I knew nothing of wrath until I had tasted passion.
I knew nothing of rancor until I had been betrayed.
I knew nothing of malice until my soul was snatched away from me.
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MY hands twitch until I hold them down. It is an instinct I have learnt to control. Afterall, how many walls could I break in a single day? The debris sits in the corner and no one has attempted to dust it away, they are scared of facing the wall I had shattered to pieces in my rage.
Is this what Varun felt? Is this what he describes as my greatest and only weakness? He is the only one who has dared to enter this room, his words act as his shield against my anger. He brings me food that I have thrown in several corners of this house, the hallways have been ransacked with plates and I'm not proud of it anymore, but that realization has only come after four long and excruciating days.
My anger is justified, at least that is what I have been telling myself. But I have been imprisoned in this house for far too long to not have bouts of anger reappear, in the middle of the day or at night.
I wasn't 'allowed', to meet Rubyn or Clarissa, to see the human who had called himself my father. I had scared Jace away and Varun, who I had barely met, had already seen most of my anger by the first day when I knocked down the first wall. I could only knock down the walls here, not the barrier his wife had built around the perimeter. Rubyn had wanted it and I had been infuriated enough to attack him for doing this but in these last few hours, consciousness and sanity has come back to me in a stable manner.
I am finally breathing, finally thinking. Now that I close my eyes, I don't see blood, I see her and she asks me to breathe so I do. It helps for a moment but then I remember that she isn't here to hold me down and the anger surges.
I need to know that there is a reason behind this. Someone needs to care enough to rescue her from the Goddess of Ghosts, of madness and nightmares, a literal child of hell. I knew she was awake, I knew she was still alive but I barely felt her, she was beyond my reach, or theirs. And except me, no one had seemed to care. No one followed the flight, no one caught my father, and no one even cared to find the assailant.
So what if she was a Goddess, did Aethera's life suddenly mean nothing to them?
"Are you ready to talk?" Varun asked, perched against the broken door.
"Are you ready to stop babysitting me? I am of no use locked in this house," I muttered.
"You are," he nodded, carefully moving inside the room. "Within these...sort of walls..." he said, rolling his eyes around at the last piece of debris cracking down from the wall in the corner, "you can connect to her, faster than any of us can find her."
"She's too far," I muttered.
"Which is why Jace is here to help you. Rubyn is already tracking her, but if you try to connect with her, in your dreams, we can reach her faster."
"Oh, so, Rubyn cares after four days," I snapped.
"He hasn't slept a day, none of us have. We do need your help, Art but in your anger, you're blind. I know it is an incomprehensible pain but you have to see her through it," Varun said, placing his hand on my shoulder.
"Jace will be here any time now. He has a device that will put you to sleep and maybe it can be helpful in tracking her if you're willing to calm down now. I am joining Rubyn in the search, the barriers are still up so don't try to -"
"You're passing the baton to another babysitter then," I shrugged his hand off me, standing in the other corner of the room within seconds.
"Prove to me that you don't need one anymore and maybe I'll let you join the search on ground. I know it doesn't mean much to you, but if you're taken too, we will never get to her; your safety is as important as hers," he said, not sparing me another glance before leaving the room.
For the first few days, I felt as if I had been rendered completely incapable of thinking. Varun had been appointed to take care of me and he had done a decent job seeing as to how the house was still standing. Rubyn had visited once, hadn't spoken a word and disappeared soon after witnessing my anger. He had decided that it was best for me to remain locked up, and it was hurtful to know that Clarissa hadn't even tried to visit.
I wasn't angry at them. Honestly, I was angry at myself.
No one was to be blamed for this. I was right next to her and I should have been enough. After all that's what we are, a team. They expected us to be alright because even if her powers hadn't come to her, mine had and I should have protected her until then. But the feeling of guilt was too much to be ignored and it had turned into anger soon enough.
The anger was now fading into a resolve to find her but then again, was there anything I could really do while locked here?
"Am I going to meet the same fate as the fine plates in the hall?" Jace peered inside the room, breaking my chain of thoughts.
"No," I whispered as he allowed himself in, a small device in his hands.
"Where do you want to set it up?" I asked, determined to get started with the process as Jace carefully placed the monitor on the table beside the bed. He took out a vial from his leather jacket, carefully opening the cover it had been secured in to reveal a purple serum.
"Is that going to put me to sleep?" I asked, inching towards it.
