I'm still laying on the ground and the shield is still around me. I can't breathe. My mind is slowly drifting to the void. I can see myself laying on the ground in a pool of my own red blood. I'm watching the scene not with my own eyes, because my body is down on the floor. I'm floating in the sky, watching everything around. Alec is punching the shield, his knuckles bloodied. He's crying, screaming, struggling. Umbra is in Lux's arms, shaking; and from his red eyes are flowing tears. The Sphinx is watching the scene silently.
Then she opens her mouth.
"Alec. Your brother died instead of you because your time was up when you answered. Yet the answer you gave me is wrong. The correct answer is Day and Night. You will also have to die."
"My pleasure." He opens his palm waiting for the dagger to form.
But even my spirit will not accept that. Something is happening. I feel it.
Then a light brighter than any I've ever seen shoots towards the sky, and I realize it's coming from me. Then I'm being sucked back into my body, and Hera's voice is ringing not in my head but in the whole world. "That's it. The curse has been lifted. Lux, take the mirror out."
I can only hear. I can't move, and I can't see anything. Then the light starts fading out. I can move again.
I lift my head, look at my chest, and at the dagger sticking out of it.
I can't believe what I'm seeing.
To the blood already wetting my clothes and the ground is being mixed something new, that's also coming out of my wound.
Blood. Yet it's golden.
The shield is destroyed now and Lux runs forward, the mirror in his hand. Alec drags himself towards me and holds my head, but I don't move a muscle. I'm looking at my reflection in Lux's mirror. At first, I see my face. But then it's slowly starting to turn into Athena's, her big, warm smile illuminating everything around. Then she steps aside, but she's still in the mirror. And now next to her I recognize the face of another god. Poseidon's. They look at each other, smiling, then at me, and realize we actually have a lot of traits in common.
"Alec, what is this, what does this mean?!"
"It means that you are a god yourself, brother. The god of Protection and Sacrifice."
YOU ARE READING
Demigod Tales
General FictionWhen Hera and Zeus take over Hospitium, my village, and hold captive my mother Athena and the rest of the gods, my curious instinct pushes me further. There must be something I can do. And there is. Hera chooses to send me on a mission along with my...
