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The arena was silent as the werewolf’s carcass settled into the sand. The Trial’s twentieth champion and he was already dead.
“My Lord,” one of the guards called, “we found him like this in his chambers. Someone stabbed him with a silver blade. There was little sign of struggle. No one but our staff and the champions have entered the barracks, so the killer must be among them.”
Ares’ calm demeanor shifted in a heartbeat, his countenance turning scarlet with rage. The god of war placed a single hand on the parapet and leapt over it, dropping the fifteen feet to the arena floor. He landed lightly, like a cat, and stalked over to the werewolf. With one arm, he turned over the werewolf’s corpse like it weighed nothing at all. The slab of muscle and fur rolled onto its side, and a small knife became visible sticking out of the creature’s chest.
Werewolves were hardy creatures able to regenerate most wounds, but silver was absolutely anathema to their being. If the knife was indeed made of silver, the killer had known exactly what they were doing and had come prepared. A werewolf in combat could be a terrifying sight, a savage storm of tooth and claw. It seemed someone hadn’t wanted to risk facing off against him in the trial. I didn’t blame them; werewolves were apex predators. I’d faced one before and had no desire to do so again.
Ares bent down and snatched up the weapon.
“Who violated the sanctity of my home?” His voice thundered through the arena like a tsunami, and I felt it in waves. It was as if the very notes of his voice were infused with raw power.
He strode toward the champions, the bloody knife held aloft.
“Who did this?” he shouted again.
Gone was the calm and collected being who had loitered patiently in my chamber. The being before me radiated anger in a way that I had never seen in another soul. This was the Ares I’d read of. He might not have been the most respected of the Olympians, but there wasn’t a being on either side of the veil who wanted to face him in his wrath.
The champions shrank before him like ice melting in the desert sun. No one spoke a word. No one wanted to be the object of his attention. I had only been awake for an hour, perhaps two. And while I was confident Ares knew I had nothing to do with the killing, I didn’t dare breathe.
Ares brandished the weapon wildly. “When I find who did this, I will kill you myself. No one will be able to save you from me.”
I didn’t doubt him for a moment, though I did wonder how he planned to identify the killer. I hadn’t seen anything like a security camera in the barracks. I doubted such things functioned beyond the veil and they certainly didn’t seem Ares’ style. Which led me to wonder what means he had at his disposal for determining the truth.
There were a dozen deities present. They could have powers I couldn’t even conceive of. The rulers of the Fae, for instance, were revered and dangerous beings. While stories were told of their power, little was known of the scope of it. Could they see the future? Or divine the past? I had no way of knowing, but if I were the killer, I figured I’d be concerned that I’d just made a terminal lapse in judgment.
I looked around for signs of a guilty or fearful conscience, but the other champions were as stony faced as I was.
“Come now, son,” Hera called. “You’re about to have them murder each other for your entertainment. Let us not waste the day on this.”
Ares whirled to face his mother. He opened his mouth to speak, but Zeus fixed him with a stare that could have melted steel.
The god of war’s shoulders sagged as he deflated before Zeus’s authority. Enraged though he might have been, even Ares needed to pay obeisance to the ruler of Olympus.
Ares turned back to face the champions and, holding the knife by the blade, he shook it at us. “None who violate the sanctity of my home will live to leave it.”
With a flick of his wrist, he sent the blade flying at the ground. It spun end over end, faster than the eye could track, before burying itself in the sand of the arena.
“Let us begin the trial,” he called, the rage in his voice giving way to excitement.
A cheer went up from the other champions. This was the moment they had been waiting for.
I didn’t share their enthusiasm. Only one of us was going to leave this place. Statistically, our chances of survival were terrible. When I considered what I was up against, the odds didn’t improve at all. Disciples of the gods, champions of the faerie courts, heroes of men, spies, and heaven only knew what else was hiding among the champions.
I didn’t like my chances but that didn’t mean I had given up. I had everything to live for. somewhere out there, Lara waited for me. My friends too, Murdoch and Dizzy. After all the times they’d saved my skin, they would be furious if I let someone kill me now while they weren’t around to watch my back.
