by Eliza Raine
‘We don’t have gladiator shows in Egypt,’ barked Busiris. ‘We leave that to those barbaric idiots. My armies are organised, and only fight when there is something to be gained.’
‘Sounds more like Athena’s thing than Aries’. Strategy over brute strength and all that,’ said Evadne.
‘Are you suggesting that I am weak?’
Evadne looked at him, seeing his black eyes cold behind the heavy liner. She thought about Busiris’s crew-mate Eryx, with his fierce allegiance to his captain and his simple courage. Busiris would likely live longer, granted, but she doubted he was as strong-willed or as motivated. Did that make him weak? Maybe she could find out.
‘Not at all. Brute strength is nothing without strategy. Why waste energy on a doomed outcome?’ She shrugged. Busiris narrowed his eyes at her and grunted,
‘How did you end up here?’
‘Hercules needed a gunner.’
‘That’s it? Come on, we’re all sharing here. Where are you from?’ Abderos said.
‘Leo.’
‘Nice. Leo’s really nice,’ he said.
‘Yeah.’ Leo was really nice, if your parents gave a shit about you, she added silently.
‘Lots of money there. Are your family rich?’
Evadne sighed as Abderos asked the question. Her family were rich. And their money was more important than their time or their children. ‘You don’t need to know about me, or my family. Enough questions,’ she said aloud, getting to her feet.
Busiris glared at Abderos.
‘Great. You’ve made her start pacing again,’ he growled.
15
‘Asterion, jump now!’ Hercules roared the last word as the minotaur teetered on the edge of the underground cliff. Animalistic fear was etched into Asterion’s face and Hercules bared his teeth as his patience with the creature ran out. He placed a hand on his first-mate’s back and pushed. A wild howl erupted from the minotaur as his hooves scrabbled on the ground, then he began to slide down the cliff.
Hercules glanced at the tidal wave fast approaching them, then over the edge of the precipice as Asterion slid into the wide central tunnel, still bellowing unintelligibly. He sat on the edge and pushed himself off, into the pipe on the right, the one the dancing white light had disappeared down. He felt a smattering of water over his head as he slid off the cliff, his breath catching at the sudden drop, then he heard the whoosh of water as the wave flooded over the edge of the cliff, creating a mirror of the waterfall opposite and cascading over him and the tunnel. Within seconds he was plunged into darkness, a cold trickle of water beneath him as he raced through the pitch-black pipe. He could no longer hear Asterion’s howls as he sped through the tunnel, his momentum carrying him up the smooth cold sides as he rounded bend after tight bend. He took long measured breaths, hoping to see the guiding white light ahead of him at any minute, but the tunnel stayed dark as the trickle of water beneath him grew.
Hercules swirled around the inside of the mountain in the slowly flooding tunnel for what felt like eternity. He knew he didn’t need to panic, there was no way Apollo would devise an obstacle that couldn’t be beaten, but he was starting to feel nauseous in the endless dark, with no idea where his body would be thrown next. The water was now halfway up his hips and although the impenetrable lion hide protected his backside from the constant sliding it couldn’t stop the freezing liquid from washing up his legs to his crotch. Suddenly the tunnel opened out and Hercules barely stopped himself crying out as he was launched from the pipe into a dimly lit cavern. He flailed his arms as he fell with an almighty splash into a freezing pool. Kicking hard, adrenaline coursing through him, he righted himself under the water and broke back through the surface. He gulped down air, acutely aware of the weight of the wet lion skin and massive sword fighting against his attempts to stay on the surface.
‘Captain!’ He kicked himself round in a circle, looking for Asterion. The minotaur was swimming towards him, making significantly fewer waves than he was. He tried to calm himself. He didn’t need Asterion to see him out of control. ‘The cavern is going to flood.’
Hercules looked around the cavern properly. It was lit by the same blue flames within chunks of ice in the carved walls. There were three tunnels allowing water to pour into the cave, and no other ways in or out that he could see.
‘If those are the tunnels we came in from, how do we get out?’ he demanded as the minotaur reached him.
‘We must have to go down,’ Asterion replied.
