by Zara Stark
"Dumb luck? There's no such thing! There's only good or bad and everyone is prey to its might," I grinned, laughing again. "Rich or poor, old or young, human, dragon or even a god. Everyone's been touched by luck good or bad. Luck is never dumb, it's calculated and cold."
The man started to shiver in his cell, the anger never leaving his face as his teeth started to chatter and he wrapped his arms around himself. The coin in my closed fist started to warm.
"It'll kill you. You'll never get the happy ending you want. You'll watch everything you love die from bad luck and then you'll follow them into Avernus. Make no mistake. Your power is no touch of good luck but a blight of bad," The man cursed. His words cut deep but not as deep as they could have if he weren't struggling with being so cold.
A voice that I didn't recognize came out of my mouth, melodic and slow. "My luck is mine to bear. Just like you will bear yours, let's see shall we?"
I couldn't feel my hands and could only watch as my fingers not in my control flipped the coin and caught it on the back of my other hand. I pulled my hand off and saw the sad face was the face-up side.
"What rotten luck you have," Sang the voice not my own.
The man gasped clutching at his throat. His skin turning purple.
My body not in my control turned away from his and kept walking until we came upon a dirty, broken mirror.
I knelt in front of it and stared at my reflection. My eyes were pure gold instead of green. I quirked my head to the side. It was the burnished amber and whiskey that
"Octavia, you warm their beds and drape yourself in their colors. Remembers my eighth, you aren't blue and gold, you're red and black," The Me in the mirror said.
I flipped the coin in my fingers again and looked at the coin. Sad face-up. The mirror shattered and crumbled to the dirty floor.
I shook my head and rose to my feet. I looked toward the end of the hall and kept walking toward the red light.
I dragged my broken wings behind me, determined to make it to the end of the hall. Dream me was convinced if I made it to the end of the hall, I would be free.
How can you spread your wings and fly when you can’t even reach the heavens? How can you spread your wings and fly when you can’t even reach the heavens? Echoed in my head again and again.
If I could just make it to the light, everything would be okay, I repeated like a mantra in my head.
Red thread shot out of the walls and twined around me, trying to keep me from going forward. Winding around my ankles, wrist, waist, and neck. One hand clawed at the thread trying to free myself while the other clenched the coin in my fists.
What rotten luck! What rotten luck! Echoed in the halls, reverberating off of the walls and drilling into my head.
I could feel myself slipping into unconsciousness from the lack of oxygen.
What rotten luck! What rotten luck! I heard again.
I flipped the coin with one hand and caught it. I held my hand closed tightly, almost afraid to look.
The red thread choked tighter and I opened my fist. Happy face-up.
A golden thread shot out of the red light down the hall and attached itself over my heart, pulling me free.
I collapsed to my feet and gasped for air. Letting myself catch my breath before continuing on. I don't know how long I remained on the dirty floor but when I rose I dropped the coin.
It went tinkling to the ground, bouncing off of the stone. Finally, it landed on its side and rolled down the hall. I chased after it, but with the weight of my wings and the pain in my body slowed me down.
The coin stopped, rolling onto its back. I froze in place, afraid to look at what side the coin had landed on.
I tiptoed over to the coin as if that would help somehow. My eyes locked onto the golden coin. Sad face-up.
The hall began to rumble and shake, dust wafting in the air, shaken free by the movement. I looked all around.
What rotten luck! Resounded down the hall again, the sound bouncing off of the narrow walls until it sounded like a hundred voices were saying it instead of just one.
I hugged my arms around myself tight, what was going to happen. I braced myself.
I waited and waited for something bad to happen.
I had almost calmed down and was ready to move again when the red light down the hall went out.
My eyes went wide as the light disappeared and I was engulfed in darkness.
Chapter 5
I spun my dice number six dice on top of my fingers as we waited for our turn for battle. Dink, dink, dink and back again over my knuckles. An odd feeling crept over me, I had woken up that morning and felt the need to hold my number six die. Over the years, I had learned to trust my gut feelings and my gut was telling me I needed this die today.
The guys were nervous, I hadn’t trained as much with my die yet and were unsure if they were ready for in-battle use. I had only had two days to learn my way around the deck that Cobalt made for me, I wasn’t sure why they feared my dice. My only guess was our entire lives we had all had our own things. Raiden master of all things electric, Cobalt of metal, Nevada of cold, Azar of fire and me with cards. Now to all of our surprise, I was using dice. Years upon years of board games and my touch had not once activated a die. My card powers had sprung forth when I was angry that Nevada had beaten me at Go-Fish if any game were to activate my dice power wouldn’t it have been the cut-throat game Monopoly? It was a shock to all of us that my powers were evolving into something else.
Part of me thought it was being in Ancient Rome where magic hung in the air like a cloud of hookah smoke. Iowa most certainly held no magic in its air, nothing for my powers to evolve from but here I seemed to be soaking in the magic all around me like a greedy little sponge.
