“I have promised them that you will not kill any spiders in this maze.” Her voice is bizarre, like scratches and hums at the same time, but I can understand her. “In exchange, the spiders will not attack you.”
I am still smarting and bleeding in a few spots, and I’ll probably start itching and swelling, given the size of the bites. I nod. “You have my word.”
“The other bugs down here, I cannot help with.”
“Thank you.” I offer my arm, and she returns.
Now I have to figure out what’s next. Hopefully, my unaimed running didn’t get me lost or send me deeper into the tunnels.
“Please, help me find the way out,” I say to the fox and panther. “Watch out for more bugs.”
They don’t hesitate, loping off down the tunnel. I follow at a jog. We hit a T in the maze fairly quickly.
“Go.” I point in opposite directions.
Then I wait there. I close my eyes to force my racing heart and thoughts to slow down and focus. To center on my senses. To ignore my spider bites. The air to the right is cooler and a little sweeter. Barely.
A clattering of legs coming toward me stands the hair up on my neck, and I spin around just as a bullet ant lunges.
93
Crystal Labyrinth
With a snarl, the panther leaps over my head, just avoiding the glass ceiling, and comes down on top of the bullet ant. The cat’s powerful jaws sink into the back of its armored skull with a sickening crunch.
Axe in hand, I drop my arms to my sides in a sort of anticlimactic realization. My animals can fight for me as well as direct me? Hades didn’t say anything about that, but I should have guessed. Very handy.
My panther comes away with greenish goo around her muzzle, which she proceeds to spit out, pawing at her own face.
Above me, Samuel runs by, looking closely at a copper disc of some kind in his hands. Hades said he won Hephaestus’ Labor. The prize was a compass that always points the way to go. A lot like Meike’s mirror.
With a chuff, my panther runs past me in the direction the fox went.
I follow, axe in hand.
We come across the fox making his way back to us, and he turns to run in the same direction. More running and following.
We run until we come to another T, one way leading up, the other on the same level. We do the same thing, just to be sure, but this one seems obvious. Sure enough, the fox returns first, and we head upward, after the panther.
We emerge onto the second level. This one is all glass, the level between the stone maze below my feet and the top level above. Sunlight dissipates the shadows here…and I can see bugs everywhere, running this way and that. I catch sight of several of the other champions, too, and when I look up, I see faces in the immortal crowd filled with bloodlust and fascination, their cheers audible even down here.
I block all of that out and focus on only what’s directly in front of me. Solve one problem, then the next. And every single second, I’m expecting to hear Hades’ voice offering advice. Or maybe his butterfly showing me the way.
But I don’t.
I’m standing at another crossroads when a pounding on the glass has me whirling, heart thudding harder, crouched and ready to defend. But I find Trinica standing under my feet.
I drop to my knees as she stares up at me.
“Which way?” Her voice is slightly garbled through the floor.
Because of the clear tunnels, it’s impossible to tell if I’ve been in that section before. I point. “That way, I think. But I’m not sure.”
Easy to get turned around in here with the glass.
She frowns, hands going to her hips. “You’re not sure? Or you’re not helping me now that you need to win?”
I give her a look. “I wouldn’t not help you.”
After a second, she looks down at her shoes, then back up at me. “Okay. I believe you.”
I’m not sure she does. “You can do this. The way you should go always feels a little cooler and smells sweeter. It’s subtle,” I tell her.
“Subtle. Great.”
I put my palm to the glass. “I’ll see you on the outside.”
Which is when a wicked, stinger-tipped tail rears up out of the shadows behind her. “Scorpion!” I yelp.
Immediately, she scrambles straight up, using gauntlets at her wrists and ankles to climb the walls to the ceiling with apparent ease. Her gift from Hephaestus, I assume. The scorpion scuttles by underneath her, then tries to climb up after her, only to slip on the smooth walls. It can’t reach her with its tail, either.
Trinica, hanging upside down, grins at me. “Thank the gods those and the spiders can’t climb glass—or the spiders not without webs, at least.” She makes a face. “The hornets and the ants, however…”
Giving up, the scorpion keeps going, and Trinica drops to the ground. With a wave, she runs off in the other direction.
Which is when a sensation like being shot with a gun point-blank, like a metal bullet shredding through my flesh, strikes me in the thigh before my panther tackles the bullet ant away from me.
