[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 34: Rekindled part 1

Odd as it might have sounded, death wasn't all that memorable. I didn't even remember the first time I died, really—not the actual being dead part. I'd spent a decent amount of time dwelling on it, wondering how I'd gotten here, and sometimes I almost managed to convince myself there'd been something I'd seen or felt or heard, but in truth, there was nothing that really stood out to me. It wasn't even like falling asleep, really; it felt like mothing more than a blink of an eye. One moment, Mt. Olympus. The next, Orario.

Round two was a bit better, but not by much. I didn't find myself in any waiting rooms or lines, didn't see the shores of the Styx, didn't get an angelic escort or soundtrack, nothing. Hades had complained about the number of souls he had to deal with draining his funds, but damn, death was really low-budget. As I died...I don't know, I just seemed to fade. There was no sound or anything, just an inexorable gravity slowly dragging me this way or that, accompanied by a feeling of detachment and freedom.

Then the process just sort of seemed to stop. I don't really know how else to describe it. It wasn't really like I was able to see anything, but I got the feeling I wasn't alone, which was...well, nice in its own way. Dying didn't really scare me that much in the grand scheme of things—or it did, but not as much as it should have. I'd been facing the possibility of death since I was twelve and I'd seen most of the people I cared about go on ahead first; given all that I'd already lost and all that I'd seen, it was hard to truly be intimidated by the thought of dying any more. But being alone...that was something else. I wasn't sure who it was—it could have been Welf or my father or Death itself for all I knew—but they were there beside me as I went and I drew comfort from that.

Besides that, I got a vague impression—like something black moving in the darkness—that a massive shape was circling me silently, watching me. Which really should have freaked me out a lot, but even that felt pretty comforting in its own bizarre way. Frankly, death was more peaceful than anything else.

Life, meanwhile, hurt like a bitch.

I came too all at once, or at least that's what it felt like. Although actually, it felt like someone had poisoned me, poured gasoline on me, lit me on fire, and then started pounding my head and chest with a sledgehammer. My ribs felt like someone had shoved them in, my brain felt like someone had tried to pull it out, and all of a sudden, I was in agony again. Everything I could feel hurt, and what I could feel was weird in and of itself, focused more on the core of my body than anything else, as if I'd been cooked almost, but not quite, all the way through. I felt like my body had been hacked down to size and I could only feel the pain of what was left.

Reflexively, I tried to draw breath and nearly gagged on it, the touch of air on my throat an agony in its own right. Unable to think, I tried to move, but succeeded only in flopping around randomly. I couldn't see because something was wrong with my eyes, couldn't hear because something was wrong with my ears, and the only thing I felt was pain. My only clear sense was of the water around me and even then, all I knew was that it was there; unable to focus and without any sort of context, I couldn't make out the rest.

All of a sudden, something was filling my mouth, making me choke, but something else covered it to keep me from spitting it out and I ended up swallowing, hoping for air. It came and I managed to gasp for air a bit more easily, adding a vowels and consonants to my gagging noises as I gained a bit more feeling in my lips and tongue. I had only moments to 'enjoy' that when something else was being poured down my throat and making me fight for breath again, a process that repeated several times. I tried to fight and protest, but my objections didn't even make sense to me and they didn't listen.

Then, abruptly, my ears popped as—presumably—my eardrums grew back. My sounds of objection shifted as I actually managed to hear some of them, and with an effort I managed a word.

"Stop," I said, if with so 'a' and 'h' sounds in there.

"Mr. Percy!" A voice—far, far too loud for my sensitive new eardrums—seemed to shout at me, making me flinch. Something might have been touching me, too, but if so, the feeling was distant, as though through many layers of cloth.

When I was finally free to breath for a moment, I let my head collapse back into the water beneath me, panting like I'd just run a marathon instead of speaking a word. Each breath was like tasting new flavors of pain, the sensation so intense I felt it behind my eyes, but it slowly began to change, maybe even lightening. After...awhile, I managed to put two and two together and recognize the voice.

