Chapter 31 Nyssa
Nyssa
The shades were almost upon the only two living figures on the Isle of Judgement when Aph, Evie and I arrived.
Though still held aloft, there were somehow more of them than there’d been last time — courtesy of Kronos and his fucked up snakes, I guessed — amassing in a gigantic black cloud above the unaware heads of Hephaestus and Archimedes.
The only thing stopping the shades from descending upon the two gods of craftmanship, and wreaking chaos this realm had never known: my parents.
With arms raised high and hands clasped in the middle — as though, even in this, they would not be parted — Hades and Persephone stood guard over them.
And with as much of a reprieve as they could seize, Hephaestus and Archimedes placed the final obsidian keystone into its place atop the archway to Tartarus.
All three gateways were complete.
Wasting no time, for there was little to spare — my parents were almost completely transparent now — I sprinted to the first gateway. Evie ran with me, sword unsheathed and eyes alert for anything, while Aph darted over to the panting, exhausted, and filth-covered men.
I was grateful that none of the living could see the danger of the dead lurking mere inches above their heads.
“Hurry, Nyss,” Charon called as he lent his strength to my parents’. They were spent, and I knew my time was limited. “I don’t know how much longer we can hold them.”
“Not… long,” my father rasped.
“On it,” I said, placing my palm atop the cool stone.
Closing my eyes, I called on that morsel of power stored deep within my core.
The tiny ball of light danced joyfully to the surface — all too willing to give parts of itself to the stone, imbuing it with the magic of Life itself.
Tingles danced across the skin of my hand and I smiled as I opened my eyes to the purest white light beneath my fingertips, sinking merrily into the arch.
Seconds later, the air within the stones shimmered — like if I reached out to touch it, I’d feel the soft, glossy weight of gossamer between my fingertips.
I dared not, knowing the temptation of paradise might be too great to withstand, and the realms would find themselves without a ruler once more.
What would happen to Caelus if I did, though? Would he immediately drop dead and join me in the Elysian Fields? Or would he instead take on my allotted lifespan, alone?
A shiver darted down my spine at the thought.
Today was not the day for that particular answer.
I could never willingly doom him to an eternity alone.
My gaze flicked over to my parents. They weren’t soul bonded, yet still were not able to survive without each other. Our situation was theirs tenfold.
“That’s my girl,” my mother said, ghostly tears rimming her lower lashes. Her eyes — the exact same shade of green as my own — closed as she adjusted her stance and forced more of her strength into holding the billowing, wailing cloud of souls back.
One down, two to go.
As I darted to the middle arch, I risked a glance at my friends.
Hephaestus and Archimedes lay sprawled on the ground right where I’d sentenced Zeus — a lifetime ago.
Aph crouched between them, offering murmurs of reassurance, clasping Arch’s hand tightly as she leaned down to speak with his father.
Arch met my gaze, with something worryingly like resolve hardening his features, and rose into a seated position. A question seemed to cross the distance between us — unspoken and cautiously asked, but asked nonetheless.
Can you do this? His eyes seemed to say.
And as I slapped my hand down on the dust-covered gateway to the Asphodel Meadows, I dipped my head in a terse nod and called on my mother’s gift once more.
Yes.
Life responded instantaneously, flowing down my arm from its starting point in my chest. It soothed every nerve on the way down, like a fresh burst of rain on a hot summer’s day. Even the air seemed to lighten in its presence.
This time a full minute passed and Life’s light dimmed to a faint, pearly glow.
It seeped into every crack in the stone, filled every fissure, until the entire archway shone from within.
The light faded into nothingness, and the damage was undone.
The air within this gateway flickered into existence as well, and a chorus of moans echoed over the still river water as shades felt the call to go home.
Almost. Just one to go.
I turned towards the last arch — the one that would send Kronos home — and my vision blurred. Shades seemed to press in on all sides — or was that blackness my shadows?
What are they doing here?
Dazedly, I registered the taste of honeyed nectar on my tongue and the scent of ambrosia in my nose, mingling with the frostiness of the shade-plagued isle.
Odd.
Raising what felt like a stranger’s hand to my face — a hand that moved too slowly and limply it couldn’t possibly have been mine — I rubbed the tickling sensation away from the space beneath my nose and upper lip.
