Sabrina
I was not keen on the hugging part, but somehow, the moment called for it. I felt myself drawing near him. The prophecy should've made me push him away, to question the ounce of trust I allowed myself to give to him. Yet, there was none of that. I even invited him to lie beside me for heaven's sake. Something in his eyes told me he wanted to break free from whatever was binding him to his past, and for that, pity filled me. I was trying to run away myself.
I held his hand tightly and felt an energy flowing from his palms into mine. Was it his essence? That was uncertain. But the energy traveled in my veins and into the depths of my dreams.
My body was detached from my consciousness. I hovered over a dark space, the familiar setting of my dreams. I was inside that cursed closet again, hiding from my father. He had a whip; I heard its leathery scratches against the wall. There was rustling in the kitchen. It was feeding time. Most days were spent like this. I go to school, a block away from home, then roam freely in the apartment during the afternoon. I'd watch TV, read books, and learn what was there to know about the world. But I wasn't free to loiter outside or to talk to my peers. I had to stay inside the bubble until he came back. When he enters the apartment at night, from his so-called work, he reeked of every bit of despair. He'd curse when he noticed that I touched the books again or when the crayons were on the coffee table. All I could do was stay inside the closet until his anger subsided. On worse days, scenes like this happen. He grabs the leather whip and begins to hunt me down the hall like prey. He knows I hide in the spare room, but he enjoys taunting me, making me shake. The dreams showed me the day it happened.
"Your mother should've just kept you instead of leaving you on my damned doorstep. Heck, I should have just allowed you to die right there and then," a glass shattered as he raised the whip. Nightmares plagued me days before, it drove me slowly mad. In those dreams, revenge became a deafening howl. I clung to the blade in my palms. Its cold dark blade felt cool to the touch. I realized that those nightmares made objects come to reality as if someone was placing them beside me each time. The beads gently rolled from the string like it was bidding its time. The footsteps were close. He was zeroing in on the closet, whip at hand.
"Come out you little prick," with those last words the closet door flung open. Before the leather hits my skin, I aim the blade at his neck. There was blood and a loud thud. The pool of his blood slowly spread across the floor. Panic consumed me as vapors rose from the rich crimson. Shrills filled the room, and a woman laughed. Three shadows emerged from the smoke.
"For a child of Nemesis, you know no bounds. Prepare to be punished for the crime you have committed. We shall plague you with madness!" anger laced the tone of her voice. The first winged woman lunged towards me. I bolted out of the room. Her golden eyes were fixed on me. I was a prey again. I knew from memory I had escaped that ordeal, but the scene in my dreams soon changed. I was back in the pit, with its flaming spires and eternal darkness. It was different from the one I saw in my visions before. There was no singular booming voice, but collective howls were heard from below.
"Zagreus!" someone began to shout. He's here? I wondered. The voice came from far away. A figure fleeted from one of the spires. He was running down into the pit his eyes fixated on the darkness that loomed. He had a quiver of arrows slung on his back. A bow at hand, his pace began to quicken.
That's Zagreus, I thought. He looked almost the same as he was but with extreme hesitation in his eyes. They were bright blue, I began to realize, not the hazel I had grown to like. He ran towards the pit, following the clamoring voices inside. In the darkness, he disappeared then, a diabolical glow. There were conversations inside overpowered by a monstrous howl.
"No!" I screamed but no sound ever came. The echoes of torment pierced through eternal darkness. I can hear flesh being torn and consumed bit by bit. The Titans, the thought occurred to me.
The titans have bounded Zagreus to their stead and ate his flesh. A familiar voice began to say. It was the woman who saved me from the furies that day, Nemesis as she was called. They believed every lie that was told to Hera and passed down to them. That the boy was a son of Zeus and Persephone. The boy was simply an heir of Hades. But lies do drive everyone to madness, don't they? Tartarus never allowed it to be that way. He saved the boy's heart, planted it into Gaia to take form again then gave the boy to my mother, Nyx. He was cared for until the day he returned to avenge himself to his father.
Zagreus stands for everything wrong in the god's world. It needs to be reshaped as it is. To bring the balance again. The Underworld may have forgotten him, but the children of Nyx haven't. He needs to go back and seek what needs to be done. Help him return to the underworld. His power needs to be unleashed. Maybe then, your sins can be atoned.
Her figure did not appear in the vision, but her voice etched itself in my head. She was bidding me to do what she asked to redeem myself from the crime I had done – to keep the furies at bay. I was going to help him regardless. In the back of my mind, I still do not know what entailed his return to the underworld. I was deathly scared. The pangs of fear jolted me awake.
When my eyes opened, the sun was not yet rising. The sky was tinged with violet outside. I could hear Nico's soft snores from the far corner of the cabin. Zagreus lay asleep, his eyes moving quickly inside their lids. He was still dreaming, I realized. With hesitation, I lifted my free hand. She said they saved his heart from the Titans. I carefully placed it on his chest, where his heart was, and followed its beat. It thumped like a regular heart – like a human heart even. It synced with his soft breaths. Staring at him, I wondered if he was truly the one to settle the balance. At the end of it all, was it necessary to kill his father? But who am I to answer that?
I kept my hand on his heart until the dreams flung him awake.