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Piece of Darkness II - Gambit

Chapter Eleven

What the hell, he thought, you're only young once, and threw himself out of the window. That would at least keep the element of surprise on his side.

—Douglas Adams, 'Mostly Harmless'

A sudden wave of terror engulfed my mind. I couldn't see what was in front of me, I could barely formulate coherent thought. I didn't know if I was still lying on the ground or if I was standing up. All I could hear was a distant scream, a scream which could have been my own. I didn't know what I was scared of, I didn't know if there was anything to be scared of - all I knew was that I was terribly, infinitely, incomprehensibly horrified.

Then, as suddenly as it began, it all stopped.

For a tiny moment, as the horror receded from my mind and my vision began to return, the scene before me flickered. For a nanosecond, I wasn't lying on the ground, I was standing, and the monster was nowhere to be seen.

Then things flickered back and I was on the cold ground once more, at the feet of Phrice.

I peered up at the spirit.

"What are you doing to me?" I hissed, realising that my cheeks were wet from tears.

"I am playing with you," the monster murmured, in a disturbingly happy tone. "This is what I do - tear apart foolish mortals' minds with pure horror, and the amusing thing is that you don't even understand how it's happening."

I barely listened to Phrice, instead trying to think. My mind was still rattled from the blast of horror, but I could see one thing clearly: I had to stop the spirit from unleashing that on me again so that I could regain my composure, and the only way to do that was to keep the creature talking.

"I've never even heard of you," I muttered in a tone which was probably a little too belligerent than it should have been, considering my position. "What are you, like a really minor spirit?"

"You could say that," the skeletal creature hissed. "Most people don't like to know about horror. Fear, pain, love, hate, yes, people can deal with those - but horror is too much, a step too far into the darkness."

"That must make you feel pretty neglected, huh?" I said, switching to a more sympathetic tone as I groped for the handle of my dagger, which had spun out of my hand when I'd fallen.

"Why, it does," Phrice acknowledged, its glowing skull bowing a little. "After all, horror is what gives life that extra… spice."

"You could say that," I said, as my fingers tightened around the hilt of my weapon. I had a feeling the spirit was about to unleash another attack, but this time I was ready. Just before it could throw out another blast of terror, I sprang up and lunged at it with my dagger.

Naturally, it vanished.

I cursed, and cast around wildly, expecting another shadow attack. Nothing came for a moment, however, nothing except a long, low chuckle.

"Interesting," came the whisper in the dark. "You manage the fear better than some, but are you able to see past the horror? Can you see the true nature of your environment"

"What are you talking—" I started to say, but I cut myself off as I sensed the disturbance. When Phrice reared out of the shadows on my left, trying to impale me, I was already dodging the blow. I swung my dagger in a wide arc, seeking more to repel the spirit than to attack it. Sure enough, it pulled back, once more vanishing into the dark.

There was a brief pause, a respite which I used to consider what Phrice had just said. I felt like I was being given a clue to the way out of this trap, but what did it actually mean? The true nature of my environment? As clues go, that really sucked.

I reached out with my sight, pushing myself to use my vision to its fullest extent. If there was some hidden escape route, surely my sight would reveal it.

But I saw nothing. The shadows around me thinned a little but other than that, nothing changed. No shining doorway or magical "This Way" sign materialised before me.

My fear, which I'd been distracted from for a moment, seized my throat in a vice. If I couldn't even use my sight to see through the darkness around me, what hope did I have? Despair began to creep in and I felt like throwing in the towel right then. If the one thing that set me apart from other regular mortals was taken away from me, I was screwed.

Phrice must have sensed that I was distracted, because once more the shadows rippled. I raised my dagger instinctively, and suddenly found myself enclosed in a ring of identical skeletal creatures, all of them wielding ominous jagged daggers.

"You seem to be coping well so far," Phrice murmured, each of the creatures' jaws creaking open, all of them synced with the tormenting spirit. "I think it's time I increased the challenge."