Faintly horrified to discover that it came away golden and metallic — covered far too fully to be anything less than a bad nose bleed — I stared at my glittering hand wondering what I was doing and why I was bleeding right now.
Every breath scraped. Every inhale clawed and every exhale was forced. Heavy.
But still I forged ahead. I had a job to do. Something important. Something…
There.
My gaze latched onto that final gateway, and I lifted a heavy foot to get to it. Unfortunately, the ground decided now was the most opportune time to lurch beneath my boots, and my knees buckled.
“Nyssa!” someone called. A woman, I thought dreamily.
Ignoring the concern in her voice and the twinge of fear lancing my heart, I crawled toward that final obsidian archway. Gold splattered the stone floor beneath me — so stark on the obsidian.
My head felt so heavy, so weary, I could barely keep it upright.
I longed so badly to collapse, to curl into a ball and sleep, but that black monstrosity glared at me. It taunted me with the knowledge that I needed to finish this task if we were to have any chance at defeating Kronos.
A familiar crop of red hair and intense amber eyes filled my field of vision, cutting off my view of the arch.
“Move, Aros,” I slurred around a too-heavy tongue. “I need to finish.”
I tried to shove him away, but he was immoveable.
Lump of a god.
Aros lifted a bronzed hand and two immaculately kept fingers snapped before my nose, assaulting my senses. Blinking rapidly, I tried to shake the lingering crack out of my skull, and those amber eyes came closer.
“You have... pretty eyelashes,” I said as the lashes in question multiplied and floated dizzyingly around in circles.
“Nyssa,” a decidedly feminine voice snapped.
I giggled at the oddity of Aros sounding like that. Then a second pair of eyes joined the swirling amber irises — cerulean blue and framed with long blonde lashes.
I smiled, because Aphrodite was looking at me. She saw me. The goddess of desire desired me — my friendship. And I sorely needed her, especially after…
“Charon,” I whimpered as the face of my friend hovered above me, albeit upside down and mostly transparent.
A fourth face pushed in beside him. Dark hair, deep blue eyes, and a short black beard caused by weeks of no shaving.
“Nyssa,” Arch murmured, the sound almost lost to the keening wail of displaced souls. “You have to stop now. You’ve given enough. Let me finish it.”
All four faces undulated above me, each painted in various stages of grief. Grieving the loss that was to come, the sacrifice Arch was about to make if I’d let him.
“No,” I growled. “Not you, too.”
Charon met my gaze head on, something like regret shining back at me.
“Nyssa, if you do this, we might lose you instead,” Aros said, and as my vision cleared momentarily, I realised that it wasn’t Aros at all, but his twin, Evie.
Of course. He’s in Strathos. With Caelus.
“Caelus,” I sobbed.
If I did this, what would become of him? What would even be the point? The prophecy couldn’t be fulfilled unless I fulfilled it — and this wasn't that. Was it?
No. Someone has to send Kronos back. It has to be me.
But how could I instead choose to let my friend sacrifice himself to fix what I broke?
I couldn’t.
Not again.
I shoved them all aside, and rolled over onto my stomach. The arch was right there, all I had to do was reach for it.
And with a cold sense of finality, with an icy wash of fear coursing through my heart, I stretched up and laid my fingers against the black stone of the final arch.
Even gods can break.
The whispered warning came from everywhere and nowhere all at once. Perhaps it came from my own soul. From the Death or Life that lay within me. From my parents. From the Sisters. From Fate itself.
Heedless of the warning, I called on those last dredges of buoyant power — those last flickers of brilliant light — and begged them to finish the task.
Someone’s warm grip wrapped around my other hand, and I blinked down at where my own fingers were dwarfed by the dirt-stained, calloused grip of a blacksmith.
“Take it from me, Nyss. It’s a much better way to go out than slowly, piece by piece, with every weapon or tool I forge for this war. Allow me to make amends for the blade I created that stole Charon from you, and almost stole your soulmate.”
Arch’s handsome face fell as he squeezed my fingers.
Aphrodite clutched at his arm, sobbing, “No.” Her eyes rained tears down her cheeks, silently begging me not to do what he asked.
