by Alex Raizman
“Maybe it’d be worth using a bit of power to cross this last bit?” Ryan asked.
Athena shook her head. “We’re not coming up here as heroes or equals, Ryan. We’re coming as supplicants who need a favor. If we charge up there in our divine glory, it will set the entire tone for the conversation. A tone we don’t want. Have you heard of Bellerophon?”
“Can’t say that I have,” Ryan said after a moment of thought. The name sounded vaguely familiar, but he couldn’t quite place it.
“He was a hero who tamed a pegasus. He was beloved by the gods...until he tried to ride that pegasus up this very slope. For his hubris, Zeus waited for him to get close, then struck him with lightning and let him fall to the Earth as a warning. If the mountain isn’t enough of a clue, let me speak plainly: Zeus is not fond of uninvited guests.”
“Okay, fine.” Ryan sighed. “So we have to climb the whole way to show we’re being properly respectful?”
“Yes,” Athena said.
“Fine.” Ryan fought back the urge to sigh again. We need their help, Ryan reminded himself.
“Glad you agree. Especially because you need to take point,” Athena said, handing Ryan a pair of icepicks.
“Uh...what?” This entire time, Ryan had been relying on Athena to show him where it was safe to step. “Don’t you think it’d be best if you want first? Or Crystal?”
“No,” Athena said flatly. “I’m exiled from Olympus. I shouldn’t even be here. And Crystal…” Athena trailed off and looked at Crystal, who shook her head. “Back when she was Ishtar, she did not exactly endear herself to Olympus. I think Hera might throw her off the mountain on principle.”
“Ares always liked me,” Crystal interjected with a sour note.
“Right up until the end. Believe me, he dislikes you as much as the rest now.” Athena turned back to Ryan and shoved the icepicks towards him.
With a deep breath, Ryan took them and turned to start climbing. When they reached the base of the ice wall, Ryan looked over his shoulder. “Hey, Athena, how’d you get exiled?”
“Stop stalling,” Athena responded.
“So what do I do with these?” Ryan asked, holding up the ice picks.
“Don’t fall?” Crystal suggested with a smug grin.
“Very funny. Seriously, though. This is the first straight-up ice cliff we’ve had to face.” Ryan looked up at it again and swallowed hard. The sheer ice was a new obstacle, and although he’d gained practice climbing over the last few days, this seemed orders of magnitude harder. Ice is slippery.
He tried very hard not to think about what falling down the mountain could do to him. Would he have time to twist reality? Or would he smash into rocks before he could, and find himself knocked senseless and tumbling miles down to the ground below?
“Relax,” Athena said, giving Crystal a pointed look before turning back to Ryan. “You slam the pick in with each step. Drive it deep enough into the ice to support yourself, then climb up to the next. The claws in your boots will keep your feet from swinging too freely. Then repeat until you’re at the top.”
“That seems...easy enough.” Ryan took a deep breath to try and calm himself. Okay, Ryan. You’ve got this, he thought with a confidence he didn’t feel. Still, with Athena and Crystal looking on, he began to climb.
This was definitely harder than climbing actual rocks. That, at least, involved handholds he could trust, giant boulders that had stood for millennia. This was ice. Ice was treacherous, ice could crack. Don’t think about that, Ryan thought. Every time he swung himself up to the next place to insert the pick, his heart skipped a beat. He was acutely aware that he was resting his entire weight on a thin piece of metal that was stuck into ice.
Don’t look down, don’t look down, Ryan chanted to himself and no sooner had he started the reminder than the urge to look down became overwhelming. He couldn’t stop his eyes. Athena and Crystal were tiny specs beneath him. Even with superhuman stamina, his legs were singing with aches from the climb, and already his arms had added their voices to the chorus.
Wind whirled around him, tugging on his clothes. He was starting to sweat in spite of the cold, and the wind drove a bead of sweat into his eye. Ryan blinked, trying to clear the distraction. You can do this. He swallowed hard and swung the next pick.
It slipped.
