by JJ King
One woman stepped forward and drew herself up to an impressive height of over six feet, “We know who you are. You are the disgraced, the fallen. You were cast out by the Goddess and now you dare step back into her sacred temple!” Her voice boomed louder with each word.
Em fought to hold back her impatience but couldn’t quite get past the unwarranted titles heaped upon her and her sisters by those who would have been her sisters. She tilted her head to the side and studied them, dressed in the purity of white, armed with swords and holy fervor. They looked at her and Thea as if they were nothing more than soulless demons to destroy for daring to enter the premises. They wouldn’t listen, she understood, because to them, they were just monsters.
She stepped back, straightening as she assessed their numbers. They were twelve strong, all beautiful, all strong, all prepared to fight to the death. She hoped it didn’t come to that but steadied herself for the eventuality. Beside her, Thea stood tall and flipped her hand over, making a “come and get it” gesture. In any other circumstances, Em would have laughed. They’d all watched too many Indiana Jones movies.
The attack came from every angle. Em stood back to back with Thea, protecting each other’s backs, and blocked the first blow with her forearm. Spinning, she brought her elbow crashing into the priestess’s face and wrenched the woman’s sword arm down over her shoulder, effortlessly breaking the bone. The sword fell to the floor by her feet where she’d expected it to fall. She ducked, avoiding a wide swing, rolled and came up with the blade in her hands to meet another sword with a clash of metal.
They fought together, side stepping one another but staying close, as if they’d been doing it all their lives. Em relieved another priestess of her sword and tossed it to Thea, who grunted in thanks and thrust her shield into her attacker’s chest, then crashed the hilt of her sword into the woman’s forehead, sending her slumping to the floor.
They fought like the demons they were thought to be and, one by one, the women fell unconscious until there were just three against two.
Sweat dripped down Em’s forehead into her eyes, but she didn’t take her gaze off the woman stalking her. She was good, this one, strong and fierce in every way. Em could tell by the gleam in her eyes that she was caught up in the battle and unconcerned about her sisters. The other two were good, but this one, she had guts. Em grinned, “Come on then, let’s get this over with.”
The clash of their swords sent painful reverberations up Em’s arm and into her shoulder, surprising her with its intensity. She swore and pivoted, narrowly escaping the slash of blade against her side.
Her snakes hissed and struck out, fighting their own battle and frustrated to be anchored. As she danced back from another thrust, Em felt their frustration seep into her, sending a wave of heat through her blood. With a furious shout, she lunged and felt her sword slip through the woman’s flesh, into the muscle, and out the other side of her thigh.
The momentary triumph she felt disintegrated as pain shot through her. Em looked down to see a knife, buried to the hilt, sticking out of her abdomen. She gritted her teeth and looked up into the woman’s wild eyes, then leaned forward and let her snakes attack.
Screams filled the room as the woman stumbled back, her face a mass of bloody bites still oozing with the venom of her punishment. Em watched as her opponent, a woman she’d have been proud to call her sister once, fell to the floor in violent convulsions with white foam trickling from her mouth. Her heart twisted in regret but she had no time for condolences. She stepped around the dying woman, pulling the dagger out of her side, and plunged it into the back of the last priestess just as the woman parried Thea’s attack. The priestess cried out once, then fell to the floor, silent, as Em twisted the blade and ended her life.
The room was silent now, except for the sound of their labored breathing. Em looked her sister up and down, finding blood but no excessive wounds and groaned when Thea lifted her shirt to get a better look at the wound. “I’m fine. Let’s just go get the urn.”
They raced out of the room, swords at the ready, and made their way swiftly to Athena’s anti-chamber at the center of the temple. With every step they took closer to the room her Goddess had considered her sanctuary, her heart beat harder. There was every chance in the world that their luck would run out when they opened that door.
The temple was like a maze, made, in part, to confuse those with ill intent, but Em remembered it as if she’d run through the halls just yesterday. It took only a minute to wind their way to the center, to the room where they’d find their sister’s salvation or their death.
Em pulled to a halt just outside the ornately carved door and stood frozen, unable to think with the cacophony of her drumming heartbeat in her ears. She jumped when Thea rested her hand on her arm and swiveled to look pleadingly at her sister.
“For Eury,” Thea whispered, squeezing her lightly.
Em nodded slowly, letting the words sink in through the panic. When she found her voice again, she answered, “For Eury.” She lifted her hand, grasped the handle, and pulled.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
The room was utterly still and dark.
Em’s eyes adjusted quickly as she stepped inside and scanned the large chamber. Once, she’d have had to light the oil lanterns that stood around the room every six feet on brass basins to see, but she wasn’t that girl anymore.
Still, she let Thea light a lantern and closed her eyes as the flash and glow from the brass illuminated the area near the door. Her snakes hissed and shied away from the flames.
