The Goddess's Hero

Bri

Skye's POV

The first thing I noticed was the dark. It surrounded me completely, but I didn't mind. I was warm enough here. I closed my eyes, only to realize that they were already closed. That or I couldn't move. My senses came alive. I shot up in the pitch black darkness and squeezed my hands into fists. I could move freely here, but where was here? I stared in the darkness around me, trying to make sense of where I was and what I was doing here. I couldn't see anything. I began walking around and I didn't run into anything. I put my hand out trying to find a wall but there was no wall. Frustrated, I began to run around.

"Save your energy." I recognized the female voice within my mind. I turned towards the source and I tensed. A woman in her mid-thirties stood before me. She had beautiful brown locks that reached her shoulders and her eyes were a big dark brown. The smile she shared with me was tentative and she gripped the sides of her plain white toga until her knuckles turned white. A hundred questions zipped through my mind, but I held them at bay. Quietly, I sat cross legged on the floor facing my mind's intruder. Her eyes never left me as she also sat before me. She seemed so awfully familiar. Some foreign vague memory tried to resurface. Her face staring down at me. 

"Do I know you?" I asked the woman in front of me. She smiled sadly at me. 

"Not really." 

"That implies that I might." I pointed out. Who was she and how was she so familiar to me? I could've sworn I'd seen her somewhere before. 

"Yes, it does." Was her simple response. I waited for a moment before realizing that she wasn't going to elaborate. Did it even matter who she was? She's the voice residing in your head. Isn't that enough? No. 

"Why did you reach out to me all those months ago in Nexus?" Perhaps I could figure out who she was by finding her purpose. 

"Because you are the only one who can stop him." I knew who she was talking about. The one we had a deal on. 

"Once I become a Demigod, you mean." 

"Mmm, yes." She hummed and another overwhelming feeling of familiarity and safety struck me. Another in my life used to hum at me just like that. 

"How did you know about me? And how could you reach me in the Nexus, City of Gods?" Questions started to pour out of me and the woman tilted her head and giggled sadly. 

"I've known of you for such a long time, and I reached you in Nexus because that is where I am held." 

Held? I automatically looked at her wrists: nothing. I then looked at one of her ankles that was poking from underneath her dress: an iron cuff. I followed the chain with my eyes, but it disappeared into the blackest of hues. 

"Wait, how can I see you?" I asked as I realized that I could in fact see her when I couldn't see anything else.

"We are connected in mind." Her quiet voice never stuttered. And a glimpse of my past hurled itself into my brain. 

Two voices, one male and one of the female sitting in front of me. 

"Please, I'm begging you!" Her words carried her fear into the wind. "We are connected in spirit." 

"I have no connection to the boy." 

"You have a connection with me." Her big doe eyes looked at me from above. "And I have loved you ever so, Lord Jasper." 

"Because of your love, and our connection, sweet child: I'll protect the child of yours." Tears fell from the woman's eyes onto my face. 

The memory faded as quickly as it came. The woman seated in front of me looked worried.