Chapter 19
Charisma
The wind struck my cheeks like a harsh hand, tossing my hair in a wave of floating strands that swayed behind me. I blinked tears away as I redirected my mind from the unsettling, persistent dream to the two imposing gods who lay proudly on their thrones mounted on a high platform.
At the crack of dawn, Eros had woken me with the reminder of the upcoming trial and led me down the stairs to the kitchen where we both ate our breakfast in silence, weighted by the knowledge of what the day ahead announced.
Mere moments ago he had wished me good luck before using his magic, and in the next second, I was standing once again at a crossroads with my life.
My breath turned to fog in the crisp air, swirling together with the misty exhales of the other contestants.
No one dared to speak yet. From the tallest to the shortest, wisest to the dullest, strongest to the weakest and bravest to the shyest; they gazed with round eyes behind the elevated surface where a maze seemed to mock their unwavering attention.
I knew the worst part was yet to come but I couldn’t imagine anything worse than a maze that was alive.
The crimson, cracked soil seemed to whisper the promise of a brutal demise; the ground paths releasing a scorching heat that rose to the atmosphere in clouds of condensation.
The walls were unlike anything I had ever seen.
They were not made of stone or bushes but composed of creatures.
Thousands of snarling beasts pressed shoulder to shoulder, with bodies that were a blend of womanly figures and bird-like appendages woven into barriers of feathers and wings.
Harpies, I realized.
To me, the maze resembled an imagined concept of hell, though I was confident an afterlife with the devil would’ve been far more inviting compared to the living nightmare that was waiting for me with open arms.
From his throne of swords, robed in the armor of a warrior, the god rose to his feet, scrutinizing the crowd. A paludament of imperial purple draped his left shoulder, flowing onto the ground, the vibrant shade a contrast to the blackness of his beard and hair.
“I, Ares, God of War, along with my beloved sister,” he motioned toward his relative, “Athena, Goddess of Wisdom and Warfare: we bid you welcome to your second trial.”
The woman scratched the belly of an owl resting on the pauldron over her shoulder, her chin high.
Athena removed the braided hair from her chest, short nails drumming on the edge of a throne forged of books before she stood.
She moved with a queen’s grace, but her eyes, cold and calculating, held the venomous allure of a serpent.
“I assume that each of you have wondered about the selection protocol for the Gods’ Gambit and the criteria that led to your individual participation.” I held my breath, waiting for Athena to continue. “Rest assured that you will receive answers to your questions.”
“In the unfortunate event of the matter not being revealed evident by this time, allow me to state that we, gods, are the creators of humankind.” As he spoke, the God of War’s fingers tapped on the sword tucked into his sheath, his features rough as if carved in stone.
His beard moved with his lips, the words settling over the contestants like a storm of bloodbath and violence.
Ares certainly wasn’t the God of War for nothing.
I could imagine him on the battlefield, slaughtering his enemies without much of a struggle and gathering a pile of the dead behind him.
If anything, I was convinced Ares was the type of warrior to fight without his armor, savoring the blood shed like he’d relish a warm bath.
A shiver ran down my spine as my focus moved to Athena. “Human production requires each god to contribute with power, and due to simultaneous creations, an excessive amount of power may unwittingly channel into a single individual. We refer to those individuals as errors.”
If I had wheels in my head, they’d be spinning rapidly enough to cause a short circuit. My teeth sank into my tongue, and I forced myself to listen before jumping to a ridiculous conclusion.
“What my sister is trying to say is that you, mortals, are what we consider errors. Certain portions of our capabilities exist within you, and they upset the Earth’s balance. It is rather simple to understand, isn’t it?”
Athena shot him a look, shaking her head. “Through this game, we will reestablish Earth’s balance and reclaim the lost fractions of our power.”
I tried to focus, but the surrounding whispers wouldn’t cease, a tide of panic, agitation and bewilderment rising over the crowd. My eyes remained unblinking, limbs locked in place as if someone had forged me into a frozen, impenetrable statue.
“Magic?”
“Why didn’t I know until now?”
“I-I have powers?”
“Why do we have to die for their mistakes?”
“What if we learn how to use them and fight against them?”
“This is a fucking stupid plan. How are you going to fight them when they have thousands of years of experience over us?”
“Do you really believe what they say? What if it’s just a way to excuse themselves for killing us without mercy?”
The Gods watched with an abnormal lack of interest, surely not the first time they heard such complaints, but I didn’t acknowledge them.
I seemed to be stuck in a trance, the voices diffusing into background noise.
I lifted a hand in the air, transfixed by the palm that I kept twisting backward and upward, almost expecting a flare of magic to emerge from the movement.
Somewhere within me lived a thread of the god’s power, and I had been oblivious to it my entire life.
How could I have been so blind? In all the fictional and mystical worlds I had read about, magic rarely lay hidden.
Instead, it spread traces of its existence until it manifested with full force after not being set free for too long—some would burn buildings to the ground, others would freeze entire cities or wield the weather with their emotions.
But me? I had never experienced anything even remotely close.
My teeth bit the inside of my cheek. What if this was the advantage I was waiting for?
I hadn’t found an ally, but perhaps it wasn’t necessary to attain one against the gods.
All I needed to get home was magic, and that I had.
If I could learn how to use it, I could return to my mother—I could veyrith there.
Yes. It was a good plan. 226688 had told me that in order to veyrith to a specific destination, one had to have visited it before, and what other place could I be more familiar with than my own house?
I could go home. My chest constricted, and my heart missed a few beats as the possibility set in. The next breath I took was easier, calmer. For now, all I had to do was to pass today’s trial, and I’d figure out the rest from there.
“Are you okay?” Theo neared, placing a comforting hand on my shoulder. I flinched at the touch and held back a smile when my eyes met his.
