It wasn’t. All three heads were now trying to get under its own body as Ares crouched beneath it, slashing and stabbing with his sword.
“Get on its back!” he hollered.
I threw a glare at him as I scrabbled to my feet. Thank fuck for the toughened leather armor. If it was a fang that had caught my back, it would have gone straight through flesh. I tested my weight on my ankle, and though darts of pain sprang up my shin, it wasn’t debilitating. I first jogged, then ran toward the Hydra, taking care to stay behind it, out of reach of its long necks. But as I got close it began to stamp its feet hard, and a wave of heat washed over me.
I kept running as one head shot up high, reaching over the creature’s back and locking eyes on me. It opened its jaws wide, and an unearthly glow shone from deep in its throat. Uneasiness gripped me, and I tore my eyes from the head to its tail. I needed to climb up its tail to its back, and I could worry about why its mouth was glowing later.
I was only a few feet away. Spikes jutted up along the Hydra’s whole spine, and the metal it was made of what looked to be millions of tiny interlocking scales. I threw myself at its haunches as I reached it and cried out at the fierce heat of the material under my touch. But I held on, jamming my fingertips into the tiny gaps between the scales, and kicking with my feet to try to push myself higher.
I could hear Ares yelling but I couldn’t make out the words over the shrill screeching noise the Hydra was making. With an effort, I managed to pull myself up onto the thing’s back, just in time to see all three heads twist over to look at me. The wailing noise wasn’t coming from any of them, I realized. It was coming from three small glowing metal stumps at the creature’s shoulders. I watched with horror as the metal scales duplicated themselves out of nowhere, the stumps rapidly turning into necks.
I had about thirty seconds until heads formed on the end of them, I realized. And then there would be six freaking sets of fangs to deal with. I lurched forward, trying to reach for the central neck whilst staying low enough to avoid the snapping jaws, but the heads on the left and right had different ideas. They swooped in on either side of me, and I conceded with a second to spare that I couldn’t avoid them. I gritted my teeth and threw myself off the Hydra’s back, hearing a satisfying crunching sound as the left and right head smashed into each other, before my shoulder smacked into the ground, swiftly followed by the rest of me.
“Where did the new heads come from?” I heard Ares yell, then felt a tug on my arm that stopped me rolling through the dust. Within seconds he had yanked me to my feet, and we were running to the edge of the pit.
“I don’t know,” I panted, looking at him. Dark oily stuff covered his gleaming armor. “But I can’t get to one head while the others aren’t distracted. They’re too quick.”
“We’ll have to try something else.” We both looked at the Hydra. If it wasn’t trying to kill me, I’d have thought the last metal fangs clicking into place as the new heads finished building themselves was cool as hell. As it was trying to kill me, I was stuck somewhere between crazy impressed and freaking terrified.
“How the hell are we going to get past six heads?” I breathed. As if hearing me, the creature pawed at the ground, its claws scraping on the stone, then took a slow step toward us. All six fanged jaws snapped in unison, then opened wide. They were glowing again. The sound around us changed, and I realized it was because the steady roar of cheers and whoops from the crowd had hushed.
The Hydra was getting ready for the kill.
24
Ares
The feeling burning through my body as I watched the Hydra heads rear back up before us was not fear. I knew that for certain. But it was nothing I had ever experienced before.
It was connected to fear, perhaps. A kind of fear-fueled excitement? It made my heart hammer against my ribcage, my stomach clench in anticipation, my breathing quicken. I could feel sweat on the back of my neck, cool on my skin. I could hear blood rushing in my ears.
Eris’ words rang through my head. “You are about to find out what it feels like to be human.” Was that was this was? This visceral, physical reaction to the threat before us? It was... intense. Never, ever before had I not known I could beat my opponent. Never before had I been so out of control of my own fate. And contrary to everything I thought I would feel, it was delicious.
I could die. Actually die. The towering creature before me could end my life if I wasn’t smart enough, strong enough, fast enough. The thought set my heart racing even harder, as though it were trying to remind me that keeping it beating was my challenge.
I felt a twisted grin take my face, resolution coursing through my body, hardening my muscles. This was a real fight. A real, true, life-or-death fight. Could there be anything more thrilling than overcoming death itself? How had I never known this desire for glory, this need to believe in my own ability? If I could beat the Hydra, the six-headed, twelve-foot-tall monster that by all rights should crush me to dust, I would be an actual hero. A deserved hero.
Fiery excitement caused a noise to bubble from my lips, and Bella snapped her head to look at me. Was she feeling this too? Did she feel this every time she fought?
The idea was intoxicating.
A wave of heat rippled through the pit, grounding me ever so slightly. Something was about to happen. In a sudden blur of movement all six heads shot forward, black liquid firing from the lethal jaws. The oily substance coated the ground, not quite reaching us but spreading fast.
“I’m gonna guess that we don’t want to touch that stuff,” said Bella. I glanced at the exposed parts of her arms, then down at my own solid armor. Even without my magic, my armor would withstand more than her human-made boots and leather. If the liquid was acid or lava, she was in trouble.
“Climb onto my shoulders. From up there you may be able to reach the heads, and you will not make contact with the liquid.
She stared at me. “Climb on your shoulders? Seriously?”
“Yes. Do it now.”
“But-” she started, then yelled and looked down, leaping sideways. The liquid had reached her boot, and as I had feared, instantly began burning through the material, acrid smoke sizzling from her shoe. I looked down at my own divinely created boots, relieved to see they were not reacting to the acid. “Get it off me!” Bella kicked and shook her leg, bending to untie the shoe fast, until a shriek from the Hydra made us both look up. It was charging.
With a fierce curse, Bella gave me a glare, then reached for my shoulder. I bent as she lifted the boot that wasn’t covered in the black liquid, cupped one hand beneath it and lifted. I heard her intake of breath as she clambered across my shoulders, then felt my own breath constrict as her thighs moved around my neck. But I had no time to deal with the new increase in pulse rate her thighs were causing. The Hydra had reached us.
I slashed with my sword, no longer caring if I severed a neck, as I raced to my left. Bella shouted, one of her hands gripping my helmet as I ran. The black acid splashed up around me as my gold boots pounded the earth, the Hydra stamping and shrieking behind me.
“We need to get under it!” shouted Bella. Her voice sounded strained.
“We need to go for the heads!” I roared back. I saw one of her boots, only half of it remaining and smoking, fly to the ground in my peripheral vision.