'Daniel, be careful!' Ceridwen called out as the boy rammed his new horns into the belly of the beast.
Cerberus reared up on its hind legs, attempting to use its front paws to repel its relentless attacker, but to little avail. Danny drove it back farther and farther until there was no longer any place left for them to go.
And Ceridwen watched in horror as the two tumbled backward over the edge of the ridge, disappearing into the Underworld below.
Tumbling down the rocky cliff, Danny tried to use Cerberus’s disgusting body as a shield, tucking himself close so the putrid, matted fur so that the beast could take the brunt of the damage. They crashed again and again into the cliff and with each jarring impact Danny did his best to twist around to keep Cerberus between himself and the jagged outcroppings of rock. Then their painful journey came to an abrupt end with a whimper from the hound and the splintering of bones inside it. An enormous rib bone shot up through it, nearly impaling Danny, just before the impact sent him sprawling across the ground. He rolled, grunting in pain with each bump, and at last came to rest against the trunk of a gigantic tree.
Danny lay there for a while, looking up into the skeletal branches and strangely shaped leaves that decorated them, until a flow of warm blood into his eyes obscured his vision. With a trembling hand he wiped away the blood, and slowly pushed himself into a sitting position.
Cerberus was lying in a heap among the rocks across from him. It didn’t look as though the multi-headed dog had been as lucky as Danny.
Serves you right, you piece of shit, he thought, still feeling a trace of the terror he’d felt when he had first unknowingly trod upon the sleeping monstrosity. Danny didn’t like dogs much; ever since his loser father had brought him a dog not too long after his parents had split. It was a mutt from the local animal shelter. All the thing did was bark, poop, and piss all over the house. It hadn’t lived with him and his mother for very long. When he thought of dogs, all he could think of was his father, and how the only thing the prick hadn’t done to his mom was shit and piss all over the house. The bastard had all the bases covered when he’d brought that dog to live with them.
His body felt like one big open wound, damp with his own blood, every movement met with white-hot agony. But Danny figured he’d gotten off lucky. He was surprised that the damage wasn’t worse considering how far he had fallen. He looked at his arms and, for a brief moment, was thankful for the changes he’d been undergoing, as he grew into his true self. Yes, there were scrapes and some bloody gashes, but he was alive, and he was sure he wouldn’t have survived that fall if he’d been a normal teenager.
Danny heard his name being called from someplace far above and gazed up to see the tiny shapes of his companions as they made their way down the cliff toward him. He climbed to his feet, checking out his legs, making sure that nothing had been broken.
'Down here!' he called up to them, hands cupped over his mouth.
Danny could see that Doyle and Ceridwen were helping Eve. He hoped that she was all right. Between the fight with the Hydra and now this, she had been taking quite a beating lately and he wasn’t sure if she was as durable as he was. Ceridwen, at least, seemed a little better. She’d been drag-assing back in the tunnels and he’d thought she was just going to pass out or something.
As the others made their descent, he took the opportunity to look around. It was a cruel place, rocky with strange, skeletal trees rising up out of the gray dirt like the hands of some animated corpse. Even though the air was still, the strangely shaped leaves rustled, producing a strange grating sound.
Weird, he thought. Danny began to look more closely at what he believed to be leaves, but the sudden sound of growling distracted him.
The boy turned, stunned to see the giant dog stalking toward him on wobbly legs. Cerberus hadn’t been killed in the fall after all. Huge chunks of its flesh were missing, and exposed muscle and bone glinted wetly through the various rips and gashes.
'Give it up,' he told the dog as it slowly moved closer.
The animal continued to growl, bloody strings of saliva dripping from its two remaining mouths. Danny glanced in the direction of his friends, but they were not close enough to lend him a hand. It looked as though he was going to have to deal with this problem on his own.
'Last chance,' he told the animal. 'Just get the hell out of here, and we’ll call it even.'
Cerberus continued its inexorable advance.
'All right,' Danny said, reaching up to break away a limb from one of the skeletal trees. The branch came away with a loud snap, followed by a metallic rustling from the weird leaves.
He turned back to face the dog and saw that the animal had stopped. 'Changing your mind?' he asked, a snarling smile on his face.
Cerberus seemed to have forgotten about him, its two remaining heads looking around as the sounds from the trees began to intensify. Its ears had gone flat against its blocky skulls, and Danny thought that he heard at least one of the heads whimpering.
What now?
The dog seemed afraid, and even though he would have liked to think it was because of him, something told him that really wasn’t the case.
Suddenly Danny realized that the leaves weren’t leaves at all. He watched in awe as the shapes dangling from the trees began to drop, unfurling sleek, angular wings just before hitting the ground and gliding back into the air.
'Son of a bitch,' he whispered in awe, as the strange birds filled the air, their bodies catching the muted light of the Underworld, their feathers like tarnished metal. As he watched them dip and dart about, he trawled his knowledge of mythology, gained mostly from television, for the identity of these strange, metallic creatures.
One of the birds flew past his face, the side of its wing gently glancing his cheek, and he recoiled from its touch. His hand came away from his face covered in fresh blood. Wait. I remember. Birds, but with metal razors for feathers, some shit like that. Something to do with Hercules.
The swarming birds cried out, their strange song reminding him of the shriek of a rusty screen door, only much louder. They were agitated, maybe picking up on the vibes from him and Cerberus. Most flew in a shrieking cluster above them, but they were starting to dip lower, single members of the flock dropping down from the sky, razor-sharp wings coming dangerously close.
From the corner of his eye he saw Cerberus leaving, its heads and body tucked low to the ground as it began to trot. The flock apparently didn’t care for the dog’s sudden movement. Their grating cries grew louder, and more of them glided down from the sky, the touch of their wings slicing into rotting, broken flesh of the hound. Danny could hear the giant dog yelping in pain as it fled across the barren landscape, shrieking birds in pursuit.
Then Cerberus fell and the birds swarmed him. Even at that distance, Danny could hear the dog whimpering and he almost felt bad.
Almost.
Most of the razor birds had left with Cerberus, and Danny used the opportunity hurry to the cliff to meet his friends. They were almost to the bottom.
'You all right?' Eve asked weakly. 'You look like total shit.' She smiled at him then, and he knew that she was okay, despite the fact that she was covered in drying blood.
'You guys might want to hurry,' he said, looking back over his shoulder. Only one or two of the birds were visible in the dark gloom of the cavernous sky. Most of them were still savaging Cerberus, and perhaps they would roost there for a time.
'What now, Daniel?' Conan Doyle sounded a bit exasperated.
'I think we’re okay.' He reached out to help Eve with the final step to the Underworld floor. 'But there were these crazy birds made of metal and — '
'Stymphalia,' Conan Doyle interrupted.
'Whatever,' Danny agreed. 'They’re nasty.'
Conan Doyle nodded as he removed his handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his brow. Both Eve and Ceridwen were sitting on the rocks at the bottom of the cliff path. Eve was already starting to look better, but now that he could see more clearly, Danny wished he could say the same about Ceridwen. The Faerie sorceress sat with her face buried in her hands. She might have gotten her second wind before, but it seemed like she had just about used it up.
