Chapter Thirty-Nine: Pressure

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Disclaimer: I don't own HOO or VE

Chapter Thirty-Nine: Pressure

As Ciara charges the beach with her friends, she had only one thought—this is how we're going to die.

She could only hope that her friends were able to bring her back, that Dustin would come back as well, and that they would find a way back to one another.

Evan reached the beach first. Swinging his sword, he dove straight into a group of hellhounds. Next was Carmen, coming to his aid, and then Maverick joining her flank.

Waverly took on a group of empousai coming up the beach. Ciara joined her, Reid behind them. Ciara went straight for one of the frost giants clambering behind the group, spewing frosty breath they had to jump around or risk being frozen by.

Sliding under his giant legs, she swiped her sword at his thighs, drawing bright blue blood. The giant turned around, confused. Her heart twisted—she remembered Percy talking about how they weren't actually vicious, they had just been manipulated to fight. But if she wanted her and her friends to survive, she didn't have a choice.

She plunged her sword into his stomach.

The giant collapsed in a pile of frosty ice shards. She tried to shadow travel, then remembered they had given up their powers. It seemed like they were all struggling to remember that—Waverly and Carmen kept trying to control the plants around them, Reid kept reaching for his reed pipes, and now Ciara was trying to shadow travel.

They hacked and cut their way through, but for every monster they destroyed another took its place. Things got even worse when Maverick cried out, and they turned to see that his was disappearing from the feet up.

"Maverick!" Waverly cried. In the confusion and at her moment of distraction, one of the empousai took the opportunity to plunge her hand straight through Waverly's chest and pull out her heart.

Both Maverick and Evan screamed as she fell to the ground, her heart thunking in the sand beside her. Maverick tried to move, but as Ciara watched his legs, torso, arms, and face disappeared, blowing away like sand in the wind.

Evan reached Waverly's body just as it began to disappear to. He tried to kneel next to her, but between trying to defend himself and her disappearing body he wasn't able to.

Ciara swung at a hellhound just before its claws ripped through her chest. Her heart ached at killing the animals of her grandfather's realm, but she didn't have a choice. They had to give Skye and Adrian the most amount of time as possible to get to the Immortie and imbue their powers and maybe even their memories into it.

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Meanwhile, Skye and Adrian were rushing through the forest, trying to get to the tree. "It's only a little further!" Skye shouted. She tripped over a tree branch, and would have fallen to the ground if Adrian hadn't caught her arm.

"Careful," Adrian started, but stopped when a dark shadow swung across their path. When they looked up, a woman was standing in front of them.

"Rhea," Skye said, looking at the woman in her bright red dress draped with pelts and the two lions growling behind her. "Isn't it a little hypocritical just how much you wear lion pelts when they're supposed to be scared to you?"

"Yeah," Adrian chimed in. "It kind of defeats the purpose."

Rhea hissed. "Well, since I'm about to kill you both, I don't see why it matters."

She pointed her arm, and her lions pounced. Swinging his sword, Adrian disintegrated one and then stepped in front of the other. Skye started to use her powers, but Adrian pushed her arm down. "Save them!" He said. "You need them for the Immortie."

Skye shook her head, but Adrian pushed her back and angled his body so that he was blocking her from both Rhea and the lions. "Run!" he yelled.

Skye ran.

As she sprinted through the tree she had grown up around, she could see the nature spirits (the ones which were still alive, anyhow) coming out. As monsters pounded behind her, she pushed herself faster and faster. If she could just get to the tree... everything would be ok.

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Meanwhile, Ciara, Carmen, Evan, and Reid were left to battle the remnants of the monsters. But the more they defeated, the more that arrived. Ciara remembered learning about the Spartan soldiers at the battle of Thermopolye which had held off a whole army of Persian soldiers while the rest of their allies escaped to Athens. They had stayed knowing they were going to die, and yet they stayed anyway out of their sense of honor and duty.

Ciara tried to imbue that feeling now. She might not have her powers, but she was a granddaughter of Apollo and Hades. With every swing, she imagined hundreds of Greek soldiers behind her swinging along with her. With every pang of fatigue and every ache, she thought of her father's healing powers.

She was a combination of light and dark. Her daughter was proof of that. Surely she could pull enough light to save her friends and enough darkness to get the job done. 

The first one to go was Evan. He started to halfway disappear, then was stabbed in the neck by one of the snake women behind him.

Reid was the next to go. He was fighting with some of the spirits who had emerged from the forest and in defending them opened himself up to attack from one of the Cyclops, who twisted his neck with one swift crunch.

Then it was just Carmen and Ciara standing back to back, dealing with a circle of monsters pushing and pressing them and extending as far as the eye could see. 

"So I guess this is it," Carmen said. She was bleeding from a gash on her face, and her arm was held at an awkward angle. 

"I guess so," Ciara gave her a tight smile, then turned backed to the battle. 

"It was worth it," Carmen said breathlessly.

Ciara cast one last look at the ruined camp. "Yes," she said. "It was."

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