Time seemed to slow as the ice pick broke free of the handhold he’d been about to create. Jagged shards of ice rained down from the impact site. He’d put his whole body into the swing, but the angle had been off, and all he’d managed to do was uselessly gouge a thin line in the ice. Ryan’s stomach lurched as his feet swung wildly with the motion, and his heart dropped.
The remaining pick, the one supporting his weight, began to groan in protest. It wasn’t supposed to support his entire mass, not when he was flailing like this. He could hear the ice beginning to shatter under the force. It was a high pitched sound, almost melodic.
If he couldn’t regain his footing, it would be the last sound he ever heard.
Ryan’s feet started to scour the ice below him, trying to get purchase, but in his panic, all he could manage to do was dig furrows. The single pick embedded in the ice was beginning to slant downwards, breaking free of its moorings, and Ryan was gripped by a horrible vision of falling - not just to the bottom of the ice wall, but down the mountain. He could see the pick breaking free at the exact moment his feet hit the wall, sending himself careening away from the wall to crash into the cliff behind Athena and Crystal. They’d turn, trying to catch him, but they wouldn’t be able to grab him in time.
Ryan brought the free pick back up, hitting the ice with all of his might, fueled by divine strength and adrenaline enhanced fear. It was too much force. The ice shattered under the impact, slivers flying free and raining down on him. A couple landed on his eyes, and he was blind, and in that blindness, he lost track of logic or reason. He was sure he was already falling, just unaware of it. Any moment he expected to hit the edge of that cliff and then keep falling, impacting another ledge, then another, and yet another, until his broken corpse was finally free of the mountain and could fall all the way until it hit the atmosphere. If he was traveling fast enough, his body would ignite from the pressure at that point, leaving a blackened skeleton and a nanoverse that had once been humanity’s last hope.
Ryan forced his eyes open and saw that he was still secured to the ice. The pick was at a terrible angle and starting to slide.
If Ryan had been able to concentrate, he would have twisted, Olympian pride be damned, but his panic was nearly full-blown mania at this point, and his divine powers required a moment of clarity to function. There was no time for clarity, there was no time for cleverness.
He swung the pick and heard it sink firmly into the ice. For several seconds, all he could do was stare at both picks, his arms trembling, his stomach rolling. Relief brought tears to his eyes. In spite of the cold, he felt hot, and he pressed his forehead against the cool ice. I can’t do this, he thought. I can’t start climbing again.
He’d faced hundred-handed giants on worlds of blasted iridescent sand. He’d grappled a mad god with more power than Ryan had ever imagined. He’d stared down a horde of vampire-goblins armed with weapons straight out of fantasy. None of those, nothing in those, terrified him more than the idea of trying to move his ice picks again.
Distantly, he heard someone calling his name. Athena or Crystal, he couldn’t tell which. He didn’t dare look down to check. Breathing as deeply as he dared, Ryan focused his ears on the sound. After a couple moments, he identified it. Athena’s voice.
“Keep going!” Athena shouted. “I can see a ledge just a bit above!”
At least, that’s what he thought she was shouting. She must have been doing some minor twist herself, making sure her voice could cut through the distance and roaring wind. It’s what he wanted her to be saying, at least. Looking up seemed safe. Ryan forced his head away from the wall, his eyes watering at the effort of n
ot going to either side and looked upwards.
It was there. Athena was right. Just a couple more handholds and there was the top of his climb. He just had to make his arm move. He just had to…
“I can’t!” Ryan shouted, his voice coming out hoarse and cracked. He could barely hear it after it left his own lips. There was no way Athena and Crystal could hear it on the ground. If he could focus, he could twist...and if he could focus, he’d have nothing to fear.
His old anxiety spoke up then, an old friend whispering in his ear. At the worst points in Ryan’s life, it had always been there like a good friend, happy to remind him that no matter how bad things seemed, it could still get worse. If you don’t move, you’ll be hanging until you fall.
That terror was enough to overwhelm every other fear. The last two handholds were taken with careful, trembling deliberation, a task that should have taken twenty seconds stretched over five minutes of real time and hours in Ryan’s perception, and then he was hauling himself over the edge.
