#[ she who sleepwalks without a sound // hypnos ]

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus IV: Fall of the Sun

Forty-Five: Euna

A Dream Catcher Would Have Been Easier

             Unlike the last two times Euna took Hemera’s god-enhancing droplets, Euna didn’t try to shut out the noise.

           She listened very carefully.

           As her feet struck the mud, she could hear the dying cries of the trampled grass and strawberry plants, some too mutilated to scream. She could hear the plants being crushed under Pax’s, Eris’ and Python’s foot—er—feet and snakely bodies? Yea, whatever. Those.

           The transition to god mode was much smoother this time. The first time, all the plants screaming had been deafening and overwhelming.  

           Now, Euna could hear, with clarity, Miranda, her sister, praying for vines strong enough to hold down Python’s tail and the cries from the plants. She could sort through those prayers.

           It reminded Euna of how she had tuned out years of her father’s scolding and Joey’s desperate mockery; Euna let her brain unfocus. The screams of demigods—those were outside her head, right?—those faded as easily as the hisses inside.

           This must be how it is for Mom, Euna realized when her emotions for the demigods turned to apathy, and she stalked towards Phobetor.

           Inside, she knew all these things—people, plants, whatever the difference—needed to die, because life relied on death. No animals could live without killing. No plants could prosper without taking the territory of another, without weeding out the trash.

           That’s what Euna was going to do. Weed out the trash. Though, that made it sound like a chore, and Euna hated chores.

           “Euna, oh Euna, my fair maiden—mf!”

           Euna shoved a white, blooming flower into Jack’s mouth, tired of hearing him talk. She didn’t need him right now.

           Phobetor stood ahead of her, a tall humanoid with a weirdly fused kiwi-bird-skull-plague-doctor-thing going on. He had recovered from where she drop-kicked him. He huffed and adjusted his Renaissance-style lord’s cap. “I beg your pardon?” Phobetor demanded again, hands trailing to his pink-and-green pokey-doted bowtie. “You’ll ‘start’ with me? Young demigod, I am the great Ikelos—“

           Traitor to the Second Titan War, Backbiter hissed in her hands. She swept the scythe to the side, rotating it. Although familiar as a farming tool, she wished it was more balanced for fighting or executing.

           The god seemed flustered when Euna didn’t break stride, though Euna couldn’t tell if that was from their proximity or if he’d heard Backbiter’s bitterness.

           “Kronos?!” Phobetor blundered, proving it was the latter. One of his hoofed feet took a step back and he put his piccolo-hatchet to his beak. “I’ll show you your worst fear—” he started to say to Euna, and—if she was correct—he sounded desperate.        

           “I’ve already seen that,” Euna said. With each step, long grass sprouted at her feet, exploding up to her hips. Strawberry vines slithered around the ground, slinking towards the God of Nightmares.

           Phobetor’s cheeks puffed and a high-pitched note pierced the air.

           A wave of exhaustion hit Euna but, the joke was on Phobetor: she was always too tired and in need of a nap.[1]

           Phobetor retreated another step. “Why aren’t you sleeping? You’re not a child of Hypnos[2] or Hecate.” He huffed, then raised the piccolo back to his lips as they curled into a smile.

           Another note.

           Euna didn’t care. She was almost upon him. The grass and vines had expanded to surround them. She stroked the rosewood box in her pocket once before settling both her hands on the cool shaft of her scythe.

           “Dunno,” she muttered, “Kinda hard to trick me when I know what you’re doing.”

           Hemera’s god-droplets probably didn’t hurt either.

           Shuffling nearby barely caught her attention. She didn’t need to look. The grass and strawberry vines alerted her to the presence of several sleepwalking campers.

           Phobetor’s smile crumbled when the strawberry vines snaked up and the grass bent to drag the campers into their thicket.

           Everything was so much quieter now with sleepwalker’s shambles silenced, so much more peaceful.

           Something leaked from Phobetor’s jester sleeves: aphids, beetles, caterpillars, and cabbage maggots. Things that were bad for the garden. “You are a demigod—one of Eris’ pawns! An upstart!” he cried, flinging them towards her.

