on the wax figures of the Viking and the Spartan and the items they were holding-the Viking's axe and the Spartan's shield.
Weapons. My gaze flicked around the room. Swords, spears, daggers, staffs. We stood in a room full of weapons. The deadly points and sharp edges glittered underneath the lights, and one by one, the bits and pieces of metal winked at me, as if they knew exactly what I was thinking-and what we had to do if we wanted to make it through this.
"If we can't run, there's only one thing we can do-stand and fight," I said in a grim voice. "That's what we've been training for, right?"
Daphne and Carson stared at me, their mouths hanging open, but Logan had a different reaction. He actually smiled, and a fierce light began to burn in his eyes. Spartans were a little freaky in that they actually loved to fight, especially since they were the best warriors at Mythos-or anywhere else.
Not for the first time, I wished that I had Logan's confidence when it came to battling Reapers. With a shaking hand, I drew Vic from the scabbard strapped to my waist and held him up high. Vic's purplish eye met mine.
"Are you ready for this, Gwen?" the sword asked in a low voice.
"I guess I have to be, don't I?" I whispered back.
If he could have, I thought Vic would have nodded his half of a head in approval. "I'll be here with you, every step of the way. You're a Champion, Gwen. You'll be fine. You all will. Nike has faith in you, and so do I."
I nodded back, his words making me feel just a little bit better. I stood there a second, and I forced myself to breathe-in and out, in and out, in and out-just like my mom had taught me. Just like she'd always told me to do whenever I was scared, panicked, or upset. Yeah, I was all those things right now-and then some.
But there was no time to think about what I was doing, and no time to be cautious or quiet. I raced over to the case-the one with the goddess Sigyn's onyx bow and quiver in it-raised up Vic, turned my head away, then brought the sword down on top of the glass.
CRASH!
The case shattered with a roar, and shards of glass zipped through the air, stinging my hands and drawing blood. I thought that an alarm sounded, blaring together with all the others going off, but I was already moving over to the next case, one that contained a long wooden staff.
"Daphne! Carson! Logan!" I yelled. "Get the weapons!"
My friends scrambled forward, their shoes crunching on the shattered glass. I smashed another case, this one containing a sword with a dull bronze hilt. I used Vic to shatter the artifact cases, one by one, while Daphne, Carson, and Logan grabbed the items inside, as well as all the weapons they could reach on the walls and a few the wax figures were holding. We met in the middle of the room and quickly sorted through the weapons.
"We have to stick together and make a stand right from the start," Carson said, holding a staff in one hand and stuffing the ivory horn and a couple of daggers into the pockets on his khaki cargo pants. "We need to strike at them first. Otherwise, they'll overrun us."
Daphne strapped the quiver with its single arrow to her back, then tested the golden strings in the onyx bow. Satisfied, she bit her lip and looked around, the air around her cracking and hissing with pink sparks of magic. "Over there, behind the knight and the centurion. The Reapers won't immediately see us when they come in. Hopefully, I can pick a couple of them off before they realize what's going on."
"You three do that," Logan said, strapping the shield he'd swiped from the wax Spartan to his forearm. "I'll hide over there behind the Viking. When the Reapers move to attack you, I'll come up behind them. Divide and kill, right?"
I nodded. It was a good plan, even though my stomach twisted at the thought of Logan's being separated from the rest of us. But the Spartan was the best fighter at Mythos. This sort of situation was what he'd been training for his whole life-what we'd all been training for.
We scrambled up onto the dais and around to the far side. Daphne took up a position between the knight and the