The room looked much the same, the only differences cosmetic. Athena had always liked the finer things; silks, velvets, thick pillows, and gauzy curtains hanging from the posters of her spectacular bed, where she’d always slept alone. The Virgin Goddess, that’s what some called her and what history knew her as. Instead, her bed had often been filled with women who loved one another and loved their Goddess more than life. It had been a happy place and one that brought painful memories to mind.
She’d been cast out from this place, she and her sisters. They’d been cursed, transformed, turned from faithful devotees into the monsters of myth and legend. They hadn’t been forgotten, though, she let the smirk tick up the corners of her mouth as deep seeded vitriol stung her veins. The darkness that she’d fought back and kept at bay for so long slid over her skin like the silk Athena so loved, and it felt good.
Thea stepped past her and walked to where a number of urns and intricately carved boxes were displayed on a low table near a seating area. One by one, she opened them, studying the contents while Em seethed at the easy dismissal they’d received from the priestesses. How dare they? She thought furiously.
Rage clawed at her chest, tearing at the wall she’d erected to keep back the dark. Her breaths came faster, harder, as the injustice of what had been done to them surrounded her like a cloak. She pulled it in, nestling into it like a child coming home. It was familiar and powerful. It had consumed her once, more than once, taking her beneath the surface, to where the guilt and pain of her life slid away.
She could do that now. She could sink beneath the depths and let the hurt go. She could refuse to feel the rawness of loving Poseidon again, the vulnerability of exposing her heart to the possibility that it could be shattered once more.
Do it, the darkness called to her. Just let go and it’ll all fade away. Do it….
“Em,” Thea’s face swam in front of hers, blurred around the edges and slightly out of balance. Her voice echoed in Em’s head, as though she were underwater, hearing her sister through the lapping waves. Thea frowned and a look of worry replaced her annoyance, then her hand was rising up and…
The blow staggered Em back a foot. She blinked and threw her hand up to ward off further attack, then cradled her stinging cheek as Thea’s face came back into focus. “What the hell was that for?” She asked from clenched teeth.
“You were slipping,” Thea rubbed her thumb over Em’s cheek. �
�I’m sorry, but you looked like you were slipping again.”
“Slipping?” Em’s head still felt fuzzy and there was a longing in her gut that made her uneasy.
Thea looked at her for a long moment then smiled sadly. “Em, I’ve watched you go to the dark place enough times to know what it looks like. I should have been expecting it,” she shook her head and shrugged, “all the signs are there.”
Em tilted her head, wondering if her sister had been hit in the head by one of their attackers. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“I’m talking about you going dark, you idiot,” Thea hissed. “Gods know you’ve done it enough times, leaving me behind to deal with everything by myself.” Her voice grew higher and more hysterical now, startling Em because Thea hated shrill women. “You know, I used to make excuses for you to Eury, tell her that the guilt you felt over our curse was too heavy for you, blah, blah, blah!” She threw up her hands and stalked away then marched back to thrust her finger into Em’s chest. “Did you ever stop to think about what it was like for us when you went full on monster? Hey? Did you? Fuck, Medusa,” her eyes flashed, “we had to clean up after you and bend over backwards while you flipped the switch like a fucking vampire and stopped caring about anyone but yourself.”
Em felt as if she’d been punched, not just in the stomach, but everywhere and by a very large giant. She stared at her sister, whose fury was evident in every sharp movement she made. She’d embraced the dark many times over the millennia, more times than either Thea or Eury had, although they’d had their moments. Each time she’d succumbed, she’d been wracked with guilt, with pain and empathy, or what she’d thought had been empathy. But, not once had she ever thought about the toll her absences must have had on her sisters. She’s ducked out on them, gone dark and spent years, decades even, without a care in the world.
Thinking back, though, she wondered at how she hadn’t seen it. Each time she’d come back from despair, they’d been there to welcome her, to hold her and help her back, just as she’d done for them in the early years. But, they’d stopped disappearing and she’d gone under again and again.
Then she heard it. She, she, she. Everything was about her. Gods, she was so wrapped up in herself and what she felt and how hard her life was that she’d spent a lifetime cashing out and leaving her sisters behind. The urge to sink into the shame that licked at her like flames was overwhelming. It burned and twisted inside her gut until all she wanted to do was make it stop but that was exactly what she’d done in the past. She’d taken the easy route, the pain free path, one too many times. Her parents needed her, her sisters needed her…
The floor beneath them shifted and buckled, sending them each sprawling onto the floor. All around the room, paintings and trinkets fell to the floor, crashing, spilling their contents, as the ground churned.
“Earthquake!” Thea shouted above the din of cracking wood and falling stone. She struggled her way to Em and offered her hand.
Em grabbed it and rose, unsteadily, to her feet. “We can’t leave without the urn!” She shouted back, making her way to a pile of large boxes next to the bed. Frantic now, she began yanking them opening, pulling out the contents and leaving them strewn on the floor. Eury would die if they didn’t get the urn.
