Page 67 of Blood of Hercules
I glanced over—Achilles was glaring at me.
He didn’t look away when I held his gaze.
Not a good omen.
“Here,” Patro barked as he came back out and dropped two books onto my lap. One had a painting of a disemboweled corpse on its cover; the other had a drawing of a Spartan helmet.
Something tells me these aren’t going to be my Emmy and Carl fanfics.
“Do you have any math b-books?” I asked before I could stop myself. My stress levels were at an all-time high; I needed numbers to calm me. I also needed to stop talking to the man who was likely going to snap and kill me.
Patro made a face. “No, because believe it or not, I’m not aloser.Also, this isn’t leisure reading.” He pointed to the graphic cover. “It’s an original founder’s manual on the crucible, but it’s in Latin, so I also gave you the translated version.”
“I can read Latin,” I whispered.
“Sure you can,” he scoffed with disbelief. “We’ll reconvene once you’ve read them and are no longer an ignorant savage.”
I ran my fingers along the rough yellow pages of the original.How old is this book? I’m holding history in my hands.
I barely noticed the men leaving.
An hour later, I was nauseous and sweating.
The Latin was rough but comprehensible—unfortunately.
I wish I was illiterate.
The book had started with,
“All Sparta is divided by one mental test, one of which paranoia inhabits, sleep deprivation another, and starvation the third. What others in their own language call “pain” is, in our Spartan War Academy, the crucible. The River Styx separates the dolomites from the academy; the drowning and running separate them from the mind. Of all these, the cunning are the bravest. Because they are farthest from civilization and refinement, their minds don’t break when the rest shatter.”
It got progressively worse from there.
The book detailed ad nauseam the importance of pain, suffering, dirt, fear, and hunger. Confusingly, it referred to the crucible as a mental test, but then constantly described it as a war.
Later the book repeated, “It is the right of the crucible to break those it has conquered so they have no shelter from themselves. If you must break a man, do it to reveal power; in all other cases, kill him.”
Charming.
And the last line read, “There are no stupid gods because there are no stupid Spartans. The crucible or death; there is no third option.”
Sweat streaked down my spine. I opened the English version of the book, hoping I’d made a mistake translating.
It was exactly the same, except the English author used the termsslaughter, murderous,andrevoltingmore frequently.
I pushed both books off my lap, unable to stomach them.
The crucible almost soundedworsethan high school.
I collapsed back on the chair with Nyx wrapped around mythroat. The sun set over the Ionian Sea, and a graveyard of stars made an appearance.
I barely noticed.
Time warped around me.
Crickets chirped and waves lapped as I drowned in the night sounds.
When I finally dragged myself into the bed, head fuzzy with heavy thoughts, there was a strange creaking coming from the other side of the wall.