As dangerous as the situation was, I might have a few things still going for me. One, I was a wizard, and cornered like a rat in a trap, wizards only grew more dangerous and resourceful. Two, beside the other competitors, I looked like a lightweight. There was every chance the other champions would overlook me in favor of dealing with the greatest threats, like they had with the Lycan. After all, I’d been asleep for a day and no one had bothered murdering me. Last but not least, I was tough to kill. A lot of people had tried over the years, and none of them had succeeded. Fate, it seemed, wouldn’t rob my curse of that particular pleasure.
There was light forming at the end of the tunnel. If I could survive this, I still had a chance of curing the curse that had held my family prisoner for 400 years. It would give me the freedom to pursue the life I’d always wanted.
If I could make it out of here alive. I jammed my hands in my pockets and took a deep breath. To do that, I was going to need to focus on the here and now. I was going to need every shred of cunning to survive whatever Ares had planned for us. As I stared at the god of war, his lips creased upward into a knowing smile.
I let the breath go. I didn’t like the look of that smile one bit.
“For the first challenge,” Ares began, his voice booming like a stadium announcer shouting into a megaphone, “my brother Hades has lent us his domain.”
The excitement among my fellow champions diminished until there was silence in the arena. Even the air seemed still and stagnant.
“Each champion will be transported to the arena in the underworld. The challenge is simple—to progress, they must overcome the perils Hades has in store and escape the arena. Only twelve gates have been prepared. Once a champion passes through a gate, it will close forever. Those who do not find a gate in time will remain in my brother’s domain until the flesh sloughs from their bones and Charon drags their bitter soul across the river Styx.”
My stomach twisted itself into knots, and I started regretting the feast. There were nineteen of us, and only twelve gates. Seven champions weren’t going to make it back. A full third of our number was going to die today. Ares wasn’t messing around. He meant to weed out the weakest contenders quickly.
“Hades’ arena is round. You’ll find the exits spaced evenly around it,” Ares said. “In addition to the danger posed by your fellow champions, there are numerous threats within the arena itself. Eurynomos, the flesh eater, and his minions prowl there. Besides the daemon, I understand that Hades has prepared something special for each of you. It waits for you within his walls. Those who triumph will feast with the gods this evening. Those who fail, well, you will endure an eternity with my uncle whose company gives damnation a good name.”
A chuckle went up from the Olympians seated in the pavilion.
“Prepare yourselves for your journey!” Ares shouted.
Journey? How did he intend for us to reach Hades realm? Would Charon come and ferry us to the arena? I had met the ferryman once and had no desire to repeat the experience. As I stood wondering, the god of war swept his hand before us and the arena vanished.
I fell.
My stomach writhed and flipped as the weightlessness engulfed me. I plunged through inky darkness. I looked but couldn’t see the other champions. Plummeting, I lost track of time and space. I did my best Wile E. Coyote impression after he had run off a cliff, flapping madly in the vain hope that I might be able to fly.
I did not, but in the distance, I caught sight of a sickly sea green light. I felt like a wanderer stranded in the desert, spotting a mirage in the distance.
It was a tiny speck at first, but grew swiftly as I hurtled toward it.
The light took form as I descended, growing into a sprawling labyrinth beneath me. I could make out its rounded perimeter in the distance as I plunged toward the center. Its mazelike corridors wove in every direction like a latticework and I had only a moment to try and commit them to memory before I lost sight of the nearest gateway. I focused on what I hoped would be the shortest path to my nearest exit, but it was impossible to know for certain.
The ground rushed up to meet me. Just moments before I hit it, I felt something pull hard on my back, yanking me skyward. I felt like I had driven into a wall with a seatbelt on. Jerking violently, before falling the last five feet to the ground.
I couldn’t get my feet beneath me in time, instead landing heavily on my chest and forearms, only narrowly avoiding face planting the cold gray stone of the arena’s floor. I gasped as the impact knocked the wind out of me. As far as journeys went, I wouldn’t be lining up for another one of those anytime soon.
