all my friends are heathens (take it slow) | calypso vs. eos

I move like a shadow.

No one seems to notice when I exit Eos's room, let alone what I found. Percy's rosary had gone missing a few days ago, and I had scoured every inch of the house with exception of my sisters' rooms. I saw it hanging off the side of Eos's dresser in her room, bleached even paler in the sunlight.

Her rosary is wrapped around my hand, balled into a fist at my side with such an intensity that my knuckles have turned white against the pressure. There is no word for the cold, black rage that rose within me at the sight of my little sister's token in Eos's room, its fair beads glistening in the light.

(I am not known for wrathful outbursts, but perhaps this is the exception.)

Eos, who had an empty face and blank, almost glassy eyes, at the Reaping. Eos, who stood and watched as my blood pooled onto the concrete beneath me.

Perhaps I am at fault for raising her, but there is nothing, no thought, no reason, only the darkness that burns through every fiber of my being.

This house is too quiet. There is silence except for the swift but furious pitter pat of my feet against the long flight of stairs to the entry room. It is too eerie, too surreal, and for a moment I want to pinch myself to make sure it isn't a dream. If Percy was here, she'd-

But she isn't.

Something I always have to remind myself of.

She is not here, she is lost somewhere in the stars and no matter how long, how deeply, I gaze into those obsidian and silver skies, I cannot seem to pinpoint where she has ran off to. She is not here, and her body, tiny and horribly broken, is sitting in a bed of white velvet in her casket.

She's not fucking here.

And nothing is going to change that.

I became what I am, this dark, twisted being, to save them, and for the power that comes along with being a crime lord. But here I stand, broken, shattered, weak- what I used to be. It is a feeling I had long forgotten, being made of such breakable things, glass bones and paper skin.

There was nothing, nothing I could have done to save Percy. That is the worst part of it all. I was rendered powerless- and I have not felt powerless for a long, long time.

I can take bullets to the bone, take blades to the flesh, but this pain, I cannot endure. This pain is dark, searing, everlasting, all-consuming. This pain is not ripping through my every nerve, tearing apart my every vein- it is all in my head and in my heart. That is what gives it its power, what makes it so excruciating.

Percy said I was invincible, but I proved her wrong.

Perhaps she can see my flaws now, from the stars. Perhaps in death, she knows the truth about me.

I'm a liar, a cheater, a murderer. I'm no hero.

I murdered a boy only a year my senior when I was fifteen, and I was not sorry. I did not tremble at the sight of his blood drenching my hands and pooling onto the ground below me. A part of me liked what I saw- he deserved it. I remember how the skin on my inner thigh had burned where he touched it. His touch was terrible and cold and put ice in my bones and a chill down my spine. But the fear did not shut me down, it curled my hands into fists and told me how to end it.

After that, there was only fire and a furious, bitter, black rage blooming from some dark part of me I had never known before.

The priest's boy was not my last kill.

I'm a liar, a cheater, a murderer. I'm no hero.

But maybe that's okay.

My trek down the winding halls is a lonely one. As the minutes slip by me, I swear the cavernous hole in my chest only continues to expand into something less than a hole and more like a void. Perhaps that is all I will become. An empty, dark void.

It is path I am all but a stranger to.

Maybe I am not in the right mind when I stalk into the grand entry hall to face Eos, but I lost every fuck there was to give after I saw Percy broken in Atlas White's arms, the pool of her blood left by Travers's mark glistening in the firelight. In this heavy, eerie silence, my shoes sound like gunshots against the white marble floors as I step toward Eos, the ivory beads of Percy's rosary tangled in my hand. Its silver cross hangs down from between my fingers, gently swaying like a pendulum.

Fingers curled around the rosary, I am anything but steady.

"You," I say, but it cuts through the air more like a growl. "I found Percy's rosary in your room." My eyes bore into hers, searching for something, some spark of fear or remorse. I do not think I will find any.

"You . . . you took it from her corpse," I continue. My voice is cold, but it is not accusing. I say the words like facts, because that is all they are.

My free hand immediately flits to my belt, skimming over my gun, Thanatos. Almost instinctively, my fingers begin to close around its handle, but I stop myself, and instead opt for my knife, Styx. Its brother, Lethe sits on the other side of my belt, but that knife is much more lethal- much sharper with a blade curved like a scythe.

And my intentions are not to kill.

"Don't. Ever. Touch. Her. Body." Each syllable is pronounce with an icy, sharp precision. I draw out every word, letting them tattoo themselves on my tongue and hang in the air. Perhaps if I put enough emphasis on what I say, my words may actually get through Eos's thick skull.

Rather than Thanatos or Lethe, my hand curls around the hilt of Styx and pulls it out, its blade glinting almost furiously in the garish light of the sun bleeding through the window.

"Do you fucking understand me, Eos?"

I do not waste another moment; in only a few deft movements, my arm pulls back and forward and then releases, sending Styx flying at my sister.

I try not to wonder if I will regret the scar I leave.


[Calypso attacks Eos; Styx (throwing knife)]
D5rOX98Lthrowing knife
[9088 -- Deep Gash on Forearm -- 7.5 damage]