[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 70: Drowned part 1

I couldn't do anything but stare with wide eyes as my sword—one of the few things I had left to remember my world by, one of the few things that had been with me from the beginning—began to come apart in my hands. It unraveled and unfolded in long strips of Celestial Bronze with the snapping groan of twisted metal. In what seemed like moments, more metal than I thought the sword could contain was flexing, reaching out, and sliding across itself in long, sparking motions, even as I struggled to hold on, as afraid to release it as I was to let it go. No one else seemed to have any more idea what to do with it than I did, staring at the somehow living remains of my sword with a kind of fascinated horror, as with bronze tendrils seemed to waver, as if sniffing at the air—

And then they were abruptly in motion.

"Move!" I shouted, finally having no choice but to let go as a hundred blades swung wildly through the air. Bronze limbs slammed into and through the ground, lashing out at anything in sight as everyone scattered. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aiz lash out at the sudden attack with one of her own, sending sparks flying as she diverted a blade, but accomplishing little more than that, and had to swallow a sudden, illogical demand for her to stop, replacing it with something only slightly better. "Get back! Stay away from it!"

Aiz snapped a glance my way, meeting my eyes for just a moment, before withdrawing slightly with a slight dip of her chin, leaving me to...to...

I had no idea what I was planning to do, honestly. Without anyone else being in danger, I was free to focus on what Riptide was doing, but all that did was raise even more questions as I saw what all those blades were really up to. They flickered towards the fallen plant monsters Aiz had disposed of before we arrived, as where its blades penetrated the corpses' hides, bronze spread over dead flesh and a scaled pattern seemed to grow across the blades as they merged with one another in the same way that thing had merged with Riptide. A moment later, I heard a cry of something living and turned to see that a living plant had somehow approach, and just as quickly been impaled a dozen times and drawn into the growing bronzed mass.

Dead or alive, whatever monsters it touched, it consumed—and it hungrily reached out for more as I looked on in horror at what was happening.

"What...the hell is happened?" I asked the air, half-hoping for an answer as I felt even more out of my depth than I had when the monsters attacked. A moment later, Ryuu landed beside me from wherever she'd been before, and laid a hand on my shoulder.

"Mr. Jackson?" She asked quietly and I was sure my eyes were still too wide when I turned to look at her. "What should we do?"

There were a lot of things tied up in that question—curiosity and confusion perhaps most of all. Even with as expressionless as she so often was, I could see the uncertainty in her features, the questions she wanted to ask lying just beneath the surface. If I was baffled by this whole mess, I could only imagine how she felt right now, with all of this going on. But most of all, there was a quiet, patient acceptance. A simple gesture of support that said that we could talk about all this later, but here and now, with no way of knowing what was happening, she was ready to trust me and follow my lead.

Saying friends like Ryuu were worth their weight in gold did them a disservice; you couldn't buy or replace people like her. I should know—I'd lost enough friends like her.

"We have to contain it," I said. "Just for a minute. If we do, I can—"

I didn't get a chance to finish, which might have been for the best because everything after that point was going to amount to 'I'll make something up,' because all of a sudden, I felt something stir, like a massive beast displacing the water with its passage. It rose to the surface of my senses almost too quickly for me to follow and it was all I could do to lift my eyes towards it in time. When I did, I saw the red-haired woman land on the edge of the newly-trimmed cliff, casting her gaze around. It landed on what had been Riptide and became almost contemplatively, before turning towards Aiz in consideration.

And then it landed on Ryuu and I—and the distance between us abruptly vanished.

I hadn't even realized what I was doing until I was halfway through doing it, empty right hand coming up to grab Ryuu and push her away. A sudden burst of strength and adrenaline was enough for me to raise me shield in defense against an attack I knew was coming but couldn't hope to see. I tried to anyway, keeping my eyes wide and taking in everything I could, from the slow widening of Ryuu's eyes to the emotionless gaze of the red-haired woman. I saw the cuts and bruises and burns on her skin, bad in some places but still nowhere near what they should have been and seeming to get lighter by the minute. I saw the blood caking her skin, the focus in her gaze already shifting away from me, the muscles flexing. And yet, I still couldn't see it coming.

But I felt it. Gods above did I feel it. The force of it hit my shield hard enough that the bones in my wrist, hand, and forearm shattered in an instant. The force of it drove the shield back further and it slammed into me at an angle, catching me in the shoulder and side, and with a series of snapping pops, I felt my shoulder, collarbone, and ribs shatter in a symphony. And as if even that wasn't enough, I felt my feet leave the ground, as the force of the blow just carried me away.