My head was spinning. I coughed and spluttered as I tried to get my breath back. Pushing myself up on my hands and knees, I finally got my feet beneath me and stood up. Somewhere on the descent I had let go of the duffel and it was nowhere to be seen. Part of me hoped the heavy scuba tank had KO’d one of my fellow champions but the rest of me knew that was probably a little too optimistic. Still, the thought brought a small smile to my lips and helped me forget my own discomfort.
Dusting myself off, I took a look around to get my bearings. The arena glowed with an eerie gray green light. The floor was solid stone, but the arena’s walls seemed to be made of something alien. They were smooth and shone a soft luminescent green. I reached out and touched them, curious as to what they could be made of. I almost expected them to wobble like the walls of a jumping castle, but they too stood firm, exuding a subtle trace of arcane power.
I drew my hand back, not wanting to tamper with whatever energy coursed through this place. A shiver ran down my spine as a cold draft blew through the halls of the maze. Where had it come from?
The breeze only heightened my discomfort. The entire atmosphere here was different. It had a pallid and unpleasant aura that seemed to permeate everything around me. It was like the maze itself was trying to leech the life out of me. Hardly surprising; the underworld was not meant for the living.
The hall I stood in ran off in two directions. The one before me I was confident lead toward the outer wall, while the other lead deeper toward the center of the maze.
Figuring that the closer I went to the center, the more chance I had of encountering the other champions, I made straight for the outer wall.
Ares’ briefing had been clear enough. The first twelve champions to reach the gates would be able to leave. Everyone else would be left behind. I didn’t have to fight the other champions at all. I simply had to outrun them.
I’d often heard that discretion was the better part of valor, and while people were quick to call runners coward, they were still alive at the time. I figured that would certainly apply here. The fewer champions I had to face, the better my chances of making it back to the Areopagus alive.
I started down the passageway. I didn’t run as I had no idea what unpleasantness Hades had in store for us. The arena itself could well be booby-trapped or have other perils hidden within its depths. I was already in the Underworld. It was safe to assume everything here was hostile to my very existence.
As I moved, I studied the floor, looking for any raised stones or other breaks in the pattern, anything that might give away the presence of a trap, or a design pattern I could use to navigate my way through the maze. I found nothing. The walls also seemed devoid of any holes or grooves that might hide other dangers. Hidden blades or projectiles were the most common I had encountered in my travels. Cheap and easy to load, they proved deadly at short ranges, impaling unwary tomb raiders and leading to a painful prolonged death, far from medical assistance. Such traps didn’t have to kill you immediately, they simply had to cripple you or impede your ability to move and the perils within the tomb or the remoteness of the locale would do the rest.
I figured Hades’ arena would be no different. The trial was a race, and anything that wounded or slowed the champions would be effective in taking them out of the competition, or turning them into easy fodder for their fellow competitors.
A shrieking howl echoed through the halls behind me. I felt it in my bones.
“What was that?” I muttered to myself. Was it one of the other champions? Or was it a beast of the underworld?
I picked up my pace a little, eager to put distance between me and whatever was back there. As I went, I worked through what I knew of Hades and his domain. Cerberus the three-headed hound of Hades was known to guard its gates. Were these the same gates? Or were those elsewhere? Would Hades have released him from his vigil for a little sport in the maze?
The howl came again. This time it was closer, but it was high and shrill, less like a dog and more like a banshee. Which was both comforting and terrifying at the same time. I had no desire to face Cerberus but whatever was making the racket behind me seemed just as unpleasant.
The corridor I was moving through came to an abrupt end at an intersection that forked left and right. I looked down both paths but saw nothing to set them apart. As I stood vacillating over my choices, an old Dungeons & Dragons adage came to mind.
“Left is right and right is wrong,” I whispered as I looked at the paths.
The howl came again and I took off running down the path that led left.
With nothing to orient me, I could quickly become lost in the maze’s depths. I wanted to head toward the outer wall, but the hallways all looked the same and above me only darkness stretched as far as the eye could see. I had used a tracking spell at Delphi to know which way led back to a certain point in the maze, and knowing I needed to move directly away from it had helped steer us through the Labyrinth. But at Delphi we’d been standing at one entrance to the maze. Here I was lost in the middle of one. I couldn’t really rely on it to be moving in the right direction.
