“No, this is a test of pain, and the burning acid is on the ground. We have to endure the acid to win, the answer is low, not high!”
I processed her words as I darted out of the way of a snapping jaw, trying to ignore the feel of her legs squeezing around my neck. She was right before, about the staffs, though I wouldn’t admit it. It made sense, I decided. I would do as she bid me.
“You can’t touch the ground, you’ll burn. Let me slide under, and you can stand on my armor.”
“You’re sure you can take the acid?” She gripped my helmet harder as I pivoted one-eighty and held my sword high. I felt her move on my shoulders, her feet coming up to where her thighs were.
“My armor is divine. It can withstand anything!” I roared, and ran full-pelt at the creature.
Excitement set my insides alight as the myriad horned snake heads snapped down toward us and I dropped, putting my trust in Bella to both stay off the acid and avoid the fangs. She jumped as I slid from my rear-end to my back, flying under the belly of the beast as scaled necks collided with each other, acid splashing up in waves either side of me.
Bella gave a true battle cry, raising her arms above her and grabbing onto the scaled underbelly of the creature. I jammed my sword into the ground to stop my movement, trying to maneuver myself underneath her as she hung from her fingertips, keeping her legs bent and feet from touching the acid below. Finding one of the gashes I had made earlier with my sword, she pushed one arm deep into the creature, holding on with a strength I hadn’t thought her small frame capable of.
Her body convulsed suddenly, in time with a shriek from the Hydra, and the four clawed feet around me began to stamp and jump in earnest. A scream, high and long ripped through my skull, and when I realized it was coming from her I shouted her name before I could stop myself.
“Bella!” She didn’t respond, her body convulsing again, but her arm moving further into the mechanical creature, then wrenching back hard. She dropped, slamming into my armored chest in an awkward crouch, and the brief glimpse I got of her agonized face, tears streaming down her cheeks, set a boiling swell of rage through me, before she began to slide on the gleaming metal.
I dropped the sword, flinging both arms out to stop her falling, pulling her body flat to mine. “Hold on to me!” She cried out in pain, and for a moment I thought she had touched the acid. Then she pulled her left arm free of my vice-like grip, the one that had been inside the Hydra. The skin was searing red and blistered, but clutched in her fist was a pulsing purple orb.
“It’s dead,” she gasped, and with a flash of light the metal beast above us vanished, a gong sounding loud in my ears.
25
Bella
Ares sat up, gripping me around the waist with one arm and gently moving my legs with his other so that he could scoop them up, clear of the black acid. Tears of pain still leaked from my eyes, but I didn’t care. The agony of my burned arm was blocking out everything other than the fact that I’d killed the Hydra.
“How did you do it?” Ares asked me quietly as he stood, still cradling me.
I screwed my face up against the fierce burning, and concentrated on answering him. “Followed the heat. Put my arm in, went to where it was hottest.” A wave of nausea took me and I clamped my mouth shut. Agony or none, I didn’t want to throw up on the God of War’s fancy armor.
“Pain! We have defeated your test!” Ares bellowed. The crowd erupted in response to his words. “That is enough for today.”
“Indeed. Good show,” came Pain’s magnified voice, then everything flashed white.
We were in the caravanserai, in my room, and Ares set me down on the bed quickly. More nausea crawled up my throat.
“I feel sick,” I croaked, and he dropped to his knees beside the bed, before popping back up with my rucksack clutched in his huge fist. He rummaged through it fast, his armor clanking, then pulled a tub of the paste that we had got at the apothecary out of it.
“This may hurt,” he said, putting the tub next to me on the bed, then pulling his helmet off. The pain was so all-consuming that I couldn’t even focus on his face. I felt like my arm-bones themselves were burning, my entire forearm and hand a mass of fire and agony. I was getting flashes of brief and blessed numbness, but I knew on some level that that was not good. “Are your ready?” Ares asked me. I nodded.
He was right. It did hurt. In fact, it hurt more than anything else I’d ever experienced in my life. More than when I’d broken my ribs, my collarbone, my ankle. I was sick. I cried. I screamed. I was a damned mess.
But Ares sat beside me patiently, applying more thick paste to my raw and scalded skin, and saying nothing but the words, “You can sleep soon.”
After what felt like an eternity my arm was completely covered in the stuff, and thank all the gods, I stopped feeling like I was being flayed alive and started to feel the cooling effect of the paste. Within a minute of the pain lessening, I was unconscious, the sleep Ares had been promising taking me completely.
When I woke, the first thing I registered was pain. But it wasn’t agonizing, just dull and uncomfortable. With an instinctive delicacy, I lifted my arm clear of my body, and sat up slowly. Although very similar, this room was not my own. The closet and washroom door were the wrong way around. I looked around slowly, stopping as my gaze fell on Ares. He was sitting in a large and extravagantly upholstered chair, wearing an open linen shirt and leaning one elbow on the armrest. He looked... disheveled.
“How is your arm?” he asked me. I blinked at him, then looked to my raised limb. The paste had hardened, forming some sort of cast. I was grateful for that. I didn’t want to see the state of my skin underneath.
“It hurts,” I said. “But not as bad as before.”
I felt a tiny tug in my gut and I snapped my eyes to him. “What are you doing?”
“Helping you,” he said gruffly. “Zeeva said I had to let you sleep for your power to restore properly.” Anger started to bubble inside me.
“You’ve just been helping me so that you can get to my magic?”
He gave a hiss of annoyance and stood up, coming to the bed. His bed, I realized with a start. If we weren’t in my room, we must be in his. “No. You needed your power back for me to do this.” He leaned over me and took my other hand. My body reacted to his touch immediately, my pulse quickening of its own volition. I felt a stronger pull in my stomach, but before I could open my mouth to protest or question him, delicious soothing pulses washed through my arm. A tingle that wasn’t tickly or exciting, but completely relaxing, moved all the way from my spine and down my arm, and every muscle in my body went slack as I melted into the mattress.
For the first time since we had entered the gladiator pit, nothing in my body hurt.
“Gods have healing powers,” Ares said quietly, then let go of my hand. He didn’t move away though, his hair falling forward as he leaned over me.
“Even Gods of War?” I whispered, the soothing warmth fading, but no pain returning.
“Especially Gods of War. I had to wait until you regained your magic to use it though.”