Chapter 28
Persephone
Sense forced its way through the drug-induced fog swamping my brain as I scrambled backwards. It had wings, why the fuck did I think I'd be safe up a tree?
The cat sprang forward, swiping at me with a huge paw, its glowing scorpion tail rearing back behind it. I ducked my body instinctively, fear of the cat overtaking my fear of falling, and it snarled as my right leg slipped and I cried out.
Within a heartbeat my other leg gave way, not strong enough to keep me upright on the branch, and the world seemed to turn to slow-motion as the rest of my body followed my legs.
I couldn't breath at all as my fingers left the branch and weightlessness took me, the only thing in my head the certain knowledge that I was going to die.
Then my shoulders wrenched again, harder, as the vines from my palms caught my weight and then I was swinging thirty feet above the ground, my whole body shaking violently and everything around me spinning.
I can't do this, I can't do this, I can't do this. The hysterical words pinballed around my head as the ground beneath me began to become obscured by the black dots overtaking my vision.
I was going to pass out. And then my vines wouldn't stop me from falling at all.
Give up. I had to give up. No, get to the ground! The fierce voice sounded loud in my head, all the more shocking because it was my own thought, my own voice. Extend the damned vines! You've already fallen from the branch, and you're still alive! You're stronger than this!
Shaking my head, I willed the vines to grow, lowering me towards the ground. Looking down at the forest floor made the black dots come back, so I looked up instead, just in time to see the cat swipe at the exact spot my vines were coiled around the tree.
I willed the vines faster as his huge claws made contact, severing the vine from my left hand.
I swung violently, but the right vine held strong, and now I was only ten feet from the ground and still moving fast. The cat swiped again, and weightlessness took me once more as I fell the last five feet to the moss covered earth.
I landed awkwardly on my hip, and swore as I rolled and something hard cut into my thigh.
Scrambling to my feet, I looked for the cat. =
He was still up on the branch, but the dappled sunlight streaming through the thick canopy of leaves caught its stunning red wings as he extended them, then leaped from the branch.
I couldn't outrun this thing, or hide from it, I thought, the pain in my thigh increasing. But as he landed gracefully opposite me, leaves swirling across the ground as his wings beat, the forest around me tilted and lurched hard, then vanished as a distant gong sounded.
I took a heaving breath of relief as the stark hall came into focus around me, the nauseating dizziness melting away fast. I'd done it. The ten minutes were up.
“Sorry, Persy,” I heard Dionysus' voice say, and blinked up at him on his throne in front of me. “That's not how I wanted you to see my realm, Taurus. But I'm afraid I didn't have a choice. Nicely done though,” he added with a slow smile.
“Was the wine drugged?” I asked, trying to slow my breathing and willing my racing heart to slow down too.
“I happen to be the god of madness along with wine. Lots of Taurean wine causes hallucinations.”
“Wait, hallucinations?”
“Yeah. What did you see?” I felt my mouth fall open.
“You mean the huge cat with wings and a scorpion tail wasn't real?”
Dionysus chuckled softly.
“Had someone recently described a manticore to you, by any chance?”
“Y-yes,” I stammered, recalling the brief chat with Hedone I'd had before the Trial.
“Well, your sub-conscious remembered the conversation and your imagination did the rest.”
“So I was running away from nothing? I nearly killed myself in that tree for no reason?”
“I've seen people do a lot worse,” he said slowly.
A sharp pain in my thigh made me look away from him and down at myself. Through my torn skirt I could see a long gash on my leg, bright blood trickling down my bare skin.
I summoned the power Hecate had taught me to access earlier, concentrating hard on the wound. Thrills of excitement pulsed through me as the skin glowed a faint grassy green, then began to knit itself back together.
The pain faded almost instantly.
Confidence filled me as I watched my thigh heal. My most crippling fear was heights, and I had just fallen out of a freaking tree and survived. Not just survived; I hadn't given up. Last time, at the chasm, I'd quit. But this time I'd pushed through the fear, and won.
One test down, one seed safe, and now I knew I could definitely heal myself.
Bring it the fuck on.
“Hera,” I said, standing up abruptly before the commentator could say anything. I strode past Hermes, then Zeus, and stopped in front of the Queen of the Gods. She was wearing a teal gown that would be classed as a toga, but had a distinctly modern feel to it.
Her black hair was piled high in a complicated collection of braids, all held in place by a glittering tiara with a peacock eye at its center. Her dark eyes glittered as she leaned forward and handed me a goblet.
“Drink from the cup of marriage and birth, and see if you shall be tested,” she said as I took the cup. I steeled myself, and took a sip. It tasted like blueberries. Nothing happened, and I handed her the goblet back and she nodded.
“Who next, Persephone?” called the commentator.
“Poseidon,” I answered. He was at the far end of the row and I marched towards him. Poseidon had already tested me once this round; I could handle anything he might throw at me.
“Drink from the cup of the ocean and see if you shall be tested,” he said, and handed me a goblet. He was in full god-of-the-sea garb again, sporting a long beard and holding a smaller version of his trident. Waves crashed in his blue irises as I drank from the cup.
