The Contradicted Woman

Oracion's POV

I stare at the land unfamiliar to us with curiosity. Admittingly touching some of the wildlife that seems unnatural to the underworld and yet somehow still fitting with it's neon blue and black spots of colours. A sense of uncomfortableness with the floor as the moss texture feels like it's pulling in my feet although the other two don't seem to have that problem.

"And how long exactly do we have to walk before we're there...?" - Percy

"You'll know when we're there, just keep following the tiny stream of water" She points towards the small lining of water that connects from the river we just travelled across. "Look around! Everything here has something to do with the dreams of the souls that got lured here" She spins with fluid motion before continuing to move forward. Her face, eyes, body and voice all reminding me of the woman I was once close to for that brief span of my life. But she still denies the claims, that was all it took for me to lose myself once again and without a target to my rage I simply took it out on the closest thing.

"I said look around, don't get too lost!" She shouts towards Percy who's stepped off the tiny pathing and instead towards a dark grotto where each step he's taking is lighting up under him like a welcoming mat.

"I'll bring him back" Sighing before following his steps I notice images of people in the glowing orange fruit that hangs low from the thick tree leaves. Some sad, some happy, but none of them are the same people. A black one sits in the distance that gains my interest, a ghastly face with glowing red eyes appearing deep inside it..."A nightmare perhaps?" I quote out loud, my gentle breath causing it to crumble to the floor with a tiny shriek being let out...not my best choice.

"Percy?" I call out after seeing that I'm coming to the end of the grotto, the lit up floor revealing him sitting down...crying?

"I love you mum, dad and you...Percy" Between his hands I notice him holding a cracked open fruit, his sobbing tears confusing me before a green glitter sparkles out from it. A female's voice giggling out of it and spinning around with long transparent hair "I just wanted to see my family again, I just wanted to create that for you!" She puts her arms around him and he openly accepts it, only sobbing harder at the gesture.

Her eyes locking onto me during the hug before her cold voice feels like it marks me for death, "You killed me and that's okay!" The comment unsettling me along with her fixated smile on me but nonetheless I continue watching her eyes scan me up and down as if searching for something. "You're his...father?"

"Excuse me?"

"You've got red claw markings all over your body, she wants you dead. He wants you dead...they all want you dead" I take in my appearance but don't see the markings she's referring to, before I can question her she dematerializes into a cloud of green once again, "I'll be here Percy" The voice fades out as he extends his hand outward as if trying to reach for her one more time.

"I'm sorry"

"What for?" He wipes his tears after being confused by my apology

"I believe she was the Lycan I slew when we first met, I wasn't aware." I watch him walk past me without batting an eye at me, instead keeping his head straight to the exit

"That wouldn't of changed your actions, would it? Let's stop apologising for things we don't truly mean" His cold response appearing unhinged in comparison to when he first met me, where is his overgrowing confidence stemming from. "Do not growl at me" His voice breaking me out of my thoughts

"Was I actually growling?" I hold my throat in disbelief but by the time I try to confirm whether or not, he's already walked off back to where we came from. I stare one last time at the space he sat, the opened up fruit having a red thread of hair in it, odd.

People hate me, I get that. I have no reason to defend myself for the lives I've taken and for a man who ignores time, I certainly have lost the time for compassion. I'll do what I must and however I must, killing this boy is the rule of the world that I must go through with right here and now if we cannot fix this mirror.

"What took you both so long! I was beginning to think you left me" She pouts but doesn't wait for a response, her legs skipping ahead of us with no signs of slowing down.

-

Athena's POV

Sitting on the bed beside Persephone I become increasingly bothered by something, the goddess of decay wrote a book. The woman in the palace claiming to be did not need another god of royalty to open up the gates of the underworld. The only difference between them...is that they're not in their original bodies. Persephone saw Hel presumably before we all met up in the treasure room..."How did Hel know she could enter the treasure room without your key?"

"She-I'm not sure, maybe she fell through it like Anubis said Chris chased her thro...okay she knew" Persephone catches herself, now intrigued by my question

"You saw her in your room, we saw her by Chris. The mirror saw her as the Hel I recognise, you saw her as the Hel you recognise."

"Go on..."

"She denies knowing Aeon, she denies referring to Christopher as if she was his mother. But what if she wasn't lying for just any reason? Is it possible both sides are telling the truth? Look at this!" I scamper over to her with the open page as she leans in to read it. "Day XXXXXX, I went outside for the first time in a...long time. We met him...I made a mistake and fled. We made a mistake...she did not, the perfect queen"

"This is the last entry she ever made, so what changed?"

