Chapter 25 Nyssa
Nyssa
The swirling vortex of souls was ten times louder on the centre of the Isle. Darker, too.
Archimedes and Hephaestus crouched against the ruins of the third gateway, bracing against a storm they could not see. Gale force winds assaulted their every move as their limbs strained to finish the mammoth task I’d set them.
Neither heard us approach or even deigned to glance our way.
When I reached out to clasp Arch’s shoulder, he jerked, whirling faster than I’d anticipated, and smacked my wrist away.
“Nyssa?!” He recoiled, eyes going so wide I feared for their tenancy in his head. “Fuck, sorry! I didn’t see you there!” he yelled over the howling wails.
“My fault!” I called back. My brows furrowed, taking in his bedraggled clothing and the purple smudges colouring the skin beneath his eyes. A quick glance confirmed his father was in a similar state of disarray.
“When did you last sleep?” I asked, unease softening my voice a little too noticeably.
Arch crossed his dust-covered arms then opened his mouth to respond. Before the words could make it past his teeth, however, a fresh wave of vociferous souls shoved us backwards.
The Isle swarmed with the displaced. There were too many vying for attention, too many clamouring for rest — and it was only a matter of time before the living joined them.
The longer Hephaestus and Archimedes remained here, working, the more likely it was that they’d be swept into the Styx.
“I know that look, Nyssa,” he scolded. “Don’t shoulder this too. My pa and I are the only ones who can fix this mess.”
I groaned, hating that I was the cause of it.
“You know he’s right,” Caelus agreed.
Trepidation reared its ugly head, souring my mood. It demanded I do all, be all, for everyone, all of the time. My fingernails dug crescent-shaped gouges in my palms as I clenched them, staving off the acceptance that they were right.
But they were right. I couldn’t fix this one.
“Fine, but I can at least help you work in peace,” I grunted, annoyed at my apparent lack of usefulness.
I threw my hands up, both in exasperation and in preparation of using whatever sway I held over the dearly departed.
Midnight burst free from my palms, blanketing the Isle in shadow. A few curious souls stopped to look, but the majority continued swirling, lost to the despairing depths of their displacement.
I felt Caelus leave my side, angling through the thicket of shades to the general area of the third arch. Out of my periphery, I saw lightning blaze to life in his hand — a bolt the length of a spear, as bright as the midday sun.
Hephaestus jolted at the sudden glow, then grinned through his thick, black beard. He dipped his head in thanks, then began jerkily hauling another broken black stone back towards the gateway. Arch rushed to help, and together, they hefted it into place.
“Halt,” I implored the whirling souls.
Several more ceased their assault — but not enough. They were but a few drops in the ocean of shades surrounding us.
The hungry creature inside me stirred, summoned by the depth of my need. She uncoiled lazily, grinning, gluttonous for the taste of a life.
Death blinked, and shades faltered.
“Pauó,” I commanded, my voice slipping into an eerie otherness, as Death lent her strength to mine.
The swirling mass halted. They trembled as our gaze touched on each of them, understanding instinctively that they were in danger. That some fates were worse than death, worse even than this perpetual state of existence.
We were on the cusp of devouring them — Death was starving.
Our head cocked to the side as two shades dared move, locking onto them with lethal precision. The fingers of my right hand jerked and tendrils of shadow burst forth, capturing them.
They squirmed and my face split into a feral grin — but I couldn’t decipher whether it was hers or mine. I didn’t care to, either.
My shadows dragged them closer. I watched in a trancelike state, as they fought against the strain of my bindings, frantic and desperate.
“Nyssa?” some far off voice called. Its tenor was familiar… but not urgent enough to break my focus.
My lips parted, jaw opening wide as the tendril pulled the first shade in. With a ravenous inhale, Death swallowed, gnawing heartily on what little sustenance the soul offered her. No sooner than she was done, did our eyes latch onto the second writhing figure.
My jaw opened again, readying—
Until a sharp zap forced my eyes down. My hand hung limp by my thigh. Scarred fingers — the source of the shock — entwined with my own.
