Bandages and Salt (PJO X BSD AU)

Chapter thirty-six

I watched as surprise cut off the other boy's own words as his eyes widened with something like shock. Turning around, I found myself before a startling beautiful Greek warrior.

The man had a beautiful face turned cruel from the reality of a war long ago left behind to the rest of the world. His hair was long, a golden color that would have shined like the sun if there was any light to let it. His eyes were the most human thing about him, a liquidy green that reminded me of a shallow sea. He wore a white tunic and had Greek battle armor adoring his body, there was a lethal gracefulness to his movements when he moved even as an arrow dug its way into his heel.

I didn't have to ask who he was. This hero is one of the few that most people in the modern world would know even if they had no interest in Greek myths. What I did wonder though was just how much modern beliefs influenced the appearance of the heroes of old stories.

In the Iliad, the hero before me hadn't been as invincible as he was believed to be now. Back then, he had only been remarkably skilled and had died in battle getting revenge against the enemy soldier that had killed Patroclus. In the earlier stories, an arrow blessed by Apollo had killed the hero's companion since Patroclus had gotten too close to defying fate. I don't know if they were really just companions as most stories say, or if they were something more, but looking at the warrior now was like looking at a half a soul that desperately wanted to become whole once more.

"Achilles," I said, watching as the ghostly figure drew closer.

The ghost only nodded, a solemn look softening the cruel look carved into what once should have been a kind face. "I told the other one not to follow in the path that I created, now I'm warning you."

I hummed, taking in the information that the deceased was giving me. It was the confirmation that I needed to know that we were on the right path.

"Do not do this," the ghost pressed on, not seeming to realize that just how useless his words were right now, not to something as suicidal and desperate as I currently was. "It will make you powerful, but it will also make you weak."

"It was your own arrogance that made you weak," I told the spirit. "You believed yourself to be invincible and forgot about those around you. Don't act like we're the same."

I knew that I wasn't invincible, I all but reveled in the fact. If I was invincible, it would be much harder to die as I wished to. I would actually have to live to see my own death. This was as close to invincible as I was willing to go, only because I knew that at the heart of it wasn't quite so.

"I have to do this," I told the Greek hero, something alien slipping into my tone.

It's the only way that we both make it through.

I don't know if the hero was just too used to the heated defiance that all those that came here before seemed to have, or if he'd given up on trying because the spirit only sighed, something cold and ghostly before he spoke, "Let the gods witness that I tried.

"You must concentrate on a mortal point, your mortal point. You have to pick a spot on your body that will remain vulnerable even as everything else becomes the exact opposite. This point is where your soul will anchor your body to the mortal world. It will keep you human. It will become your greatest weakness but also your only hope," the spirit explained.

As he spoke, I wondered just how likely it truly was that I would live through what was to come. I was never someone that many would truly call human even before I made my way to Japan. But I knew that I had to do this, I knew it as well as I knew the familiar clench in my heart that came from doing something that I didn't want to. For the first time in years, I was staring down at an almost inevitable death, and I didn't want to see it come. I still wanted to die, but I didn't want to die like this.