Dear Ms Lady Demigod: Twelve Days To Doom

6 8 Phobos or Fear

"We cannot open portals to hell anymore," Zeus said, "Which means the final plane has started crumbling. Soon, all the portals to the other worlds will start closing under the final plane, heaven crumbles and everything just collapses in itself,"
"Curse that demihuman boy!"

"Ajax..." Phobos got up and took his Morgenstern. He quietly walked out of the chaotic meet of gods. He reached the gardens of the gatekeeper's castle, with some stars watering the foliage and playing under the light. "Where are you going?" He heard his sister, Peitho, as she sat beside some grape vines in the garden and fed on their nectar, "To the mortal world," He answered. 

She looked at him, "Why must you go there?"
He looked at the realm gates, Peitho got up, "Ajax?"
Phobos walked towards the gate and Peitho followed him, "Phobos, listen, you must not disobey mother-"
"Why not? She doesn't defer, why must I?"

"But, why does Ajax have to die?"
"Because I detest him. Cursed as he is, he blights our existence in his name.  So, if the gatekeeper won't kill him, I will,"
The gate was covered with a golden shield that Lict had made across all the gates. Phobos passed through it and stood at the gate, looking down at the clouds of the mortal world, "It is about time I greet my half-mortal, half-brother, and see for myself if he is half as powerful as mother claims him to be," He jumped down and passed through the clouds, crashing through various planes of existence, falling like a star, "Ajax... I will be your end,"

. . .

Nataniel dug a spear into the ice beneath him and looked ahead at a small cottage. They were out of the City of the Dead, and back to the ice-covered landscape of Alkinshime. He looked at the north star shining overhead, "Eleven days left,"
Ariel stood beside him, looking at the golden water lily in his arms. Nataniel grabbed his hands and walked into the small, abandoned cottage. It seemed like it was a part of a village at some point. But something killed everything and everyone around it, and now this cottage stood alone, on a white landscape with a huge, tall forest behind it. 

Nataniel removed the cobwebs with his spear as he walked in. Ariel walked behind him. Nataniel turned towards him, and looked at Ariel's face, "Stay here, I'll go for a hunt and try to find some food," Ariel sat on an old and dusty mat with his knees before him and the golden water lily in his lap. Nataniel looked at him one last time, then left the house, closing the door behind him.

It was dark and the forest was full of strange, magical creatures and flowers. Fruits that glowed in the dark and flowers that gave a hypnotizing aroma. Nataniel walked barefoot with his spear. He got down and touched the ice, he closed his eyes and within one glance he could see the various ways in the forest. Everything that the snow could see, he could see. 

'His skin was always golden, I never thought he'd be of any other colour, but now he is. His colours are fading away, his hair is slowly getting lighter, his eyes are turning grey from green, slow death, slow death is taking him away from me, what should I do?'

Suddenly, a heard a loud roar and heard fast footsteps. It jumped at him and pinned Nataniel to the ground. It looked like a huge lion, with tusks like an elephant. It roared on his face and Nataniel struck it in its mouth with his spear, tearing his gut. It roared and jumped away, Nataniel got up and felt a strong pain in his shoulder. 

The creature jerked its head and attacked him again. The creature broke his spear and slammed him on a huge rock, breaking some of his ribs. It stood on top of Nataniel and roared. Nataniel's eyes glowed bright blue and it began freezing the creature. But it attacked him yet again, refusing to surrender. He tried to his face but Nataniel grabbed his paws. He kicked its leg and completely broke it with a frosty kick, turning his flesh into ice shards. The creature jumped back from pain and the ice shards turned into another spear. Nataniel grabbed the spear and pulled his arms back to gather his strength, the creature ran at him and Nataniel jumped up, striking the creature in its neck. Its skin was hard and difficult to penetrate, it pushed Nataniel away like a bull. 

Nataniel landed on the barks of one of the trees, tilting it. He tried freezing the creature again but it won't give him enough time to do so. He would run and dodge, "ARIEL!" He yelled as the creature struck him down, "ENOUGH!" His eyes shone again and the creature's face froze. It began rubbing its face on the ground from the pain of freezing muscles. When Nataniel froze the rest of its body. He felt a burning pain on his shoulder and so he decided that he couldn't ignore it anymore. He tore his shirt and looked at the wound, the claw marks. It was a deep cut, so deep he could almost see his bone. 

There was so much blood that his white shirt turned red, his trousers turned red and the blood from his shoulders was staining his feet. He pressed his hands over his wound to freeze the blood but suddenly, he saw something dark in his blood. A black element that seemed to grow bigger until his blood turned black and it began spreading to his collarbone and his neck,

"WHAT IS THIS?!" He touched his neck and soon saw that darkness on his palm. It seemed like black clouds were moving inside his body. And they felt like acid inside the veins. He began scratching his skin out, just to scratch out some of that darkness out of his body, 
"Nate," He heard and turned around, finding Beth standing in his flowy, white shirt, blue trousers and boots. 
"Beth?"

Beth walked towards him and traced his cold fingers across Nataniel's cold face, "You are...Truly, immensely, immeasurably lonely...Because you let your lover kill me,"
"No, I didn't! I tried to stop him-"
But Beth's shirt started turning red and blood dripped out of his stomach, "What is happening, Beth?!" Nataniel pressed his hands on his stomach, and they just went right inside it. Nataniel felt his organs from the inside and quickly pulled out, "I am pregnant with your pain,"

Beth's blue eyes began losing their glow as they turned towards Nataniel's face. He reached his hand towards Nataniel, "Now, this is happening with your demigod.
"NO!" Nataniel yelled as the bright spread to his stomach, "And you are with his pain...Your demigod," He smiled. 
"NO!!!" Nataniel pushed him away and began running out of the forest, running away from Beth's ear-piercing screech "ARIEL!"

"ARIEL! ARIEL! ARIEL!" Nataniel screamed as he entered the cottage. Ariel was still sitting peacefully, looking at the water lily. He ran towards him and hugged him strongly, "Ariel,' Nataniel was breathing heavily and soon began weeping, "God, you stayed..." He didn't say anything for a few minutes and moved away from him. Ariel didn't have any blood on his clothes and then he looked at himself, he didn't either. 

And his shoulder didn't hurt. There was no wound. His clothes didn't have a single stain on them, and no blight on his body. He looked around, it was quiet and peaceful. Ariel looked down at the golden water lily. 

Nataniel got up and looked outside the window, and the huge trees of the forest behind them, lighting up because dawn was near. He went back to the forest and found that his spear was just laying on the ground, he picked it up and looked around, there was no creature, just the ice that he had left behind.

And standing on that snow, that dry grass, that wet dew, standing in that magical forest that morning, Nataniel considered his wounds. Maybe he did have wounds in his stomach and his shoulders, he just couldn't see them, but occasionally he could feel them, occasionally they came alive, but at that moment when his wounds were euthanised by his sanity, he wondered,

'Would I ever heal?'

Why must mortals be intransient, but their wounds shan't?
And if we must live with them, are they truly the past?

-To be continued

Phobos, The god of fear
Dear Ms Lady Demigod: Ten Days to Doom