           Desperately, she thought.

           Euna ignored them, doubting they were real, and not caring if she was wrong. Instead, she plucked a handful of seeds from her berry crown, things she’d been gathering during her and Jack’s trip, and tossed them at Phobetor.

           She closed her eyes, sensing his movements through his steps on the smashed plants and the pollen in the air.

           He turned to tar, assuming her attack was immediate.

           It hadn’t been. She’d been trying to learn from the whole “tact” thing that Axel taught her--the way Joey would analyze an opponent to find their weaknesses during a dojo match.

           Euna settled her hand back onto Backbiter’s long staff. She exhaled, concentrating on where her plants felt Phobetor’s presence and commanding her seeds to take root and grow. She needed Phobetor’s focus on her, so these seeds could expand. She couldn’t have them explode out like the walnuts trees in Santiago’s pyramid.

           Phobetor went to raise his piccolo-hatchet.

           Then she lunged, swinging her scythe in a wide arc.

           Her blade, Backbiter’s two-toned, blade vibrated with a solid strike.

           Phobetor screamed.

           When she opened her eyes, she saw Phobetor standing several feet back. His form was half-melted. Tar dripped off a vaguely humanoid figure, the colorful minstrel adornment unraveling into shiny dribbles. There was no face underneath the kiwi skull as it clattered into the grass.

           One gross, rippling hand held the stump of another. Snakes, spiders, and bugs spilled from it alongside golden ichor.

           In the grass, Euna could sense his dismembered tar-puddle limb and splintered hatchet.

           Ikelos, did you forget that I can permanently cut up a god, as I did Uranus? I told you my vengeance would be swift for traitors to my cause. Backbiter laughed. You coming here bodily was your end.

           Phobetor stood there, stunned. When he finally recovered from his shock—that Euna had something that could really hurt him—he tried to take a step backwards.

           His tar feet stuck fast. He glanced down in panic at the two splendid pitcher plants holding his feet in place—carnivorous plants with deep cavities in the shape of pitchers, dripping with sticky, digestive acid.[3] Massive flowers—stinking corpse lilies—sprouted all around the pitchers, reinforcing their weaker walls with two foot long red and white petals.[4] Tree roots erupted from the ground, twisting the petals together, pushing them up to Phobetor’s hips, sewing the pitchers and petals together like they were making a bodily cast for Phobetor.

           Although hard to tell with an overdramatic puddle, Euna thought he might be shivering. Rippling? Whatever.

           “You’re the one who gave us nightmares for months. You made my sister relive her death over and over again,” Euna said. With barely a tug in her gut, she commanded more corpse lilies to grow, encasing Phobetor’s waist and trapping his tar into a tightly-wrapped, leak proof, biodegradable package. Satyr-approved.

           “Demigod,” Phobetor said, his voice trembling, “This is most unwise! My father will hear of this!”

           She could feel Phobetor try to slip away. He abandoned his legs, letting the upper half of his body melt over the petals.

           She expected he would try to run. Gods didn’t need their full bodies to exist, after all.

           Euna waited patiently as part of his body sludged backwards over the corpse flowers and pitcher plants, dripping onto a larger, thinner leaf. When his melting torso made contact, the massive 10-foot wide gunnera leaf enclosed around him, making Phobetor release a muffled cry.[5]

           Vines and tree roots encased the trap, reinforcing it. At her command, they lifted the wiggling gunnera leaf up, plopping it on top of the corpse lilies to make another vaguely humanoid thing. He looked funny with pitcher legs and a wiggly leaf for a body. Joey would have called it gross.

           “The other gods will hear!” his muffled cry came through the leaves. “The Olympians will never rest until they know Backbiter is destroyed! Anything you do to me will get their attention—”

           “You talk too much,” Euna muttered. She knelt down plucking a smaller pitcher plant from the larger ones, and scooped up the tarlike essence of his dismembered hand before it could crawl away.