Hercules frowned. The water had risen a foot in the short time they had been in the cavern. He took a deep breath and ducked his head under the ice-cold water, feeling his skin tighten as the cold enveloped him. He swivelled his head, trying to take in as much as he could through the dark water. There was the light! Maybe ten feet below them, hovering. He pushed his head back up.
‘The light is down there. Let’s go,’ he said, before taking another massive breath and diving down. The cold water stung his eyes as he kicked his way down towards the white light, brightening as he approached it. He was expecting to see another tunnel in the rock, a way out of the cavern, but he didn’t. Instead he saw a blue circle, pulsing and glowing. The white light bumped gently against it.
Hercules’s eyebrows knitted together and he reached out towards the circle. As he touched it, it changed colour, to bright white. The guiding light danced away from the circle, zipping across the pool in the other direction. As Hercules removed his hand from the circle to follow the light it immediately turned blue again. He propelled himself through the water after the light, until he reached the other side of the cavern and a second glowing blue circle. He pushed his hand against it and waited. Nothing happened. The light bounced for a moment, then zipped off again.
Hercules needed more air. In two big strokes of his strong arms he was back at the surface. He took a big breath, then dived back down, looking for the light. He found it, still ten feet down and hovering in the middle of the pool. When he reached it, it zoomed off again, this time straight down. Hercules kicked after it, his ears popping as he went deeper. Soon he could see the floor of the pool. The only thing clear on the dark rock was a third pulsing circle. With a big kick he reached out and touched it, turning it white. Still nothing happened. He waited until his lungs began burning for air, then kicked angrily back to the surface.
‘What am I supposed to do?’ he shouted over the now-roaring sound of the water cascading into the fast-filling cavern.
‘I don’t know, Captain,’ Asterion answered, treading water. ‘What is the light showing you to do?’
‘Touch all the circles! I’ve done that!’ Hercules gave an involuntary shiver. The freezing water was starting to take its toll, his powerful legs tiring sooner than they should. Touch all the circles… What if he needed to touch all three at the same time? There was only him and Asterion.
‘Asterion, dive down to the blue circle over there and hold your hand on it, on my mark,’ he barked. Asterion nodded and took a breath. ‘Go!’ They both kicked under the water again, Hercules moving swiftly to the blue circle opposite the one Asterion was headed to. He pressed his hand to it and waited a second before a low rumbling sounded. He looked down, trying to see through the dark water and noticed the current changing, pulling downwards. A section of the floor, right in the centre, was moving up towards them. He watched, hovering in place as a disc of the stone floor rose higher, and water was sucked down into the hole left in the floor beneath, easily big enough for him to pass through. The disc stopped suddenly, then began moving back down again, water rushing back up towards the surface. He let go of the circle and swam to the surface. Asterion was there already, gasping.
‘I can’t hold my breath that long,’ he wheezed.
‘Idiot,’ Hercules hissed. The water level had risen higher than the lowest tunnel now, leaving only about four feet of air above them. ‘We’ll have to hold on as long as we can, then the second we let go of the circles, dive for the hole a
t the bottom.’
‘Yes, Captain.’ Apprehension danced in the beast’s bull eyes.
‘This is our only chance, Asterion. If you screw this up we both die.’ Hercules projected every ounce of malice he possessed into the threat. Asterion nodded.
‘Go.’
Again they ducked under the water, moving faster this time to the blue circles. The disc in the floor began to rise like a plug being lifted, the water rushing down past Hercules and making the lion-skin cloak ripple. He watched carefully, and as soon as he judged the disc high enough for him to make his escape he launched himself towards the hole. He kicked hard, tapping his reserves of strength, determined to get there before Asterion. The disc was dropping, but not as fast as he was swimming. His ears popped again as he reached the black hole, gripped the edge and pulled himself through it.
16
Eryx burst from the freezing water, his lungs burning in his wounded chest as he gulped down crisp air. Bergion splashed to the surface beside him, heaving and retching as he forced air into his own lungs.
