And, as if the heavens seek to mock me, that's when a knife goes whizzing past my head.
I duck before the next knife makes its target.
From the ground, I watch a twanging blade burry itself into Apollo's shoulder. He curses, falls to the ground beside me. Artemis has her bow strung, is screaming for her twin as Hebe cowers next to the nearest tree and more flying objects fly at all of us. I tuck my head against my knees and roll to Apollo, find him panicking and trying to pull the blade from his flesh.
"No!" I hiss, prying his hands away from the wound. "We don't know where it hit don't take it out yet in case it nicked an artery!"
"Apollo!" Artemis shouts, desperate to know he's alright.
"Can you move?" I ask him.
He gurgles, but it's only spit trapped in his throat and not blood. "Yes," he says, about to hyperventilate.
"Well," I say as a knife cuts itself past Artemis' cheek, sends her blood running. "Don't."
I grab my own knife out of my belt, stand and duck as something sharp flies for me. Adrenaline fueled, I trace its movement back into the trees. "They're coming from south!" I yell to Artemis. "Aim your bow south!"
She does as told even through her fear for her brother, fires one arrow after another until there's a distinct howl, head meeting muscle and bone. My fingers clench around the hilt of the hunting knife between them as I glance to Artemis. "Is Apollo okay?" she asks, breath heavy.
"Apollo's fine!" her twin calls from the ground. "Just…peachy!"
"Hebe?" I ask, look to where I last saw her and find her crouching with her hands over her head.
"Okay," says Artemis. "You two stay here. Kore and I are going to go make sure the thing is dead."
"We are?" I ask, but she's already got me by the collar of my corset and is pulling me forwards. "What if they throw more knives?!" I ask her in sudden throat-thick fear.
"We shoot them." she says. "They hurt Apollo. They're dead."
What we find in the southern cover of trees is a girl, no more than an inch taller than Artemis, who is quite short all things considered. She's a pale thing with dark hair, starved of the sun in winter. Artemis' arrow has gone straight through her stomach, a bloody red staining the girl's garments which are stitched in a cobalt thread with atoms and molecules.
She's from Pente, like Athena.
"The girl from Pente," I say softly to Artemis, and the girl groans.
"She's a dead bitch," Artemis mutters, loading her bow.
"Wait!" I say before she lets the arrow go. I crouch down to the girl's level then, find her fear-stricken eyes that blaze copper in the shadows of the forest. "Are you the only one?" I ask, taking in our surroundings of a small camp, complete with sleeping mat and fire.
The girls spits blood in my face at answer. I'm a bit taken back by that, fall out of my crouch and onto my ass on the ground. "Oh," I say, wiping the red away from eyes before it clouds my vision. "Oh."
In the next shot, Artemis gets the girl clean through her eye and kills her quick.
A trumpet blares.
Our walk back to Hebe and Apollo is filled with silence. Is that the first life Artemis took? I wonder, because she didn't even blink. Gods know there is madness even outside of these games.
When we reach our allies it's to Hebe having Apollo propped against a tree, the knife out of his shoulder and some strange leaves pressed to his wounds. "It didn't hit anything vital," Hebe says when she sees us. "My momma taught me some ways to stop bleeding these leaves are a good one."
At close look, I appraise her choice and nod my acquisition. Hybrid trees of the Capital's making are often pretty useful for more than their rot-proof wood. "My momma taught me the same," I say to Hebe with a grin. "You did good."
Artemis drops to her twin's side in relief upon hearing he's not going to die from the wound. "Thank the Gods," she whispers, pressing her forehead to his. "I killed her, Apollo. It's okay now."
"Who was it?" Apollo asks in a hoarse voice; the peacock feathers are all missing from his hair now.
"The girl from Pente," Artemis says, malice in her voice.
"Her name's Phoebe," Hebe whispers softly. "She was thirteen."
"I don't care," Artemis snaps. "She tried to kill my brother.
I look at the twins then, really look at them and see their dependency, how the bond they share verges upon unhealthy in need. And the longer I look, the sadder I get, because we all know two can't win the Games. Sooner or later, one of them is going to be dead, but I'm sure the other won't hesitate to follow.