The monsters, all ten of them, surged towards me. I whirled around manically, trying to bat them all off at once. I beheaded the nearest, cut the arm off the second and sliced the third in two. The fourth cuffed me in the head and I reeled away, stumbling right into the arms of the fifth, who started to try to choke me with its sharp, bony hands. I thrashed, throwing it off me, and buried my dagger in its chest.

Two more came at me together. I dodged one, but the next got me, slicing me across the arm. I stared at the deep cut in disbelief for a long moment before I even felt the pain. When I did feel it, I roared out in agony: it felt as though my arm had actually been cut off, but the dagger hadn't even gotten to the bone. I closed my eyes, and my cry of agony, almost of its own accord, turned into a bellow of, "Go. Away."

There was a rustle of air, and I opened my eyes. The monsters were gone and the pain had stopped. I looked at my arm: the wound was gone, and I was completely unharmed.

I frowned. What the hell was this?

An idea struck me: the monsters had been using celestial bronze daggers, but I was mortal, I was impervious to that kind of weapon.

So how had they been able to cut me?

The beginnings of a realisation began to form in the depths of my mind. I still didn't understand what was going on, but the truth was starting to come into view.

The answer, I decided, lay in that strange flickering of vision which had occurred a few moments ago. With a chill, I saw that I had to get back to that to understand how to escape.

And the only way to do that was to make Phrice once more attack me with that pure, terrible horror.

"Is that all you got?" I called into the shadows, using as condescending a tone as I could muster. "Honestly, I can see now why I've never heard of you. A few skeletons that look like bad pantomime monsters? I've seen ten-year-olds fight things scarier than that."

Immediately, I could sense the spirit becoming angrier. The air grew colder, the shadows became even thicker.

"You're pathetic," I went on. "What kind of a miserable challenge is this? Does Hades really think you're actually scary?"

The attack came so fast, I was on the ground before I knew what was happening. Without pause, Phrice forced pure horror into the depths of my mind with merciless force. I spasmed, crying out, but this time it wasn't as bad because I was able to fix onto a single purpose, an idea which kept my mind from being lost in the sea of terror that threatened to drown it.

The horror pulled back, and it happened again. My vision flickered, and I was standing in the middle of the chamber, with no monster to be seen, no dark shadows curling around me.

Things flickered back, and I was back on the ground, but it didn't matter, for now I knew what was going on. Now I knew how to escape.

I stood slowly, shaking off the after-effects of the bout of horror. Phrice, after an ominous pause, whispered, "You are a fool. You think that you can outlast me, that you can keep taking the horror which I yield until I grow tired, but you are mistaken. You will be driven insane long before I will tire."

"I don't care," I said flatly, planting my feet squarely on the ground.

"What?"

"I don't need to outlast you," I said, sheathing my dagger. "I don't even need to fight you."

"Why not?" the spirit said coldly.

"Because," I smiled, "I'm not really here. You aren't really summoning skeletal monsters to attack me. You aren't really throwing me to the floor. This is nothing but a bad dream."

I closed my eyes and focussed, not on my sight, not on what seemed to be happening in front of me, but on the last thing I remembered seeing before Phrice had attacked me: the tunnel out of this chamber.

"What?" the spirit spat, its voice already starting to sound more distant. "No! You cannot escape! I will not allow it! No!"

The monster's voice faded away, and I woke up.

I was standing in the chamber, exactly where I'd been standing before I'd been supposedly flung to the ground. But I hadn't been flung anywhere - the whole thing had been going on inside my mind. Phrice had invaded my mind when I'd entered the chamber and had trapped me in an psychic tomb of horror.

I could sense Phrice trying to regather its strength, perhaps getting ready to invade my mind again. Not wanting to wait and see if the spirit was ready for round two, I ran for the exit, and left the chamber which I would forever remember as the Cave of Horror.