The corridor turned abruptly to the right and continued about fifteen feet before it became a dead end. Luminescent walls faced me on each side.
“Thanks for nothing,” I muttered.
I wasn’t really surprised that my time playing Dungeons & Dragons hadn’t prepared me for this very real dungeon, but I was disappointed.
I let out a sigh and started back the way I had come. I turned the corner and picked up my pace. I had to make it back to the intersection before whatever was chasing me reached it and cut me off. If I got trapped in this tunnel, I would have to fight my way free.
Sucking in a deep breath, I took off running, my boots pounding against the stone. Rounding the next corner, I slowed my pace. Up ahead was the junction I had made the wrong turn at, but standing in the middle of it was a woman. She was about my height. Her alabaster skin was a sharp contrast to her scarlet hair, and her crimson scale mail shifted and clinked as her head whipped around to spot me standing behind her.
I recognized the champion from the arena. What had Ares called her? Alessa.
She looked at me and her eyes lit up. Turning, she squared off against me in the hall.
“Wait, Alessa,” I called, raising my hands. “We don’t have to do this. There are twelve doors. Just keep walking. I’ll take a different path and we can both leave here alive.”
In my mind, I urged her to keep moving. I didn’t want to fight another champion unless I had to, and chivalry or not, I didn’t want to hit a lady. So I was willing to let her pick her path and go, if she would take me up on the offer.
“No,” Alessa replied, her voice a raspy growl that sounded utterly inhuman as it passed her lips. “I came here for you.”
With that, she drew the curved blade hanging from her belt and charged straight at me.
I couldn’t run. There was nothing but a dead end behind me. The only way out was through her.
It wasn’t what I wanted, but as she charged me, I could see the madness dancing in her eyes. The wicked knife she was wielding would gut me like a fish. Chivalry wasn’t going to save me today.
“Don’t do this,” I shouted as my hands tightened around the P90. I almost felt sorry for her. The woman had literally brought a knife to a gunfight. I’d given her a chance to walk away, and she wasn’t taking it.
“Thief!” she cried, as she closed the distance faster than I thought possible.
She wasn’t wrong. I’d certainly taken my share of things that didn’t belong to me. Call it a familial shortcoming. Kleptomania ran in Caldwell blood. It was what had made Francis such a great privateer. But it seemed an odd sort of insult given the circumstances and try as I might, I couldn’t recall having ever met her before. Had I stolen something from her? Ares had introduced her as the champion of the Crimson Court but that meant nothing to me either. I’d never heard of them.
“Last chance,” I shouted, not wanting to kill the woman over a case of mistaken identity.
On she came, lengthening her stride and drawing back the blade ready to strike. She was only about ten feet away and seemingly intent on filleting me when I let out the breath I had been holding and squeezed the trigger.
The first few shots went wide. I’d like to blame it on my nerves but truth be told, I wasn’t a good shot on the best of days, and shooting a berserk knife wielding lunatic that was charging straight at me was hardly ideal conditions. That said, the P90 came standard with a fifty round clip and even I couldn’t miss for long at that range.
Bullets stitched their way across Alessa’s chest. Sparks flew as bullet met scale mail and I feared the rounds were doing nothing at all. What was it loaded with? Rock salt?
Alessa screamed, a shrill high-pitched wail as one of the rounds found its mark.
Erring on the side of caution, I squeezed the trigger until it went click on the empty magazine. Alessa collapsed, pitching forward onto her face and sliding the last foot and a half until she came to a halt just in front of me.
“What a waste,” I muttered as I removed the spent magazine from the weapon and tossed it away. “One down, eighteen to go.”
“Usurper,” Alessa groaned.
I leapt a bloody mile. No one could survive that. Surely my mind was playing tricks on me.
“Traitor,” she cried as she raised herself up on her hands and knees, her red hair fading to a matted black mess. She raised her head. What had been smooth porcelain skin was gone and in its place was taut leathery skin stretched thin over her bones. But above it all was a pair of red eyes, surrounded by black sclera. They gleamed with hate as they settled on me.
Thick black ichor stained her amour, but I couldn’t see a drop of blood.
Alessa wasn’t human.