What would I enchant next? Poker chips? I wondered.
The opposing team stood across the arena from us. My eyes were immediately drawn to the centaur. A centaur! That stood with the four other members of his team. I felt my mouth drop open as I took in the appearance of the centaur. His lower body was entirely horse, four legs and a long flowing tail that were the same midnight black as the hair on top of his human head. His top half was that of an attractive human man. What struck me odd was the six-pack, how did a centaur get a six pack? He couldn’t exactly do crunches now, could he? He held a wooden staff in his hand and stared at our team with a calm serenity that the rest of his team didn’t have. One of their members was covered in a thick black cloak with the hood up, hiding their face but the fold of the cloak twitched and moved like the person underneath the dark cloth was antsy and nervous. The other three were harder to discern, wearing similar armor to us and appraising us just as we were appraising them.
“Please welcome back Team Bumblebee! Only four battles away from hitting their thousand! Cobalt Aurelius has returned to this powerful four dragon team stronger than ever. The real stunner on this team is the magical little female on their team!” The Announcer yelled over the raucous crowd.
“Opposing them is Team Chiron! This three dragon team also features a gorgon and a centaur. We haven’t seen what most of this powerful team can do because their gorgon and centaur usually defeat their enemies within minutes! Please welcome Team Chiron!”
The spectators cheered loudly and my eyes darted to the hooded figure. That was a gorgon? As in the most famous of all the gorgons Medusa herself?! Snakes in her hair.
Maybe she wasn’t actually twitching nervously under her cloak and that was truly writhing snakes. I cringed. I wasn’t afraid of snakes, my lawn back home was full of harmless Garter snakes. Of course, Water Moccasins were a whole different thing. But no, I wasn’t afraid of the snakes, it was the whole turn people to stone with a bit of eye contact thing.
Raiden beckoned us over into our pre-battle huddle and we gathered close together. I clenched my number six die in my hand and felt the magic flutter in my hand, it wanted to be activated, and it bounced itself in my closed fist. A gasp escaped me in shock before I coul
d think to hide it, the die was moving on its own?
“Nervous, Tavia?” Azar asked with a grin.
I flashed him a weak smile. “Me? Never!”
“What’s the plan?” Cobalt interrupted, directing his question to Raiden, his voice gruff.
“Wind dragon, name’s Enlil, he’s fast, Nevada will slow him down. He has this defense mechanism when he’s cornered, he throws up a miniature twister either around himself to protect himself or he throws it up around an enemy and deprives those caught inside of it of oxygen, slowly suffocating them,” Raiden explained.
“That’s a horrible way to die,” I bit my lip.
“Yes, slow and painful, he’s done it dozens of times, it’s his calling card, he laughs when it happens too,” Raiden shook his head. “He won’t try it against it, he won’t risk it against a diverse team like ours especially when we have a magical wild card on our team.”
“Magical wild card?” I took a little bow. “I like that.”
“When he does his wind vortex, the oxygen particles rush around him leaving the center-deprived of oxygen and the outer edges full of oxygen atoms. What does fire need to burn?” Raiden gave us a wicked grin, his eyes sparking.
“Oxygen atoms duh,” Nevada huffed.
“It was a rhetorical question for dramatic effect, Vada,” Raiden turned his glare to Nevada, the grin on his face turning into a grimace.
“We don’t have time for that, just get on with it. Nevada will slow Enlil down and when he throws up his vortex Azar will ignite it, we get it, get to the rest,” Cobalt snapped.
“Someone woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning,” I scoffed. “Be nice to Raiden.”
“I don’t need to defend me, I’ll just whip these brats into shape later,” Raiden crossed his arms defensively.
“Hey, I was just trying to be nice and protect you,” I stuck my tongue out at him. “Screw you, Captain Prick.”
“Well if you insist,” Raiden bit his bottom and then gave me an intense appraising look. His pale eyes trailing up and down my armor-clad body. I was shocked at the intensity of it.
“You’ll have to wait until the battle ends thought,” Raiden grinned before turning back to the guys leaving me a little breathless. “They have a lightning dragon on their team, I don’t know his name, he’s going to gun for Cobalt as soon as the battle begins. I’ll take of him and their metal dragon Monel.”
“Two enemies? Feeling a little ambitious today?” Nevada sassed to Raiden.
Raiden rolled his eyes and carried on. “Cobalt, you’re going to avoid that lightning dragon at all costs, you’re going to go for the Centaur, he’s fast and wicked with the staff. That leaves--”
“Me and the Gorgon?” I cut him off. “I always get the hard ones!”
“Yeah you do,” Azar winked at me and they all burst into laughter. I laughed with them at my own expense. He wasn’t wrong!
I shook my head at him but couldn’t help the giggles that bubbled forth.
