She holds up a hand and the arena immediately falls to silence. Athena sweeps the champions with a single piercing look. “The second trial begins shortly. You will be positioned at different locations within the maze. There is one door leading to the exit, but it requires a key. There are five keys hidden within the maze. There is also a time limit. You may only take one key if and when you find them. If you have not found a key and the door exiting the maze within the time allotted, you will be eliminated.”
This is where alliances begin to break down. Five keys means seven people eliminated. At least. We have to find the keys first, and there’s no guarantee all will be discovered before the time limit is reached.
I take a slow breath and speak softly enough that only Helen and Achilles can hear me. “It’s a good wager that the keys—or at least a few of them—will be in the center of the maze.”
“Find your way in, find your way out,” Achilles muses. “Seems simple enough.”
Helen snorts. “Sure. Simple. Except for the other champions trying to do the same thing.”
Down the line of champions, Bellerophon approaches with black hoods in their hands. Ah, that makes sense. They’re not going to give us a chance to potentially memorize the way through the maze. If we’re blindfolded and they take a strange route, it will be discombobulating enough that we should all start on even ground.
At least in theory.
Bellerophon eases the first hood over the Minotaur’s head and tightens it a bit. Then they move to the next champion.
“There will be fighting and they’re going to fight dirty.” I’m not saying anything that they don’t know, but I feel compelled all the same.
Helen shakes her head, her picture-perfect smile in place. “So will I.” She looks between us. For the first time since we got into the vans this morning, some of the real woman shows beneath the mask. “Stay out of my way. I don’t… Look, I like you two. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t be competing against each other, but this isn’t a perfect world and I’m not going to let my emotions compromise my goals. So no hard feelings, but I will go through you to get Ares if I have to.”
My stomach twists at her words, even if they aren’t surprising. The feeling only gets worse when Achilles booms out a laugh. “We’ll see you on the other side, princess.”
Her grin is downright feral. “Bet on it.”
Then Bellerophon is in front of her, sliding the black hood over her head. They move to me next. Even knowing it’s coming, it’s still disorienting in the extreme to have all sight taken from me. The hood is perfectly blacked out, and the sound of the crowd feels particularly loud without my sight to distract me.
I jolt when hands touch my shoulders. They guide me forward, and even knowing we’re maybe twenty feet from the maze, I still can’t get my bearings. I try to keep track of the twists and turns, but it’s a lost cause. And if I’m not able to, I highly doubt any of the others are having a more successful time of it.
Oh well. This isn’t outside the expected parameters.
The hands on my shoulders tug me to a stop and a soft voice in my ear says, “Stay here with the hood on until Athena begins the trial.”
I nod, and they release my shoulders. Without the touch to anchor me, I feel even more out of sorts. The sound is unrelenting, and with the darkness so complete, I have to fight against the urge to lift my hands defensively. Anyone could be standing just out of reach and…
The cheering goes quiet and Athena’s familiar cool tone fills the empty space. “The second trial begins now. The trial will end in two hours or when five champions have escaped the maze. Good luck.”
I drag the hood from my head and blink into the bright lights. The walls are just as high inside the maze as they were outside it, but I can still see the upper tiers of the arena and the several of the screens showing the various champions. It’s impossible to gather enough info to be helpful, though. The maze walls seem to be uniformly gray. Even the differing heights of the walls—ranging anywhere from ten to fourteen feet, best I can tell—only add to the disorienting feeling of being unable to guess which direction to go. The other champions could be on the other side from me or the next path over, or they could be nowhere near me. Focusing on the screens will be more distraction than asset.
The path I’m on is relatively straight, one direction leading deeper into the maze and one appearing to lead toward the perimeter. When I was doing research on what the possible trials could be, mazes were on the list. The common advice to get out of a maze seems to be pick a direction and follow that wall to the exit.