"So you're telling me that I get stabbed in the shoulder and almost die and you still won't kiss me?"
"Yes," I murmur, changing the dressings on Apollo's wounds with a roll of the eyes. "That's what I'm telling you, idiot."
It's been a day since he's taken the knife, a day since Artemis killed Phoebe. We gave up the mission of going after the Demigods thought it better to trek back to camp and let Apollo rest for a bit. The Gamesmakers got their dose of death with Phoebe, so it should sate them for a while.
The constant flux of self-made salves and water flushings that Hebe and I have decorated Apollo's cut shoulder with have healed it pretty miraculously. The wound looks weeks old instead of just a day's. It kind of makes me sad, when I think about it. Had Hebe's name not been drawn at altar, she could have made an amazing doctor. But now she's going to die and not even a God can cure that.
God, I scoff to myself lightly. What a joke. They're no more than mortals with fancy titles to their names for killing innocents. What an honor.
Apollo winces as I apply oil from a synthesized plant to his wound, the sizzling sound an internal heal. "Shit, that hurts like hell, Maiden girl."
I resist the urge to snap at him to stop calling me that and continue with my work. "Should've ducked sooner," I say.
"Not all of us have feline reflexes," he says.
"No, I have the reflexes of a bat," I say. "I rely on echolocation."
"Oh really?" asks Apollo with raise of golden brow. "And what reflexes do I have then, oh wise one?"
"A lizard," I say. "Gods know you look like one."
He flicks his tongue at me jokingly and I laugh, bat him in the face with my fingers.
Artemis and Hebe left to hunt down supper about fifteen minutes ago and Apollo's been trying to put the moves on me again since their departure. It's getting a bit exhausting, if you ask me. Sometimes I wonder if he isn't secretly trying to kill me via annoyance instead of weapon.
I finish covering his wounds with ripped fabric of his tunic and give him water to drink, sit next to him and nibble on raspberries until my fingers stain red. It's nearly an hour later, the sun setting in the sky, that Hebe and Artemis stumble back to camp with a prisoner in tow.
Both Apollo and I stand at their entrance, stare at a mud-riddled Pan with wide eyes. "What the hell?" Apollo is the first to ask.
"We found him wondering around the stream," Artemis shrugs. "Figured Kore wouldn't want us to kill him yet."
I stare at Pan then, his trembling shoulders and little boy eyes from home. Stay away from him, Prometheus' voice tells me. "Don't kill him," I say instead. "Don't…"
"Okay then," Artemis says, and shoves Pan forwards.
He stumbles, shies away when I try to help him from where he falls to the ground. "Hey," I try to say, holding my hands up in peace. "It's okay, Pan."
"Why are you helping me?" he asks, face in the dirt. "Prometheus said"
"He's not my boss," I interrupt the boy, knowing that if by some miracle I do make it through these Games, Prometheus is going to give me hell for saying that. "Come on are you hungry?"
Pan nods, stares up from a sheen of matted hair as I grab his palm, which is noticeably pale against the dark of my own skin. "Come on," I say again. "Let's get you fed and cleaned up, okay?"
He's been hiding out on the farther ends of the arena, he tells me after I've helped him wash in the stream and given him olives and dried bird meat to eat. It's apparently like a marsh down that way, everything wet and fuddled and there's a constant drizzle. He says there were some weird things down there, monsters.
Giant snakes chased him up this far, and he barely made it past the watch of the Demigods. The boy is scared straight it's plain as day in his meadow eyes and even with reassurance no one in our pack will hurt him, I can tell he's ready to run the moment we look away.
Who could blame him?
Artemis is still fuming from the day before, on the red alert when she isn't doting upon Apollo like a grievous mother or a lover if you look close enough, but I don't really want to. There's a hardened edge to her, like unbendable steel and it's obvious she's killed someone, is ready to kill again.
I think about Hades every time I look at her, the way he rammed his sword through that boy from Exi, the blood on the back of my neck.