We had shared a similar vision before, but did that mean I could connect to her in our dreams? Could I finally see her, but did I want to? What if it left me with nothing? To know that a vision of her would be one of the last is what had haunted me, to see her once again only to be taken away from her was the driving force of my wrath. I couldn't bear to imagine it so why was I so eager to face it?
"You're going to drink this and sit there, I'm going to connect these...things," he wiggled the sensors around animatedly as I rolled my eyes and took a seat beside the bed on an old armchair.
"Hey, Ed," Jace called out and a man appeared at the door. "Has Varun left?"
"Yes, sir," the man nodded.
"Secure the perimeter and ask the others not to move a single step. If they're sitting, they'll remain seated for another hour. No one comes inside the house until I say so. Absolute fucking silence or I will hang somebody from the tree, got it?" Jace warned him as the man squirmed out the door. "Shut the bloody doors," he shouted.
"If you're not focused, this doesn't work," Jace muttered. He was riled up, and I don't know if it was because of me or the situation in general. His fingers were slightly trembling as he connected the apparatus from one end, I could feel his breathing stagger and his heartbeat was beyond fast. I tried not to notice, but the man was sweating bullets and the corner of his forehead was throbbing in anxiety.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, man," he said, a little too fast.
"If you're not calm, it doesn't affect this, right?" I had no intentions to joke around, I wasn't in that mindset but if this dumb Muppet did not follow through, I wasn't going to succeed and this would just be another waste.
"Okay so, can you hear them?" he asked me.
"Hear...who?" I asked, confused.
"The guards...around the house. Is anyone within hearing range? Has Varun left for real?" he asked.
"Yeah...but," Wait...what?
"Fuck my -"
"How do you know that I can -"
"This isn't how this was supposed to go but..." he scratched his head, trying to step away from the machine and me. Hadn't Clarissa told us that they didn't know the extent of our abilities? That people like Jace were clueless and could never know the true capabilities that all of us possessed?
"What the fuck is going on?" I asked him, carefully getting up from the chair in order to not scare him. I couldn't afford a mental breakdown, especially not his.
"Art, I know I am the last person you will listen to right now, but just...give me a minute, okay? We don't have much time left," he whispered, the vial in his hands clutched to his chest as he stepped away from me.
"You better start speaking then," I growled, growing impatient with his pathetic cowering.
"I will...but you need to know that I am going to give you this vial...and you will supposedly drink it...I will connect the sensors but we you're still agitated and need a few days more, you'll throw the chair and you will cry about it or whatever," he whispered, making absolutely no sense. "Scream at me when Varun comes back, I will run away and you will remain angry until tonight...until Varun goes back to Rubyn," Jace was moments away from being snapped to death because whatever the fuck he had said had made absolutely no sense to me.
"What the fuck are you high on, asshole?" I spat, taking a step towards him.
"Trust me -"
"Why?!" I growled.
"Because I can take you to her!" he snapped and a moment of silence ensued between us as i digested what he had just said. Aethera? He knew where she was? And how the fuck did he expect me to calm down now?
"If you remain angry, we waste time and I will never be able to get you to her," Jace said, rather too fast for me to comprehend.
"Let me get this straight, you know...you've known where she is...for how long?" I asked, slowly shaping my words and breathing. Her words echoed in my mind, I tried to bring myself back to earth. He knew something and most importantly, he knew where she was. The snapping of the throat would have to wait. "Don't you dare bullshit me now, Jace. You and I both know I am at the ends of my wit," I snapped, taking a seat on the chair, an action that was taxing enough but I had to look calm for him.
"I...Let me start at the beginning, okay? Because without context you will kill me," he warned me, sitting at the edge of the bed. "I knew of Aethera ever since she...ever since she was left at the orphanage..." what? Jace didn't seem a day older than twenty five so how did he know her...when he was five? "I...am not human. I have never been. I am not like you too. But what I am can be explained later."
I was almost certain that I sensed no one except a human and myself in this room so when Jace mentioned that he wasn't one, for the first time since she had disappeared, I focused my senses on someone else - him. And nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"You cannot sense it, no one can. Except the Gods," Exactly how much had Jace known all along? "I was assigned to keep a check on her...to ensure that she was alive and that her powers hadn't woken up yet...to report back to her...mother," Jace gulped as my brows scrunched in confusion. Aethera's mother had known of her all along and she had asked Jace to check her? What exactly was going on here? But most importantly, who the hell was he if not a human?
