skies and see if you shall be tested,' he drawled and handed me a goblet. I took the cup and started when electricity sparked through my fingertips. Oh, this was going to be a test alright. I looked into his eyes as I sipped the sweet liquid, and his lips parted.
'I'm afraid this might hurt a bit,' he whispered, and the hall vanished.
Thirty
Persephone
I'd expected to find myself in an open space, or surrounded my lightning bolts like when Zeus had abducted me, but to my surprise I was in an underground cavern. In fact, it looked and felt like I would expect the Underworld to look and feel. I was standing on the banks of a river of liquid fire, which was running into a dark cave mouth in front of me. I turned slowly on the spot, thrown by how un-Zeus this felt so far. There was nothing else along the rocky river banks, and the high cavern ceiling sloped down towards the dark entrance before me. I peered into the river. It wasn't lava but actual fire, rolling and sloshing like water. It was mesmerizing, and I tore my eyes from it before I could get distracted. The only place to go was the cave, and I wanted this Trial over. So I strode towards the darkness.
The air was hot and humid as I stepped through the arched cave mouth, and the darkness barely receded, the only light coming from the burning river.
I knew instantly that something was wrong. Seriously wrong.
It was as though my senses narrowed to slithers, only specks of sound making it to my ears, and flashes of images to my eyes. Despite the heat the hair on my skin rose, and I stopped moving. I tried to listen for the gong, but all I could hear were fragments of something high pitched, that faded away before I could work out what it was. Things were moving in the shadows, the flickering red light never staying still long enough for me to see what they were. Fear began to churn through me, my stomach tense and uneasy as my black vines slid instinctively from my palms.
Suddenly the flames in the river leapt up, and I cried out and staggered backwards as the scene in front of me was illuminated.
There was a shallow pool of water with an apple tree in the center of it, and chained at the waist to the narrow trunk was what must have once been a man. He was so emaciated his body was barely more substantial than a skeleton, his pale skin paper thin and covered in blistering sores. He stood rigid against the tree, his sunken eyes hollow and staring, his thin lips withered and pulled back from his teeth.
'Water,' he rasped suddenly, and I gasped in fright. He was alive? How? I watched in muted horror as the man leaned down towards the pool of water, his skeletal hands trying to form a cup. But as he reached the liquid it shrank away from him, as though it were alive. He let out a wracking hiss, then moved fast, throwing his arms up towards a low hanging branch from the tree, grabbing for an apple. The branch jerked out of the way, his fingers just scraping the fruit as it whooshed out of reach.
'They cursed me,' he croaked, his hollow eyes fixing on mine. I swallowed hard. 'I fed them my son, and they cursed me never to eat or drink again.'
'Fed them your son?' I breathed, very real fear now hammering through me, my vines hovering. Before he could answer, the flames in the river died down, and the pool and the tree and the awful man vanished.
This wasn't right. Where was the gong? And the commentator’s voice with the time? What was I supposed to be enduring? Sure, I was scared shitless, but fear was Hades’ power, not Zeus'. I needed to get out of here.
But what if this is the test? You can't afford to lose a seed.
With a snarl, I turned to the cave mouth a few feet behind me. Except it was gone. Panic mingled with the fear, fresh sweat rolling down my neck and making my palms clammy. I was trapped. The flames leapt again, before I could work out what to do, and where the pool had been before there was now a stone table. An enormous muscular man covered in dark hair lay prostrate on it, his abdomen ripped open.