           “Getting their attention will save me time,” she said, setting Backbiter down. She withdrew her rosewood box and popped the lid open with her thumb.

           All the vines and flowers entwined in her hair dangled towards the opening. The vortex of Kaos inside greedily suctioned everything around them; the background din of screams and battle seemed to hold its breath. The waist-high grass rustled loudly towards them.

           “After I’m done here,” Euna said absently as she poured the essence of his hand into the swirl to nothingness. The Phobetor cocoon squealed, apparently able to feel his detached limb shatter into nonexistence. “I’m coming for the Olympians next.”

           Euna clicked the lid closed, tuning out his shrieks like she’d tuned out the plant and gardener’s prayers. The air around them seemed to let out a relieved sigh. She put the rosewood box into her pocket, then lifted up the scythe and groaned in annoyance. If only Persephone’s box had been bigger. Cutting the God of Nightmares into pieces to shove each limb into oblivion? This was going to take forever.

           Frowning, she hefted up her scythe to lob off a chunk of his head. Calex and the others better have something good planned for dinner, because after this mess she was going to be starving.

 ***

Thank you for reading! I’m sorry it’s running late. Things have been crazy *sweat drop* I hope you enjoyed despite the lateness! Stay turned (hopefully next week) for some back-to-back Ajax chapters, Keeping it Holy.

***

Footnotes:

[1] Mel betanote: She’s the hulk. She’s always mad! XD

Jack: sleeptime hulk.

[2] I mixed up the god and the Pokemon for a shamefully long period of time. I got really confused when “Hypno” kept coming up as an incorrect spelling.

[3] So, I’m a huge fan of carnivorous plants. Big pitcher plants are known for eating mice, bats, and rats. These can only be found in East Malaysia, but you can get cute, baby ones in lots of other areas. (Being a fan of cute rodents as well, I prefer the smaller ones that like to snack on mosquitoes and gnats).

Mel betanote: “Oh, okay. This is based on your interests. XD All I could think about was the pokemon version because of your last note.”

Jack response, “No Victreebel for you! Only hoards of tiny Oddishes!”

[4] Corpse lilies are the biggest flowering plants in the world and one of the strongest. Also, one of the worst smelling, emitting the unnerving stench of rotting flesh. It doesn’t help their reputation that they look like something from Little Shop of Horrors.

[5] Enormous plant from Brazil, also known as “dinosaur food.” Gunnera plants are thought to be 150 million years old.

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus IV: The Fall of the Sun

Forty-One: Hazel

When Your Mom Scolds the Hope Out of You

             While Hazel rolled between the legs of two battling giants—Eris and some weird chicken-lizard thing—she stabbed a ghoul through the ribcage. She came to a stumbled stop at the horrifying sight of Melinoe and wished Nico was here to help her fight.

           Of course, she also hoped he was safely away, somewhere that hadn’t been crushed by Python or raided by creepy sleep-walking puppets. But, really she would rather he was strong enough to stand with his Stygian iron sword and do some ghoul puppeting of his own. She’d never been as good at controlling the dead, and, if it were up to her, she’d have Miss Half-Mummy-Half-Charcoal doing the Charleston dance.

           If this ghost was Melinoe.

           “Poisoned child!” Queen Marie Levesque stood and screamed where the Goddess of Ghosts had been moments before. She stumbled towards Hazel with a knife.

           Hazel almost dropped her spatha.

           When Gaea manipulated her mother’s voice, Gaea slipped into her own gravelly tone. Here, this creature had the same look of anger, frustration, desperation, and disappointment so familiar to her mother. Here, Melinoe frowned and screamed identical to Queen Marie. Although Hazel hadn’t had one in so long, she thought she was lost in a flashback, one she’d deeply repressed. But, she couldn’t be. This was real.

           While Queen Marie staggered forward with a knife, four other ghosts came closer in Hazel’s peripheral. In her shock, she probably would have been overwhelmed had a blast of water not slapped her in the face.

           Confusion interrupted her terror.