"We...always knew she would wake up one day. In fact the day you both found us...you were the surprise for me. I had been asked to wait in an Athanatoi house near her, wait for her. I thought because of Rubyn she would be attracted there first so I remained there for years, acting like a part of their guard, building ranks for the day she would appear. But when you came along...I knew something had shifted."
"You knew who she was before she even changed?" Athanatoi could not be sensed, even by their own blood until their powers had been awaken or they had gone through the change.
"Many of us...and her mother were waiting for her. But you know what it meant when you both changed together? That another war was near and you were its weapons. They saw you and her, they saw her blood and they assumed the worst...and now a war is brewing for no reason except the fact that someone found a better weapon after ages - you and her, together," he muttered.
"This is a misunderstanding, then? What are you getting at, Jace?" I asked, scratching my head now. The man had replaced my anger with utter confusion.
"Okay, I am seriously messing this up. I cannot believe this," he snapped at himself. "Aethera is not one of your kind. She has never been and believe me, she's not an Athanatoi. They're all confused out of their minds and assuming it all wrong, until days go by and they actually place two and two together."
"Before you came along, the plan was simple, Aethera would change, I would detect her, bring her, or she would find her own way and Rubyn would not be able to trigger her powers alone and I would help her leave that house like any other ordinary travelling Immortal...she would escape and be brought to her mother without suspicion, just another Athanatoi undergoing change. This new war wasn't on the menu, man."
"Where is her mother?" I asked, and that was just one of the questions swirling in my mind.
"Dude, open your fucking mind before Varun kills me..." Jace buried his head in his hands, taking a deep breath before meeting my eyes again. "Melinoe is her mother. Aethera is not a demigod, like you and the others, she's a true Immortal. Like, not just live as long as eternity like you will, but literally of pure blood!"
The realization of these things doesn't dawn immediately, it takes awhile, so naturally, I remained in a state of shock, trying to gulp down the information. The color of her blood, the confusion and the state of unknowingness of her ancestry...is this where it led?
"Rubyn has been fooled or maybe he has known since she walked in because half of her is Aether's blood. You were right, she wasn't Nyx's, at least not directly. I mean, she is her grandmother, but that abyss that Rubyn was lost in, trying to place her was to mask her trace away from Melinoe. We don't know if Rubyn is just waiting for you to fuck up and track Aethera for him or if he is genuinely clueless so that's why...this vial," he held the vial up against the window, "is not going to be used," his hand crushed it until every bit of the liquid seeped into the ground below.
"Varun and Karolina are the ones they wanted you to know of because they want you to be their champions...their weapons in this war, but Art, the history of the war was written by the victors. There are those like Melinoe and Aether who were brought as weapons from their realms to be used."
"She's their child...but how is that possible, the war ended eras ago," I whispered, trying to recall the books I had read earlier. It did not make sense.
"Believe it or not, it's all because of Zeus and his incapability to accept defeat," Jace whispered. "History will never tell you about the wrath of Nyx or how scared Zeus was of her out of all the other ancient Gods, history will never tell you that during the last war, she threatened to kill each and every God, including Artemis, your mother, and Zeus and Hades after her son, Aethera's father was killed."
"He died during the war -"
"A God died because the others couldn't stop a senseless war," Jace said, slumping on the bed.
"What about Aethera then?"
"She was conceived during the war, Melinoe had fallen in love with Aether and no one knew of her birth because the war kept them apart. He tried to leave, he tried to escape before she was born and he wanted to be there for Melinoe but Hades...he killed him as he was leaving the battlefield..." Jace recalled the events as if he had been there and I don't know what scared me more, what he was hiding about himself, or what awaited ahead for Aethera. "Melinoe never saw him again and for centuries she went into hiding...until Nyx found her and helped her. The Gods knew, Art, the older ones at least that the war was pointless."
"And she saved Aethera?"
"More like kept her in an abyss until the time was right. When it seemed like it was safe for her to be introduced to this world, she let her be born and within weeks, it was Nyx who safely put her on the porch of the orphan home, until, obviously you and her met and fate repeated itself."
"And you couldn't take Aethera away when she had just changed?"
"No...the blood sample that the doctor took at the infirmary was with your father's men and it was too late. Melinoe had to step away, she has remained a servant to Hades, reappearing after giving birth to keep a check...to keep Aethera away from him but she thought Aethera would be safe with the Athanatoi..until they -"
"Desired for us to be their weapon..."