When he got to the top, he scrambled away from the edge and pulled himself into a trembling ball. No more, he thought. Any more passage up or down the mountain would be done with twisting and damn the Olympians if it offended them. He’d fight them all if it meant he didn’t have to climb another step on Olympus, and he’d do it with a damn smile on his face.
Athena reached the top of the ice wall some time later. Ryan hadn’t moved in the interim, and she knelt beside him. “Are you all right?” There was genuine warmth and concern in her voice.
The tears had turned to frost on his lashes, and Ryan hoped it just looked like he was brushing ordinary ice away when he wiped his eyes. “Just slam the pick in with each step, eh?” he asked. He’d meant for it to come across lighthearted and playful, but it just sounded bitter.
Athena’s hand was on his cheek, and he leaned into the contact. It was soft and warm and human and everything Ryan needed in that instant. “I would have caught you. You know that, right?”
“It was kind of hard to think in the moment. I was sure I’d fall too fast.” His voice was still high and hoarse, his heart was still pounding in his chest.
Athena smiled and laughed. She was doing that more often these days, Ryan realized. It was a nice change. She had a laugh that wrapped around you like an embrace. “Ryan. I’ve caught arrows with my bare hands. You think you could fall that distance too quickly?”
“I’m still mortal,” Ryan said quietly. “I could still die.”
“Yes,” Athena said. She met his gaze and, in a tone that would brook no argument, added, “If I allow it to happen. Which I assure you, I will not.”
Ryan took a final deep breath and nodded. “Thank you.” She moved her hand away, and he felt its absence as strongly as he had the touch. “No more climbing.”
“No more climbing,” Athena agreed, looking over his shoulder. “We’re here.”
Ryan had been so paralyzed he hadn’t even looked to see what was around him. He turned his head and found that the stone beside him wasn’t a random boulder, but the step of some grand staircase, leading up to an immense facade. The doorway was flanked by columns, and Ryan’s mouth fell open as he took in the enormity of them. He’d seen photos of the Parthenon and the Coliseum, and this facade seemed to be the primordial ancestor to them, related in the same way birds were technically dinosaurs. I bet they were cheap knock-offs even back in the day, before they were ruins. Through that empty door, he could see a city full of buildings on an enormous scale: columns that dwarfed the ones in front of him, stone buildings the size of skyscrapers, and statues that would overshadow Lady Liberty.
Athena spoke, and at first, he could hear the pride in her voice. “Ryan Smith, welcome to the Theopolis.” On the last word, Athena’s tone shifted, the pride turning to confusion and an undercurrent of fear. “What...no, that’s not right,” she finished.
Crystal approached as Ryan’s eyes began to adapt to the splendor, letting him notice details he’d missed at first. One of the immense towers was leaning drunkenly, looking like it might collapse at any moment. Another had huge chunks torn from the sides as if some giant hand had punched holes in it. One of the statues had an arm proudly upraised, but it ended at the elbow. Amid all the ruins, this city of the gods was silent, save a wind moaning its way between the cracked and crumbling stones.
“What...what happened?” As soon as the question came out, Ryan realized it was stupid, as neither of his companions had been here in hundreds of years.
“I don’t know,” Athena hissed through clenched teeth, her fingers curling into fists. “I can’t imagine what could have done...this” There was an undertone to her rage, a hint of deep pain. It gave Ryan a chill that had nothing to do with the cold air.
Crystal sighed, sounding more irritated than anything else. “How about we hold off mourning until we find out if there’s anything to mourn, yeah? Maybe they just stopped the cleaning service. C’ mon, we didn’t climb all this way to bloody mope once we got to the top.”
Without waiting for an answer, she stalked towards the ruins, leaving Athena and Ryan no choice but to follow.
***
Ryan’s first experience with another world had been Cypher Nullity, the abandoned afterlife of Crystal’s ancient people. There, he’d felt an overwhelming sensation that he was walking among the ruins of something that had once been great and grand. In some ways, the same feeling of kenopsia was worse here in Olympus. In Cypher Nullity the architecture had been alien and the ruins so unimaginably ancient that they were clearly something from another world, something scraped out of fiction and dropped in front of his eyes.
