Chapter 22 Persephone
Persephone
The first thing I noticed was the smell. Sweet rotten meat and moldy earth swamped my nostrils and I was gagging before the light even cleared from my eyes.
“What the—” I started to say, but trailed off as I looked around me. I was standing in the middle of a cave, but unlike the rocky walls that glowed with daylight that I'd seen in Virgo so far, these walls glowed deep red. And they were casting their light over a floor littered with bones.
My stomach roiled as I gaped around at the room. Rows of alcoves were gouged into the rocky walls and there were hundreds of tiny figures lining them, made of something pale and ivory colored.
More bone, I realized, as I stepped closer to the wall, screwing my face up as something crunched and sludged beneath my boots.
Don't throw up, don't throw up, I chanted in my head, as a fresh wave of putridness assaulted my senses. I tried to remember the smell of meadow flowers and lavender and lilies and incredibly, the rotting smell faded a little, and I was sure I actually could smell lavender. Was that my powers?
Able to concentrate slightly better now, I pulled my attention from the rows of bone carvings to the rest of the small room. The thing that had caused all this must be in here somewhere. And so must a way out.
All the walls looked completely solid though, and the room was only fifty feet around. All I could see on the floor were the remains of the prey of whatever lived here.
“Hello?” I called out cautiously, scanning the rocky walls for any clues to what I was supposed to do.
“Good day,” issued a silky voice, and I froze.
“Erm, where are you?”
A figure shimmered into being before me and my heart did a small gallop in my chest at the sight of her. I'd seen her before, when I was very first dumped in Hades' throne room, but not this close.
She was beautiful, her barely clad body curvy and voluptuous, and her face angular and grand. But her hair was made of flames. Two short sharp horns jutted up from her forehead, and as I dragged my eyes over her I saw that one of her legs was made from wood.
“I saw you when I first arrived here,” I breathed.
“No. That was one of my sisters. We are the Empusa, pawns of Hecate. Welcome to my lair.”
“Oh. Thanks, nice to meet you,” I said, nerves making my voice hitch. “Do you know how I can get out of here? Not that it's not...” I looked around, scrabbling for something polite to say about her disgusting lair.
“I have four riddles for you,” she said, saving me the trouble. “If you can not solve them all, then you are mine.” Two fangs shot down over her bottom lip as an evil smile settled on her face. I shuddered as two thin lines of blood trickled down her chin, from where the fangs had torn her lip.
Her fiery hair flickered and danced around her head, making her skin look like it was rippling. She gestured with an elegant arm and I followed it to see four holes appearing in a shoulder height section of the rocky wall. They were just big enough to put a hand in.
“Number one. I build my home with natural string, and defend myself with bite or sting. What am I?”
A home from natural string? That had to be a spider web.
“A spider?” The Empusa stared at me, her face unchanging. Did that mean I was wrong? Fear made my chest clench at the thought.
I didn't want to die at all, but being eaten by this thing and left to rot here... I'd rather have been eaten by the giant sea-asshole, Charybdis, than have trinkets carved from my bones to adorn this place.
But she didn't move, and I frowned. I was sure the answer was right. There must be more to the Trial than just answering the questions.
I looked back at the four holes in the wall. Four riddles, four holes. Were they keyholes? Keys in Olympus were weird, I already knew that from those awful hourglasses.
So maybe I needed a spider key for the first hole? As I turned back to the lair my gut churned again. Please, please tell me I didn't have to find an actual spider. Please.
“Do I need to find a spider?” I asked the Empusa, my voice small. Her smile widened ever so slightly. Bile rose in my throat as I looked at the nearest heap of bones on the floor.
Then my eyes flicked to the rows of carvings. Was there one carved as a spider? I moved to the nearest wall quickly, and heard a deep rumble. A soft, sensual laugh bubbled from the Empusa's mouth and I looked at her.
“You'd better hurry, pretty little human,” she said, her eyes filled with glee.
A new smell hammered at the lavender barrier I'd somehow concocted. Sewage. My gut constricted, causing me to retch as I swept my eyes over the room fast. Where was it coming from?
A gurgling sound dragged my attention to the floor, and my pulse quickened as I saw a black sludge starting to ooze up from the ground, thick enough to displace the rotting bones.
“What is that?”
