Chapter 13 Darkness and Fear
Throughout the day the two played in the water or sat in the sand simply talking or eating. Athena had gotten stung by a jellyfish and that was when they decided to stay out of the water for the rest of the day, or at least any deeper than knee depth since Athena needed to leave the sting under the water until it felt better.
"Good thing salt-water helps healing." She commented while inspecting her arm seeing the angry red marks of the sting but it stopped hurting for the time being.
"Have you been stung by those things before? You don't seem to be affected by it much." Kozmotis commented.
"I have twice before, but the last two times were worse than this, I even got sick." She replied as they walked over to the blanket they had laid out and sat down. Kozmotis took her hand in his and lightly trailed a finger along the marks and lightly kissed the worst one. Athena smiled and leaned against him resting her head on his shoulder relaxing.
"I love you." He said softly.
"I love you too." Athena replied with a smile.
"May I ask you something?" He asked.
"You just did, but of course, you do not need to ask if you can ask me something." Athena replied teasingly. He chuckled and wrapped his arms around her wait laying back on the blanket, taking her with him. She giggled and rested her head on his chest asking, "So what is it that you want to ask me?"
He waited a few seconds before responding, enjoying the warm day and holding her in his arms.
"Would you consider the idea of us wedding?" He asked.
"You want to wed? Me?" Athena asked surprised.
"Always the tone of surprise. Yes. I would be very honored if you would consider marrying me." He answered.
"I would love to marry you Kozmotis." She replied and propped herself up on her elbow and kissed him softly. He ran his fingers through her hair and placed his hand on the back of her head to deepen the kiss.
He wrapped his arms around her and pulled her down so that she was laying on him. They stayed that way for a long time and watched the sun set before deciding to leave and took their time in going home, enjoying a nighttime stroll in the moonlight. They ended up at their usual meeting area by the river.
"We plan to go home and end up stopping." Athena said teasingly.
"Going home means going in separate directions, I don't feel like being separate right now." He replied and pulled her onto his lap, brushed her hair to the side and rested his chin on her shoulder.
"Alright. It's a nice night, I don't mind being out late." She answered with a smile as the two sat in silence listening to the sound of the water rushing by and lit by the moonlight shining down and reflecting off the rushing water's surface casting more light all over the place. Athena was soon lulled to sleep by the peacefulness. Kozmotis was fighting sleep as well and decided that it was time to leave and carried Athena home, put her in bed and laid beside her before allowing sleep to take over as well.
"What happened to Athena?" Lily, a friend of Athena's, asked. She was a nature/spring spirit with a strong air of innocence about her with curly dark hair, pale skin, average height and a thin frame and wore a light blue and yellow sundress. She looked at her friend with worry, Athena was lying on the bed with her ankles and wrists restrained to the bed the way some hospital patients need to be so they didn't pull at tubes.
"Pitch stabbed her. I don't understand why the sand didn't consume her or why she didn't become a fearling." Bunny commented.
"You become a fearling by allowing your fears to consume you or are manipulated into allowing your fears to consume you or there is likely a chance that being tainted with black sand could cause that too, but I expect Athena's will is strong enough to resist and had magical defenses against that, but probably not the illness and slow healing that it has caused." Tanjiro responded.
"Why is she restrained like that?" Lily questioned.
"Athena has proven to be an incredibly restless sleeper, it was not helping the wound at all." He answered.
"Okay so where is Tooth? How is she doing?" Lily continued.
"In the next room, I'm not sure how she is doing, Crystal and Jack are tending to her right now." Bunny responded before leaving the room to find North. Lily stayed by with Athena who's expression was scrunched up in an expression of pain and fear, sweat beaded down her face and neck so she changed the damp cloth that was now just as hot as her head.
"Could Jack help to get the fever down?" Lily asked.
"What? you wanna ask Jack if he'll be willing to lay on her until her fever is down?" Tanjiro asked jokingly to lighten the mood.
Lily rolled her eyes.
"No not necessarily that." She answered.
"I'll go get him." He replied and left the room as Bunny returned.
"Do ye think ye can heal 'er?" He asked Lily.
"Maybe help speed it up a little bit, but not very much and only the wound, not the illness." Lily answered.
"Could yah heal Tooth?" He asked.
"I'll need to go see her to know but if she is only injured then yes I could probably heal her easier than Athena." She answered.
"Why don' we go see what ye can do to help Tooth." He suggested as Crystal and Jack came into the room.
"Where'd Tanj run off to?" Bunny asked.
"Went to go help North out with something." Crystal replied.
"North said the Yetis will be able to help, they are good with medicine." Jack replied and gingerly put a hand on Athena's head and the back of her neck.
"Oh wow, she is really warm." Jack remarked. Several minutes later Lily poked her head into the room, "Tooth is alright and is awake now. According to North the Yeti's say that she'll need to rest for a few days."
"The rest of us should help in any way we can against Pitch and find out how he ended up becoming so strong so quickly.
Athena woke up in her own bed, feeling arms wrapped around her, glancing to see Kozmotis lying beside her asleep, she smiled a little and slowly started to sit up but was pulled back down by her lover.
"Hey I need to get up." She said with a laugh.
"Just stay here." Kozmotis replied sleepily, wrapping her arms around her tighter.
"Come on Pitch let me up." She replied.
"I'm comfortable just like this." He answered while nuzzling the back of her neck. She worked to pry his arms off her to get up when she was thrown back down roughly and pinned to the bed. In the back of Athena's mind she knew there was something wrong with this memory, Pitch hadn't done that. She looked up at him and the Pitch she knew started changing into a grotesque black figure with intense gold and silver eyes, it wasn't even Pitch Black.