“Okay, tell me straight up, is that Medusa? Because I’ll need to get her autograph before I fight her if that’s the case,” I told Raiden.
“No, that’s Stheno,” Raiden explained and I deflated, shoulders slumping. “Medusa was killed by Perseus remember? What kind of librarian are you?”
“Do we need to go over this again?” I sighed.
“Apparently so,” Raiden shrugged but he didn’t look irritated in the slightest, a small smirk even quirked at the corner of his mouth. “Anyways, you need to make eye contact with her to turn to stone, I was about to theorize before I was interrupted that if you use your Alpha of Shields she can’t make eye contact with you.”
“You’re basing her getting turned to stone on a theory?!” Azar growled at Raiden.
“Gravity is a theory, yet you aren’t hovering off of the ground,” Raiden snapped back at Azar.
“Gravity isn’t a theory, it’s real,” Azar argued.
“Gravity is a law, as defined by Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation, a particle attracts every other particle in the universe with a force which is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between their centers,” Nevada interrupted.
“It’s been defined more recently by Einstein in his Theory of General Relativity,” Raiden turned his gaze from Azar and fixed his glare on Nevada. Cobalt met my gaze and rolled his eyes and I bit back a laugh. We were going way off on a tangent now.
“Same coin, different sides, it’s described as a theory due to modern nomenclature. The mathematical formulas for both are remarkably similar, Newtonian Gravity can be written as a space-time curvature similar to Einstein’s, the only minor differences is that Newton’s is a constraint equation that doesn’t account for a propagating degree of freedom, Einstein’s builds on Newton, turning it into a Wave equation and accounting for real-world discrepancies and includes a space-time metric, that’s it,” Nevada explained, as anxious as I was to fight the Gorgon and wished for Raiden to explain exactly how I was supposed to go about doing so, I loved hearing Nevada talk about science stuff. His voice was calm and monotone most of the time, always with a touch of arrogance and a patronizing flare. But when he talked about science, his voice came alive with inflection, even his sapphire eyes flared with the light only a freshly cut and polished stone that they shared a color with could have.
Raiden nodded fascinated, his eyes drifting off and he looked like he was going over something in his head. Most of what Nevada was talking about sounded familiar. I always did well in my science classes in both high school and for my general education requirements but my degree was in library science and information technology. Raiden, however, had been working on his degree in electrical engineering and had taken many math and physics classes.
“How is she going to defeat the Gorgon?” Cobalt cut off his voice gruff.
Nevada and Raiden deflated and had the decency to look a bit guilty.
"It should work! Perseus looked at Medusa through the reflection on his shield and he didn't get turned to stone," Raiden sighed in resignation. "It's not a concrete theory alright."
"If that story is even real," Nevada whispered in a mocking sing-song tone. Raiden fixed him with a glare before he looked back to me.
My number six die pulsed in my hand and before I could second guess myself I held it up and the guys all turned to look at me. "I'll use this."
They all stared at me dumbfounded.
"Come again?" Raiden asked.
"Maybe later," I winked at him.
"Promise," Raiden chuckled before growing serious once more. "Seriously, I don't think it's a good idea to show the Concilium you have more than just card magic up your sleeve."
"I don't have sleeves, apparently the Ancient Romans don't believe in them," I snorted, waving my bare arms around.
"Stop being a smart ass and listen for a second, why on earth do you want to use that die? What does it do and how will it help against the Gorgon?" Raiden demanded, his voice gravelly and rough with irritation.
"I don't know, this die has been telling me I need it all day, now I'm pretty sure I know why, to defeat a Gorgon," I grinned, making all four of them roll their eyes at me.
"It spoke to you, in words?" Nevada asked, concern coloring his voice.
I shook my head. "No, I just get worried feeling and emotions that come at me. I don't know how to explain it. They don't speak in words, I just get impressions of what they want or are trying to say."
"So they want something, they're sentient enough to have feelings and motives?" Nevada asked.
"Not quite, they all center around me and helping me, they aren't their own feeling and motives but what they think they can do to help me if that makes sense?" I said uncertainly. "I really think this will work if you guys don't mind me trying it out.
"Are you serious?" Cobalt grumbled.
"As a human trying to defeat a Gorgon," I shook my head. "I know it so
unds crazy but trust me alright? My winging it had worked out pretty well so far hasn't it?"
"This goes against everything I believe," Raiden whispered and I knew it was a major concession for him to agree to let me do this. He lived for planning and meticulous strategizing. I made a mental note to introduce him to the magical world of bullet journaling and planners when we got back home to the modern day. He would love it and maybe find an artistic way to channel his little obsession.
"Please," I pleaded, looking up into his eyes.
Raiden exhaled hard, running a large hand through his pale hair. "Fine but if the Gorgon throws her hood back, I need you to activate a shield ASAP."
"Gotcha," I grinned.
"Let the battle begin in THREE, TWO, and ONE!" The announcer yelled and the crowd went wild.