Chapter 22 Persephone #2
This wasn't an intelligence test, I thought bitterly. It was a test of temper.
“Number three. Although I only have two eyes on my head, my tail has a magnificent spread. What am I?”
I snarled in anger. There was nothing in my world that had a spread of eyes on its tail. How was I supposed to find something if I didn't even know what I was looking for?
But I had barely stamped towards the nearest shelf before I paused, my eyes snagging on a carving of what looked like a parrot.
I'd seen other birds when I was looking for the last two carvings, and my mind flashed to the feather on Hera's mask at the masquerade ball.
“A peacock,” I exclaimed, and moved as fast as I could through the rising ooze to where I thought I'd seen the bird carvings. Sure enough, after a little hunting, I wrapped my vine around a detailed peacock carving.
It was getting easier to control the vine, but harder to subdue the surge of rage that accompanied contact with the awful carvings. I made my way to the holes as fast as I could, but it was like I was wading through quicksand, and any speed was impossible.
The sludge was higher than my waist. When I finally dropped the peacock into the third hole there was a click, then the rock morphed slowly into a third handle.
Just one left, I thought, pulling up the handle then balling my fists. One more stinking, rotten, vile carving left to find, and I was out of here.
“Last, but not least,” the Empusa said, and something about her sinister expression made my skin crawl. “I have the head of a leopard, the middle of a pig, the rear of a flamingo and the tail of a dragon. What am I?”
I stared at her. Surely there was no creature in Olympus that fit that description. Surely. The rear of a flamingo and the tail of a freaking dragon?
“The ugliest damned thing in the world?” I hissed, raking through my brain to come up with an answer. Wasn't a chimera what the Greeks had called a monster made up of other animals? But that was made of an eagle and a lion or something, not flamingos and pigs.
Panic was beginning to prick at my forced calm. I had to answer this right. My life depended on it. I could feel my power under the skin of my hands, humming with need, longing to break free of my fragile control.
Come on, Persy, it's an intelligence test, not a Greek mythology test. There was no way that creature exists, I reasoned.
Which meant it had to be a trick question, or a different kind of riddle.
The head of a leopard. Did that mean spots?
Middle of a pig might mean pink? As were flamingos.
.. A pink spotty thing with a dragon tail?
Another bark of frustration escaped me. Head, middle, rear and tail.
Did that equate to start, middle and end?
The start of leopard was 'L'. The middle of pig was ‘I’. My heart raced as I thought through the riddle. Rear of a flamingo could mean the last letter, which was ‘O’ and if the tail of a dragon meant the same thing that was an ’N’.
“Lion!” I shouted the word, and this time the smile on the Empusa's face faltered. She hadn't wanted me to work it out.
With renewed vigor I forced my way through the stinking sludge, now almost at my shoulders, looking fervently for anything resembling a lion.
Eventually, on a shelf almost too high for me to see, I spotted a carving with what looked like the ring of a mane around it.
I sent my vine up towards it, and when the shoot made contact, I swear I could hear an actual lion roaring.
All my muscles clenched as the dark, greedy, angry power flooded through me.
Kill her. Kill the vampire bitch.
The words were in my own voice, in my own head, but they didn't belong to me.
Fuck these riddles, these games, kill the demon.
The world whirled around me as darkness burned through my body, black and hot and brutal. I stared dumbly at the lion carving as images of my vines wrapping around the Empusa, dousing her stupid hair in the sewage, tearing her wooden leg away...
A wave of sweet, rotting stench invaded my nostrils, mercifully snapping me out of the brutal vision.
The smell had been caused by the sewage reaching my neck, now only inches from my nose, I realized with a start. I heaved once more as I turned, hardly able to pull myself through the ooze now.
Holding the lion carving high, fury and fear making my limbs shake, I lifted my other arm out of the thick black stuff, and fired a vine from my free hand at the handles on the wall. The vine smashed into one of them, and I willed the vine to curl around it.
Just as the sludge edged over my jaw and reached my mouth, I yanked, instructing the vine to retract, and take me with it. I was instantly pulled off my feet, the force of the vine tugging me through the disgusting sewage.
It splattered around my face, and my eyes streamed with the acridity of it, but the vine pulled me on, and my head stayed above the surface.
But when I smashed into the wall, I realized with horror that the last hole was submerged. I plunged my hand into the rising muck, feeling frantically for it, but it was too deep.
I would have to put my head under.
A fresh surge of hatred for the people who had put me in here and forced me through this rose inside me and I very nearly smashed the lion carving against the wall in fury.
But I retracted the vine at the last second, rational thoughts forcing their way through the red mist. Put the lion in the hole and it's over!
With a huge breath, I closed my eyes and let myself drop through the heavy sludge.
It was so thick that I instantly panicked, the feeling of being crushed overwhelming. I scrabbled at the wall with my free hand, feeling for the handles to work my way down to the last hole.
My heart was hammering so fast I thought my chest might burst, the weight around me pressing in hard, my eyes burning behind my eyelids.
I was going to die here, suffocated in sewage.
My fingers snagged on a sharp edge, and my body tried to take an involuntary breath as I realized it must be the hole. Acrid sludge burned my lips and nostrils as I drew the vine holding the lion desperately to my other hand, which was now gripping the hole.
My lungs burned for air, every single instinct in my body warring with my instructions to stay calm and not breathe.
I shoved the lion carving into what I prayed was the hole. The stuff was moving further up my nose, starting to fill the back of my throat, and it burned like acid.
It was too much. My mouth started to open.
A handle formed under my fingers, and I yanked it.