"Yeah," Jace muttered. "I can take you to her...but you need to be careful because the moment you leave, half of what they had is gone too and they will definitely track us if we're stupid."
"How will we leave?"
"The barrier is weak for someone like me, I know how to get past and they won't suspect me -"
"How do I know this is not a trap? That all of this wasn't some bullshit story because if she has Aethera, she would just need me, right? Perfect weapon, but for the other side," I asked, carefully studying his eyes.
"Man, are you kidding me!?" Jace wailed, throwing his head in his hands again. "Varun will literally kill me if he hears me and comes back and you want to do this -"
"He's nowhere around," I confirmed it for Jace who was panicking more by the minute.
"You know what, I was kinda hoping that you would trust me, but thank god that your kind is stupid enough to hand me the tech, because gods know I wouldn't risk it otherwise," Jace muttered to himself, pulling out a burner phone from his back pocket.
"You're...calling her?" I asked, pointing at him punching numbers into the phone.
"You get five minutes, tops. Nothing longer because Varun will be here soon and in case we don't get time then, listen to me, you have to be angry, okay? You have to look like you're back to square one because the device didn't work. Varun will leave and he will presume that I got away too. I will see you tonight, do not leave this room until I am come back to pick -"
"Got it, dial the phone now," After everything he had said, I don't know why but it felt better to know that Aethera was okay...that someone she knew existed out there and in their own way was protecting her.
But for her, I overthink too much. Soon the feeling was followed by distrust; what if nothing he said was true and she was locked in a dungeon where I would join her soon? I needed to know what he said was right, I needed to know she was alright.
"Yo, is she around?" Jace asked a man who picked up the phone.
"They're training," a monotonous voice replied.
"He wants to speak to her," Jace whispered into the phone and the man on the other end broke into a chuckle.
"Didn't trust you, did he?" the man snickered and I could hear him move as my impatience grew. The man stalled for another few seconds until I heard her.
"What is it, Liam? We're busy," Melinoe sounded younger than I had expected and she sounded pissed.
"It's him, madam," Liam replied, handing the phone to her as I got up from my seat to take the phone from Jace. I had heard enough from one end. I snatched the phone from him as Melinoe spoke her first words.
"Jace?" she asked from the other end.
"Where is she?" I didn't have time for pleasantries.
"Good, I didn't expect you to be gullible enough to follow Jace," she chuckled, and then her voice grew distant. "Honey, can we take five, someone's on the phone for you," she said and my heartbeat quickened waiting for Aethera to grab the phone. In those few seconds that no one spoke, I prayed that I would hear her voice, that all of this wasn't another nightmare.
"Art?" she whispered and my heartbeat, for the first time in four days, relaxed at the sound of her voice. She was there, somewhere.
"Hey," I whispered, finding my voice seconds later.
"Are you okay?" she asked and I could hear her voice break, she was on the verge of tears and to my surprise, so was I.
"Never been better," I replied, cherishing every little syllable she spoke.
"I wanted to call you but...mother said Jace would be caught," she whispered. "Art, please, get out of there. Jace will help you -"
"Are you okay? Has she hurt you? Has anyone hurt you?" I asked, desperately. Her voice wasn't enough anymore, I had to see her to know she was fine.
"No...no, I am fine. I mean, she did kidnap me but...she's my mother, Art. She did it. She awakened my powers and we have been training...I...cannot explain it on call but it's everything you said it would be. The feeling of...the power. Art, it's so magical, and I know now why you were mesmerized by it," she chuckled despite the thickening of her voice caused by tears that were flowing out of both of our eyes.
"I'll be there as soon as possible, baby," I promised her. "And I'll take care...Rubyn won't know."
"No one can know...no one can follow you," she warned me, as her mother called her. "She wants to speak to you, but I will see you soon, okay?"
"Okay..." I whispered, closing my eyes to the last words she spoke as Melinoe took the phone.
"We are waiting for you, Art. I am sorry I couldn't take you with me...but you understand that kidnapping from the ladies' room was far easier," she said. "Jace knows how to get out of there. He will mask your tracks until you reach us but you cannot contact anyone...and Art?"
"Yeah?" I said, still dazed from it all.
"Your grandfather is waiting here for you too; don't make family wait."
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