"She wasn't lonely...anymore?"

"So who did she meet?"

-

Oracion's POV

"Odd, I wonder what this is?" Percy thinks out loud, holding something circular in the palm of his hand.

"Here let me see it!" Hel rushes over to him, going to place her hand on it but ultimately freezing up and giving him a distraught look of anger before hurriedly walking off in the direction of sparkles chiming in the distance.

"Um?" He asks me but I wasn't sure either, instead we continue just behind her to meet up. She waits just in front of the water for us, crouching down by it and extending a hand to Percy which he accepts.

"This is it! Now open up the bag and pour the shards in, the water helps to soothe emotional damages too Percy!" She smacks him in pretty forcefully and kicks some water at him while laughing, grabbing the bag from my hand and emptying the shards inside it where they immediately flow to the surface and gradually rotate around Percy.

"What was that all about?" I go to question her abrupt actions but something makes me uneasy, staring deeper into her face I notice something's changed...not one that I'm fond with.

"Hel, the daughter who was born half dead and half alive. Cast to the underworld and given the theme of decay." She slowly re-introduces herself while staring into the deep surreal blue water with rising orbs flowing out of it and bursting into chimes like a song, her smile from before slightly fading from her face as she places a hand on my back. The touch of it feeling cold and dead with no emotion or gentle meaning behind it, a grasp of death that's touching my very spirit.

"She was alone for a very very long time, she was quite literally the living side and that's what she got, to live. She brought up a young boy, she walked the halls of the underworld alone, she saw the child that we had. Oh our sweet lovely child that we had together, Oracion, you will not harm him." The ground beneath me crumbles as if the time got robbed of it, causing my body to fall into the water along with Percy, trying my best to not land on him from the sudden motion.

The shards of glass instead spinning around both of us now as they ring to themselves in the water. Getting back to the surface I stare at half of her face reconstructing itself, "Half alive" She smiles to herself, covering the other side of her face with her hand. "Half dead" a twisted frown replacing the other side of her face with a dark flesh. The snow white hair being dyed black as tears run down the smiling face and a sadistic laugh comes out of the other.

"The palace...Fenrir's door" Percy coughs out after taking in some of the water from when he got pushed in, "The Unbound Wolf, The World Serpent and The Goddess of Decay. Who the fuck gives us titles like that and expects us to not raise absolute hell?" She laughs to herself while continuing to break away the land, only expanding the pool of water further, if I were to approach it I'd most likely lose a piece of myself, and I'd most definitely cost Percy his life.

"We're the reason why you all live! You should be grateful and praise my very existence for being part of the bloodline that you exist in! But alas, that self-thriving Moon Goddess whore was just scared of us. She tied my brother to that weak world where humans thrive, stuck me down here and who knows where our other brother went to all these eons. You see, it was just me. The death gifting queen who took the lives of others. But once the world opened up and she took her final moments to curse us, instead of reincarnating me like the others, all it did was place me into a dormant like state in my own body." Hel's twisted expressions of an clear hate being spread across one side and the other one plastered with sadness as she looks at me with guilt in her eye.

"How fucking ironic was that?? She was always there, but none of them even questioned her. She took over...the side who had a life, the Hel who gave life. The Hel who wanted to please people...the crying girl who waited." I feel myself growing fainter the longer I'm in this water, Percy's tired body struggling to keep itself afloat without me helping him.

"That water, it can fix your mirror. She was unfortunately telling the truth there, but I'll be damned if I would let my brother's killers get away without some sort of punishment. Not this time...not when he's so close. Feel what we felt all these years. The searing abandonment that scars your bones and engraves itself into your soul. The mirror of Amaterasu is a prison, and you broke it open" She breaks away the final piece of ground, the deep pool of water feeling endless as we gradually begin to sink. The glass following us down and reflecting pieces of different faces looking back at us, a shock of stabbing as the pieces pry their way into our bodies and shut us out from reality.

-

Athena's POV

"The amulet!" Persephone screams out, the life gauging piece of metal showing Percy's heart beat gradually slowing down with each second.

"And what are we meant to do about that?" - Anubis

"We're going, we planned to from the beginning. Whatever terrible lies she was trying to convince us with weren't nearly enough to persuade me" Persephone chants while grabbing my arm and pulling me to entrance of the palace. Hearing Anubis just behind us all I can do is run in my own silence, my fear of losing Percy not settled in yet. I will truthfully face the wraith of Adam if he comes to any harm. "Shit"