I hit the ground—

When I came too, there was a long moment where I couldn't move—couldn't even think of moving—because I was in so much pain. My left side was on fire and by cruel coincidence, I think I'd landed on it, so gods only know what other damage had been done, but when I tried to gasp for breath I immediately regretted ever falling for this 'breathing' trend to begin with and I swear my vision went grey-white. I could feel fighting going on behind me, each vibration of the clash sending shudders of agony through me, and I would have been sick if I had the strength.

Water. I needed water. I'd die if I couldn't get to water soon—but I could feel it, somewhere nearby, and my eyes rolled to try and pin point it.

And when I did...I saw her. Standing in the water of the lake, towering over it, the thing that I could only assume Riptide had become surveyed the battlefield. Scaled bronze skin cloaked a vaguely feminine form, shifting oddly in placed between metallic armor and living flesh. Tendrils of darkened material hooded her head like hair, but it didn't hide the fact that her face had no ears, no mouth, no nose. All it had were a pair of glossy black eyes, like polished volcanic rock, that gave her a detached, alien look. But they were familiar, somehow; I'd seen them somewhere before.

Oh, I remembered. That's right. I'd seen those eyes once in the Garden of the Hesperides—in the faces of Zoe's sisters.

"Riptide..." I tried to said, though it came out as more of a slurred drawl, croaked and broken and receiving no reply. She, it, whatever—they were too far away and my voice too weak. I knew that, but when my voice didn't work, I tried again, my one good arm reaching out helplessly over the ledge, grasping for something that I knew was too far away. "Ana...klusmos..."

All of a sudden, those black eyes looked at me, as if hearing me across the battlefield. All around us there was fighting, and I could even see sparks erupting from all around her form as if things were breaking upon her, but even so, our eyes met and held—for a moment.

And then she looked away and began to move, further and further out of reach. Away from the chaos, the town, the destruction, and deeper into the forests of the floor, leaving me behind.

And just like that, I didn't fucking care anymore.

"Anaklusmos..." I groaned and water splashed over me. What seemed like my entire body started popping and cracking, fragment soft bone slipping through torn flesh and taking their rightful place. Something that had been flattened began to inflate and my chest cavity began to widen, ribs pulling together like the legs of a dying insect, and every moment of it was agony—but I didn't care. After another moment, water splashed over me again, and as the wave rose and fell, it swallowed up the pain and dragged it away. I grabbed my arm, bracing it carefully as broken ends connected and mended, and then used it to leverage myself upright. "Anaklusmos!"

She didn't turn back. Odds were, all I was doing was drawing attention to myself and making people thing I was crazy—but damn it, let them think that. Right now, I was fucking getting there.

I turned around and saw the battle going on behind my back, and immediately felt disoriented as I tried to make sense of it. I couldn't see Lefiya or Lulune and I saw Mrs. O'Leary standing guard over Ryuu, who was laid out on the ground, sending a flash of concern through me. Aiz and the red-haired woman were fighting and it was pretty clearly not going great for Aiz, whose armor and clothes were torn and bloodstained.

"How do you know that name!" Aiz shouted and for a moment I wondered what she was talking about. A moment later, it also occurred to me that I should probably be upset about the broken bones and brush with death.

But both of those things were so far down my list of priorities right now it wasn't even funny.

"You!" I shouted, interrupting the fight again with about as much care as I'd given before. "What the hell was that thing!?"

"...Stay out of this," Aiz said, with want might have been concern for me after how well this had gone before and might have been a need to answer her own questions—but either way, I didn't care.

"Fuck that! What was that?" I demanded, furious. "What did you do to Riptide!?"

The red-haired woman, the Level 6, shifted her eyes towards me for a brief moment—and then looked away, dismissing me utterly.

Something in my chest, the orb I'd felt before, starting to crack again, breaking as fury rose up in me. I heard a rush in my ears, felt a rumble, and thought for a moment that I'd imagined them both—but no. Hephaestus, the old Hephaestus, had told me so before, back on Calypso's Island, and he was right.

I was my father's son.

I cast a glance past the fight, my eye's meeting Mrs. O'Leary's and right now I was by far the more feral of us two. She caught the look and understood it, taking Ryuu gently in her mouth and drawing back into the shadows with nothing but a whimper to mark her concern.

"Fine," I said, sounding too calm even for my own ears. My hands trembled, knuckled clenched too tight, blood running too hot in my veins. "Then we can continue this conversation when you get tired of drowning."

Without another word, I slammed my fist into the ground. Something broke, and not just metaphorically—my fingers, my wrist, and my arm shattered, coming apart as power flooded up and down it. But as it did, fissures opened all around me, as far as I could see, and geysers of water spilt forth from the cracks, pushing upon and widening the cracks as they went. Everything around me snapped and cracked and shifted unsteadily, moving even as I stood still, and behind me, as wave rose, coming up from the lake below to tower over the cliffs.

And then half of the island fell down into the water.