           When Hazel shook the droplets out of her cinnamon hair, she caught the distant glimpse of Percy. He had pulled Annabeth into his lap on the throne of Saturnalia and dragged Piper close—to protect them. One of his hands outstretched towards Hazel. Even from where she stood, she could tell his face was tight with rage as his mouth moved to shout. Tears streaked down his cheeks while he watched his home get ravaged.

           Over that and the chaos, she couldn’t really hear Percy, but, she assumed he was saying, “THAT’S NOT YOUR MOTHER!” and not something about “boar smother.” Likely not the latter—though Phobetor did seem to enjoy morphing into a giant boar.

           Ah, Hazel thought, Eris said Percy couldn’t fight her people. She didn’t say anything about slapping sense back into his friends.

           A voice much louder and clearer, almost too high-pitched for comfortable listening, shrieked beside her, “Tiny child of Pluto, make like a dough lump and ROLL!”

           Hazel dove to the side.

           A giant combat boot with a talon poking out the back and several in the front smashed the ground she had been standing on. Marie Levesque had also dodged to the opposite side, but the four ghostly figures hadn’t moved. Three that should have been smashed instead dissipated and reemerged on either side of the foot. The one that got impaled by the ankle talon poofed, making Hazel wonder if that talon were coated with Stygian iron.

           The giant eagle-snake raised its combat boot up, slammed it back down for better footing, and shoved Eris away from the strawberry field.

           Hazel pushed off the icy dirt, snatching up her spatha. She wished Arion was here, so she could run away from her mother and reevaluate everything from a distance.

           Now that she had broken her line of sight from Melinoe, her childhood terror quieted. She could focus enough to see five Romans and the counselor from Iris’ cabin in a small defensive circle around two downed bodies, one a centurion and one a soldier. They slashed through oncoming ghosts, but there weren’t enough of them to make a proper defensive circle. They wouldn’t be able to hold out much longer, or keep the ghosts out of the camp.

           From their other side, the God of Nightmares and his sleep-walking troop were about to flank them.

           Hazel’s stomach twisted when she thought about what must have happened to Lou Ellen. The daughter of Hecate, who had promised Hazel that she could handle Phobetor alone, was nowhere to be seen. Hazel hadn’t considered that Lou Ellen might have been bluffing and was running low on spells. She had recently pigballed a god after all, and might have fallen easily after Hazel left.

           Hazel would have to thank Percy for snapping her out of it later and the giant bird-thing for… warning her? First, she needed to bust these ghosts, defeat Melinoe, and wrangle Phobetor.

           An army. Two gods. No biggy?

           Hazel quivered.

           Another troop of ghosts were almost upon her, carrying cleavers, pitchforks and a traffic cone. Marie Levesque—no-no—Melinoe stalked towards her.

           Hazel reached a hand towards the sleep-walking campers that were about to attack Butch’s troop. A tug hit her gut. With a flick of her wrist, she disarmed the sleepwalkers. Their weapons spun from their grasps, whipping towards Hazel, until she redirected them to slam into the oncoming ghosts and Melinoe.

           The ghosts shrieked and dissipated under the holy metal. Marie screamed and almost made Hazel freeze up again.

           Her mother stood there, a scowl and wrinkles marring her beautiful face. She clutched where a celestial dagger had imbedded into her saffron robes. “Poisoned child!” she yelled. “Worthless. The main gift your father gave me, and it ended up being a worthless child that would kill her own mother twice!”

           “No! You’re gone! You’re in the Fields of Asphodel!” Hazel choked back tears, struggling to remember that wasn’t her mother she just stabbed. Right? Melinoe couldn’t actually conjure her mother, could she? Hazel didn’t sense the Mist around her.

           “And who put me there?!” Marie demanded.

           Hazel stumbled backwards from the goddess, repositioning her spatha into a defensive stance. With her other hand, she battled with herself to maintain control on the floating celestial and imperial blades. The other ghosts she’d struck had dissipated. Marie had not, and Hazel wasn’t sure she could bring herself to attack her mother again. [1]

           When she saw someone else help the Romans beyond them, Hazel’s tears turned to relief.