A column of stone crashed to the floor near the door, destabilizing the ceiling. The violence of it felt wrong, unnatural somehow. This wasn’t the first earthquake to hit Athens and it wouldn’t be the last, but the way it was damaging the temple…
It was him. Poseidon was at the center of this and that meant he was with Athena. Em felt a rising flood of panic threaten to overwhelm her, so she refused to acknowledge it, refused to let it touch her at all. It took every ounce of concentration she had but, somehow, she stayed focused on her goal. Eury’s survival was everything, the only thing. She repeated it like a mantra in her mind.
Hope bloomed when she laid eyes on the delicately carved urn that she’d last seen more than a few millennia ago. Miraculously, it looked exactly the same as it had then. The breath she hadn’t known she’d been holding whooshed out of her lungs. The chances of its survival had been slim but she’d hoped and prayed and, somehow, been granted this small gift. It had to be protected by the goddess’s power or some spell. She lifted it free and hugged it tight to her chest, sending up a silent thanks to whomever was listening.
With a grin of triumph, Em looked toward Thea just in time to see the wall behind her sister shift and crack with a loud groan. Without thinking, she sprinted across the room and shoved Thea out of the way as a chunk of the wall broke away and fell onto an unlit lantern, spilling oil onto the floor and the soles of her shoes
“I got it,” Em screamed above the roar of the crumbling temple, grabbing Thea’s hand to pull her free. “Come on, we have to get out of here!”
They raced through the temple, leaping over fallen stone, skirting small fires, until they reached the entrance to the tunnel again. Em pushed the hidden mechanism, praying the shifting structure hadn’t been impaired, and sucked in a ragged gasp of relief when the door swung open. They would be safe if they could just make it out the other side.
Dirt rained down on them as they ran through the tunnel, guided only by their preternatural sight in the pitch black. The light that shone in from the end of the tunnel looked like Elysium to Em’s eyes, despite the sharp pain of adjustment when they tumbled free from the subterranean passageway. She sucked in great gulps of fresh air and hunched, one hand on her thigh the other holding the urn against her chest like a child, as her equilibrium balanced.
Out of the temple, Em’s mind began to work again, furiously regurgitating everything that had been said or done over the past few days. She’d been selfish, childish, weak, everything she claimed to hate. She’d deluded herself too many times and she was sick of it. She pushed the urn into Thea’s hands and pressed a kiss to her sister’s cheek. “Go,” she pointed toward the house where her family waited for salvation. “Go save Eury.”
“What?” Thea whirled on her, “What do you mean? Let’s go.” She reached out to tug Em forward but Em stepped back, shaking her head.
“This earthquake isn’t natural, Thea, can’t you feel it?” She held out her hands above the ground, feeling the familiar vibrations of rage tearing through the earth. “It’s Poseidon. He’s with her. He’ll tear the city apart if I don’t stop him.”
Thea’s eyes were wild, “No! Medusa, leave them be! We need you! What if the blood doesn’t work?”
But this time was different, she was finally doing the right thing. Instead of hiding, she would face whatever was waiting for her beneath the temple. If she didn’t, Athens would fall, with her family and millions of people in it. The price for selfishness was far too great to pay.
She reached for Thea’s hand and squeezed it tight, “It’ll work. It has to.” And every cell in her body held onto that belief because she couldn’t stand to think otherwise. “But, just in case…” she pivoted away from her sister and raced into the crumbling tunnel toward the temple and the stairs that would lead her to Poseidon and Athena.
The echoes of her sister’s frantic screams mixed with the pounding of her footsteps as Em disappeared into the darkness.
She didn’t think, just ran. Every moment that passed, more of the temple and surrounding city would be destroyed. And, if Poseidon was doing this kind of damage, he must be fighting for his life. The thought of him not succeeding pierced her heart.
It took only moments but, to her, an eternity, to reach the
stairs and start her descent. Her eyes pierced the darkness. There was no light down here, no trickle of illumination to guide her path but still she ran.
Her thoughts swung like a pendulum inside her mind, taking her from one extreme to another.
She was doing the right thing.
She was abandoning her family.
No, she struggled to think straight. She was the only one who could stop this destruction. She was s
aving her family even if they didn’t realize it. Poseidon and Athena would rip the city apart if she didn’t stop them.
Poseidon needed her.
Poseidon had caused all this and should suffer.
Tears of confusion and passion streaked down her cheeks and fell, powerless, against the floor as she ran deeper into the heart of the temple. A great heaving rumble of power exploded through the walls, throwing her down several steps onto her hands and knees. Shattered pieces of stones rained down on her head as she pushed to her feet and flew down the long, winding staircase. A single thought pierced the cacophony in her head, she had to get to Poseidon before he destroyed the city… and himself.
Her feet hit the landing with a jarring thud that travelled through her bones. The sharp coppery taste of blood flowed warm into her mouth from the puncture of teeth through tongue. Her snakes reared and hissed, excited by the primal taste. She didn’t reach up to soothe them, she needed their instincts right now. She needed every ounce of power and advantage that she could get.