Chapter 60
"Look, I didn't really want it to come to this," Cyd said, crouching down in front of the pinned Cerberus. He reached out and started poking the nose of the most stubborn-looking head—the duty-bound mastiff. "How about you just let us pass, and we call it a day?"
"Don't act so smug!" the mastiff-head snarled, its words muffled by the massive scaled claw pressing its muzzle into the dirt. Its body still strained against the dozens of other claws holding it down, massive paws scraping deep gouges in the stone floor. "Your… scales… must be running out! This is a contest of endurance now! The moment you slip, I will tear you to shreds! Let's see who breaks first!"
"Ah, you caught me," Cyd said, clicking his tongue. If the damn thing really only had three heads, this would have been over already. But holding down fifty-plus furious canine skulls at once had required unleashing every single scale the dragon-cloak possessed. Cerberus was right—it was now a battle of stamina. But he couldn't show weakness.
"Still looks like I'm winning, though."
He gave the mastiff's wet nose a firm pinch.
"Is that so? How long can your mortal mind maintain such precise control over so many fragments?" The head couldn't shake him off, so it settled for a furious, guttural growl that vibrated through the stone. "We shall see who tires first!"
Cyd blinked.
Now that he thought about it… he didn't feel tired at all. Not even a little. Hephaestus had mentioned that the divine artifact, woven with the dragon's own nerves, would respond to his will. But controlling each individual scale with this level of precision should have been mentally exhausting, like trying to play fifty games of chess simultaneously. Earlier, with smaller uses, he hadn't noticed the strain. But this was the full arsenal. Why did it feel… effortless? The scales moved with a speed and coordination that felt less like commanding a tool and more like moving his own limbs.
Come to think of it, the cloak had acted on its own before. Like shredding his sleeve. Or reacting to threats before he could.
Hephaestus had sworn the dragon was utterly, completely dead. But…
Cyd stood up, his expression turning serious. For a fleeting second, he thought he could see it—not just his own shadow on the grey ground, but a second, far larger silhouette behind it, winged and draconic.
(Finally figured it out, huh?)
A voice, raspy and smug, whispered directly into his mind. It wasn't hearing with his ears; it was a vibration in his very bones, centered on his right arm.
(I'm not quite as dead as they thought!)
You have got to be kidding me. It's actually alive.
Cyd pressed a hand to his face.
"This is a problem."
"Hah! Afraid now? Too late!" Cerberus's central head barked, mistaking Cyd's dismay for fear of it.
You should be dead. Thoroughly.
Cyd narrowed his eyes, focusing his thoughts inward, towards the presence he now felt thrumming along the connection in his arm.
(Yeah, yeah, deader than a doornail! Mostly. But that goddess—she got greedy. Wanted you to have perfect control from the get-go, no practice needed. So she used my nerves as the conduit. I was supposed to be asleep forever, just a bundle of reflexes. But then you had to go and bring me down here, to the land of the dead. The ambient… essence… of this place. It woke me up. Properly.)
Cyd's eye twitched violently.
(Don't make that face! My nervous system is fused with your arm. I'm an extension of you now. I can't hurt my own host. And besides… you beat me fair and square. Pisses me off, but I respect it. I'll be a good weapon. See? This teamwork isn't half bad! But now that I'm awake, I'm not going back to being a silent hunk of hide.)
You're… very chatty.
Cyd sighed internally. His life was about to get a lot noisier.
CRUNCH—SCRAPE!
Without warning, Cerberus's colossal body convulsed, throwing its weight violently to one side. The sudden, desperate lurch caught the network of scaled claws off guard. They slid, just for an instant, losing their perfect grip. It was all the monster needed. Its buried claws weren't just struggling—they'd been digging. The ground beneath it, already stressed, gave way in a shower of shattered rock and dust.
Cyd's eyes widened. He threw himself backwards, arms coming up in a defensive cross.
He was a fraction of a second too late.
A paw the size of a banquet table, now free, swatted him with the force of a catapult.
WHUMP.
The air exploded from Cyd's lungs. He didn't feel pain—his body wouldn't allow it—but he felt the overwhelming kinetic energy transfer. One moment he was standing; the next, he was a human projectile, hurtling backwards at a sickening speed, the world blurring into streaks of grey and black.
"Oh, crap—the river!"
He twisted in mid-air, trying to orient himself, to change his trajectory, but the force behind the blow was monstrous. He was going to sail right over the bank and into the middle of the lightless, soul-drowning water.
"CYD!"
Medusa's voice cut through the roar in his ears. He saw her, a small figure in the distance, throw aside his pack. Her arm snapped forward. One of her sickles, the chain attached to its handle whipping through the air, flew toward him like a gleaming, purple-grey comet.
It wouldn't reach him in time.
Medusa's teeth were bared in a snarl of pure frustration.
(Relax, kid. Told you I'm not playing dead.)