           On Butch’s other side, an elephant stampeded the ghosts that were about to flank their allies. Her heart warmed to see Frank tossing the more corporeal ghouls left and right. Some sleep walkers even stirred as he and the giants’ steps made the earth shake. Maybe Phobetor was stretched too thin with keeping the Mist barrier down and controlling a sleep-walking army.

           Seeing Frank gave her hope and reminded her not to listen to this wretched woman—this wretched goddess.

           Butch and the others cheered at his presence.

           The raging elephant morphed into a swarm of wasps—causing some not-so-sleepy sounding cries from the sleep walkers, now jumping awake in shock—then morphed into a gorilla mid-lunge at Phobetor.

           The creepy minstrel raised his piccolo-hatchet to pipe in staccato.

           The few sleepwalkers still asleep collapsed to the ground as—Hazel assumed in horror—Phobetor released them from his spell.

           At the same time, the gorilla face-planted.

           Frank morphed back into a human.

           “Frank!” Hazel cried. She lost control of the imperial and celestial weapons. They cluttered to the strawberry field. Her hearted pounded inside her eardrums.

           During the distraction, Hazel’s mother withdrew the blade in her stomach. She grinned maliciously and lunged at Hazel.

           Hazel barely blocked the attack with her spatha and retreated. Nico had once said he’d met Melinoe, but wouldn’t talk about it beyond that. She understood why now. Hazel felt like she’d forgotten how to control the Mist, how to fight, and how to do anything more than be a scared child, split between watching her friends be attacked and defending herself. Where had this terror come from? How could it return so quickly?

           “Cursed girl. Can’t save your friends. Can’t save your soldiers. Can’t save your love!” Marie Levesque screamed between attacks that Hazel could hardly counter. “All you do is bring misfortunate to everyone around you!”

           Beyond the Goddess of Ghosts, Hazel saw Phobetor grin down at Frank. “Ah! This one shall do nicely!” he said before piping out a few notes.

           Frank jerked to his feet, but his posture was off. Hazel knew his eyes would be closed.

           The previously sleepwalking, now confused Greeks were defenseless when the ghosts turned to attack them. Hazel had taken away their weapons. They scrambled for a way to defend themselves and the Romans tried to join their rank.

           This was too much. The undead army seemed never ending. Every one they took down, more shadows seemed to pour in. How many had snuck out from the Underworld? How many had used her brother like an EasyPass fast lane? How long before her friends fell to panic and exhaustion?

           Hazel needed to save the camp and all of her friends. She’d won impossible battles before, but this was different. She felt alone. Percy couldn’t fight. Annabeth and Piper were too sick. Neither Jason nor Leo had returned. They’d wasted so much of their energy and magic fighting the Triple A Chimera the night prior, and she was the only one who came out mostly unscathed.

           Hazel fell to pieces at the thought of Phobetor making Frank kill the Romans that he’d just saved.  She wondered where Clovis was, if the son of Hypnos was still alive, and if he had the strength to help her wake Frank.

           Her insides quivered to think that this time, without her friends and without the gods to help, Hazel might be about to die again. They all might be about to die. Hazel didn’t mind sacrificing herself in Alaska to stall Gaea. She did mind failing this group of Romans and Camp Half-Blood. She minded not being able to save Frank.

           Something made her shakes become violent.

           Although the ground had been rumbling with each of the battling giants’ steps, the vibration became more consistent, almost rhythmically so. Hazel could sense the ground shifting a few yards away, further outside where the Mist barrier should have been.

           At first, she thought Python was about to make another hole for a second grand entrance. But, it couldn’t have been her; the massive drakon had paused by the cabins, as did a figure running towards the draken, the sinister gleam of the Cloven Terror.

           Even the ghouls seemed to hesitate.

           It was a song coming from the ground.

           When the sound became loud enough to distinguish a terrible cacophony of words, Hazel gritted her teeth, wondering if this song was one more way for the gods attacking their camp to dishearten them.

           “Heartbroken, we found a gleam of hope.