Not knowing how to feel about it, I take myself to the stream and bathe away sweat and any thought of the Games left. Instead I remember Plutus and Desponia in the fields, the way their skin shines in the light and their honey hair curls like Mom's. I remember glimpses of my father, warm skin against my mother's own rich flesh in stark contrast, the way Plutus and I are the perfect mix of the two of them.
When I come back it's to bed down uneasy. Pan sticks in but he has no mat, chooses to sleep on the ground instead of in the trees because he likes the earth beneath his fingers, the solid promise of place to run instead of fall.
We all wake in the morning weary, expecting threat. There have to be big groups now, at least two. Our alliance is unlikely, since we aren't the Demigods. Poorer republics hardly ever team up, especially in a group so large as five.
"I think we should go to the mountain," I say after breakfast, try to twist my sweaty hair into decent-made braids. It's getting hotter in the arena, like the Gamesmakers are going to cook us from the inside out.
"Why?" asks Artemis, leveling her bow and taking aim at imaginary target.
"It'll provide good cover," I say, not mentioning the fact that that is where Hades and Hestia said they'd go, that they won't hurt us if we follow after. At least I think they won't. "It's away from the Demigods, at least."
"I still say we attack them head-on," Artemis says, casting a bold glance at me.
"Apollo's no archer right now," I say, daring her to challenge me on it because we both know he isn't. An archer with a bum shoulder is like a viper without venom just an empty threat.
Artemis glares at me, but her twin pats her on the back in assurance. "I think Kore has a point, sis. Just a couple of days, so I can heal some more. Then we'll go after the others."
Artemis is hard for a moment, before she sighs. "Alright," she says. "But if we get killed, I blame Kore."
"I'll take full responsibility," I say with a wave of the hand. "You can beat the shit out of me in the afterlife."
"Looking forwards to it," Artemis smiles, the first real smile she's given in two days.
I grin back, glance over to Pan who's shaking as he always is, rabbit hidden from the fox. Giant foxes that allude the chase in this arena's case. "Do you want to come with?" I ask him.
He blinks at the offer, like he didn't expect us to keep him around, but then he opens his mouth, ready to speak, and it's met with thunder.
We all glance to the heavens, guessing the cool relief of rain, but then the ground shakes and it's anything but relief. Everyone looks at one another, expressions mirror confusion. The vibrations grow stronger by the second, before the sound of howling screams in the distance.
"No," says Apollo with morbid fear. "No way…"
"The hounds," says Artemis, poised for run. "It's those fucking hounds!"
There is soon a roar to accompany the howling. "And that cat-thing!" Hebe says, paling.
I take one look at everyone, at the blatant terror in their faces. "Well," I say, stringing on my pack in haste. "Let's not wait to find out!"
They all grab their things quickly, race into the forest after me as the stampede grows closer. "Shouldn't we climb a tree or something?!" Apollo screams over his sprinting and the din of oncoming threat.
"And if some of those things can climb trees too?" I ask.
"Good point!" he says, and we keep running.
It's only with the nip of mythical beasts on our heals that we're lead straight back to the cornucopia like livestock to the slaughter, but once there, we're not the only ones. Every tributes stands in a circle, wild monsters snapping and growling, but coming no closer.
Tributes stare at each other as the animals retreat, not a one trying for a bite. They stay close enough to make sure we can't leave the meadow, trapped little things to bait. And we're all equal matches of wide-eyed stare, on the offensive and ready for kill when static crackles, an intercom overhead.
"Welcome tributes!" calls out the voice of Dionysus Bacchus, cheery and clean. "Don't mind the beasts, they will not harm you without our instruction. But, I'm getting off topic. For, you see, we are pleased to have brought you to the first annual Pantheon of our beloved Divinity Games! Rule one of this little party is no killing allowed. Everyone put your weapons down we wish peace for you all in this night. The Fates are in everyone's favor tonight my friends!"
This everyone in question looks startled, weapons still raised like they don't believe it. Because this must be a joke, right? No killing? What in the world kind of rule is that in a game made for such a thing?
"We tell no lies, tributes," says Dionysus then. "Tonight is made for feasting and friendly fun."
Oh, yeah, he's definitely kidding... right?