Page 138 of Crown of Olympus
CHAPTER 41
Nyssa
Thunder cracked,echoing across the blackened sky. Lightning cleaved the horizon in two.
Everything was drowned in darkness — thick and stifling, nothing like the usual calm of night. The unnatural gloom sent an icy feeling of dread through me, cold enough to crack bone.
I turned — or at least tried to. My body didn’t respond. It remained statue-still, my gaze locked, unblinking, on that black horizon.
I fought and clawed to move, to scream, to twitch a finger — anything at all, but nothing worked. It was like I was merely a passenger inside this familiar body.
“Beautiful, isn’t it?” A voice crooned, sounding alarmingly like my own. “Do you see what you are capable of? What you could accomplish?”
My head finally turned, though not by my will.
I looked down at my blackened, bare feet, standing on the edge of Aetherion. Beneath me stretched an obsidian platform, propped high above the rows and rows of gods and creatures bowing in silence.
Everyone I knew and loved was still, frozen instatuesque obeisance — Charon, Caelus, Aphrodite, Aros, Apollo, Archimedes. Even the Primal Council dared not move under my watchful eye.
The entire realm knelt before me, their faces downcast.
The me-that-wasn’t-me laughed with cruel delight. It was a jagged, merciless sound — one I’d never heard escape my mouth.
She raised her hands —myhands — stained black from fingertips to wrist, as if shadows had consumed them. Power surged. Inky shadows bled from my fingertips, curling into spiralling ribbons of darkness. They twirled through the air, looping around everyone below, encircling them, tangling in them.
Then she pulled.
The me-that-was-not-me yanked every single soul from its body in one mass exodus.
She was more powerful than I had ever imagined I could become.
Without resistance, she reeled them in, drawing them into our body, deep down into the place where my soul lived, and consumed them all. Ravenously.
I felt ill.
My eyes stayed fastened on the gods I’d once called friends. She had forced me to watch as they keeled over.
Dead.
Nothing more than empty husks.
And it was all my doing.
My hands.
My power.
My hunger.
I woke with a start,the echo of a scream still caught in my throat. My body was damp with sweat, my heart raced like a warhorse in my chest, and my lungs heaved as if I’d run alongside it.
I was going to be sick.
I threw back the covers and raced to the bathroom with its deep green walls, rosy tiles, and tormenting memories.
My reassuringly pale fingers gripped the edge of the bench. I bent over the basin, flirting with panic. After several minutes of retching and dry heaving, I managed to choke it down.
The nausea faded.
