'Oh, I haven't summoned them yet,' smiled the Lord of the Gods, and snapped his fingers.
The room began to morph around me, the ground rumbling and bright flashes of white light disorientating me. I was moving lower, I was sure, the ground dropping so that I was in a circular pit, stopping when I was about ten feet below the rest of the room. The dais now wrapped around the edge of the pit, the gods appearing one by one on their thrones and peering down at me. I turned slowly, seeing three new faces on the opposite side of the pit, and a man in a white toga stood next to a huge iron dish. Hecate was still standing next me in the pit and I looked at her.
'Those are the judges,' she said, without me having to ask. 'And he's the commentator. That's a flame dish, and we use them to send pictures to the rest of Olympus - like your TVs in the mortal world.'
As she spoke, gently flickering orange flames in the iron dish above us roared up, gleaming white hot, then vanished, replaced with an image of Hades' smoky form. I glanced at where the god really sat, in the throne made from skulls. A shiver took hold of me. He was staring featurelessly back at me.
'As you all now know, this is the last entrant in the Hades Trials,' he said, and I realized with a jolt that the image in the dish was speaking the same words. It was just like a camera was on him. 'There will be three rounds, each made up of three Trials. The current leader, Minthe, won five tokens. In order to beat her, Persephone,' his slithery voice stumbled slightly at my name and goosebumps covered my skin again, 'will need to get at least six to win. Defeat the Spartae skeleton.' He fell silent, then the commentator leapt to life, making me jump.
'Good day, Olympus! So there you have it, from the Lord of the Underworld himself. Can this last contestant beat the beloved Minthe to a spot on the Rose Throne? She's starting with an easy test, a Spartae skeleton. As you all know, the Hades Trials test the future queen in the four values that our divine gods hold most dear; Glory, Intelligence, Loyalty and Hospitality. All things the queen of the dead will need in abundance!'
He sounded like a TV presenter from my world, and I listened intently to his over-enthusiastic words. So this was a test of glory?
'Well, I have to say, this newcomer sure looks the part, but who is she? So far we know nothing about her history or powers, but no doubt more will be revealed as we watch her fight!'
I frowned.
'If I was already married to Hades, how come they don't know who I am?' I asked Hecate quietly.
'The gods wiped you from Olympian history. Only they, and a handful of lower gods from the underworld, like me, know you ever existed.'
'Right.' Wiped from history? Didn't that seem a little extreme? What the hell had happened? Curiosity burned deep inside me as I tried to imagine a life in this place, but I gave myself a mental shake. I was moving on, like Athena said. All that mattered was the future.
'I have to go now. Good luck,' Hecate said, a sincere look on her beautiful, angular face.
'Thanks,' I answered her.
Her eyes turned milky white as the air around her rippled, then she was gone. A suffocating sense of how alone I was washed over me immediately. A rumbling snapped my attention to the walls of the sunken pit I was in, and I watched as patterns began to push their way out of the marble, as thought they were being carved before my eyes. The patterns were of vines, covered in grapes and leaves and twisting together as they spread across the wall until they met the place they'd started. Something about them was wrong though, and I moved closer to the stone to look. Some of the vines didn't match up properly, like two pieces of a jigsaw that didn't go together. I reached out to touch one of the areas where the vines cut off bluntly and heard a clattering sound behind me.
'Persephone will have no crowd to cheer her on today, as is the rules for the first Trial. But this is where she will win or lose supporters,' sang the commentator, excitement in his young voice. 'Will she make short work of her first demon? Or will she meet an untimely end and hand Minthe the throne today?'
I glared up at him, until the clattering got louder and dust started to gather in a large ball on the other side of the pit. My stomach tightened, my muscles tensing as the dust swirled faster, hardening into something. I shifted my weight from foot to foot, my heart beginning to hammer hard in my chest. Movement caught my eye, and I realized more carvings were appearing on the walls, but deeper, and not the same color as the stone.
Weapons. They were weapons. Twenty feet to my left was a huge sword, held up securely in the marble vines as though birthed from the wall itself. I couldn't make out what was behind the still swirling mass of dust, but there was an axe on my right, blade gleaming. I turned quickly, and saw a flail behind me in the white vines. It had a short wooden handle with a chain coming out of the end, topped with a gleaming silver ball covered in four-inch sharp spikes. I reached for it, the stone vines crumbling as soon as I touched the weapon, then reforming behind it. It wasn't as heavy as I thought it would be, but my hands still shook as I hefted it experimentally. I swung it gently as I turned back to the dust, my relief that I could use it with just one hand vanishing when I took in what was before me.
Nine
The dust had dissipated, and in its place was what I could only assume was a Spartae skeleton. It looked like it had been aptly named. The skeleton's jaw clacked open and shut unnervingly as it looked at me, and I braced my wobbling legs. It was like a Halloween outfit come to life, with gleaming white bones and empty eye sockets. And it was lifting a sword and starting to move towards me. I swung the flail in my hand, trying to build up some speed, and as though sensing the danger the skeleton immediately broke into a run. Adrenaline flooded my body, my fight and flight instincts warring with each other inside me. I held my ground, raising the flail as it whirled around, careful to keep it a good distance from my own body. Thank the gods it was so light. My pathetic attempts in the gym wouldn't have granted me the ability to wield much more.
If Hecate said this was an easy demon to defeat, then I would defeat it easily, I told myself as my breaths came shorter and the skeleton raised its sword above its head with a hiss. I swung out clumsily with the flail just before the thing got close enough to bring the sword down, aware that my weapon had a longer reach. The spike covered ball crashed into the skeleton's rib cage, bones flying and clattering to the ground as the top half of its body tipped backwards, no longer attached to the bottom. The sword fell with it, the metal ringing loudly as it hit the marble. I held my breath as the flail swung back towards me, feeling my shoulder wrench slightly as I flicked the lethal ball away. I'd done it! But... Unease trickled through my brief elation as I glanced up at the silent gods, then round at the judges. Nobody was moving, their eyes fixed on the Spartae skeleton.
Too easy. That was way, way too easy, I thought, as I looked back at the demon.
Sure enough, the scattered bones were starting to vibrate gently, then one wooshed back towards the still standing legs. I took a breath as the bones all began to zoom back, the skeleton rebuilding itself before me.
OK, I thought, fear trickling through my pumped up body. How do I defeat a skeleton that can put itself back together? I thought about every horror and fantasy book I'd ever read. Smash up the bones? Set fire to it? Freeze it? I glanced around the pit quickly, looking for anything that might be more useful. The weapon I couldn't see earlier was a crossbow, I now saw, but I didn't think that would help. The flail seemed the best bet for smashing bones. As the skeleton bent to retrieve the sword from where it lay on the floor I made my mind up. With a roar I launched myself towards it, swinging the flail faster this time. I hurled the ball at the thing's skull, getting a kick of satisfaction as it toppled from its body with another hiss. Its bony arm reached for me and I brought the flail down through its forearm, hoping to splinter the bone, but it just severed at the joint and clattered to the floor. I moved backwards, out of the other arm's reach, then smashed my weapon down onto the bones on the floor as hard as I could. The jolt of the ball hitting the solid marble sent shockwaves through my arm and up to my shoulder, but when I lifted the ball the bones looked completely untouched.