“Your doom,” the flame-haired demon grinned at me.
I didn't wait to find out what she meant. If I had four riddles to get through I didn't have time to let the sludge get any higher. I raced along the shelves, scanning every little carving, looking for a spider.
“Yes!” I hissed as I finally spotted a tiny bone carving in the shape of a spider, and reached out for it. As I picked it up though, heat burned through my finger tips, and I saw a flash of fire and blood. I yelped as I dropped it back on the shelf.
Another soft laugh came from the Empusa and I turned to glare at her.
“You are no creature of the Underworld. You may not touch my treasures, human.”
“I'm not entirely human any more,” I snapped, nerves humming as I hesitantly called up my vines. Relief washed through me when a green shoot began to ease gently from my right palm.
The black vines were absolutely not what I needed right now. They tended to fly about angrily all over the place, and I definitely did not want to knock any of these carvings into the rising sludge.
It was oozing over the toes of my boots now, and it reeked. Plus, if the black vines really did steal power like Hades said they did, the last thing I wanted was any of this Empusa's power inside me. Yuk.
I directed the vine towards the toppled spider carving, but as it got close it veered away, almost like when you try to put the wrong end of two magnets together.
I concentrated, forcing the vine back towards it. But as it touched the bone, revulsion swamped me, the total opposite of the joy I felt when I connected with the earth and living plants. My breakfast rose fast in my stomach, and I snapped the vine away, heaving again.
“Life and death, light and dark... You will not master the balance,” the Empusa hissed. I looked up at her, sweat now trickling down my neck.
“Black vines it is then,” I hissed back, and a dark vine shot from my palm, smashing into the row of carvings. “Shit!” I yelped, trying to control the whipping shoot. Get your shit together Persephone, unless you want to drown in sewage, I berated myself.
With an effort, I pulled back the black vine, then sent it carefully towards the spider. Gingerly, slowly, I managed to wrap the vine around the bone carving.
A new, dark energy hummed along the vine and into my hand, spreading through my veins like fire. I saw no awful images, felt no searing heat, but I knew on every level that the power was wrong.
It was fueled by fear and blood, and it didn't belong inside me. My whole damned body was sweating now, nerves and stress and fear pumping more adrenaline through me.
I could feel my temper rising, anger starting to simmer deep inside me as I hurried over to the four holes in the wall, the spider carving wrapped in my vine.
The sludge was covering my boots completely now, and was half way up my shins. I found that lifting my feet out of it allowed me to move faster than trying to move through it; it was as thick as tar.
When I reached the wall, I carefully lowered the spider into the first hole, and willed the vine to let go. As it did a small click sounded, then rock began to fill the hole, growing all the way out of the wall and forming a small handle.
“Thank fuck for that,” I muttered, half panting as the brimming anger inside me abated. I gripped the handle, and discovered I could only turn it left ninety degrees, so that's what I did before turning back to the Empusa.
“Number two. My golden treasure never lacks a guard, and is held in a maze from which men are barred. What am I?”
“Golden treasure?” It had to be an animal of some sort, I thought looking at the carvings. My mind whirred, trying to think of an animal that had golden treasure.
I didn't even know about half the animals in Olympus, so I'd have to hope we had the same animals in my world.
What had gold treasure in a maze? “A bee!” I shouted, as the answer came to me. I dragged my legs through the sludge, and started hunting through the shelves.
If I survived this, I was showering for a week. It took me until the sludge had reached my waist to find the fucking bee carving. The stench was becoming unbearable, my magical lavender no match for its ferocity.
I carried the bee carefully over to the holes in the wall, my progress infuriatingly slow, and anger roiling inside me the whole time my black vine was cradling the carving. It was toxic, I was sure. The second I connected with the bones I could feel their dark, angry influence.
I tipped the carving into the next hole as soon as I reached it and the hole filled in quickly, a second handle forming. I yanked it up and turned back to the Empusa, knowing I must have a wretched scowl on my face.
Just get it done. Just get it done. You'll be out of here soon.
The dark red light, the awful stench, the oppressive heat, the nauseating bones surrounding me; all were making the fury building inside me harder to dispel.
This place was a damned hell-hole, and once again I was suffering for those bastard gods' entertainment.
I needed to get out, before I lost my shit, which would almost definitely result in my death.