The Passion of Hades - Eliza Raine Page 0,67
feet. The grass was brown-tinged green and reached my knees, and the air smelled faintly dusty. It felt like it hadn't rained in a while. My green vines were itching at my palms, the desire to nurture and grow the needy life surrounding me almost overwhelming. But that shivering feeling took me once more, and this time I could actually feel something skittering across my skin. My breath skipped in my chest as the gong sounded.
'Ten minutes,' the commentator’s voice boomed, and I stared down at myself in horror as thousands of spiders scuttled from the grass and up my body.
A strangled noise crawled out of my throat as I started waving my arms wildly, vines bursting my from my palms and whipping through the air as my panic grew. Within seconds the things had reached my chest and were on my bare skin, and I shook myself harder as I stumbled through the grass, slapping at my arms and body, trying to get them off me.
'They're more scared of you than you are of them,' I panted desperately, repeating the words my mom had told me every time I found a spider in the trailer. But they'd reached my neck now and my skin felt like it was alive and I couldn't stand it. My own vine smacked hard into my shoulder as I beat at myself, and the force made me fall onto my ass. The moment’s pause was long enough for me to take in my once red skirt, now almost black with hundreds of spiders, most tiny, but some enormous. A beast with red stripes and massive hairy legs skittered up my skirt towards my bodice and I shrieked as I bat my vines at it, again hitting myself in the process. My heart was hammering so fast in my chest I wasn't sure it could take much more. I'd have a heart attack and drop down dead under a mountain of fucking spiders. I struggled back to my feet and started chanting again as I spun on the spot, looking for any sort of refuge. There was nothing, not even a tree on the horizon, just a sea of dry moorland grass. I felt the tickle of legs on my bottom lip and whimpered as I clamped my mouth shut.
They won't kill you, it's an endurance test, I told myself, employing the same tactic that had worked when I'd been over the volcano. Just ride it out.
But my skin was crawling with spiders and it was impossible to ignore them, panic and disgust battering at my willpower like colossal tidal waves. I wanted the things off me, I wanted to be anywhere but here. They were crawling up the side of my face now and I knew they would be in my hair. I felt a hot tear slid down my cheek as I squeezed my eyes closed, the contrast to the skittering spiders stark. Revulsion gripped my gut as I felt something inside my ear, and I almost opened my mouth to give up. I had two seeds safe, I could afford to lose one.
Don't you dare! My fierce voice was back inside my head, and I tried to shift my focus to it, tried to ignore the feeling that the spiders were burrowing into my head now, through my ears. If I lost a seed then I had to win one in every other Trial, which seemed highly unlikely. And whether I liked it or not, something inside me had changed. I wanted to win. I wanted to have a choice at the end of all this, I wanted there to be a possibility that I could stay in Olympus. Stay with Hades.
Come on Persy, what can you do? I channeled determination through myself, trying to focus. Were my powers any use here? The vines were shit at keeping the spiders off me, but there was grass here. I willed my green vines to connect with the earth beneath me, still keeping my mouth and eyes clamped shut, my body frozen in place. The creatures were moving up my nose now, and I was having to breath hard through my nostrils to dislodge them. I felt sick.
Until my vines hit the ground. Happiness coursed through my entire body, the sense of space and life surrounding me forcing out the fear of the spiders just a little. I sent the eager magic I could feel building inside me towards the earth, willing it to