Nightshade, the voice spoke again, this time echoing around my mind — harder to ignore.
A warm touch caressed my cheek, and my face was tipped gently up. Silver, black-rimmed eyes consumed my field of vision, drowning out every other thought in a way that only they could. Caelus ran his thumb back and forth along my cheekbone, every pass bringing me closer to the surface.
He stilled and the sudden absence of sensation startled me out of Death’s reverie. I jerked as I became fully cognizant once more, blinking wildly at the juxtaposition. He began again, attempting to quell the rising swell of emotion that threatened to undo me.
The shades moved tentatively, and, realising they were unbound, frenzied anew.
What have I done?
Horror flooded me.
I ate an innocent.
My skin prickled, fingertips going icy, and my eyes grew so wide it almost hurt. I tried to step out of Caelus’ reassuring embrace — I didn’t deserve it — but he followed, disallowing my retreat.
“It’s okay, Nightshade,” he murmured.
It’s not.
“You weren’t yourself.” His eyes, crinked at the corners, conveyed only genuine understanding and concern, which made what I’d done all the more abhorrent. The tether between us hummed with the same feelings — and it was then that I understood: he believed what he’d just said.
“You’re wrong,” I breathed, unable to meet his steady gaze. “I was fully myself.”
His thumb stilled on my cheek.
“That is who I am, deep in my core. That is what lingers beneath my skin… what I could become if I let myself.”
Anguished wails filled the spaces between words as he took the time to contrive some semblance of a response. Eventually, his thumb continued its steady rhythm, and resolve washed down our bond.
“You don’t scare me, Nightshade.”
“I should.”
He shook his head with a self-assured smile. “I am the one person who is safe with you, always. Even deep down in that part of yourself you fear will win, you love me. Even that facet couldn’t let me go.” He leaned in until our noses brushed. “Do you know how I know?”
“How?”
“You told me.”
My nose scrunched, betraying my confusion.
“You gave up every part of yourself to bring me back. Every part. Even that one. And it went willingly. In fact, it’s me you should—”
“Nyssa!” Archimedes called from the centre of the swirling masses. “We need you!”
Hephaestus and his son were once again battling the torrent of shades, trying desperately to finish that last arch — the one that led directly to Tartarus — and arguably, the one we needed most.
“Whatever you did before — can you do it again?” Hephaestus shouted over the wails and wind.
My gaze flicked back to Caelus’ — surety clear on his face even if I couldn’t feel it within my own soul.
“Try again,” he encouraged. “But this time you stay in control. Not your power.”
He squeezed my hand three times then relinquished it.
I strode to the centre of the Isle, moving slowly through the throng of displaced souls, and called on Death again. She lurched to the forefront of my consciousness — still ravenous — but this time, I stood alongside her.
As equals, not combatants.
Are you sure this is what you choose? she asked, soft but filled with steel.
Yes.
Finally.
Our face cracked into a wicked grin and power ignited through our veins like icy wildfire. Shadows leached from our hands, throwing the realm into a starless night.
“Pauó,” we said again, throwing our hands out wide — and again, the shades relented.
Together, we held them at bay, and long minutes passed as the gods worked.
There were so many of them — thousands, caught between places, filled with this insatiable emptiness that was palpable.
Souls doomed to roam the Underworld, instead of resting in the Elysian Fields, or wandering the endless plains of the Asphodel Meadows, or — perhaps worst of all — freed of the pits of Tartarus.
As time slowly passed, our power waned.
The souls continued to test us, to toe our invisible boundaries. I could not hold them back indefinitely, but perhaps I could hold them just long enough for Arch and his father to finish.
“How much more time do you need?” I shouted, not daring to take my eyes off the storm for even a moment.
“Two days, maybe three!” Arch called back. His voice was laden with the heft of his task, straining as they worked to fix my mistake.
I never intended to cause such destruction — but for my storm-wielder to live, I’d gladly do it all over again.
Even knowing what it truly cost in the end.
“Just a little longer, Nyss, we’re coming to help,” he said as though I’d conjured him by will alone. For a moment, I wondered if I’d gone mad again. But then a mop of unruly blonde hair entered my periphery.
