The Immortality Trials Omnibus
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Hedone hovered near the entrance to the lava tube, watching transfixed. There was no way Theseus would win this Trial, she thought, with no remorse or regret at the realisation. Lyssa and her crew were no longer in the running, Hercules had made sure of that. Hedone had thought her heart would stop when she and Theseus had emerged from the volcano just in time to see Lyssa kick Hercules in the head. But he’d shown her who was stronger. Hedone didn’t know why he had thrown the feather at Epizon, but it had worked. Lyssa had stopped fighting and run, surely breaking all the rules when her ship landed on the water and her crew dived in to rescue her.
The Trial was between Hercules and the giants now, with Theseus’s trident-throwing below her getting him nowhere. Hercules had managed to disable one of the birds, his lion-skin cloak allowing him to get right underneath it, then grip its neck and twist. The giants had a huge metal net and although they already had two thrashing stymphalian birds secured in it, they didn’t seem able to catch another one. They were using the net as a shield to get close to the flock but they couldn’t open it to use it without losing the birds they had already snared.
Without warning a body tumbled past Hedone in the water and she gasped soundlessly, pressing herself flat against the volcano wall. It was a telkhine, wearing a weird metal crown. It looked like it was dead, or unconscious. It hit the ocean floor, causing a puff of moss and tiny creatures to erupt around it.
Hedone looked up where it had fallen from, and immediately noticed something odd in the swarm of metal birds. Lots of them had stopped moving. Completely. She looked to Hercules, who had clearly noticed it too. He moved like lightning, ripping the heads from two of the creatures before she could even draw a full breath. Everything around her shimmered slightly, then with a flash of light she was on the deck of the Virtus, her wet hair clinging to her face.
He had done it. Hercules had won.
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