Chapter 37
Nyssa
Blinking to clear my vision did absolutely fucking nothing to actually clear it. Nor did calling the darkness back to me.
These were not my shadows. They were no allies of mine.
A sharp snap sounded nearby — suspiciously like clicked fingers — and all at once I was plunged into a desert.
Endless red dunes lay before me, spread out in each direction as far as I could see.
I half expected the rolling amphisbaena to make a second appearance, somehow surviving the fatal wounds Caelus and I had inflicted upon it last year.
A shudder darted down my spine at the thought.
Fucking snakes.
The irony was not lost on me that my shadows’ chosen form was also fucking snakes.
“Where the fuck am I, and how the fuck did I get here?” I murmured. To the voice, I shouted, “What trickery is this?”
To which he replied with nothing more than a rolling, dagger-sharp laugh.
The longer I stood still, contemplating his demise and my own self-rescue, the hotter it became. My black leathers absorbed all the light of Helios’ sun, chafing and cooking me just like it had in Apollo’s trial.
I took a step forward, anticipating the shifting crunch of sand beneath my feet, but instead the soft squelch of rotting leaves greeted me. My vision shifted again and I was standing within a familiar, eerie forest with trees of ivory and bones for limbs.
Demeter’s Bone Orchard.
Dazedly, I glanced around, wondering how I’d managed to shadowstep — albeit unwillingly — using someone else’s shadows.
Light filtered in through the rotting leaves high overhead, giving the foggy orchard a haunted feel.
I knew if I kept walking along this seldom used track, I’d wind up at the enormous Tree of Threnos, beholder of Demeter’s broken heart.
“Not today, tree. I’ve got all the grief I can handle right now,” I muttered, spinning on my heel and exiting the grove instead.
A few minutes of hiking later and the skeletal trees faded into elms and oaks. The fog dissipated and sunlight shone through the gaps in their vibrant emerald leaves. A few steps later, I emerged in a clearing filled with wildflowers.
A meadow where a hydra once lay, slain, and a tiny dragon almost shared the same fate — for this was a clearing seared permanently behind my eyelids, in a forest I had visited only once but would know instantly.
The Forest of Artemis.
“How the fuck does this keep happening?”
I whirled around, trees blurring as I moved, and spun straight into a hard stone wall. The impact jarred my face, taking the brunt of the blow. My eyes smarted and my nose ached fiercely, likely broken. A trickle of golden blood smearing my forefinger only confirmed the diagnosis.
“I told you: foolish,” the voice whispered from somewhere close by, and I reacted without consciously choosing to.
My fists flew in the general direction of the voice’s origin and I was rewarded with a muffled grunt. Though the man was still invisible, at least his deceit had finally cost him something.
He growled, dodging my next blow, and followed up by a second snap of his fingers.
In an instant, I was transported to a forsaken fortress, still stained with the crimson blood and mutilated bodies of soldiers.
It was every bit as horrifying as the first time I’d beheld them, and my gaze lingered on the one whom I’d spoken to.
The one I’d granted the peace of oblivion and sent on his way with a bronze obolus.
Snap.
The man was gone. In his place was a dark chamber and three eerily cloaked figures.
Snap.
The room lit up with thousands of brilliantly glowing golden threads, my gaze snagging on the one right in the middle that started as two but merged into one. Thick emotion lodged itself in my throat.
Snap.
A winter tundra greeted me, my feet sinking into inches thick snow and my breath exiting in a visible puff.
Snap.
The ice was replaced by an inferno. One gigantic forge burned steadily to my right and a worktable appeared on my left. I reached out to touch it, immediately thrown into fresh sorrow by the absence of the gargantuan god it belonged to.
Snap.
My hand passed through the now non-existent bench, throwing my balance off-kilter and sent me sprawling in the dirt of the arena.
The sand tasted more ashen than earthen and I spat it out as I got to my feet.
Unlike in Ares’ trial, this arena was still, silent — empty.
The midday sun only illuminated the lack of bodies in seats, and lack of champions to defeat.
But no — I’ve already defeated them.
Snap.
Instead of a sandy arena floor, my boots now stood on the rotting deck of a long-since sunken ship as we swayed to and fro on Poseidon’s tumultuous seas.
Snap.
The mottled grey, tentacled limb of Scylla reached out and plucked Aros from the deck right in front of where my ankle was trapped in it. She pitched him through the air, into the cliff face, and he disappeared beneath the roaring waves.
“Stop it!” I roared, lashing out at everything I had and landing no hit.