The scaled cloak on Cyd's right shoulder didn't just flutter—it dissolved. Hundreds of individual scales disengaged, flying off his body like a cloud of black hornets.
(Dragons. Can. FLY.)
The scales didn't scatter. They streamed behind Cyd, swirling and interlocking with impossible speed. In the span of two heartbeats, they reformed—not as a cloak, but as a pair of vast, jagged, draconic wings, webbed with dark membrane between the black scales. They snapped open with a sound like a thunderclap.
His backward flight didn't just stop; it reversed. He hung in the air for a surreal moment, suspended by the dark wings.
"Not bad," he grunted, a genuine grin spreading across his face. His hand shot out and caught the handle of Medusa's flying sickle as it reached the apex of its arc.
Their eyes met across the distance. No words were needed.
"Medusa!"
She understood. Planting her feet, she wrapped both hands around the chain and spun, using her whole body as a fulcrum. It was like wielding the world's deadliest yo-yo. With a powerful heave, she didn't pull Cyd to her; she used the anchored chain to swing him, changing his vector from 'away' to 'straight back at the problem.'
"HUMAN!" Cerberus roared, all fifty heads turning skyward as Cyd became a dark blur shooting toward it, wings folding back to streamline his flight.
Cyd didn't try to slow down. He embraced the momentum. As he flew, he thrust his right hand forward. The wings on his back and every single scale still in the air responded instantly. They streamed toward his outstretched arm, layering and compacting themselves with mechanical precision. In less than a second, they formed not a claw, but a massive, spiraling drill-tip around his fist and forearm, scales overlapping and grinding against each other.
"Spin!"
The drill-tip erupted into motion. A deep, bone-shaking whine filled the cavern as black scales became a blur. The resulting vortex of wind whipped up a minor hurricane, tearing at Cerberus's fur and forcing it to squint its many eyes.
It focused entirely on the terrifying, approaching drill, bracing for the impact.
It never saw the distraction.
A dozen scales, deliberately shed from the main mass, shot out from the edges of the whirlwind like black shuriken. They weren't aimed to kill; they were aimed with surgical accuracy.
Thwick. Thwick. Thwick-thwick-thwick.
Each scale found its mark: not the eyes themselves, but the sensitive eyelids and muscles around them. Dozens of heads yelped in unison, snapping their eyes shut in reflexive pain and protection. In an instant, Cerberus was blinded.
"Game over."
The black drill met the center of the massive, now-blind creature. It didn't deflect or skid. It punched clean through fur, muscle, and bone with a horrific, wet SCHLORP-CRUNCH.
For a moment, there was silence, save for the dying whine of the drill.
Then, a geyser of dark, arterial blood erupted from the massive, dinner-plate-sized hole now bored straight through Cerberus's torso. The monster shuddered once, a full-body spasm.
"I told you to sit."
The drill dissolved. The scales flew back to Cyd in a whispering cloud, re-knitting themselves into the familiar cloak on his shoulder as he landed lightly on the ground a few feet away.
THOOOOOM.
Cerberus collapsed. The impact shook the foundations of the gateway. The pool of blood that spread from the grievous wound hissed and smoked where it touched the stone, giving off a sharp, acidic smell.
"Looks pretty toxic," Cyd observed, head tilted. He jogged over to where Medusa had dropped his pack, rummaged inside, and pulled out an empty water skin. With the casual air of a tourist filling a bottle at a mountain spring, he walked back to the fallen guardian, unscrewed the cap, and carefully positioned the opening under the still-flowing stream of blood. Drip-drip-glug.
"Of… course…"
Cyd's hand froze. He looked down.
The massive body was… twitching. The edges of the horrific hole were seething. Strands of muscle, black and glistening, crawled across the void like worms. Bone reformed with audible crackling pops. New heads, small and puppy-like at first, pushed their way out of the healing flesh, blinking and yawning before rapidly growing to match the others.
"You're… not dead?"
"This… is the Underworld," a chorus of new and old voices rasped. The creature began to rise, unsteady at first, then with gathering strength. The hole was now a puckered, angry scar, rapidly fading. "I am the guardian of Hades' gate. A wound like that… is merely an inconvenience here."
I just put a hole in you the size of a wagon wheel.
"You want to go another round?" Cyd sighed, carefully capping his now-full water skin of probably-lethal blood.
"No." All fifty heads shook in unison, then let out a simultaneous, jaw-cracking yawn. "You have defeated me. This once. You may enter."
As one, the great beast settled back onto its haunches, then lay down, tucking its many heads against its paws. Dozens of eyes slid shut.
Cyd blinked. He thought for a second, then pulled out a second, smaller water skin from his pack. He walked up to one of the smaller, newly-regenerated heads—a dopey-looking hound with its tongue lolling out—and gently tapped the skin against its nose.
"Hey. Mind drooling in this for me? Just a bit."