The Spirits of the Universe (PJO)

Chapter 91--The Finale

The first breath I took in nearly ten minutes felt like breaking the surface of the ocean after someone had held me under.

Not like that's ever been a problem for a son of Poseidon. But whatever I thought drowning felt like, it was definitely this.

I dragged the air in ragged and uneven, and it burned all the way down—sharp and real and there—in a way that made my eyes sting. Then I exhaled, slow, and felt my brain reboot like an old computer someone had finally plugged back in.

Has the Underworld always looked like Eternity's throne room, or did you find a way out?

End.

The sound of her voice—dry, calm, like she was commenting on the weather—hit me somewhere behind my sternum, and something loosened. The pressure I'd been carrying since my time in the void just . . . went. Like setting down a bag you forgot you were holding.

I couldn't answer yet. I was still too busy breathing. And—embarrassingly—still too busy smiling.

Order, I managed between breaths, was it you who helped me snap out of whatever Skull was doing?

That was End, he responded.

A wave of warmth broke across my chest. Thanks, End. You saved all of us.

She didn't answer. She didn't have to. I'd learned to read her silences—and this one wasn't cold. This one was the verbal equivalent of her looking away to avoid letting me see her expression.

I took two more careful breaths. Steadier, this time. My hands were shaking, but the dark spots in my vision had stopped multiplying, so I was counting that as a win.

That was when I actually looked up and took stock of where I was.

I glanced down at the armrests. Bones. Interlocked femurs and finger bones, and a crown of what I was fairly sure were tibias arching over my head.

I'd been horrified by this chair the first time I'd seen it. Now, after floating in the cold blank nothingness of outer space with nothing but my own heartbeat and the distant impression of End's panic for company, I found my observations oddly . . . comforting. It smelled like ash and old stone. The floor looked solid beneath me. It wasn't the void.

The room had changed while I'd been gone.

More pillars reduced to rubble. Chunks of floor just gone, revealing the void below—darkness that pulsed slow and patient, the way the ocean does when you know something big is underneath. Clearly, things had gotten interesting while I'd been in space.

And then I saw them.

Eternity had Aridne pinned against a pillar across the room, one hand locked around her throat, and the scene stopped my heart before my brain had even finished processing it.

Aridne's feet weren't touching the ground.

She was struggling—weakly, fingers prying at Eternity's grip, eyes blazing even as her face started to lose color. The seal on her powers had clearly held, which meant she'd survived this long on nothing but speed and spite.

From the look of her, she was nearly out of both.

Eternity, for her part, looked delighted.

"Your boyfriend is dead," she said, almost conversationally, "and soon I'll fade you." She tilted her head, surveying her handiwork with the air of someone rearranging furniture. "Life's going well for you, isn't it, Nyx?"

The name landed strangely in my ears. Aridne's real name—the one she'd had before she had met me. I still hadn't figured out how I felt about loving someone who'd existed before the concept of time had bothered to show up to work.