we really need to get that box. And I… I found some help.’ He looked up at me.

  ‘Help?’

  ‘Yeah. That feather in Magical Objects class. It turns out it belonged to a phoenix who’s conscious wasn’t transferred to a new bird.’ Icarus shook his hair from his eyes and looked at me with more interest than I had ever seen on his face. I blinked quickly, trying to ignore the feeling I was getting from looking back at him. ‘He calls himself Nix and he said he wants to help us.’

  ‘I’ve read about that happening,’ he said quietly. ‘Consciousness being transferred to objects. It’s incredibly rare.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘Well, rare or not, Nix told me that this book would tell us what we can use to lure the snake away from the cave.’ I hauled the book up in front of me to show him the cover. ‘But I can’t read it. It’s written in Greek.’ He held his hand up and I gave him the book, then slid down the opposite bookcase onto the floor. I cocked my head, trying to see the cover of the book he had been reading before I handed him the massive Aquarius Fyta.

  ‘It’s from your world. Sherlock Holmes,’ he said, without looking up. I felt my eyebrows shoot up.

  ‘You’re reading Sherlock Holmes?’

  ‘Yes. Have you read them?’

  ‘No, no I watched it on TV,’ I answered.

  ‘What’s a TV?’

  ‘Sort of like a flame dish, but they show people acting stories in them.’ Icarus looked up from the book, frowning.

  ‘Like a play?’

  ‘Yeah. Exactly.’

  ‘Why don’t people just read?’

  ‘Some do,’ I answered. He looked at me a moment more.

  ‘Did you like it?’ he asked eventually.

  ‘What, TV?’

  ‘No, Sherlock Holmes.’

  ‘Oh. Yes.’

  ‘Me too,’ he said, and dropped his eyes back to the book. I didn’t know what to say after that, so I said nothing. Eventually Icarus picked the book up and turned it, showing me a page. There was a drawing of a red and black plant that looked like a cross between a jellyfish and a mushroom.

  ‘We need to find some of these,’ he said.

  ‘We? So you’re coming too?’

  ‘I have more reason to stay at the academy than you do,’ he muttered, picking up Sherlock Holmes and stuffing it in his bag.

  ‘What makes you think that?’ I said defensively. ‘If I go home I have to spend the rest of my life on the run, apart from my family.’

  ‘Yeah? Well if I go home I have to spend the rest of my life with my family, and I guarantee you that’s worse,’ he snapped at me, standing up. The fierceness in his expression took me aback and I scrabbled to my feet. The snippets of the file floated through my mind. …father performed strange experiments…. imprisoned in labyrinth…

  ‘Well then we’ll just have to make sure we get that box,’ I said, jutting my chin out.

  ‘Pool, midnight,’ he barked, and stalked away.

  I was at the pool ten minutes before midnight. I couldn’t stay still, nervous energy causing my skin to prickle and my muscles to twitch restlessly. I was desperate to get into the water, to get past the snake and find the box. I was desperate to know that I would be able to stay at the academy. To my surprise, Icarus showed up less than a minute after I did. The academy dome was dimly lit and quiet and as he approached I could see the definition of his bare chest and arms. I jumped from one foot to the other, trying to shake out the butterflies, then stopped in case I looked stupid bouncing around. When he reached me I pulled off my hoodie and jeans, my swimsuit catching the dull light. I saw his eyes flick down to my body, before landing on my face and I felt a small shot of hope. Maybe he did find me attractive?

  ‘Ready?’ he whispered, gruffly. Maybe not.

  ‘Yeah,’ I replied, and slowly descended the steps into the pool.

  I took few long breaths, trying to expand my lungs, then a final massive gulp of air and pushed through the dome into the ocean beyond. It was darker than last time, and a tiny flutter of panic rose in me I dived downwards and realized I could see hardly anything. I kicked on regardless, sticking close to the marble slab that the academy was standing on. All the swim practice must have been paying off, because I seemed to reach the bottom much faster than last time. I braced myself as I gripped the bottom edge, preparing for the disorientating swirling that had happened before. It hit me as soon as I pulled myself under the marble, and I tumbled through the water, bubbles escaping my mouth. As I rolled to a stop I looked about me, everything now lit by the glowing plants. Where were the turquoise bubbles? Water surged around me and I span, seeing Icarus coming tumbling towards me. I kicked to the side and he righted himself, shaking his head. Bubbles were leaking fast from his lips and he looked around too, no doubt thinking the same as I was. A few seconds passed, then he began to point to his chest, telling me he needed air. I knew I wouldn’t be able to hold my breath much longer either, and we had to be able to get back to the pool. Where were those damn bubbles? We couldn’t do this without them, I thought desperately. As if hearing my plea, a ribbon of shining turquoise bubbles shot towards us out of the dark
ness. I held my arms out gleefully and they danced around me, coiling around my limbs and settling all around my head. When they stopped moving I closed my eyes and took a tiny, tentative breath. When I tasted cool air relief engulfed me. We could breathe. The relief was obvious on Icarus’s face too. He pointed upwards, towards the glowing garden and I nodded, kicking towards it.

  Together we zigzagged across the massive reef, keeping far back enough that we wouldn’t disturb anything else that was like the snake, but close enough that we could inspect the plant life. A couple of times I saw red and black, but it kept turning out to be a fish, or hard coral. Eventually though, I found them. There was small patch of sandy dirt, and six of the mushroomy plants were swaying gently in the current, the red glowing and pulsing against the dark black. I kicked up towards them, and felt a weird zinging in my hand as I reached out. I pulled my arm back instinctively and a burst of purple lightning shot across the top of the mushrooms. I should have known it wouldn’t be that easy, I thought, frowning at the booby-trapped plants. How would we get past them? Icarus kicked up beside me and regarded the plants thoughtfully. Then he held out his palms and stared at them. Tiny little whirlpools formed, then they elongated into thin tendrils of swirling water, extending towards the plants. They moved past where the lightning had been and nothing happened. I gaped at him, impressed. Of course water wouldn’t set off any traps! As his tendrils reached the plants though, they dissipated and I saw him swear in annoyance. I held my own palms out and copied him. The whirlpools in my hands were bigger than anything I’d made in the water room, and I was surprised. They were easier to control too, and I had no problem turning them into long, thin ropes. I flicked my wrists and they shot past where the lightning had appeared and wrapped themselves around the stalks of the mushrooms. I pulled, and heard a satisfying little pop as the two plants were pulled from their bed. I floated them back to us, and beamed delightedly at Icarus. He cocked his head at me in a reluctant nod, then took the plants. I sent the water ropes back for two more, then we started to kick our way back to towards the cave and the snake.