The Daughter Of Night

Chapter Forty-Six - Caius Vows Revenge

Chapter Forty-Six - Caius Vows Revenge
Posted: Saturday 31st August 2024

Caius

While I allowed the immortals to impose their will of returning my mother's body to Camp Half-Blood for funeral rites, I did not allow them to make me leave the mortals to their mourning. Less than a day after her death I found myself standing before my mother's funeral pyre as her shroud was burned.

She had no cabin mates. I discovered that it was normal for a deceased camper's cabin mates to create their fallen sibling's shroud. As I knew nothing of shroud-making, I allowed the Apollo and Athena cabins to team up and they created a beautiful tribute to my mother.

The shroud was midnight blue, with stars sewn across the fabric and a beautiful sunrise depicted on the bottom of the shroud.

"Apollo should be here," Will Solace, my halfbrother, muttered behind me. His face was tear-stained like my own. I didn't think he knew my mother well, but of course, he knew her better than myself. I only had a few hours with her. From the time I was born to the time she died was shorter than I had now been alive.

"Do you want to be the one to tell him that she's dead?" Austin asked Will, speaking quietly.

"No," Will admitted, "what if he... you know..."

There was no one here to say anything at my mother's funeral. No one present knew any words to say. Her death had come as a complete shock, no one had expected the news.

But when I had recounted the story, I got the feeling that no one was particularly surprised. Nyx had always been a shadow on my mother's life and it was no shock that she had eventually led to my mother's demise.

"Do you think he's okay?" Kayla muttered to Will. I knew that this time, he meant me.

"I'm sure he will be," Will said, "he's a god right, mortals die all the time for them."

"Yes, but he's a day old," Kayla replied.

I reached up to my own face and wiped away another tear that was threatening to spill over. I felt like a fraud, crying at the funeral of someone I had hardly known, but I had known her better than I knew anyone else in the entire world.

I tore my eyes away from the pyre and slowly began to walk away, turning my back on the mortal part of me, on the mortals who had been there at my birth. I needed to speak to my mother one last time.

"Where are you going?" Will Solace and Nico Di Angelo had darted after me.

"To the underworld," I replied.

Will and Nico exchanged a significant look behind me.

"Do you even know how to get there?" Will asked.

"No, but I'm a god, I'll work it out."

"You're the god of life, I don't think Hades will take kindly to you busting down his door," said Nico.

"I am not worried," I said, "but you are welcome to come with me if you are."

Nico and Will exchanged another look.

"I need to speak to my mother," I continued, "just one last time."

"We don't need to go to the underworld to do that," Nico said. "Someone get me a happy meal."

*

Watching Nico Di Angelo set up to summon a ghost was an individual experience. He enlisted the help of a Hermes kid to retrieve a Happy Meal (which I was told confidently was the best thing to use to summon ghosts) and dug himself a little pit. Once the Happy Meal had made it's way to us with surprising speed, Nico poured the contents out into the pit and began chanting.

Eventually, he stopped and said, "Ariadne- eh, what's her last name?"

"Chester I think," Will provided.

"Ariadne Chester," Nico said.

The next moment, shades had formed. They were indistinct in form, shadows of the mortals they had once been. One stepped forward and knelt down, taking some food from the pit and eating it. As it did, it became solid and the spirit of my mother looked up at us.

"What do you want Nico?" She asked.

"Not me," Nico held his hands up, "him."

Her eyes settled on me and she sighed deeply. "You should not have summoned me."

Her words hit me like daggers, she did not want to see me. The one person who I needed more than anything did not want to see me.

"Why?" I asked.

"I told Hades to keep you away," she said. "Tricking me by asking Nico to summon me? Unfair."

"I didn't... it's not a trick... I didn't know..." I said.

"Hades was expecting you to come storming in and demand he release my spirit," she frowned and cocked her head at me, using the statement as a question.

"I will," I replied, "I want you back."

She shook her head, "no you will not. I am dead. I should stay dead."

"No, you should not!" I argued, "Your death was untimely. I... I need you..." I needed her more than I was able to put into words. In my short life, the only time I had felt like I belonged somewhere was when I was with my mother. I was too much a god to fit at Camp Half-Blood and I was too alien to the Olympians. I wondered if my father would be able to set me at ease as well as my mother had, but he had always been a god, unlike my mother who had spent her life caught between the two worlds.

"My death was required!" She snapped back. "Caius, you can do so much, be so much... If all I have to do to make sure you are out of Nyx's reach is stay dead then so be it."

"But Nyx doesn't matter!" I complained, "I will bring you back, I will make you my champion!"

"It doesn't work like that," she said, "I am sworn to Nyx until she sees fit to release me, even after death, Nyx never released me. I released myself. She can't get to me here, she can't use me against the people I love anymore."

I didn't know what to say, words caught in my throat as I couldn't find the right ones to express my feelings to my mother.

She smiled sadly, "I won't speak to you again Caius."

"What? Why?" I demanded.

"You are immortal," she said.

"That's obvious," I snapped. "Why?"

"Mortals die," she offered, "It will be better for you if you move on from this. I'll always be with you, but you can't get lost amongst the dead. I have sworn to Hades that as long as Nyx lives then I will remain in the Underworld."

I blinked at her, "then I will kill Nyx." If this was the only way my mother would be returned to me, then it was the only course of action for me to take.

"No!" She almost shouted, her eyes widened in horror. "No, Caius, you can't! She'll kill you."

"I don't think so," I countered, "I will kill Nyx then we can restore you."

My path was clear to me now. I would do whatever it took to destroy Nyx.