‘Where’s Antaeus?’ Eryx gasped. Bergion shook his head and Eryx’s heart faltered. Then an almighty splash on his other side rocked him in the water and he kicked frantically to turn himself around. Antaeus only surfaced long enough to look desperately at Eryx, his skin deathly pale, before he sank back under the water, arms limp. Eryx swore, took a big breath and dived back under the water after his captain. The giant was sinking fast, his weight dragging him down towards the hole they had just emerged from, but Eryx moved faster, gripping Antaeus’s wrist and pulling hard.
Antaeus had become a dead weight, his eyes glassy. Fear filled Eryx and he pulled harder, enough to stop the giant’s descent but not enough to get him back to the surface. Frustration welled inside him as he wrapped his other hand around Antaeus’s wrist and pulled, his kicks futile. Suddenly, Bergion was there, his dark form and long beard clear under the water. He gripped Antaeus’s other wrist and then they were moving up, fast. They broke the surface as one and Eryx scanned his surroundings. They were in another lake, but this one was in a gloomy forest, dark willows branching out from a grassy bank ten feet away. He grunted as he kicked for the closest shore, turning constantly to check Antaeus’s lifeless head was out of the water. Between them they scrabbled onto dry land, hauling their captain with them. Panic rushed in as Eryx looked at him, not knowing if the blue skin was due to cold or lack of air.
‘What do we do?’
Bergion said nothing as he kneeled beside Antaeus, unclipped his cloak and held his own ear to the giant’s chest. After a moment he wriggled one massive arm under Antaeus’s back and pulled him up into a sitting position.
‘Hold him here,’ he grunted. Eryx did as he was told, kneeling behind his captain to hold his gigantic frame up. Bergion took a deep breath, then punched Antaeus squarely in the chest.
‘What are you doing!’ yelled Eryx, shocked, but Bergion ignored him, moving back and then punching him again. Antaeus shuddered under his hands. Bergion punched a third time and Antaeus heaved, throwing water up as he lurched forward. Bergion backed away quickly and Eryx leaped to his feet.
‘Captain! Are you all right?’
‘Does he look all right?’ snapped Bergion. Antaeus continued to heave, his breath rattling as he panted, but the colour was returning to his face.
‘How did you know what to do?’ asked Eryx quietly, awed.
‘Albion and I used to drown each other sometimes.’ Bergion shrugged. Eryx stared at him, infinitely glad both that he hadn’t been brought up in the same way as a full giant and that he’d never had a brother.
A gentle cooing sounded overhead and Eryx looked up, into the trees.
This was not a normal forest, he realised.
17
‘Get down, the phoenix is back!’
Lyssa dropped to the ground the second she heard Epizon hiss the warning. Her still-wet clothes squelched beneath her as she lay flat against the forest floor. If you could call it a forest. There were no trees like these anywhere else in Olympus, she was sure. They glowed with all the colours of a diamond: ice blues, bright purples and soft teals. Each leaf looked like a glistening gem and there was an eerie absence of the noises she’d expect in a forest. There were no rustling leaves, birdsong, tapping of critters’ feet or murmurs of wind through trees. Under normal circumstances she would have found it very beautiful, peaceful even, but having nearly drowned in the last cavern, she was in no place to appreciate it. She was angry. If Epizon hadn’t suggested they try touching the circles all at once, their lungs would have filled with ice-cold water and that would have been the end. The end of her chance to stop Hercules, the end of the Trials. The end of her life. Worse, the end of Abderos, Epizon and Phyleus’s lives too. She would have been responsible for killing most of her crew. Nausea coiled in her belly and she clenched her teeth, forcing her Rage to replace it. This was Apollo’s fault, not hers. He took Abderos, he designed a bunch of traps to try to kill them. Athena made her do this, made her risk her and her crew’s lives to do what the goddess herself couldn’t and prevent a lunatic from living forever. Her muscles twitched as she lay flat on the ground, shaking with both cold and anger.
‘I think it’s gone,’ Phyleus whispered loudly.
‘I’ve had enough of this,’ she spat as she jumped to her feet. Phyleus was standing up slowly, brushing gently glimmering leaves from his soggy clothes.
