*Fireworks* *Explosions*
I am done with Mark Of Athena! Oh, my gosh, this took longer than I expected, but man, it feels good to have finally made it through all of that. And the House of Hades story shall be up soon, pals!
Review! Enjoy! All that jazz!
:)
Third Person: Zytaveon
That night, Veon couldn't sleep.
It had taken some time, but he'd finally convinced Nico to rest, and once his head hit the pillow, he was out like a light. Veon, on the other hand, couldn't calm his mind enough to rest.
All he could think about were his regrets, the dread of the future to come, and all that stood between him and getting Lu back. Zyanya was gone. From now on, Lucy would be Lucy again. At least, that's how he saw it. He needed to get his best friend back. He could finally see Kaze's point of view on the matter, how she was so willing to turn against everything she wanted to please her goddess. But he knew, in the back of his mind, that she didn't have many options. Closing the Doors wasn't an easy task, and getting the power of Chaos would help immensely, not to mention when Percy and Annabeth fell, they needed that power, even more, to help the two demigods survive.
He gripped his pillow angrily. But it should've been him.
He wasn't sure when he fell asleep. All he knew was that his mind was wandering throughout the scenarios that might've turned out differently, that he was mentally torturing himself as his brain refused to settle down, and then his thoughts began to drift away as he passed out from exhaustion.
He saw the landscape of Tartarus, although it wasn't like one of those previous visions where he was actually there, feeling the air and ground. It looked more like a movie playing in front of him, instead. He saw his lance suddenly plunge from the top of the screen, digging itself into the ground with a thud and a bit of ringing as it pierced the glassy ground. Moments later, a person came flying down beside it. They hit the ground hard, sending earth flying, but the lance remained in place, embedded in the ground. When the dust settled, he saw that it was himself.
The vision of him pushed himself up from the ground with one arm, his other bent at a painful angle. He was covered in cuts and blood, one of his eyes swollen shut - as that was the side he'd landed on, no doubt - his clothes were torn, he was struggling to breathe, and his skin was turning an unnatural poisonous color. He barely managed to move, his one arm trembling from holding the weight of him up, and then dragging himself forward towards his lance. He coughed up blood as he moved, but considering he should've been dead from the impact alone, he was actually in good condition by comparison. He climbed out of the crater he'd made, reaching his lance that was just outside the edges of it. He took it in his hand, pulling hard with his weak and single arm, before it slowly lifted from the ground. He then used it as a sort of walking - or crawling - cane, stabbing it into the ground to pull himself forward. He made it to a small clumping of rocks before sitting with his back against them, too tired to do anything else, and his lance dropping to the ground beside him. His heavy breaths ragged, he passed out against the rocks, sure he was going to die any second.
And then, a pair of Titans came walking up. They stopped in front of him and began arguing, but Veon couldn't hear what they were saying. Then, one of them reared back a fist and punched down the Veon in the dream, knocking him to the side with a heavy right hook to the head. He coughed up blood, but couldn't move as he was stomped on and kicked by the two monsters, laughing with glee. And once they were done, they dragged him off by his arm deeper into the hellish wasteland.
Veon remembered this. He'd been in that position in his dream once, long ago, back in Camp Half-Blood when he'd first arrived and been claimed by his father. He stomped back to his cabin, pondered the fate of the prophecy he'd been given, and then he'd seen this in his dream. But before he could see where the Titans were taking him, the scene began to flicker. He saw images of what had just happened, him being beaten up, him crawling across the ground with his lance, him barely managing to pull himself out of the crater he'd made, him picking himself up right after he'd hit the ground, and then the image of the lance falling from the sky, embedding itself in the ground.
The scene was restarting, Veon realized.
But this time, when the person came crashing to the ground, another blur was flying off in another direction, falling towards a river in the distance. Veon was sure that hadn't happened the first time. But he didn't have time to ponder things as he saw that this time, the person who'd fallen and made the crater next to his lance wasn't him, it was Lu. She had similar injuries to him, except her arm wasn't twisted in the wrong direction - and he realized that arm-twisting was something she'd fixed after Tsuchi had kicked his elbow to snap it in the wrong direction. There was a distinct injury that Veon noticed was in place of his arm. On her chest, her shirt had a hole burnt through it just about an inch below the base of her neck, and inside, a pure black oval gem was literally burnt into her skin. Her skin had scarred around it, as though it was trying to consume the thing, as though it had been there for a long time, like it was meant to be there. It was the same gem that she'd taken from him. The same one that she had previously given.