"Lili...?" I asked, turning sightlessly in the direction I thought she'd been and was proud I managed the word.

"Mr. Percy," She said and I could tell she was close, as if clutching me tight. I didn't relax, because I didn't have enough control to even tense myself in the first place, but after a moment I felt something clink against my teeth. "Mr. Percy, drink this. They're potions."

I wasn't sure if I didn't have taste buds at the moment or if they really did just taste that bad, but I took her word for it, swallow it despite the agony it sent through my neck, coughing only once. The moment it was gone, I had time to draw a couple of breaths and then there was another vial and another and another. From the 'feel' of them, as best I could describe, they were probably some mixture of Potions and Magic Potions. Or maybe High Potions? I don't know—but they were something meant to be good for me, even if neither my exhaustion nor my pain faded.

"I'm sorry," Lili said, sounding like she might have been crying, but I mostly just noticed that my ears had healed. If nothing else, the sound of her voice wasn't painfully loud anymore. "That's the last of Lili's potions, Mr. Percy—there's nothing left."

I continued panting, just somehow unable to catch my breath. It was like the effort of drawing in air was tiring me out. Even so, I did my best to bluff.

"It...'s 'kay," I mumbled. "I jus'...just...need a moment. You 'kay?"

I took her distressed noises as a no, but couldn't muster up the strength to do anything about it. I seemed to be healing, but it was slow and weird, less like the pain was stopping and more like it was changing location, the parts of my body I was able to feel growing slowly outwards. After a moment, I felt a strange tightness growing inside my skull—or rather, inside my eye socket—and opened an eye.

It felt like something was stabbing me in the head and I couldn't make heads or tails of what I saw besides. Colors seemed either absent or somehow off, things around be distorted and blurred. But I made out a fuzzy shape beside me and tried smile. It proceeded to hurt my entire face until I stopped.

"Made ya worry?" I tried and another blur pressed closer, this one much, much larger. It was a mass of shadow bigger than a moving van, which kind of narrowed down who it could be, and somehow I wasn't surprised to find her here. "Hey, girl...Welf?"

"What?" Lili asked, pressing closer. Maybe she didn't understand me—or maybe my pronunciation just sucked balls at the moment.

"Welf?" I repeated, trying hard.

"Mr. Welf?" She asked, shifting. She might have been looking over her shoulder. "Mr. Welf is fine, he's just—Mr. Welf!?"

My body jerked at the sudden distress in her voice and I tried to floor the general direction of her smudged face, looking towards a bunch of other smudges, with was unhelpful. A moment later, however, as my other eye socket seemed to be in the process of filling, there was something like a tug on my 'working' eye, except from behind. My eye rolled in its socket as there was a sensation like something attaching, and then the world came into greater clarity.

The first thing I saw was Welf and Zanis wrestling on the ground, with blood and swords involved. I struggled to keep track of their movements, so instead my eye tracked back to Lili. She had her crossbow out and aimed at them, but seemed hesitant to take the shot, probably because her hands were shaking and he body swayed slightly from side to side.

Oh yeah...wasn't she drunk or something? I felt like that was important, maybe.

I closed my eyes for a moment before taking a deep breath. My limbs still felt weird, as if mostly absent, but the parts of them I could actually feel were spreading, steadily opening up new and exciting places to feel pain from. Nonetheless, sensation seemed to be spreading out slowly from around my bones, but it seemed like a prolonged fight. Probably because everything above it wasn't so much gone as dead. I'd been cooked like a steak—Percy Jackson, well done—and I could feel it.

But...

Releasing an agonized sound, I hissed out my breath and began to turn, water rising beneath me to help flip me over—and fuck, but even controlling the water seemed to hurt right now, like working a muscle I'd already torn. It still did work, though, and I managed to turn over onto my stomach.

"Mr. Percy!" Lili all but shouted, looking at me with startled eyes. "What are you doing!?"

