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Ares pops up out of nowhere, right in front of me. I’m ashamed to say I scream like a scared little girl.
“You, my dear, are a hard girl to find.” He chuckles as I cut my scream short. The moment I left the others, I went straight for the hidden passageway and hightailed it to the tower garden. I figured being around angry Gods-in-training was not the best place to be.
Ares sits down on the seat beside me, sighing loudly. “You know Zeus has them locked in one of the cells beneath the castle, right?”
“What?” I’m on my feet in an instant. Ares grabs my arm, pulling me back down onto the bench seat. The second he lets me go, I’m back on my feet.
“Sit down, there’s nothing you can do for them right now.”
“Sayingright nowimplies there is somethingI cando at some point.” I retort.
“Too smart for your own good.” He chuckles. “If you want to help them, you’ll need to go to the dragon’s cavern. There you’ll find a key that unlocks the cell. Be warned though, she doesn’t like Gods, so you’ll have to go by yourself.”
“I thought the dragon eats people who enter her cavern.”
“Of course she doesn’t. She just plays with them a bit and sometimes accidents happen, but if you’re polite and don’t anger her, you’ll be fine.”
“Why can’t you go get the key then?”
“Like I said, she’s not a fan of Gods right now.”
“Fine, how do I find her cavern?”
“You’d really risk your life for them?”
“I just said I would. Now tell me.”
Ares told me alright. I really wish he hadn’t. My entire body is shaking as I stand in front of the door that leads down into the cavern where the dragon lives.
I can’t hear anything on the other side of the door, so I have no way of knowing if what Ares said is true, but I can’t think of any reason he’d lie to me. The worst-case scenario is that he’s sent me down here to die by being eaten by the dragon. If he’s telling the truth, then somewhere in amongst her treasure is a key that will free my Gods.
Yeah I saidmyGods. I’m claiming them. I’m keeping them. We’ve been through too much to back out now.
With that thought firmly in my head, I press the hidden latch Ares told me about and push the door open. It’s kind of anticlimactic to step into an ordinary, empty room after all the freaking out I was doing. Clearly Ares lied. The question though is why?
I step into the room, curious if there’s a hint somewhere in here to explain why he’d send me on a wild goose chase.
The moment I step away from the door, it slams shut, sealing me inside the room. I’ll admit, I have a moment. Just a tiny one. Where I may have banged on the door and screamed blue murder, while cursing Ares’s name and praying that he meets a horrible end.
But there is no way in hell I’m going to admit to any of that. When anyone asks me what went down in the future, I’m going to tell them that I bravely stepped into the room and remained calm. That I looked around and found that there was another door on the other side of the room.
I did not at any time freak out and cry like a baby.
I swear.
Nope. The last five minutes or so did not happen. Alright?
With my new found bravery, I walk over to the door that is now visible in the room. It opens with the slightest touch, swinging silently. My breath leaves me in a rush as I get my first glimpse of the inside of the cavern. It’s huge, covering what I can only imagine is the entire underground of the castle grounds.
From what I can tell, the only thing stopping the entire roof of the cavern from falling down upon my head is the stone pillars evenly spaced out as far as I can see.
If someone had asked me what I thought a dragon’s lair would look and feel like, I would have said dark, damp and scary, but surprisingly, this place is filled with light, a comfortable temperature and even has huge T.V screens on the walls. Each one depicts a moving scene from somewhere in the world. The closest one looks like it’s showing the forests of the Amazon. The ones further away look like rainforests and even mountainsides with snow falling gently upon the ground.
Curious about the screens, I slowly move closer to the Amazon one. “Why have windows to the world when you can go out there and see it?” I ask out loud.
“Why wander into a place you know will be your death?” A voice asks from somewhere behind me. I have a sneaking suspicion that the voice belongs to Hecatate, the dragon I was sent here to find.
Without turning around I answer, “Because some things are worth dying for.”