"I told you to stay put." The figure said in a harsh cold tone, like metal scraping hard on ice, grating on Athena's eardrums.
Dark tendrils extended from the figure wrapping around her, holding her down tightly, slowly constricting tighter each time she struggled. More wrapped around her neck and started to strangle her.
She managed to free one arm and curled her fingers between the tendrils and her neck, trying to pull them off and fought against the rest but had little success. The figure laughed cruelly as it changed back to taking Kozmotis' form with a twisted sadistic smile.
Athena managed to pry the dark tendrils off and get up, taking off towards the mouth of the cave and had to stop. As soon as she stepped outside the ground at her feet fell as a deep, dark chasm opened up. She took a few steps back for a running start and jumped, grabbing the edge on the other side. She dug her nails into the ground for leverage to pull herself up and tried to find foot-holes when the creature, still retaining her loves' appearance, suddenly appeared, standing only a few inches away from her hand, immediately stomping down on her right hand hard.
She winced and cried out in pain, being forced to let go. He gave a wicked smile before bringing his foot down on her left hand multiple times until she could not hang on any longer, let go and fell down into the darkness.
She had no idea if she was still falling or not. it was completely dark all around. Absolutely no light. Completely pitch black. After a little bit she tried to move around to discover that she wasn't falling but likely suspended somehow.
The harsh, creepy, cold laugh echoed from all directions, she didn't know if it was in her heard or not. It made her skin crawl and her heart beat faster.
Athena took off running, having no particular direction in mind, only the need to get away, the fight or flight instincts, in this case it was flight.
Ahead she could see a light, normally going towards the light people would say to stay away from it but she could not stand to be in such darkness any longer, not with that thing.
"Mommy!"
Athena's heart stopped, recognizing the scream. She slid to a stop and looked back, her daughter's voice very distinct to her, even if she hadn't heard it in a very long time.
"Mommy don't leave me!" The cry came again. She resisted the urge to run back to find her daughter, in the back of her mind she was reminded of her husband's own downfall. Her feet were grounded to the floor and she couldn't move where she was, back towards her daughter's voice or away and closer to the light.
"It's not real. Just-just a trick." She whispered to herself.
"Mommy! Mommy come back don't leave me here! Please don't leave me! I'm scared! Help me!" The voice cried out again, hitting Athena deep and hard, immediately she ran back, following the voice until she saw a little girl with dark wavy hair, she was sitting on the ground in a ball crying. She hadn't seen that little girl in such a long time, her mothering instincts took over, ignoring the instincts to flee as she knelt down and pulled her little girl into her arms.
"It's alright Katherine. I'm here." Athena said soothingly while stroking her daughter's hair. The cold laugh returned from all directions as something stepped from the shadows and took Pitch Black's form. A cruel smirk played on his lips.
"Easily tricked, just like your pathetic husband." He said in the creature's cold, harsh voice layering over his own.
Katherine's small hand reached up, immediately grabbing Athena's hair and yanked her head back roughly, her eyes darkening and going completely black as the black spread like cracks in the little girl's skin, breaking it apart and tearing out of the disguise with a harsh ripping sound and towering over her. A dark substance, like a mixture of blood and pure darkness dripped from it's mouth and razor sharp, gray teeth. The ting's head was about three times larger than a normal head and it's teeth were the size of butcher knives.
Athena shoved the creature away, scrambling to get up and took off running again, tears brimming her eyes as she ran towards the light. Her heart aching and her mind reeling as she cursed her stupidity for allowing herself to be so easily deceived.
Just as she reached it the tendrils of black lashed out at her, grabbing her ankle and knocking her down with a group of Nightmares swooping in to surround her. The black sand formed under her to drag her away but she fought against it, breaking free and had one foot over the line into the light.
The darkness grabbed her again, immediately dragging her back into the darkness as she fought relentlessly despite it being futile. More tendrils grabbed her and continued to drag her deep into the black. In front of her stood Pitch Black with his cruel, sadistic smile, watching her as she was drug deeper into the depths of his realm. He waved a hand, completely snuffing out the small ounce of hope Athena had of escape.
His laugh, mixed with the creatures (or the fearlings) echoed and came from all directions and taunted Athena as she continued to fight to be free and resist the darkness trying to crawl into her mind to find anything it can use to further torment her.
"Always the fighter love. You will give up soon. Once I find more to use against you, you will break and you will not be waking up anytime soon. Maybe if we're lucky you will never wake up and the fun will never have to end." The voices said, continuing to layer over one another as it whispered in her ear. Sharp nails scratched at her skin as she fought for freedom.
"Mommy? Why won't you help me?" What appeared to be Katherine appeared and was being tormented before her, crying and terrified, even though Athena knew it was a trick it still pulled at her heartstrings fiercely, causing the brimming tears to fill her eyes, blur her vision and spill over. She tried looking away and fighting to block the sound out with her hands but the darkness would not let her. Forcing her to watch and listen to her daughter's terrified screams and cries of fear and pain.
"NO!" Athena screamed.
I'm so sorry!
I was having a hard time in working with Athena's nightmare. I wanted to do something really creepy, but kind of unconsciously decided to save that stuff for later chapters and this one is kind of the beginning nightmares, throughout these next chapters I will continue with the same opening, throw in some nightmares for Athena here and there but I plan to focus on the other characters more too, with the new ones and the guardians becoming more acquainted and such. If you want any romance among the other characters please let me know because otherwise there is really only one paring that will be developing among them so tell me and I'll work them in as well (I'm kind of a hopeless romantic deep down). You will be finding out exactly what is going on with Pitch's super fast gain to power (just haven't decided exactly when yet, but soon) and as always there will continue to be fighting :)