As I headed down the next tunnel, I wondered how far the others had gotten. Out of all the contestants, I felt sure that Nico and Jane had done the best. Hell, they were probably able to shadow-travel right through the Cave of Horror. I couldn't imagine Percy figuring out how to get past the first challenge, and I was pretty doubtful about Alice or Annabeth getting past the cave. These rather flimsy assumptions buoyed me up, the idea that I'd gotten further than a few very experienced half-bloods making me rather confident, probably overly so.

I thought about what Nico had said about the nature of the tasks. So far, his predictions had been completely correct, so I could only assume that the next challenge would be a strong test to my problem-solving skills.

Despite the fact that I hadn't at all wanted to enter the maze, I began to feel quite competitive. I wanted to show those big-shot gods and spirits that a mortal could be as strong and skilled as any demigod.

It struck me suddenly that the course was, despite looking like a maze from above, actually not at all like a maze. It was nothing more than a mythological obstacle course. Presumably, all the maze-like tunnels which I'd seen while up above were only there for the sake of dramatic decoration.

I sighed. Even the Greek gods acted as though they were in a Hollywood movie.

As I walked on, I gradually became aware that the tunnel was darkening. The reassuring presence of ambient light which had been my guide up to now was fading and growing increasingly dimmer. I edged on, feeling rather like a hunted rabbit. If I was lucky, I wouldn't have to deal with any more monsters, but then luck seems to have a very personal vendetta against me. Not seeing something that mentally scars me for life is my version of an amazingly lucky day.

Suddenly, the ambient light flared up to blinding brightness, glaring into my eyes like a massive floodlight, before fizzling out completely, leaving me in utter darkness.

I gulped. This could not, by any standards, be a good sign. I reached out with my right hand, feeling for the wall. I found it and edged over to lean against it.

Then, without a sound, the wall melted into nothing, leaving only empty space.

I yelled in alarm, rearing away from the sudden emptiness. I could still see nothing, but I could feel a yawning void opening up around me. I reached out with my left hand, but the tunnel wall was gone there, too. I checked above: even the ceiling had vanished.

I gulped again, and resolved to stay completely still until something else happened. I would really look stupid if I accidentally walked over the edge of a cliff, and down here in the Underworld, I could well find myself falling into a bottomless pit.

Time passed.

Time passed some more.

I was just about to try my sight when four massive torches flared into life around me.

It was lucky that I was already really too tense to be surprised by the sudden illumination, because if I had jumped, I would've fallen off the tiny stone square on which I stood.

And it really was tiny. My feet were planted on it squarely, but I had no space whatsoever to move. Those four flaming torches were floating, five feet away from me, on each side of the square. Beneath me, a seemingly infinite void of darkness yawned like a vast, terrible mouth. I looked straight ahead, and felt a tiny murmur of hope: twenty feet away there was a wall, in which there was an opening back into the tunnel system. Then I glanced around and my hope was swallowed by a sense of inescapable doom: there were four entrances visible, one parallel to each side of my little stone square.

Each opening was identical to one another, each one was equally far from my position, and I couldn't see into any of them. I had no idea which one was the exit.

Then again, I realised, it didn't matter which one was the exit. There was nothing in between me and those openings except a dark and terrible abyss.

I rubbed my eyes, resisting the urge to start pacing around. A single step, here, would certainly provide me with a solution to the problem of getting out of this stupid course, but plunging into a possibly endless void isn't exactly on top of my list of good ideas.

A familiar sense of desperation filled my heart as I looked around at my predicament, and at that moment I swore that the next time a god asked me to take part in any kind of game, I would tell him to go to Hades. Literally.

In the meantime, though, that didn't give me a solution. I could not, as far as I was aware, fly, and I didn't really want to start trying to learn now. If I had a handy ability like shadow-traveling, I could skip right over the abyss, but no, I had to be a common mortal with no advantage except over-active ocular perception.

I took another glance around with the air of a condemned man resignedly contemplating his fate. Not really thinking carefully, but just feeling that perhaps throwing myself into the abyss wasn't such a bad idea, I happened to glance upwards.

