Walk With the Shadows [ Percy Jackson OC ]

FORTY-FIVE | Ophelia

OPHELIA'S LUNGS FILLED WITH FROZEN AIR and shadows more refreshing than any draught of nectar. She held up her void-black hand to snap apart yet more barbed wire lying in her path.

Each breath left her feeling more alive. Every scream to her right and to her left renewed her fury against the gods. A flick of her wrist and the barbed wire screeched and snapped, sparks flying as she tossed the barbaric fence aside.

Terrible.

Help us.

Ophelia had fought many battles, but until this moment she had never known what it meant to describe a scream as blood-curdling. She could feel the vocal cords of the suffering Dead shredding.

You can't block them out. I know because I've tried.

Ophelia stepped forward. Beyond the screams, beyond the voice of Samuel or the voice of Eris, she couldn't find silence. Incoherent whispers drowned out Hades's rock music to become the only ambient white noise.

You aren't alone in your hatred of the gods, child. The world was better without them. It was better in the dark.

What did a world without the gods look like? Kronos had wanted dominion over all, and he had been willing to send children to their doom to get it. Luke had been his puppet. Perhaps, if he had not grown up wounded by the Olympians, he could've done the right thing.

She'd heard rumors that without the Olympians, the world would fail. The West depended on the on going existence of the Olympians. But how could she trust that? How could she trust the words of brainwashed children or the gods who subsisted off even the silent worship of the masses? Luke had been right, had he not become a puppet.

She stopped at the top of a small hill. As Ophelia took another deep breath of the darkness of the Underworld, she realized it wasn't really a hill. She stood on the edge of a massive crater. The blackened tree she'd seen from the entrance ridgeline towered from the center.

Do you see it? How beautiful it is? The last of its kind, my golden apple, all alone.

The apple sparkled from the ambient light of raging infernos. It glistened like crystal, hanging from the lowest branch. Ophelia felt her skin crawl. For a brief moment she felt the faintest whisp of a hand on her shoulder, but it disappeared, replaced by a rush of cold air.

Before Hades usurped us, the Underworld was beautiful. Then he and his siblings threw us into the pit, cast away, abandoned.

Ophelia felt the Mist thicken. With every step down the side of the crater towards the beautiful dead tree, she found it easier to block the screams. It became almost peaceful. Wrapped in the calm, invisible blanket of Mist and led forward by shadows, Ophelia allowed herself to fully focus on her goal: reach the tree.

Down here in the Underworld, she never felt the oppressive heat of the sun. Apollo's grandeur couldn't touch her. In the Underworld, she never lost her gifts. Hades, king of the Underworld, didn't even feel love for this place. He ruled it in opposition to the Olympians. When the gods had overthrown the Titans, they'd divided up the world as spoils of war.