And it was then that I understood: somewhere along the way, Aphrodite had opened her heart to another, and now he, too, was at risk of deserting her to this cold, hard world.
And I couldn’t allow it.
I wouldn’t.
“No,” I said again, tossing his hand aside.
Through gritted teeth I roared, shoving all of my mother’s power — my power — down my arm and into the stone. It scraped and clawed, desperate to remain with me. But no one else was sacrificing themselves for the greater good — or worse, for my mistakes.
“Nyssa, you can’t do this alone,” Arch tried again. “You don’t have enough power on your own. You said yourself that Life was required to fix them, and I can sense the brokenness of the weapon inside you. My power calls to it, to fix it, so TAKE IT FROM ME!”
“No!”
And just when that last tendril unwound from the blackness of my soul, winding slowly down my nerves, I knew he was right.
It wasn’t enough.
I sobbed, torn between sending it all anyway, even though I knew deep in my bones that it wouldn’t be enough to repair the gate, or holding onto it and siphoning from one of my dearest companions as he was asking me to do.
A hand encircled mine again and I looked down to see those same calloused, scarred fingers.
“No,” I cried, voice breaking on the single, devastating syllable.
A gentle finger lifted my chin, and though I was looking at familiar dark eyes and features, it was not Archimedes’ face before me, but that of his father, Hephaestus.
“Take it from me instead, my queen. Spare my son the curse he unwittingly forged for himself the day he found my old workbook from the last Titan war. Let me fix my mistakes, too. Take what you need from my soul to mend this gate, and give the rest to him, so that he may live out the rest of my days, too.”
“Papa, no!” Arch cried, throwing himself around his father’s torso.
“Archimedes.” Hephaestus smiled down at him with tear-filled eyes.
“You are the greatest thing I ever had a hand in making. And you will do wondrous things in this new world that you are building. All of you.” He placed a palm on his son’s cheek and kissed the top of his head — and for a moment, I saw a glimpse of their past selves — Arch as a small boy, Hephaestus much the same as he was now.
“Do better than we did. Build a world you’re proud of. ”
“You know… what you’re… giving up?” I forced out.
Hephaestus nodded. “I do.” He looked down at his son, a soft smile tugging on his lips. “And it’s no hard task, knowing that he will live. Live well, Archimedes — my beautiful son. I’m so proud of the man that you have become.”
And with tears tracking down my own cheeks, I whispered, “Thank you.”
Hephaestus just held his son closer and closed his eyes, that easy smile still in place.
And then I did the second-most abominable thing I’d ever done, and Death reached out to the Primal god of craftsmanship. She cupped her hands around his soul, caressing it, cradling it gently between her fingers, and dragged him back to the well within my body.
Hephaestus collapsed in Arch’s arms. Arch’s screams overrode the wailing of shades, and my heart broke at the sound I would never forget.
Hephaestus’ soul bolstered that last tendril of Life within me and she met him joyfully in my chest. Together, they flowed down my arm and through my fingertips, blazing brilliantly into the stone — and together, they filled every last remaining crack in its facade.
The air within the arch shimmered as Hephaestus died.
“No!” Arch cried. “Not for me! Never for me! It was my mistake,” he sobbed. “Mine.”
“Archimedes.”
And despite the sounds of his own anguish and that of the souls hovering above his head, he heard me.
I lifted a heavy hand toward him.
He jerked back, shaking his head furiously.
“Arch,” I tried again, pausing a foot in front of him.
His eyes fell to the body lying across his knees, arms still clutched around him.
“Your father wanted to give you this,” I spoke around the lump of sorrow lodged within my throat. “It’s a gift, Arch. Don’t waste it.”
Exactly three heartbeats later, he relented. Nodding a tear-stained face, his head fell and gold-tinged droplets fell on the face of the great Hephaestus.
I pressed my palm to his chest, and Life bloomed beneath it.
That white glow burned my retinas as Hephaestus’ last gift rushed to bequeath itself to his son.
Arch inhaled sharply as their two souls twined together, healing the fracturedness of his own.
He was whole. And he was absolutely broken.
And as the darkness finally rushed up to meet me, I smiled at the thought that Hephaestus’ final act was to fix the person he loved most in all the worlds.