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“They’re getting us revenge,” a bodiless voice shouted back. “Too long Titans have tortured and looked down on us. Let’s see how they like it!”
“Yeah!”
“Yes, a lot of them suck,” I said, blunt as a truck, “but this isn’t the way. We’ll all lose if we go after each other like this. Our enemies are the monsters, not each other. Please, just put down the hell—”
“Guys,” someone shouted. “I found Andino!”
“Hey, what are you—? Get off! Don’t—”
The sun winked back on, flooding the arena with light again. The Sisypheans didn’t waste a second. Hellstones flew through the air, claiming victims everywhere they fell.
“No, don’t!”
I watched helplessly. Just like before, the Titans, now writhing and screaming on the ground, rushed to face the threat. And just like before, the second wave gathered behind them—readying their Lethe water and hellstones to strike from behind.
“Don’t do this!” Visions of fire, burning flesh, and Theron wailing flashed before my eyes. “Please!”
“RISE!”
The ground rumbled beneath my feet.
“What is this?” I backed up. “What’s happening? What— Ahh!” Limestone exploded, showering me in rocks and rubble that split seams on my skin. I hacked, waving the dust and dirt from my face.
The haze cleared, and our eyes met.
Hunks of flesh still clung to his bones, stubbornly hanging on along with its swinging jaw. Round, shrunken eyes rattled in sockets that did not shrink with it. It bent its head, and those eyes popped right out.
I screamed.
The skeletal army seized, tackled, and pinned demigods all over the stadium—taking Lethe water to the face and hellstones to the head without slowing. Stephanie Papamichael, a proficient fire wielder, incinerated two that came her way. A dozen more poured out of the earth, swarming and burying a screaming Stephanie under bones and decay.
Hades.
We’d been dropped into the pits of hell itself.
Ajax dropped wave after wave on the skeletons. Alex wielded his fists where his power failed. Where one was brought down, a dozen more took its place. They poured out of the holes in the ground—overwhelming the novices in minutes.
Just like that, the second battle of the Sisypheans versus Titans was over.
Through the dust, fear, and gloom, two figures stood on the platform. Kazran and a man I only needed to see once to remember.
“Well, well.” Drakos’s rich tenor flowed soft and slow like the river along a stone bed. “What a sorry sight this is. Comrades fighting comrades. Novices disgracing themselves and shaming the soldiers who came before them.”
Drakos raised his head and a band of silver-and-black locks fell over his brow. That silver sprinkled heavily through his hair, beard, and mustache, but it did not age him. No, it somehow only served to add distinction to a young man’s handsome face—telling the world as his other features couldn’t that he was a man of experience and authority.
I never felt the weight of someone looking down their nose at me so strongly. Guilt settled in my soul even though I hadn’t done a thing wrong.
“I’m told this embarrassment is nothing more than a clever subterfuge to get your fellow son of Hades expelled?”
Dimitri, Castor, and Sebastian stood to the side of the platform—chests heaving from running.
Drakos’s voice was calm. Pleasant, even. “Who is responsible?”
No one answered him. It wasn’t that the arena was silent. There was plenty of screaming, pleading, and demands for Drakos to get his army of the dead off them. But no one answered his question.
“No matter,” he continued. “Some time in the reflection room ought to help the culprit or culprits remember their part in this, along with the nerve to face their actions like a soldier—instead of cowering like anasnesma.”
“The reflection room?” Tycho stepped forward—a distinct lack of skeletons hanging off him.