“Do I finally get to meet the ‘we’?” I grunted, faltering under the strain.
A flash of teeth. “You do. Because this isn’t sustainable. You can’t continue, lest you end up like us.”
“What do you mean?”
“Nightshade?” Caelus’ alarm spiked my heart rate, as his thumb brushed the skin above my lip.
I dared not take my eyes off the shades, but it was impossible to miss the flash of gold as his hand withdrew.
“Stop,” he murmured. “You have to stop.”
“I can’t,” I said through gritted teeth.
“Please, stop.” His words had turned into a plea.
“Golden, I can’t. They need to finish—”
“And they shall, my darling girl,” an unfamiliar voice promised from somewhere in the darkness. Her tinkling tones were reminiscent of dew drops on green leaves as spring begins to grace the land.
I ventured a glance at the newcomer, and almost fell to my knees as I looked upon her.
Standing with one ghostly hand perched on my shoulder, and the other held tightly in the grasp of someone I knew well… was my mother.
Somehow, Persephone — the goddess of Spring — had come.
With honeyed tresses just like her mother… and eyes the exact same shade of green as my own — drinking up every inch of my face.
“Mother?” I whispered as tears tracked freely down my face. “Father?” I asked as my gaze flicked between them.
Hades gifted me with a rare soft smile.
“How are you here?”
They exchanged a look loaded with a wealth of unspoken words.
“We’re here because of you,” my mother said.
“And because Charon was relentless,” my father added, shooting him a glorified eye roll. “He begged us to come. Warned us that if we didn’t…”
“You’d join us sooner that we ever intended,” Persephone finished.
The ease with which they interlaced their sentences sent a sharp pang of something through my heart. Whether it was happiness that they’d found each other, anguish that they’d both left me, or a bittersweet combination of both, was something I would have to analyse through recollection.
The shades pressed again, taking advantage of my momentary lapse in concentration.
I raised my arms higher, crying out wordlessly as I threw my waning power back at them, halting them once more. Ichor gushed freely out of my nose now, coating my leathers in the most bewitching of warpaints.
“Nightshade, please.” Caelus grasped my face in both hands, demanding as much of my attention as I could spare. “Please. I’m begging you — don’t leave me. Not yet.”
Anguish tore me in two.
Charon stepped up beside him, their expressions startlingly identical. “Nyss, you have to go.”
Two ghostly hands grasped each of my shoulders, the echo of ancient power lending strength to their grip so that I could feel their desperation.
“My beautiful, brave girl,” Persephone lamented. “It is not our time yet. You still have much to accomplish before we meet again.”
When I faced her, it was like looking into a mirror. A brighter, less jaded reflection. Even in death, she had so much life about her.
“Hellion,” Hades whispered, using a nickname I’d not heard in decades — the one he’d given me after the hallway of portraits incident. “Let go.”
“I can’t!”
“Let us take this burden.”
“Others need you. They call, even now,” my mother added, her eyes staring at something in the far-off distance.
My arms trembled under the crushing weight of souls. “I don’t know how.” The words fell out in choked sobs. Delegation had never been my strength.
But together, my parents and Charon raised their spectral arms and took the load forcibly from me. Whatever power they each still possessed forced the storm of souls higher, allowing Archimedes and his father to finish their task.
Hephaestus looked over, nodded his thanks, and lifted another black puzzle piece into its allotted place.
Exhaustion crippled me. If not for Caelus’ strength and fast reaction time, I’d have collapsed in a pile of boneless-queen on the ground at his feet. He scooped me up into his arms and summoned a shadowgate with scrunched brows and fierce concentration.
The darkness flickered in my periphery as he moved toward the portal, but my eyes were too busy scraping up every last visual ounce of my parents I would likely ever receive.
“Hellion?” Hades asked with a wicked grin. “Give Kronos my regards when you end him.”
My lips twisted to match. “Yes, sir.”
Caelus crossed the threshold then, and the nothingness between places swallowed us whole.