Snap.
A glorious feast laid out on a dining table overlooking Aetherion. There was the sparkling pink wine and Aros’ favourite lemon tarts.
Snap.
A mirror-filled arena with a gold-clad goddess standing in the middle.
Snap.
Darkness. Final and absolute.
“Have you figured it out yet?” the voice taunted from somewhere in the endless oblivion of night. “Have you realised who holds the key to your demise?”
“No one holds the key to my demise. Not you, Hyperion” — he purred — “Not Kronos, or any other big bad Titan wanting to gut me for world peace,” I spat.
I sensed movement in the blackness. Though I could see nothing, I still felt the ground beneath my feet; still heard the faint clamour of battle in the distance; still tasted ash on the breeze.
I was still in Hellespont, and this giant, bull-headed, gaping asshole of a light bulb thought he’d outwitted me.
“Ah, so you do recognise your betters after all,” he leered. His breath reeked of stale bread and stagnant ale. “She said you’d be asinine.”
“The last one who thought themself better than me ended up with a blade tearing through their skin. His vapid little bitch did, too,” I snarled.
“Tsk, tsk,” Hyperion tutted. “I’d caution against speaking ill of that one. She wants you as dead as your mother is.”
I snarled — a wordless sound emanating from the back of my throat. My fingers splayed, itching to cause damage to a man I couldn’t see. “Do not speak of my mother.”
“No?”
The darkness shifted and I wasn’t in Hellespont after all, but in the ruins of some long-forgotten city. Dust motes and ash flakes spiralled around in a gentle breeze — an echo of the people who once lived here.
It shifted again and ten feet before me stood a god with altogether too much audacity for whatever time in the day it currently was — the quickfire scenery changes made it hard to tell.
Bare chested and bold, Hyperion towered over the crumbled ruins surrounding us, looking for all the world like a statue built solely to portray the impudence of man.
His unusually pale skin glistened like glitter caught in the sun.
His hair — the same salt-and-pepper as his brother’s — hung almost to his waist, tangled in matted waves like he’d never heard of a hairbrush.
His eyes — as gold and glowing as stars in place of each of his irises — stared daggers at me, above a sneer so large one would assume he was compensating.
“Who, then, should we speak of, hmm?” he growled. “Your father? The magnificent Hades who personally sent me tumbling into the abyss?”
“Oh, so, Hades is the reason for that disaster of a tan?” He growled again.
“I don’t know whether to disparage him for being the cause of this glaring dildo of a god I now have to shield my eyes from” — I gestured to his entire body — “or thank him for ensuring that this is the first time I’ve ever had the displeasure of speaking to you. ”
Hyperion moved quicker than a blink. One second he was ten feet away, the next he had his meaty hand clenched around my throat. With no apparent struggle, he lifted me into the air and snarled into my face.
I coughed, causing him to jerk back ever so slightly, upper lip curling.
“Did—you—” The rest of the sentence died as my vocal cords were strangled into submission.
Even with my feet dangling in the air somewhere around Hyperion’s shins, I managed a scowl.
Nightshade? Caelus’ faint voice slid in.
Busy, was all I sent back.
Hyperion frowned, seemingly torn. Releasing my neck ever so slightly, he asked, “Did I what?”
Air trickled back in, down my damaged windpipe and back out again as I asked the question I’d been dying to ask ever since he picked me up. “Did you visit Poseidon on your way over here?”
Hyperion’s face immediately scrunched. “I have not seen Poseidon in eons.” His brows lowered further, so severely it had to hurt. “What is the meaning of your question?”
I smirked as much as I was able given I was still hanging from his enormous hand. “Oh, nothing. Just that your breath smells like limp fish-dick.”
The insult landed exactly as I’d intended — with Hyperion bellowing, tossing me through the air, and erupting with so much light it could blind someone a mile away.
Volatile and vulnerable. Easily provoked.
I closed my eyes as I hit the ground, using the momentum to roll back into a crouched position. Darkness shot out of my outstretched palms, the inky serpents knowing exactly where to go. Except that when they should have coiled around the Titan’s legs, up his body, and into his nostrils…
They didn’t.
My stomach sank low in my belly, my skin prickling to the point of pain. When I tried to recall the shadows, the zapping sensation intensified — heightened by the delighted chuckle Hyperion set free. My hair stood on end, and ice travelled through my veins.
“You think your shadows can affect me?” he taunted, the epitome of haughtiness. “What is a shadow?”