Sons of the Big Three

Gladiators

rowled.

She cocked her head, and suddenly I could move. I stood up but then the room changed, melting away, the walls flowing down, the table and chair disappearing, and we were suddenly in a dark place with twisted trees leering down and the sky dark and without any stars.

‘Where are we?’ I asked.

‘A better place,’ she answered. ‘One without hope, without dreams, without gods. A world that I will help create.’

I held out my hand and Tempest shimmered into it. ‘You wouldn’t.’

She laughed again, the sound echoing all around us. ‘I had fun breaking you friend Will and giving him a glimpse of his doom. I don’t even need to do that with you. You’re such a naïve person  Nicholas Harrison,’ she spat, and I flinched.

Nicholas Harrison, the name I had before I had shortened it to Nick Harris. The name that I grew up with, until I moved with my mother from my birth state, and we had to change our names. ‘How did you know that?’

‘My speciality is memories, including the use of controlling, finding, adding, changing and removing them.’

I frowned. ‘So you basically have telepathy but with the ability to mess around with my head?’

She sighed. ‘You are thick like always. They are two different things. I suppose I could show you your worst fear, and then you can meet him.’

‘Meet who?’ I asked, but the scenery changed again, into another forest, although it was brighter and friendlier, except for one thing.

‘N-N-Nick,’ Lucy gasped, her eyes wide and searching. Her back was against a tree and there was dust and dead bodies all about her, but that wasn’t the thing that scared me. The thing that worried me the most was the blood spilling out of her hands that was holding her side. ‘Nick, where are you?’

I rushed forward towards her but when I reached her my hands passed through her. Tears were leaking from her eyes. ‘You promised to be with me,’ she sobbed as I stood there, frozen. ‘Where are you?’

Her breathing slowed, the hiccups lessened, until the light went out of her life and she stayed there, dead. I turned towards the woman angrily, who seemed to be taking deep pleasure. ‘Why are you showing me this?’ I roared.

She was unfazed. ‘Because she is the one you love. Don’t deny it; you love this girl, not the other, and this is what will happen to those you are with you. Everyone one of your friends, your family, will die because of you.’

I looked to my left and in shock saw Desmond, a sword buried deep in his chest. Will was on my other side, his eyes closed but grievous wounds all over his body, his shirt and skin slashed by claws. Finally, scared, I looked upon the bodies behind Lucy, and saw Percy and Annabeth, lifeless bodies still holding hands, and I howled in sadness.

She looked at me with amusement. ‘You shall be the cause of death for everyone. You’re the one who everyone falls for, who everyone wants, and the one everyone likes, but in the end they will all die for you. And for what? That girl loves you but you don’t love her back, and she died for you but you never told her anything.’

I slashed at her with Tempest but it just went past her. ‘Please, do not even try against me. My work here is done now,’ she announced. ‘My lord will see you right now.’

The scene shifted for one last time, and she went along with it. I stood alone now, no bodies anywhere, in a dark area with darkness shifting about. Not even shadows, the ones that Will commanded, but darker shapes that looked dangerous.