           Hearken to the sound, a whistle blows.

           Heaven sent a reply, however small.

           Evidence of life beyond these walls.”

           Hazel couldn’t tell if it was the shaking ground or the pressure in her eardrums that sent her to her knees. Others, ghosts and allies alike, fell near her. Even the two giants faltered, though, one laughed in squawkish delight. “My favorite lyrical maniac!”

           “We dream of jailers throwing down their arms.

           We dream of open gates and no alarms.

           Look to the day the Earth will shake.

           These weathered walls will fall away.”[2]

           Right as the dissonance became unbearable, the earth itself seemed to give before anyone else.

           Outside the strawberry field, and just outside camp, the grass sagged downward.

           The singing abruptly stopped.

           “K’oop!”[3]

           A male and female voice cried in harmony.

           Then, a greenish, glowing fist smashed through the weakened earth’s surface.

           Something massive crawled out of the hole.

           At first, it looked like a holographic projection—a twenty-foot-tall glowing greenish-turquoise woman with the head of a bestial feline. The semi-transparent warrior had claws as long and sharp as Hazel’s spatha and fangs the same length. At first, Hazel felt herself despair. How were they supposed to fight this along with all the others?

            A familiar voice shouted, “ROMANS! FEAR DOES NOT CONTROL US! WE CONTROL IT! LIKE WE WILL TAKE BACK CONTROL OF THIS BATTLEFIELD!”

           Hazel almost sobbed to hear Reyna. Her terror dissolved.

           When Hazel blinked through the tears, unsure why she had been in doubt before, she could see four figures riding on the cat warrior’s shoulders. In the center of the greenish avatar, a man’s body hovered. When it braced forward, the avatar mimicked his movement and did the same.

           “What in Tartarus is that?!” Phobetor demanded, apparently forgetting his control over Frank. His kiwi bird skull twisted to look at Eris, now shrinking in the lack of continued mayhem.

           “I’m starting with him,” said a girl balanced perfectly on the outside of the cat warrior’s right shoulder. The familiar daughter of Demeter had a faint glow of her own. Euna gestured towards the God of Nightmares with a scythe. With her other hand, she tilted her head back and appeared to drop something into her eye.

           Phobetor huffed. “I beg your pardon?!”

           “Thalia, let’s you and I give the Cloven Terror some cover fire. Don’t want that dodgy prick getting all the glory,” said a hulking figure crouching by the cat’s neck and grabbing on for dear life.

           “Oh my gods!” The huntress’ voice shook with rage from the other side of the neck. “Python wrecked Artemis’ cabin?! Let’s crush him!”

            If Hazel hadn’t been so close, she might not have heard Reyna’s finalizing strategy. Her imperial gold armor glinted in the hologram’s glow like a halo, though splotches of the metal looked tarnished and her cloak tattered. “Are you ready to make good on your debt? Help my troops as I have helped yours,” she said to the cat warrior.

           “Yes, Praetor. Then we’ll go to—” the male and female voice separated from harmony as one said, “my” and the other said, “his” before uniting to say, “brother.” With each pronoun, they split again. “Remember, I/he’s not used to this form. I/he can’t hold it for long. We need to do this fast.”

           Hazel, thankfully, didn’t see the Plague Bringer up there, but she could hear the scratchy singer from earlier howled with glee, “You heard the man-lady! Let’s kick some ass!”

Thanks for reading! Sorry this isn’t my cleanest chapter, especially at the beginning. Things kinda went to Hell in a hand basket between some work and family stuff, so I’ve been struggling to find time to clean these up. >.< Regardless, I hope you enjoyed! Stayed tuned next week for Calex’s chapter: A Boycott on Falling.

Footnote:

[1] Hazel, the level 3 Ranger, casts Blade Storm! Then she rolls a 2…

[2] Thrice. “The Earth Will Shake.” Vheissu 2005. This song is WAY older than I thought it was >>’’ (Mel, I might change the song choice later. I couldn’t find a more recent one that fit so well.)

[3] “Strike” in Mayan.