My weight shifts the blades. The Cyclops swats at the annoyance, ramming me hard into its back and stunning my lungs. I somehow hold on, although it takes a moment to breathe again. My ribs and arms ache so much I have to convince myself to start the whole process over again. Stubbornness wins out over pain and exhaustion, and I plant another knife near my hip, creating an attainable foothold. I step up onto it. Using one hand on the upper knife to pull myself up and keep my balance, I then drive another blade higher up into the Cyclops’s back for climbing.
Foothold. Handhold. Repeat. I can do this. I am Titan. I am Olympian. I do not break.
I do, however, run out of knives.
Letting loose a string of growled curses that would make a Fisan pirate fall off his boat and drown, I rest my forehead against the Cyclops’s meaty back, my harsh breathing pounding the space between us. Balanced between the knife at my feet and the final knife between my raw hands, I inhale disbelief and exhale denial. I can’t go up, and I’m not entirely certain I can go down.
Great plan, Cat. Way to think ahead.
The Cyclops’s skin twitches violently, and I look up. There’s a Kobaloi knife just where I need it, the throw perfect and precise despite the moving target.
I glance over my shoulder and see Jocasta prepping for another throw, her eyes narrowed and her right arm cocked back. The Cyclops is facing away from her, thrashing the sand with its club and roaring in frustration. Griffin and Flynn dash back and forth, slashing at its legs and then racing out of the way. I’ve never been more grateful for their agility and speed in my life.
Looking back up, I steel myself for more pain, reach for Jocasta’s knife, and then climb.
Jocasta throws again. The creature jerks, but I hold on. Foot up. Hand up. Again. Her blades land just where I need them, and then I have it, the thick cord around the Cyclops’s neck. I latch on to the strip of leather and don’t let go. Now there’s just the question of how to reach its eye.
It’s all or nothing at this point, and I don’t have a better plan, so I stand on the Cyclops’s shoulder, draw my sword, and wave it around. “Hey! Hey, mutton brain!” Maybe it’ll turn toward me enough that I can jab Thanatos into its eye.
No such luck. Reaching across its body, the Cyclops closes its huge hand around me, squeezing from under my armpits to my ankles. It rips me from its shoulder so fast I’m scared my neck will snap. The creature brings me in front of its monstrous face, giving me far too close a view of its overgrown, coarse features and bulbous nose. One enormous milky-blue eye blinks. The dark pupil dilates, framed by thin, crusty eyelashes. Knobbly fingers squash me until I can barely breathe, and my injured ribs grind with every shallow breath.
“I’m going to kill you, you son of a Cyclops!”Gods! That’s not even an insult!
The Cyclops offers a small, brutish smile, showing me its brown and broken teeth. Its voice is guttural, its speech halting. “Did the human think Myopies didn’t know she was there?”
Myopies?No wonder the Cyclops hasn’t pulverized anyone on the ground since hitting Carver. If the etymology of its name is any indication, it can’t see properly past its own nose.
“Steps, steps, steps, up Myopies’s back, climbing like a little bug.”
I get an unfortunate image of myself popped like an insect. The Cyclops kicks out, grimaces, and then limps a step before stopping again.
I weigh my limited options. If I throw my sword at its eye, even if I use Thanatos like a spear, I’m afraid I’ll miss. The target is big, but my mobility is bad, and sword throwing isn’t exactly my specialty. My only hope may be to get the Cyclops to impale itself.
A Cyclops is enough like a human, albeit gigantic, that I didn’t want to resort to compulsion, but integrity doesn’t mean much when you’re dead and the people you love are killed along with you. Griffin was right when he said that people like us don’t always have the luxury of a moral high ground. If this works, I’m about to fall off that cliff.
I block out the din of the crowd, the pain of my compressed body, the hammering of my heart, and the beat of fear in my ears, and concentrate, searching for that spark I have to ignite between us.
I can’t find it. It eludes me entirely, and I recoil from the thick, sludgy darkness of the Cyclops’s mind. I try again, pushing harder, but the results are no better. The strength of my magic has always been linked to the strength of my body, and there’s not much left of either right now.
It knows what I’m trying to do, and the Cyclops squeezes me in its giant fist. My mouth pops open. I gasp.
“Puny human girl.”
Before it’s too late to do anything, or at least try, I throw Thanatos like a lance. The tip of my sword hits the hard ridge of the Cyclops’s upper nose, under the eye, barely breaking the skin before dropping to the ground.
Bollocks! Why did I think that would work?
Thick fingers tighten around me, and an instinctual call for aid thunders inside me, racing toward Olympus. It’s both silent and mind-numbingly loud.
Not even a heartbeat later, a lightning bolt splits the air directly behind me, heating the back of my neck. Currents prickle my skin, and all the small hairs on my body stand on end. The thunderclap rattles my eardrums. I don’t know if the dead quiet afterward is me going momentarily deaf, or if the world around me is stunned into silence. The dry, singed smell of charred sand rises from under the Cyclops’s churning boots, and the ground the creature treads on suddenly crunches like glass.
The Cyclops shakes its head, blinking rapidly. Its pupil shrinks to almost nothing, leaving a huge expanse of cloudy-blue. An eerie howling begins, and the creature freezes. The ghastly sound opens a pit of despair in my chest, and all I can see are the dreary, hopeless souls on the Plain of Asphodel, coinless and cursed to wander with the wicked who are waiting out their punishments in the endless, swirling mists.
The Cyclops cringes. Its head drops, and its massive shoulders lift toward its misshapen ears, trying to block the awful sound. I know, like the Cyclops must, that this is its fate. Not Tartarus, reserved for punishing those who defy the Gods, but Asphodel and lifetimes ofnothing.
An icy wave of seawater splashes over me, shocking a yell from me. Briny water stings my eyes and leaves the taste of salt and rocks between my lips. My whole arm jerks under the weight of the golden trident that suddenly appears in my right hand. The sleek shaft is as long as my own body, and so thick I can’t fully wrap my fingers around it. It’s incredibly heavy but balanced to perfection.
I stare in rapt awe, blinking my spiked eyelashes and forgetting to breathe. Zeus, Hades, and Poseidon all answered my plea. My grandfather and my uncles. Lightning to blind, a future to terrify, and a weapon to kill.
