“I doubt it,” Athena muttered. All the way through the hall she’d been waiting for something to come at them. A horde of shades maybe, freshly amped up on Hades’ blood. That would’ve been fitting, a fine case of turnabout. But nothing came. Oblivion swept his nose back and forth along the ground. Panic’s ears flicked in all directions. The wolves didn’t sense anything, either.
Up was the only way to go, so they took the stairs, Odysseus by two and then three when Ares and Panic began to compete. Athena followed them up slowly with Oblivion. At the top of the stairs was a door.
And behind that door is a monster. Or an axe rigged up at head level. Or another door.
“Don’t just run in,” she said when they both looked about to. They gave her their best patronizing faces, but waited and moved, each to one side, while she checked it over. No trip wires or visible triggers. She chewed her lip. Open it low and slow, or kick it in and dodge? She felt Ares’ smug eyes on her, and kicked hard.
Nothing but yellow light spilled out onto their faces.
“This is all getting pretty anticlimactic,” Odysseus said as he walked into the new room, and promptly stopped talking. He also stopped dead in his tracks, causing Athena and Ares to run up against his back, but no one complained. The wolves whined. Athena’s eyes widened.
The room they’d walked into was an arena, and in the arena stood three behemoths.
“The Judges.” She clenched her teeth. Son of a bitch.
The three judges of the underworld, Hades’ generals, who decided the fates of the dead and guarded the borders within. She hadn’t thought he’d pull them from their posts, but there they stood. Rhadamanthys, Aeacus, and Minos.
“They’re bigger than I remember,” Ares said quietly. They were bigger than Athena remembered, too. Aeacus and Rhadamanthys seemed as large as trees and Minos, though smaller, looked more bull than man, from his cloven feet to his beautiful set of curving black goring horns. He even smelled like an animal: coarse, musky, and salty.
Along the walls of the room a few sad spears and shields lay littered in the corners. Provided for their benefit? Or leftover from the last heroes the Judges squished between their meaty hands? It didn’t seem that the weapons could be of much use, anyway. Aeacus’ and Rhadamanthys’ skin was a dense-looking ivory-gray, and looked hard enough to shatter a spear like glass.
“There’s one for each of us,” Odysseus said. “I’ll take a big one. Big and dumb is sort of my specialty.”
“They’re big, but they’re not dumb,” Athena said.
Hades had tasked the Judges with determining their worthiness, and that was exactly what they would do. Athena’s palms began to sweat. No single one seemed a more appealing prospect than the others, and staring them down would be no more effective than staring down a mountain you had to climb.
“This is going to hurt,” she said. “A lot.”
“I’ll lend you a wolf,” Ares said to Odysseus. “Pick one.”
“I should be able to pick both. You’re a god. I’m a legally dead mortal. Panic, Oblivion.” He motioned with his head for them to come, and they went to his side. “But you’re thinking about this wrong. We don’t need to beat them. We need to fight our way out. Our way through. To that tiny door, up those stairs.”
Athena followed the tip of his sword to a stairway in the far right of the arena. It led to a door, the only other door in the room. From that distance, it looked about the size of the door Alice had to wedge herself through in Wonderland. But that was just a trick of the eye.
Odysseus made to move and she heard his name squeak out of her in a tone she hadn’t known she could make. Aphrodite was right. Fear was getting the better of her. She cleared her throat.
“I didn’t fight river monsters all this time only to have you torn apart now,” she said.
Odysseus smiled his crooked smile.
“If you could see your face,” he said. “So tender. So worried. You’d hate it.” He reached out and touched her chin. “But I love it.”
Ares chuckled, and Athena slipped away from Odysseus and steeled her spine.
In the center of the arena, Rhadamanthys squared up. The Judges wouldn’t wait much longer. Athena exhaled. Rhadamanthys was the only judge without a weapon. Aeacus carried some kind of silver scepter with beautifully honed and twisted edges, finely wrought lines of razor that would slice flesh like corned beef at the lightest touch. Minos had weapons built in: his sharpened horns had a good ten-foot reach.