It wasn’t the same with Olympus. Time had not worn away all the colors from the walls, and the banners that hung from windows were still brilliant shades of red and blue and green - although their edges had frayed into tatters, and insects had begun to eat holes in the cloth. One such banner broke loose of its moorings and drifted on the wind. Ryan reached out and twisted reality just enough to redirect it towards his hand. As soon as it met his fingers it began to dissolve, so worn that it couldn’t stand even the gentle touch.
Athena stumbled beside him, and Ryan felt a tug on his arm. She’d latched onto his shoulder so hard her knuckles were starting to turn white. He’d never seen her like this before, and he began to ask what was wrong, but he saw that her eyes were glistening with withheld tears, and the words died on his lips. She wasn’t looking at him but staring at the tattered fabric that had come to rest on the street in front of them.
Again Ryan started to speak, and again he stopped. He tried to imagine what it was like for her. What if he had left Saint Louis for hundreds of years, then come back to find the Arch shattered and laying in the Mississippi, and the homes empty and abandoned? What words of comfort could someone possibly offer him then?
He glanced at Crystal, whose mouth was pressed in a thin line. She just gave Ryan a barely perceptible shake of her head. If she had any words, it seemed, she was keeping them to herself. Ryan didn’t think she did. Still, he felt an urge to do something, to do anything. Athena - brave, unflappable Athena, who had kept her calm after watching a friend fall to Bast’s gunfire - could barely stand.
Ryan just reached up with his free hand and rested it on her fingers. It wasn’t much of a comfort, but it was the only one he felt he could possibly offer.
After a few seconds, Athena gave a faint sniff and let go of Ryan’s arm. “Come on,” she said in a hoarse whisper. With that signal given, the three of them wove between columns. In some places, they had to pass under ceilings that were still held in place. In others, they had to walk carefully over the ruins beneath an open sky. A few of those colossal statues were visible as well, standing silent vigil over the crumbling ruins.
A fallen column of marble, covered with a spider web of cracks, barred their path. Athena stepped to the right of the column, and Ryan moved to follow her. Her back tensed slightly, and he altered his path to go around
the left. Don’t intrude, he thought to himself. Athena had let her barriers down more than Ryan had ever imagined she could. It would be best for her pride to let her have the momentary privacy.
Instead, he let his eyes drift upwards, trying to figure out what it had fallen from. This building only had four other columns and a ceiling. The columns were oddly curved, and some of the cracks in the ceiling looked deliberate, almost like it was...A hand, Ryan realized with a sudden shock. The columns weren’t columns at all, but the immense digits of a hand from some statue.
Walking under the massive hand provided a new perspective of the statues’ scale. Without a twist, even his newfound strength would not give him the ability to leap up and touch the palm he’d mistaken for a ceiling. He felt like an ant weaving its way between the fingers of a human. Down past the hand, where the wrist should have been, he could see the sandaled feet of the rest of the statue.
He had to pause to process the sudden perspective. He’d compared these statues to the Statue of Liberty, but now that he was among them, he realized that had been giving them too little credit. That statue would be a toddler compared to these, barely coming up to their kneecaps. It was dizzying in a way Cipher Nullity hadn’t been, grand in a way that Officium Mundi couldn’t hope to match.
This, without question, felt like a place that had housed gods.
He turned to find the path out from under the hand and came face to face with a stone bust of similarly immense proportions. It lay on its side, half-buried in the pavement. Ryan gaped. This was, without a doubt, the severed stone head of Athena.
No wonder she wanted to be alone, Ryan thought as he started moving again. Walking among the ruins of her former home would be hard enough. Coming face to face with her decapitated statue must have added a whole new level of surreality to the experience.
Sure enough, when he saw Athena again, her face was fixed into a scowl. She avoided Ryan’s gaze, and when Crystal emerged from the other side, Athena stared straight ahead as she walked.