Directly above me, engraved in the stone ceiling, was the one and only clue I was getting. It was three words written in Ancient Greek, and after a long moment of thought, I realised what they meant.

Leap of faith.

It figured, I thought darkly, that the one hint I would get was an over-used religious slogan.

I cast a dark look at the tunnels as I thought over this hint. It wasn't long before an idea struck me: what if there was a bridge which led to one of the exits, a bridge hidden by the shadows? That would certainly fit in with the hint, and it seemed the only logical way to escape from this final chamber.

It was time, once more, to use my sight.

My head throbbed a little as I drew upon it. I hadn't used it this much in a long time, perhaps ever, and the effort required was taking its toll. I was lucky that this was the last task, because if I had to use my sight much more I'd probably fall down from exhaustion.

I focussed on the opening directly opposite me - more particularly, on the space between me and it. It wasn't too long before the outline of a rope bridge slid into view.

I blinked. Well, that was awfully easy. I just had to hope that the bridge wasn't an illusion, but given the "leap of faith" clue, it seemed pretty obvious that this was the right way to go. With the confidence of surety, I stepped out onto the bridge—

—and promptly fell off the tiny stone square, into nothingness.

My screams echoed around the chamber as I twisted about in mid-air. Instinct took over as I grasped wildly at the air and just before I fell past it, my fingers got a hold on the edge of the stone.

I dangled, as perilously as you can imagine, quite literally hanging on by my fingernails.

"Okay," I muttered aloud. "Obviously I've made a slight error of judgment."

The stone square was actually the top of a stone pillar which, after a few feet, disappeared into darkness. I managed to wrap my legs around it, which took the strain off my arms a little. The bridge which I'd supposedly been stepping onto was nowhere to be seen.

I tried to think as fast as possible. My hands were stronger than they'd been a year ago, but even so I knew that my grip would soon falter. I had only a couple of minutes to work out the solution. I considered trying to heave myself back onto the top of the pillar, but upper body strength had never been an area in which I excelled, and any heaving would involve shifting my grip, which I was too scared to do.

I peered down at the pillar, half-expecting to see some sort of hidden door in the stone, but there was nothing. The rock seemed to stare up at me, taunting me, insisting that I accept my fate and just let go.

Then, a chilling thought struck me.

What if those entrances back into the tunnel were not my way out at all?

But that, I realised, could only mean one thing.

I was meant to fall into the void.

I closed my eyes, trying to clear my head. Leap of faith, that was my clue, that was the sign I had to follow. But then, what if it was a trick? How could I know whether it was trustworthy or not? For the millionth time, I doubted the motives of Hades himself. Nico had seemed certain that we would all come out of this alive, but as I clutched on, deep in the darkness, still feeling damaged by my encounter with Phrice, I simply did not know who or what to believe.

I let my thoughts drift away from my current problem for a moment, and considered my journey through the maze so far. It occurred to me, as I thought about the previous two tasks, that this entire course was intensely psychological - not once had I been in any real physical danger. Every test had been a challenge of the mind.

I came back to this, the final task. Who said this one was any different to the others? If the Shadow Games were nothing more than an examination of each participant's inner qualities, I had nothing to fear. The only challenge was my own limitations.

Nico had said that the third task would test my problem-solving skills. The problem, I saw now, was not one of getting across an abyss, but rather was one of overcoming my own fear.

Now, my mind a little more in order, my thoughts in the right place, I tried to do just that.

I had to take a leap of faith, and what is a leap of faith? Ultimately, it is jumping into the darkness and believing, despite all evidence to the contrary, that someone will catch you.

Certain, now, of what I had to do, I slowly untwined my legs from around the pillar and took a deep breath. My fear bubbled away in my stomach, but I fought to maintain my control over it. I opened my eyes and looked down into the gulf.

Without looking away, I relaxed my grip and let myself fall into the darkness.