‘Yeah, I think we all have,’ he muttered.
‘I mean it. I’ve had enough of being used, pushed around, forced to—’ A heavy hand came to rest on her shoulder. She tensed but closed her mouth.
‘This is not the time, or the place, Captain,’ Epizon said and stepped in front of her. ‘We need to focus on Abderos. We can discuss the gods later.’ The warning was clear on his face. The world is watching. She closed her eyes and took a breath. As she did, music began. Her eyes flew open, taking in Epizon’s surprise.
‘Where…?’ She trailed off.
It was the most incredible sound she’d ever heard. She knew, all at once, that there was nothing wrong with the world. Nothing wrong with her, or with her crew, or with the gods. Everybody was fine. Better than fine. They were happy. She was happy. A slow smile spread across her face and Epizon barked out a laugh.
‘Isn’t it amazing?’ he muttered.
‘It is,’ she agreed and sat down on the cold earth. She was dimly aware of a bright blue bird beating its wings high above them, a moment of blissful cold enveloping her, wrapping her up safely. The melody continued, light and dancing, happy and hopeful. If she just stayed here she would be fine. They all would.
‘Lyssa!’ A loud voice broke through her serenity. ‘Lyssa, listen to me, we have to go.’ The voice was urgent, and it didn’t go with the pretty music. She frowned.
‘Phyleus?’
‘Yes, Lyssa, you have to cover your ears. Come on,’ he said and tried to pull her to her feet. He had one arm wrapped around his head, trying to cover both ears at once. She looked at Epizon, sitting beside her. He shrugged.
‘Why don’t you want to listen to this lovely music?’
‘It’s phoenix song, and you’ll die if you stay here. We need to go. We need to rescue Abderos.’ Abderos. The name jarred her, like the wrong note had been hit in the tune. ‘Lyssa, please.’
‘Captain,’ she said, without thinking. ‘It’s Captain.’ A smile crossed Phyleus’s worried face and he tugged on her arm hard.
‘Yes. Yes, it is. Captain, we need to go and rescue Abderos, before we run out of time.’
It all came back to her in such a rush she gasped. She pulled out of Phyleus’s grip and clapped her hands over her ears, fighting the peaceful feeling still lingering, pulling at her consciousness. Her Rage returned, full force, pulsing through her body so hard it was as though it was making up for being lulled to sleep. She snarled. Phyleus took a nervous step back from her.
‘How do we kill it?’ she growled.
‘We don’t. If you kill a phoenix it will be reborn and you’ll have an enemy for life,’ Phyleus answered. More questions swam through her mind as Epizon looked up at her placidly. She reached for his arm.
‘We’ve got to go,’ she said to him. He nodded and stood up obligingly. Phyleus rolled his eyes.
‘If you weren’t so stubborn I could have got you to do that,’ he muttered as he turned away. She scowled at him, her hands back over her ears, her adrenaline pushing her through the piercing cold the phoenix was beating down at them.
‘Well, why dddddidn’t it affect you? And how do you know so mmmuch abbbout phoenixes?’ Her teeth were chattering as she started to jog, away from the pool and the bird, turning often to make sure Epizon was following.
‘I ddddid tell you I knew pppplenty about Olympus, and you chose not to bbbelieve me,’ he snarked, jogging beside her.
‘Why didn’t it affect you?’ she asked again. The cold was lessening as they got further from the bird and she was sure the glowing plants around them were getting brighter.
‘I’m…’ Phyleus started but didn’t finish. She looked sideways at him as she ran, moving faster as warmth returned to her limbs and power surged around her body. She didn’t have time to ask more questions. Looming ahead of them, rising from the ground and growing as they neared it, was an enormous gladiator pit carved from ice.
18
‘So, what do you do on the Orion?’
Evadne slumped down next to Busiris. He scowled at her, as she had expected him to. ‘I know you’re first mate,’ she continued as she folded her legs beneath her on the hard ground, ‘but what does that actually mean you do? Eryx won the Hydra Trial, didn’t he?’ She raised her eyebrows at the giant as he snorted.
