A God's Mercy (Apollo x OC)

Chapter 11

She was floating in blackness. Normally she wouldn't be alarmed; she rarely had real dreams. What bothered her most was that this was a real dream. She saw her own body and her hands in front of her. Against her was a cold harsh wind that seemed to prick through her skin like ice. Despite this, it was hard to find breath. After a while she realized that she wasn't floating, but flying. Flying through some kind of cavern or tunnel or other. She shivered and tried to raise her arms to shield herself from the cold, but the wind was so strong it prevented her from so much as twitching. She was powerless against it, like a leaf in the storm. Her limbs were heavy and her head was made of lead, yet the current was billowing her from falling as if she weighed no less than a small bird. The only thing she could do at that moment was shut her eyes tightly.

It's no exaggeration when she thought it had been years. It truly had felt like it; years, eons before the wind in her face stopped abruptly. She felt a deep dread in her heart, as if something ominous were about to happen, and so she took her time adjusting to the sudden change in atmosphere and what it had done to her. She flexed her fingers, which were stiff and aching, as well as the rest of her body, which was numb from the ice cold, but she had not the strength to even shiver anymore. Slowly, she peeled her eye open, and was stunned to find that she was no longer submitted to darkness. Floating around her was the entire cosmos, swirling bits of shining debris, diamonds, glittered in different shades of red, blue, green, against the backdrop of blackness that went on for eons, across even time itself. Melantriche cracked her rigid neck so that she could look around herself. Giant globes spun languidly on one finger. Some were much bigger than others. Some were blue and some were brown and some where orange. Some of them had enormous rings encircling their persons in a grand manner.

A wisp to her neck, and she was turned upward. She saw a woman... no, a girl, a tiny girl that must've been at least a year or 2 younger than herself, walking among the milky way. She was painfully beautiful. Skinniness was not often a very complimenting feature, but this maiden made it work. She was a small, slim little thing, as delicate as a sparrow and clad in a simple short chiton. Her skin, flawless and white, glowing like a star. Her long silver hair was tied in a hunter's knot, and her face was that of a guileless young child: plump rosy cheeks, thick brows, and large eyes of stunning sapphire blue. At once, Melantriche knew that she was most definitely a goddess. The only thing ugly about her was her expression, which was an apathetic one, but in her eyes gleamed something sharp and silver and cold, like a dagger to Melantriche's heart. Cruelty, it was. The sharpness of her gaze was burning into her, icy cold biting into her delicate white skin. When Melantriche finally managed to tear her awed and frightened gaze away from the girl, she looked down and almost screamed.

Thick sheets of frost grew rapidly upon her skin, shattering and exposing raw, red flesh. Her skin, her fingernails, her nipples, coated in ice, were flaking off and floating away from her, evading her grasp when she reached out to grab them. Her fingers became death-gray and broke off from frostbite, and her blood became blue and cold.

"No!" she wanted to shriek. All the while, the goddess watched her as if it were a play, a ghost of a wicked, savage smile playing on her lips. In that sense, she looked just as barbaric and wild as a wolf.

A voice, soft and sweet yet monotonous, spoke in Melantriche's ears, "Do you see what happens now?Shoot for the stars and your fickle little mortal body will shrivel up and die." The voice taunted her, bouncing around like a loud mantra inside her skull, torturing her.

Finally she found her voice. She screamed as she fell, but as she saw Lyra's face through the black hole, she realized she was flying upward. From a bed. Her bed.

She struggled out of the sheets for a moment, thrashing wildly.

"Lyra! Lyra..."

She fell into the woman's arms, and they embraced her, patting her back and shushing her as she wept, terrified, unable to speak.

"Oh, Lyra! I had an awful, awful dream just now! It was..." Something wispy tickled Melantriche's face, a strangely sweet fragrance filling her nose. Perfume? She sat up.

And then she saw Lyra. She donned an expensive saffron chiton. She was swathed from head to toe in veils, revealing only her face, heavily ladened in white lead, hiding her blemishes and freckles. Upon further inspection, her hair had been dyed pitch black and tied in an extravagant manner. Melantriche stared in awe. What in the...

"Lyra," she spoke slowly, softly," Why are you all... so..."

Lyra's grim face formed into a forced-looking smile.

"Melantriche, My Lady... we have to get going now."