Silver Stranded Stars

6. White holds all the colours of the rainbow

"He's right." rumbles Nathaniel next to Mina. "He should be taking orders from me."

Kakos laughs, "You? You had your chance to extinguish me and didn't. Why would I listen to you?"

Nathaniel crosses his arms, and gazes up into the sky at the purple hues of the planet Rhea half-mooned overhead. "Like I said before, I know freedom, and you don't have it."

Kakos frowns, crossing his arms back. Flames licks from the fingers at his elbows. "Killing my Dad is old news. It's been tried before." His eyes narrow, little slits of flame, "How do you think I've come to die so many times? Lighting myself on fire?" He gives a ferocious grin.

Nathaniel shrugs, "I am not you."

Kakos' smile falls away. "No, you're the fucking Barrack Prince."

Nathaniel takes a step closer to Kakos, getting right up in his face. Mina wonders if she shouldn't let them incinerate each other. They will clearly be too busy comparing dicks to get anything done.

"A Prince." Nathaniel hisses the word out between his teeth, "Let me ask you this, son of Hepheastus: How many more deaths do you want to live?" Nathaniel's dark hair stirs against Kakos' heat, but doesn't burn, even when Kakos' shoulders light in a fan of flame rising about them.

Kakos's eyes are fire. When his mouth opens it crackles with heat, "You ignorant child. I wouldn't follow you anywhere. You don't know what death tastes like."

Mina's had enough. Perhaps Atlas scrolls are hidden on Erebus, but it matters less to her then finding her siblings. Something metallic glimmers on the peak of sand not far ahead. Something that looks an awful lot like the tail of one of Josh's drones. She leaps silently off the rock.

There is a whoosh of flame behind her. They can come if they want, or destroy each other. Mina can't feel anymore care for either of them. The only people I have left are lost or dead on this barren rock.

She jogs towards the spike of metal, her swords drawn. I don't trust those serpents anymore than I'd trust Kakos.

She reaches it, bending down to pull it from the sand. But instead the ground under her shifts, the sand lifting her with it as something white pushes from below. The sand hisses down, falls away from beneath her boots, she is carried higher and higher, under the white beast beneath is revealed. She is standing on the tip of the white blind serpent. Her feet balance on its incisors. Its tongue is curled around Josh's red drone.

Is this the toy you seek?

Mina can hear the glee in its grin. She spreads her swords wide, preparing to leap, preparing to end it in a scissoring swoop. "You will tell me of them, or I will end you."

Mina. Her name is spoken by another voice. Her mother's. Mina blanches.

The serpent's voice returns, You would not end the one who holds the soul of your mother?

Mina gasps. Staring down at the eyeless head beneath her feet. Looks at the line upon which is sensory band extends. Tries to grapple with the idea that her mother is somehow a part of this thing, is somehow inside it.

She clenches her teeth, "If my mother is in there, she would want you to tell me where Josh and Dee went."

The serpent pauses, seems to shiver under her feet.

Abruptly there is a thud below and the serpent flings its head to the side letting out a scream. Mina is thrown into the air. She flips, turning as she descends looking back, seeing Kakos prepping another ball of flame. The white serpent sports a massive injury to one side of its coil, blood hiding the extent of the damage. It is diving away into the sand, writhing as it moves, a twenty-foot high white wall, awkwardly twisting in the sand.