I tried not to pull a face as briny water filled my mouth, salt making my throat contract. But nothing else happened, and I handed him the cup back with relief. Artemis and Apollo were in the next two thrones, looking significantly younger and more cheerful than all of the other gods.
“Make your next choice,” said the commentator.
“Apollo,” I said, and the sun god beamed at me.
He was shirtless, wearing just a toga style skirt, and his skin almost glowed gold, making him look as though he'd been carved from the precious metal.
His body was so perfect that my brain struggled to register it as real.
His face was the same, the planes so refined, the symmetry exact.
Hades' muscled torso and beautiful angular face filled my mind suddenly, seeming so much more right than the underwear-model perfection of Apollo.
“Drink from the cup of the sun and see if you shall be tested,” Apollo said, leaning forward to give me a goblet. His voice was deeper, and older-sounding than I had expected it to be. I took a sip from the cup, and yelped and dropped it as searing hot liquid covered my tongue.
Heat, as though I'd just stepped into an oven, engulfed me. I groaned as I looked about myself and the hall shimmered. I'd just found my second test.
The world came back into focus and I found myself standing on a bridge, bright blue sky above me. Instinctively I gripped the thick rope handrails either side of me, and looked around, sweat gathering fast at the nape of my neck.
The bridge I was on crossed some sort of wide crater, and as I looked down dread gripped my whole body. Between the gaps in the wooden slats of the bridge I could see lava. I was standing over a fucking volcano.
The deep red liquid bubbled and oozed below me, areas glowing bright orange and even white with heat. The boiling surface was alarmingly close, no more than fifty feet down.
The more I stared at it, the more my body became slick with sweat, and the more oppressive the heat became.
I turned as carefully as I could, looking both ways down the bridge.
It just led to a narrow path that lined the inside of the crater.
But could wooden slats survive this heat?
If they gave out, I was toast. Literally.
A gong sounded, accompanied by the commentator’s voice.
“Five minutes begins now!”
Five minutes? That didn't seem long. Rather than comforting, I found the shorter length of time distinctly unnerving. Something awful was going to happen if I only had to spend five minutes here.
Taking a deep breath of hot, sulfurous air, I lifted one foot. Except it didn't move. My sandals were glued to the planks, and panic fired through my blood as I pulled harder.
An ominous creaking sounded from the bridge, and I froze in my attempt to free myself. Did I really have to just stand here, while the heat burned away the wood beneath me? I'd die, surely?
As my heart beat faster in my chest, I tried to take deep breaths, assessing my situation. Sweat was running down my spine now, as well as the backs of my knees. I could hear the lava gurgling below me. If the bridge was already here, then surely it was resistant to the heat, I thought, rationally.
A cracking sound drew my attention to the end of the bridge, just in time for me to see the last plank burst into flame. My breath caught.
Another sound cracked behind me, and I spun at the waist to see the plank at the opposite end go up in flames too.
Shit. Shit, shit, shit.
This was an endurance test, I told myself, as the next plank along caught alight. The idea is to frighten the participant into giving up. Not to actually kill them.
I couldn't move from where I was, and there was nowhere to go. Which meant I had to hold my ground, no matter how close the flames got.
It turned out that was a lot, lot, easier said than done.
By the time the planks four or five from mine were bursting into flames there was no part of me not drenched in sweat. I felt like I was suffocating, the heat a real, tangible, weighted thing bearing down on my entire body, crushing me.
Every breath was hard, the temperature burning my lungs. And every plank that cracked and caught fire added to the heat and my mounting fear. My vines couldn't help me here. My healing couldn't help me if I dropped into the searing lava below. This was all about courage, and I was running out.
A plank three away from me on my right crackled with heat, then orange flames crept over it slowly at first, then burst to life, engulfing the dry wood. I turned slowly, knowing the opposite plank on my left would go next. Sure enough, fire flickered to life across the wood.
Five minutes.
I had to hold my nerve for five minutes, but I was estimating I only had about thirty seconds before the planks ran out and mine would go up in flames. And I had absolutely no idea how much time had already passed.
The heat from the next plank on my left roared up, and I could smell the fine hairs on my arms burning. I closed my eyes, unable to watch as my mind begged me to quit, the fear bordering on winning over my willpower.
Just hold on, just hold on.
As if mocking my silent chant, heat suddenly exploded under my fingertips and I opened my eyes with a shout as I pulled my hands to my body.
The handrail was ablaze, and within a second the rope had disintegrated. My legs shook under me as the second plank on my right burned out.
The heat was making my body weaken, all liquid inside me seeming to have turned to sweat. I felt the fire leap on my left as the last plank caught.
They won't kill you, hold your nerve. This is the only way to win.
It had to be the only way to win. They wouldn't make an unbeatable test, would they?
The skin on my face seemed to tighten as heat scorched up to my right, and I turned my face, closing my eyes again. This was it. If the next time I opened my eyes I wasn't back in the hall, I'd be dropping to a fiery death.