The Demigod Games

Chapter Thirty-five

Reyna unraveled her fists, letting her fingers extend. Her straightened back and hard expression remained, but her feet still ached.

"If you leave now, I won't send you to tartarus," she threatened, stepping towards the first challenge the Gods had conjured for her.

A deep yellow, beady eye stared back at her blankly. "Puny demigod!" he bellowed. "I will destroy you! I am Virgil, son of Poseidon and Clio!"

"Virgil is a Roman name, yet you are of Greek distinction," Reyna thought out loud, whilst formulating a plan. Though she was surrounded by plenty of trees, it could easily be her ending up underneath one. "He was the epic poet who had coined the sequel to the Odyssey."

"Epic poets? I WILL DESTROY THEM!" Virgil bellowed, beating his hairy chest with his oversized hands.

Reyna cringed; her ears had started to ring. "Lovely," she murmured. Unprepared and completely out of her mind, she began to take steps backwards. "Tell me, what else have you destroyed?"

The cyclops took a moment to think, distraught by the question. "I WILL DESTROY OLYMPUS AS WELL!" he shouted, unable to conjure a proper response.

"Well, that appears to be quite difficult," Reyna commented, her confidence growing as she circled Virgil.

He scratched his thick head for a moment, and then reached down towards his crotch to pull down his loin cloth. Reyna nearly threw up after having seen too much. "NOTHING IS DIFFICULT FOR VIRGIL!"

Naturally, the Gods would send the most dimwitted creature in existence. They never seemed to be able to comprehend her true abilities, but Reyna supposed it was appropriate to showcase her abilities in some form.

"Virgil," she began cordially, "would you mind if I were to scale this pine tree? I would prefer to see, eye to eye with you."

Virgil the beyond unintelligent cyclops's mouth hung open to reveal teeth that did not receive proper orthodontics. "Uhhhh, I guess."

Reyna brushed past the pine needles and dug her heels into the trunk. It resulted in quite a bit of needles stuck in her flesh, but she successfully had managed to climb to (what she had calculated to be) the highest branch that could support her weight. The tree, however, seemed to lean unevenly to one side, lacking something to even out the imbalance. "This is much better," Reyna sighed, wiping dirt-ridden sweat from her forehead. In the process, also knocked down several disgusting insects from her clothing. "Don't you think Virgil?"

Virgil smiled an awfully toofy grin as he peered up at the daughter of Bellona. "Demigods are nice to me now," he announced.

Forcing a smile onto her tight lips, Reyna said, "Cyclops are nice too me now, too. Virgil, I'm quite sorry for what I have to do to you next."

As soon as Reyna finished her sentence, she threw her body off of her the branch in only a few seconds. Her palms burned as they clung onto the bark. Her plan had worked: the cyclops received a direct hit from the very top of the pine tree, resulting in a disgruntled, "OOF!"

The entire time, she kept hold on the tree. Reyna lifted herself up as she would on a pullup bar, and then applied enough pressure to break the branch off at a sharp point. With less than a second of calculation, she positioned herself in mid-fall to land on Virgil's meaty shoulder.

Virgil, of course, didn't catch a glimpse of her due to several pine needles lodging themselves in his eye. Somehow, Reyna managed to grab some of Virgil's chest hairs. They aided her significantly in landing safely. She embarked up his chest with the tree branch still in hand, avoiding his swatting hands with ease. At last, she laid flat on her stomach, just barely balancing on the shoulder.

Reyna had no mercy as she drove the branch all the way through the cyclop's neck. She had to make a quick escape, so Reyna leaped from the staggering body onto the very same pine tree.

Unfortunately for her, the cyclops fell in the same direction due to his horrible hunchback.

She locked her gaze onto the most exposed part of the trunk, right towards the center of the tree without any branches blocking her path. Carefully, Reyna aimed for a small area just to the left of the spot she had identified.

Her skin was no longer blemishless, but every aspect of her survival plan had miraculously worked. Virgil, the innocent cyclops, fell directly on his face, causing something similar to an earthquake in the arena. Blood seeped from the sides of his neck in puddles of silver goo.

Instead of celebrating, Reyna descended from the tree and applied all of her attention to her foot. The cyclops had somehow managed to twist it without her noticing. No breaks or ligament tears, just a simple twist in the ankle portion of her left foot. She would only require a makeshift wrap and a few hours of rest to recover.

Reyna looked up to the heavens before moving on, her eyes filled with rage. "I am more than a pawn!" she snarled, screaming as loudly as she dared. "No, I am more than your pawn. I am Reyna Avila Ramírez-Arellano, more than a daughter of Bellona. We may be demigods and heroes, but above all else, we are not toys completely under your power.

"I am the praetor of the twelfth legion of Rome!.You do not control me, even the Gods cannot control fate!"

--

Lara took a step back upon hearing a stained, yet powerful voice proclaiming, "Even the Gods cannot control fate!"

"Edward," she hissed to her ally. "Did you just hear that?"

Edward crossed her arms. "No."

"Even the Gods cannot control fate," Lara echoed. "It came from that direction," she told him, pointing eastward.

"Do you think it's the owl girl?"

The daughter of Neptune scoffed, and then decided to take a seat by the side of a lazy stream. "No, owl girl wouldn't. She's too busy making out with Jackson."

"That's disgusting," Edward shuddered at the very thought. Reluctantly, he lowered himself to a squat a few feet besides her. "We need to get moving before we lose them. I swear, if we lose their tracks, I will remove your head from your body."

Boredly, Lara reached her hand into the water and watched it create a seal over her hand. "You know I'm not supposed to exist?" she ventured.

"So what?"

Lara gave him a dirty look. "So, that's why they put me here. They want to get rid of me."

"You fool," Edward growled, taking her arm and yanking her to a stance. "They want to get rid of all of us. The Gods only want to watch us die so we won't be their problems anymore!"

She began to walk away from him, but only stopped once her ankles were submerged in water. Lara had always enjoyed the sensation of flow. Most humans couldn't experience it, but she could sense the vibrations of the water with each nerve ending. "We're all fools. Fate is making fools out of us."

"That's why we have to win," Edward insisted, reaching forward once again. This time, it was an extension of trust. He tested her loyalty.

Lara hesitantly took it, stepping out of the water. "Both of us? Are we both going to take on Gaea's army?"

"We can't let jackasses like Jackson take all the glory," Edward continued. "We can do much more than him, although fate has given him everything!"

"You're right," Lara agreed slowly. "Let's defy fate then."

Bullshit, Lara thought to herself. He's going to kill me when he has the chance.

She decided then that Edward couldn't win. He was a brute with no skills besides extreme strength and weapon tactics. Regardless of her actions, Edward would die at no other hand than his own. The son of Mars was already digging his own grave.

--