"Physical therapy," I groaned, thinking I might actually need therapy after this. Gods, burning alive hurts. And something that occurred to me belatedly? If I was this tired and in pain while in contact with water, then I must really have been dead on my feet.

...I didn't even manage to chuckle at that and not just because it was bad. I did, however, manage to move my arms enough to push myself off the ground.

"Stop!" Lili said, rushing over to me and looking for a moment like she was going to push me back down, which as I was now, probably would have worked. Instead, she hesitated at the last second, drawing back as if afraid to hurt me. "Mr. Percy, stop! You're hurt—you were dead!"

"It's...just a...flesh wound," I forced out and felt proud to be able to make a Monty Python reference at a time like this. It was even sort of true—it was just that all my flesh had been wounded. With a little help from the water, which nearly floored me with stabs of pain to my gut, I managed to stand, leaning against Mrs. O'Leary.

Or, at least, I tried to. When I laid my hand on her, however, she didn't seem solid, as though she were made of liquid shadow. What's more, the shadows slipped through my hand, leaving it feeling cold and heavy and yet somehow more there. Probably because I could feel it, even through layers of dead, cooked flesh—I could feel it down to my bones or, perhaps, my soul.

Also, I fell over and my grand plan of standing up, pointing, and telling Mrs. O'Leary to fetch kind of came apart.

"Mr. Percy!" Lili said, hurrying to catch and stabilize me, which in this case meant I was basically lying on her. With her help, though, I managed to stand more or less up right and shake my head a bit. Looking at Mrs. O'Leary again, she didn't exactly seem all there, which was more than a bit worrying.

"Take a break, girl," I commanded, trying to remain upright. Bracing a hand on Lili's shoulder, I took a breath and a step. The first was the hardest and I wouldn't have managed it if Lili hadn't been there to support me, but I grit my teeth and took another.

"Mr. Percy, please stop," Lili whimpered. "I...I'll go! Just lay down here until help arrives and—"

After all that trouble I went through to stand up?

"Let's go together, Lili," I said instead. Honestly worried about what might happen if she went alone. Silly of me, considering my condition; I wasn't sure if I'd be able to do any better. "It's almost over."

At that, Lili swallowed—but she didn't argue, though I saw her fingers tightening on my arm.

The next few steps were easier, with her helping support me, and I managed to catch something of a stride, ignoring the pain. The ground was wet and it was raining, which probably helped, but after a dozen paces I was only half-relying on her to walk. After a dozen more, I walked entirely on my own power, my footsteps utterly silent in the water.

As I drew near enough, I got a better look at Welf and Zanis and saw the both of them frozen, watching something else—and when I followed their gazes, I saw Aiz and Bete, both of whom glanced at me discretely. Bete was mocking Zanis with the truth of how outmatched he was, but seemed to be keeping him distracted. Why? For me?

You really don't need to do that, I wanted to tell him. Please—be my guest and crush him.

But I remained silent instead. Partially to avoid drawing Zanis' attention, mostly because if I stopped, if I wasted the breath to speak, I honestly was sure if I'd be able to keep going afterwards. So when I saw a chance, I took it. One hand went for the sword in the man's hand, grasping it tightly with my already damaged fingers, my other arm going around his throat.

"By the way, not dead," I managed to rasp, planting my feet and pulling back with all the force I could muster. It felt weak, but maybe Zanis was having a pretty shitty day, too, because I pulled him off my friend. "Welf, end this."

My friend didn't waste a moment, withdrawing the sword he'd stabbed through Zanis and swinging it with all his might. Zanis jerked as blood sprayed and I let go of him, unable to hold him any longer—and as I began to topple over, Welf caught me.

"Percy," Welf said, the single word containing mountains of relief. "You're alive."

"Rumors of my death..." I began before giving up, hooking an arm around his shoulder and letting him hold me up. Lili was already by my other side, waiting to support me if I started to topple again, but I didn't. "No, too tired. Are we done yet?"