Page 9 of Competing Against Thor

"Yeah,The Great Sculpting Challenge. Persephone is supposed to be judging. Mel said something about convincing her with flowers." It was going to be hard for me to do well whenthatwasthe challenge. Even after Daisy showed me how she did it, I doubted I'd be able to pull off anything so delicate.

"More than likely. I still don't understand why you're doing it, you already have a load of gods exhibiting your work. Didn't Anansa buy one of your sculptures for her cruise ship?"

I nodded and took a sip of my mead. "I wanted a challenge. It's all very well creating by myself, but that doesn't push me to try new techniques or to take risks. That's why I'm doing the show."

"So not to win?"

"Not really. Winning would be good because it's judged blindly, so they don't know it's me, but it's mostly about pushing myself out of my comfort zone."

"I wasn't aware you had one of those."

"It's been a while since I've done something new," I responded. "Surely you feel like that sometimes?"

"Not really. But then, I can get my kicks by doing this to give people a spook." She waved a hand over her face, and it rippled to reveal the skull underneath, a basic skill that most necromancers had, but had become part of her legend.

"Does that really work?" I asked.

"Not as well as it used to," she admitted. "People just aren't as easy to scare."

"That's probably a good thing."

"Maybe. But more boring for me."

I shook my head, somewhat amused by her reasoning. But that was Hel. She'd been given a job that was kind of sucky, and she'd made the most of it. Just like the rest of us had.

"How's your competition going?" she asked.

I gave her a questioning look.

"I might not understand the reasons you're doing it, but I can still support you," she pointed out.

"As well as it can do. Some of the challenges suit me better than others, I'm still new when it comes to sculpting."

"New as in you started a decade ago," she responded.

"As did several of the other competitors," I pointed out. "And some of them even before that." I had no idea of the exact dates, but I had to imagine that a lot of them had been doing it longer than me. That wasalsopart of the challenge.

"Huh, so you might not win."

"I doubt I will," I admitted. "There's this woman next to me, and her sculptures are amazing." I pulled out my phone and clicked through to the page I'd been looking at full of sculptures fromDaisy Chains. I handed it to Hel.

She raised an eyebrow. "You just keep this open on your phone?"

"What? No. Well, I had it open earlier and then I got distracted, nothing weird."

"Sure." She scrolled through the photos. "They're beautiful," she conceded.

"They are. And you should see what she managed to create in just four hours the other day, the flowers were so delicate."

"No doubt I'll have to watch the show in order to do that?"

"Well, yes. I'm amazed I've been allowed to keep my phone on me, but I definitely can't show you any photos."

"Probably special treatment," she responded. "The Muses can't take your phone off you, you're a god. And a fairly important one."

I shrugged. "Hardly."

She handed me my phone back. "Looks like you've got some competition."