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The five of us set off together—six, including Milos, who walked reluctantly at Foster’s side with much encouragement from all of us to put her there. Occasionally, she’d herd us off the main road, taking us on a more circular route to the ruins than we’d ever been before.
“Good girl,” Foster murmured, scratching her behind the ears as she fell into step next to him again. I could have sworn she gave him an exasperated look before nuzzling into his hand ever so slightly.
“We really need some weapons,” Vasileios said, more to himself than anything. “We have some knives, but nothing long-range.”
“Do you foresee us needing them?” I asked uneasily. All things considered, we’d gotten by pretty well without weapons so far.
“I do.” Vasileios was more solemn than I’d ever seen him. “I’m no Keres, I can’t taste violence on the wind the way they can, but… ” He hesitated, frowning in concentration.
“But?” I prompted.
“But if I was a Keres, I would be tasting violence right now. There’s a restlessness in the air… Can’t you feel it?”
“Of course, there’s a restlessness in the air,” Dare scoffed. “People are hungry, and food is scarce. There’s no faster way to full-blown mutiny than starvation.”
I need to get into that pit.I wasn’t sure liberating the Olympians would fix all of our problems, but between the twelve of them, there was a god for almost everything. Surely, at least one of them could grow food? Demeter, perhaps, goddess of agriculture? I said a few silent prayers to each of them, just in case.
“Stay here, okay?” Foster instructed Milos. She gave him a far too intelligent, unimpressed look before parking her butt on the ground, and acquiescing to Foster’s pats of approval.
The steady hum of voices reached us as we drew nearer to the ruins, and Dare’s hand was like a vice around mine, his discomfort at approaching a crowd clear. I draped my shawl over my head with one hand before wrapping it around the lower half of my face while Dare did the same. Frankly, it was necessary. The ground was dead and dry, the breeze from the nearby coast kicking up an incessant stream of dust.
Death. We were surrounded by death as far as the eye could see. None of this was recovering without divine intervention fromsomeone.
“She could fix all of this,” Dare mumbled, vocalizing the thought I hadn’t spoken. “Gaia. If she wanted to.”
I glanced down at my feet, a cloud of dust rising with each heavy clomp of my slightly-too-big boots. We were probably lucky that opening the ground and swallowing us whole wasn’t Gaia’s style. She preferred to hide behind the plausible deniability of natural disasters, or send her minions out to do her dirty work for her. Perhaps because of that lingering desire to be loved? It made sense that she wouldn’t openly put her name on all of her atrocities if so. It only made me despise her more—she could at least have the courage to own what kind of monster she was. For all the things she’d said about my mother, Faith had followed closely in her goddess’ footsteps. She was also great at pretending to be above the terrible things she did.
“Don’t let go of my hand, Grace,” Dare said quietly, squeezing my fingers. “We’re about to see a lot of down-on-their-luck people, and you can’t afford to let any of those agathos abilities slip. Our situation is too precarious for bad luck.”
Already, I wanted to argue with him, my instincts balking at the idea of letting anyone suffer intentionally. Dare just held on tighter, content to be the bad guy if it meant keeping us both safe.
“We’ll go ahead, scope things out,” Foster volunteered, walking hand-in-hand with Estrella, Vasileios on his other side.
“Be careful,” I whispered, panic spiking in my throat, remembering leaving Riot and Wild behind. Maybe I would have a complex about goodbyes for the rest of my life.
I’d gotten the sense that there were people around, but as Dare and I got closer, it became clear just how much of a hub of activity the surrounding edge of the pit had become. Where had all these people come from? This hadn’t exactly been a bustling metropolis. Then again, it had been a few days and a sudden, giant pit was the kind of news that would travel.
Dare dragged us behind a pile of broken stone, the ruins of other ruins, and we did our best to stay out of sight while we took in the scene in front of us.
There was no giant snake monster, for one. The sky was a brilliant blue, no evidence that it had ever been filled with fire or dark for days.
Perhaps more surprisingly, the pit was a hub of activity.
“What the fuck,” Dare whispered, summing up my thoughts perfectly. “What… what are they doing?”
I cleared my throat. “I think they’re worshipping. They’re treating it as a shrine.”
“Well, that seems like an epically bad idea,” he muttered. “That’s basically a giant ‘eat me’ sign for Tartarus monsters, isn’t it?”
“Maybe that’s who they’re worshipping. Maybe it’s a nice monster,” I replied hesitantly, knowing Dare disagreed. “We don’tknowthat it has bad intentions. It could have turned that fire on us at any point, but it didn’t. It blasted it at the sky. Why would it have done that if it wanted to eat us?”
“Why do lions toy with their prey?” Dare asked. “Because it’s fun for them. Because they can. I’m just saying, if I’m a big fuck-off flying snake monster thing, I’m taking my time with my meals. Why not? Who’s going to stop me?”
It was an annoyingly valid point.
“Let’s try to get a little closer,” Dare suggested, still holding onto my hand, muting the worst of my instincts to bestow luck on every human I could see. “If anyone has seen a giant monster with snakes for legs, they’ll be talking about it.”
Well, that was true, but there was a very good chance they wouldn’t be talking about it in English. Even from a distance, I could hear a medley of different languages being spoken in hushed, reverent tones. And yet, there was an almost party-like atmosphere at the same time.