She struggled her way up and out of the crater, although she had two arms to work with instead of just one, and when she came to the top, she seemed surprised to see that Veon's lance was there. She was hesitant to reach out for it, but grabbed it and struggled to release it from the ground just as he had done previously, albeit she took much less time and effort with her extra arm over him. She was able to stand using the lance, but ultimately had to use it like a cane just as he had, hobbling her way over to the same rock that Veon had rested against. She slumped where he had sat, dropping the lance in the same position as well. Everything was playing out nearly identical, even with the differences scattered about.
Then, Veon remembered what happened next. As the two Titans came stomping up, Lu was still conscious, and looked to them in expectancy. She was breathing in the toxic air just as easily as Veon had - that is, not very easily at all - and she was in no position to resist. The two of them argued once more, but this time, they seemed more distressed, probably expecting Veon and not her. Finally, they seemed to come to an agreement that they would have to take her instead. But when the first Titan walked up and was readying to punch her like he had Veon, she closed her eyes, her face scrunched with painful concentration, and just before the blow landed, her eyes opened to reveal they were pure and completely jet black. Veon only saw them for a split second, but he knew that there was power within them, a dark, terrifying, and all-consuming power.
And then, his vision cut out, and he gasped to realize he was awake again, sitting in his bed. He looked over to see Nico was still sleeping. Luckily, he had a queen-sized bed, and so there was plenty of room for the two of them (they were brothers, sleeping in the same bed wasn't that weird, pervs!), but he worried that his sudden awakening had aroused his brother. Nico was a light sleeper, he knew. But Nico seemed far too exhausted after everything that had happened and was actually getting a night's worth.
Veon sighed, but knew he wasn't going to get to sleep anytime soon. Curiosity gripped him from something he'd seen in the dream. Having nothing better to do, he crept to the bathroom and closed the door before flipping on the light switch. He looked to himself in the mirror. When he'd woken up in his room, his shirt hadn't been affected, but now, he pushed his fingers gently against his chest, right about where he assumed it would be, and was surprised when he felt a numbing pain jab him. For a moment, it felt like he couldn't breathe, as the pain was right where his trachea would be and it numbed that entire area with overwhelming agony.
As he regained his bearings, slowly but surely, he lifted his shirt off carefully to see that the white gem that Lu had slammed into his chest when she'd teleported him back to the ship was now freshly embedded in his skin. The skin was raw around it, not like it had been for her in the dream, but even though he could breathe again and the pain had lessened, he still felt like he was suffocating. Before, she had just given him a necklace, she had worn a necklace herself. Why did the gems have to be literally embedded in their chests now?!
He had no idea what these things were, but if they were related to the goddess and her husband - Order and Chaos, he now knew - then that means she just gave him Order's gem and took Chaos's gem for herself, since he was supposed to have taken Chaos previously. That's why she had given the black one to him before. He should've guessed there was something else. And yet he still accepted it. He couldn't fathom why, but maybe there was an outside influence that made him do it. Yet now they were switched. Did that mean…?
His thoughts were interrupted when he saw a light flashing bright through the mirror. He turned to the small window in the bathroom to see as it popped open and a snake of white glowing smoke trailed inside. Before Veon could even think of running, it surged up to him, and forced its way into his mouth. Everything went white for a moment, and it felt like someone was forcing a stream of cold, thick, heavy air down his mouth and nose at the same time, as though he was taking a deep breath, but he couldn't stop and was going to overload on air. It had a similar effect, making him feel like he'd gotten too much oxygen to his brain, and he passed out.
When he woke, the first thing he saw was a white blur. As his eyes adjusted, he saw that he was sideways, and the blur formed into two legs, wearing white combat boots and white jeans. He pushed himself so that he was resting on his arm and was vertical once more, before looking up to see who was standing above him. In the end, he saw that it was his own face. Sort of.
He was dressed in a pure white version of Veon's regular outfit, and though it was no doubt him that he was looking at, his face seemed different somehow. It was more ethereal, a sharp handsomeness that looked good at one moment, but also downright frightening at the same time. His features were more defined, like an older version of Veon, and he was standing with his arms crossed, looking down at the demigod as though he had been waiting patiently for him to wake up. And he looked pissed.
"Do you know what you've done?!" He spat.
