“Panic is an asshole for making us go straight from the ceremony. I don’t have my armor, or my backpack. And if I tear this t-shirt, I will make him pay.”
“Is there anyone you don’t think is an asshole?” Ares muttered ahead of me.
I thought for a moment. “Not many people, no.”
Ares was silent for a while, then spoke quietly. “You said you would leave once you have retrieved your friend. What do you plan to do?”
His question surprised me, and also caused me an irrational surge of pleasure. He cared. “Erm, I’m not really sure.”
“Will you stay with him?” His voice was curt and clipped.
“Joshua?”
“Yes.”
“I don’t know.” And I really didn’t. “All I know is that there’s no fucking way I’m going back to London. Or the mortal world.”
“You wish to stay in Olympus?”
“Of course I do. I’ve spent my whole life not fitting in and knowing with certainty that I’m not in the right place. Olympus is everything I didn’t know I needed and missed from my life. I mean, a world where it must be impossible to get bored... That’s a dream come true.”
Ares had slowed, and he turned to look at me over his shoulder. He had a strange look in his eyes, and I wished I could see the rest of his face.
“What?” I asked him. He turned away. “Ares, what aren’t you saying?” I could feel his discomfort.
“Be quiet. I can hear something.”
“Bullshit! You just don’t want to-”
“Bella, silence!”
He had tensed, his sword raised and his head tipped back. Adrenaline immediately flooded through my veins as I realized he was serious.
I concentrated, straining to hear something. I felt a little rush of heat fire out from the well of power under my ribs, and it was suddenly as though my senses were amplified by a hundred. Every crack of a twig, Ares’ measured breathes, even the barely-there breeze, sounded loud and clear in my ears. The muted color of the forest around me came to life, and I caught the bright colors of tiny bugs and the flash of opalescent feathers in the trees that I’d missed entirely before. Unfortunately the rotten smell hammered harder at my defenses, but it was small price to pay.
Before I could tell Ares how utterly awesome this new experience was, a loud buzzing reached my ears. I turned warily in the direction it was coming from.
“What’s that noise?” I whispered. It was getting louder.
“If it is a swarm of oxys then we must defend ourselves, now.” There was a note of urgency to his voice that he did not normally have, and I snapped my eyes to his. “Bella, we can’t fight these easily. If they sting you, you’ll have about three seconds to heal yourself, or it will be too late.” He gripped my arm, and sparks of electricity shot across my skin. “I’m going to teach you to create a shield, right now.”
“OK,” I said, a bit breathlessly.
“Draw on your power and picture a shield. A real shield, that you would be willing to use in battle. If you do not believe that what you have imagined could defend you in a real fight, then it will not work.”
“Got it,” I said, and tried to picture a shield. With a jolt that felt almost physical, a massive circular metal disk flashed into my head. It was beautifully engraved with an image of two rearing stallions, spears and javelins flying behind the riderless horses. A pattern ringed the shield, and looked Celtic or Viking in style.
There was no way I’d invented this shield. I knew it was real.
I didn’t have time to ask Ares about it though.
The buzzing suddenly surged in volume and Ares crouched down, the plume on his helmet tipping back as he cast his eyes up. I followed suit, holding the image of the horse shield firm in my mind as red seeped fast across my vision, replacing the vibrancy that had been there moments ago.
The buzzing grew so loud I could hear nothing else over it, even the rushing of blood in my ears. But I couldn’t see anything in the trees above or around us.
“Where are they?” I yelled at Ares.
“This is Panic’s forest; his creatures will try to incite panic before attacking.” I caught enough of his words to work out what he had said, and I took a deep breath. The tactic was working. The longer we waited for the threat to appear, the more my imagination built up the foe.
I wouldn’t say I was panicking yet, but I certainly didn’t want to wait any longer to see what we were up against.
9
Bella
Something small, bright and freaking fast darted out of the trees toward me.
I felt a slight resistance as it crashed into an invisible barrier a foot above me, then flew off into the tree again. My pulse quickened, and everything around me began to slow as my war-sight kicked in. I felt Ares pull on my strength, and I let go of a little, allowing him to take it. The next oxys that sped toward us was moving just as quickly as the first, but my power allowed me to focus on it enough to see it properly.
It was like somebody had taken a wasp and put it through a Frankenstein machine. It was as large as Ares’ closed fist, and its body looked like it had been stitched together out of lots of bits of bright leather. A glowing purple stinger jutted out of its rear end, and it had hairy black wings that beat hard and fast. I couldn’t make out eyes on the thing, but it had multiple furry legs hanging down under its tube-shaped body.
It smashed into an invisible wall around Ares, then flitted off.
The buzzing paused, then roared, and my stomach tightened in apprehension as a swarm erupted from the trees. They weren’t just around us, they were above us too, blocking the faint light with their sheer mass. I braced myself, and felt my whole body being pushed into the dirt below me as they crashed into my protective shield. It had formed a dome around me, and a sense of being closed-in swamped me as they beat at it, covering it entirely, leaving me in near darkness. I waved Ischyros uselessly at them from where I crouched, taking deep breaths and wishing desperately that I knew how to make light.
A weird sense of urgency took over my mind abruptly, and I felt Ares’ presence pressing at my thoughts. The second I pictured him, his voice sounded in my head.
“I’m going to create a fireball. And I need a surge of your power to do it.”
He wasn’t exactly asking for permission to use my power, but he was telling me beforehand, which was a significant improvement on the last Trial. “OK.”
I felt a hard pull in my gut, and I didn’t fight it. The buzzing upped in pitch into an awful cacophony, then the darkness was suddenly gone, a roaring inferno of orange and scarlet washing over my dome instead. The oxys scattered, the terrible sound of their buzzing fading fast.
I stood up warily as the flames died down and the sensation of being so close to the heat but not being able to feel it was strange.
“The ground and foliage are too damp to catch,” Ares said, standing up beside me. Fire licked up an invisible barrier around him too.
A few lingering oxys zipped toward us, but retreated fast as they neared the flames. “They will keep coming,” Ares said. “In a few hours, they will forget that we have fire and try again.”