What power does he have? My eyes strained to detect something amiss, but nothing about him was other than ordinary.
I nodded instead of offering an answer and found the redheaded man among the contestants—the one who foresaw the outcome of the first game and sent a vision into my mind. He wasn’t a psychic, as I initially assumed. He was a seer.
Then, I shifted my focus to Verena, who was farther away from the bustling crowd.
She whispered urgently through her teeth, eyes pointed to the side where nothing but the wind stood.
Perhaps her power was talking to ghosts, though I did not know what that would be called.
I had heard about the existence of necromancers, but those could do far more than speak with the dead—they could command them to rise and bend them to their will.
While nothing assured me that Verena didn’t possess that capability, I had done my history lessons well enough to remember no one in Greek mythology could revive corpses.
With a gentle click, everything fell into place.
“Quiet.” The God of War lifted a hand in the air as if he were the conductor of an orchestra. The crowd silenced.
Athena stepped forward, and the owl tilted its head as she began to speak.
“For the time being, I suggest you disregard your self-perceptions, and instead focus on the trial at hand. You shall receive a riddle that will aid you in solving the mystery of the god from whom your powers originate and a weapon that belongs to one of us. Be advised that, in opposition to the riddle, the weapon you’ll be given is not from your god and instead belongs to another. ”
“Upon successfully solving the riddle and determining the god from whom your power stems, you may then obtain your god’s weapon from your colleagues through any necessary methods, including amicable agreement or force.
” Ares’s lips rose into a twisted smile, the sole mention of violence seeming to thrill a sick part of him, then let his sister continue.
“For instance, if your riddle proves I am your source of power, you must find a shield and spear, retrieve them, and then come to me once you escape the maze. Are there any questions?” The nine of us shook our heads. “Excellent. We will all await your presence at the end of the trial.”
The next time I blinked, I was no longer at a safe distance from the maze—I was gawking with round eyes at the entrance of it.
A tremor passed through my body, and my fingers curled on the .
. . I paused. A papyrus and an imitation of Zeus’s weapon, a thunderbolt, sat in my hands.
My fingers tested the rough materials, and I hoped for my sake that Zeus’s error wasn’t as ruthless as he was.
Perhaps I could do a civil trade, though it was unlikely I’d succeed if the god and human had anything in common.
I filled my lungs with brisk air, noticing Georgie’s muffled sobs as Yvonne held her to her chest, caressing her blonde hair and offering words of encouragement.
When Yvonne’s eyes met mine, a wave of understanding traversed between the two of us—she believed with all her might that these moments were their last. Her tattooed arms flexed across Georgie’s body and at the sight of a silent tear running dry on her cheek, I averted my gaze.
With a shrill laugh, the harpies clacked their talons on the ground and jutted out their blackened red tongues, the tips curling tauntingly on their teeth.
The creatures were an army of their own, I thought.
Their tongues alone, with those hideous, disgusting scales, were enough to compel someone to beg for their life.
Nicolas stood farther from the group, his face a ghostly white with dark purple shadows beneath his eyes. My chest constricted at the sight of him.
“Adam?” the blue-haired girl called, inching closer to the seer. She flashed a gaze over his face as he swayed on his feet, a hand grasping his stomach. “Are you okay?”
Before he could reply, Adam and the girl tumbled back, narrowly avoiding the claw of a harpy and landed on the ground with a painful thud. Their grunts mixed, and Adam spilled the contents of his stomach, his fingers trembling at his sides.
When he was done, he wiped the corners of his mouth and looked her in the eye. “I’m going to die today, Riley. I saw it—I felt it.” After his words, silence settled as the contestants shared tense glances.
Before Adam could get up on his own, Draven grabbed him by the collar, his grip tight enough to turn his knuckles white.
“Let him go! What has gotten into you?” Riley grabbed at Draven’s shoulders, but he wouldn’t budge.
The man gritted his teeth. “What about me?” If possible, his grasp tightened even more. “Did you see me die?”
Adam shook his head, eyes round. His hands came upon Draven’s wrists, but the look on his face—red with fury and pupils dilated in fright—was enough to convince the man not to try to escape him.
“No. No. I didn’t—I only saw mine. My death. Nothing else. I swear.”
“Let him go,” Riley insisted, and with no further objection, Draven obeyed, snatching the staff and papyrus he had discarded on the ground.
Although I disliked Draven, mainly because he seemed to despise me for reasons I didn’t know, I could still understand his fear of dying. That, however, made him a very, very dangerous opponent.
The contestants began reading their riddles, the rustling of paper filling the air, and soft cries mingled with the harpies’ raucous laughter. I took a deep, steadying breath, gripping the papyrus as my eyes drank in every detail.
God of Love—Eros. The answer came to me before the words I read even had a chance to fully register inside my mind. While I could fool myself into believing my goddess was Artemis, there was no reason to deny the truth.
I was the God of Love’s error.
It wasn’t a shock that he didn’t mention anything—I knew all too well it was merely a game to him, and in a game, there was always more than one player. I had my own agenda with Eros.
Two seconds later, the papyrus disappeared from my hands.
“You have something that belongs to me.”
His boots were the first thing I saw. Then the hands clasped over Dionysus’s thyrsus—a staff topped with a pinecone. And at last, Draven’s face. I almost stepped back at the sight of it—a vicious smile spread on his lips, his pupils darkening as if a shadow lived within him.
Of course he was Zeus’s error.
I sucked in a deep breath, and it almost came out as a whistle. “I’ll give it to you if you give me the bow.” Dionysus wasn’t my god, but I couldn’t walk into that maze without having a weapon to trade.
Draven laughed and then stepped aside to clear the path to the maze before leaning down and whispering in my ear. “And where would the fun be in that?” He chuckled. “I’ll give you ten seconds before I come after you. One.”