Are they mad... or am I?
Gazing over the trees, I fell on an impossible sight. Structures rose higher than the tallest oak in the Neander Meadow. Taller than the Elysian Imperial Palace. As tall as the heavens herself.
Such things could not be possib—
I jerked as if an invisible force hooked me around the middle. I flew back—farther, farther, farther away from that impossible world... and fell.
Thud!
Gasping, I gazed up at the sky as it emptied on my face. I didn’t need to look around to know I was back in Olympia.
What happened?I was there. I was right there and then it was gone.
Was that window in another world a trick? Was it another deterrent to get me to turn back? Showing me a mad town with impossible buildings and people who chose to talk to themselves instead of the humans around them?
Can’t be,I thought.Neither Hypnos, the god of dreams, nor his children could imagine something as bizarre as that. It had to be my destination, so why didn’t I get to it?
Picking myself up, I ran off the edge, welcoming the void between worlds. I got so close before I was pulled back. Maybe what I needed to do was propel myself forward quicker—cross the barrier before Olympia had a chance to snatch back her prey.
I got within inches of the window—close enough to count the teeth on a smiling pair of parents, holding up another rectangle to their toddling child, then I whipped back.
The ground punched the air out of my lungs, and left a bruise for the trouble. I pushed up off the sodden earth, rubbing my shoulder. Was I imagining it or did that hurt more the second time?
Shaking it off, I stripped off my pack and wet overcoat. I was almost there. A little more and I’d make it.
I leaped off the cliff, pedaling through the air before I hit the void.
The third time I got closer still. My fingertips disappeared through the window, and I swore they touched warm air and a gentle breeze.
The barrier snatched me back, and my stomach shot in my throat.
“Ahhh!”
I tumbled to the ground, landing hard on my hurt shoulder. Pain ricocheted through my body, jarring my jaw snap shut on my tongue. I hissed as blood filled my mouth.
There was no question. The border was spitting me out higher and higher off the ground each time. A few more times of this and I’d be breaking bones, one of them my spine.
It took three tries just to get my fingers through the barrier. How many times will it take me to get my entire battered body through?
“The answer is simpler than you think, young one.”
I snapped up, whipping around.
“Genius lies in its simplicity.”
My mind retreated to a small, quiet place. A creature as tall as the eucalyptuses crushed the brush beneath its serpent’s body. Half a dozen tentacles sprouted from his torso, each tipped with three razor-sharp claws. Free of the trees, he spread his batlike wings—their span longer than ten of me lined head to feet.
I looked into his boarish face; yellow, slitted eyes; rows of brown fangs, and spider legs sprouting from his head like hair, then pitched forward and vomited. I couldn’t help it.
Everything from their hideous patchwork bodies to the raging storms that followed them like puppies nipping at their masters’ heels, was meant to instill fear in all who saw them.
Typhons were not merely monsters, they were gods. All of them sons of the first Typhon—offspring of the goddess Gaia and god Tartarus. From Typhon, all monsters were born, granting him the title: Father of Monsters. But only the sons grown from pieces of his own body became beings as fierce and terrifying as him. Of all the monsters of Olympia, typhons were the most dangerous. Villagers that woke to find a lightning-less storm overhead, were instructed to pack up their things and evacuate. Leave them to the Deucalion Army.
That’s no longer an option for me.
One— Three— Five more typhons emerged from the forest. Beside the vomit disappearing in the water before me, I did nothing. Made no move.
My options narrowed to one. Despite his taunting that the way through was simple, the answer was not making itself clear to me. If I stepped off that cliff again, the barrier would spit me out hard enough to break my bruised shoulder for good. Then I’d have to face six of the most fearsome creatures in our land with one useless arm.