As the sphinx had said, I would lose everything without it.
“What do you think the sphinx meant?” Zalira asked me. “When she said you have ‘many.’”
“The first thing I thought of was that I had many people that I love who love me, but that can’t be it. I already know that. She was saying it as if it were something I wasn’t aware of.”
“Perception,” Io called out from the other end of the hallway, reading the sign.
“I want to say it can’t be as bad as the others, but I feel like that would be tempting fate,” I said as we joined her.
Io opened the door and we all went inside. There was a long table filled with different types of treasure. We walked over to the table and saw another sign.
Choose the goddess’s greatest treasure and place it on the altar.
I turned to see that there was a stone altar near the far wall.
Ahyana sighed. “I want to ask what will happen if we pick the wrong one, but I think we already know. Certain death.”
“Which one do we choose?” Zalira asked as she started to walk the length of the table. “How do we perceive what’s right?”
“Suri? Are you sensing anything?” I asked.
She shook her head. I had hoped her magic might be the one that actually worked since we were in the earth right now, but I supposed that would have been too easy.
I started looking at what was laid out on the table. There were elaborately decorated swords that had jewels in their hilts and blades made of the purest and brightest steel. I saw Zalira grab one.
Ahyana reached for a golden bird automaton that tweeted and flapped its wings when she picked it up. I could hear the gears whirring and clicking.
“I think this is aether,” Io said, holding up a vial of silver sparkles. “This comes from her daughter. This must be the goddess’s greatest treasure.”
“Maybe.” I wasn’t sure, though. There were so many different kinds of valuables laid out—some that were entirely unfamiliar to me. Where had they come from?
Something glinted at the far end of the table from underneath a cloth and it caught my attention. I went down to see what it was, and when I lifted the cloth, I gasped.
It was the eye of the goddess.
Here.
“Look!” I called out.
“Is that the eye of the goddess?” Io asked.
“It can’t be,” Zalira said. “Artemisia had the only one left.”
“But what if there’s another eye? For all we know, the goddess made a thousand eyes. This might be one that she kept in this cave.” For me.
This might be the greatest weapon.
And it would help me restore Locris.
“It’s obvious that this is her greatest treasure,” I told the others and began to walk toward the altar.
Zalira grabbed me by the arm and made me stop. “Hold on, what if you aren’t right?”
“Why wouldn’t I be right?”
“Because despite what you think, you don’t know everything,” she snapped back at me. “Did you even see what I have in my hands? It’s a golden sword. What if this is Dea’s golden sword?”
“That’s not her sword,” I said. Zalira was behaving so foolishly right now.
