"So pretty boy, tell me what year do you come from?"
I looked deep into her garnet colored eyes, and behind the drunkness, the craziness and whatever else, I could tell. She was dead inside. The look of having given up.
I knew that look and I knew it well, after all it was a look I wore more often than not. It was the same look I'd seen in the mirror after moving to my third foster home, when I'd finally understood that nowhere would ever really be home. The same look that had stared back at me from puddles of blood after Richter's fights.
The forest around us had gone eerily quiet.
"I'm from 2007," I answered, sitting down against a tree a few feet away from the one she was leaning on. The bark was rough against my back, and I could feel moisture seeping through my shirt from the moss growing on it.
"Phew," she whistled, the sound sharp in the quiet forest. "A 2000s guy, interesting." She tilted her head, studying me like I was some kind of museum exhibit.
"Call me grandma then cause I got put here in 1922, the greatest era to be alive, except for all the racism, but aside from that, yeah I'm sure we got your decade beat." She took another long swig, and I noticed her hands were shaking slightly. "Jazz was just getting good, prohibition meant everyone was breaking the law together, and the parties... gods, the parties were something else."
1922. That would make her... I did the math in my head. 17 + 85 = 102, years old, if she hadn't been placed here.
"Lyssa, how long have you been here?" I asked.
She paused mid-swig, lowering the bottle slowly. Her eyes went distant, if only for a moment.
"Not that long, a year and a half, maybe two, kind of lost count of the days after a while," she took another swig, this one longer than before. "It was just getting depressing."
What? She had been here for almost 2 years? My stomach dropped at the thought. Two years of this isolation, this insanity...
"Yeah, I can see that look on your face, I know, kind of hard to stomach, but this is gonna be your life now. No way off the island, at least I haven't been able to find one, and even if you succeeded where I failed, we're in the middle of the Sea of Monsters, so good luck trying to get to safety before a Trojan sea dragon eats you in one bite, or the sea itself gets its kicks from drowning you. Best get used to this life, it's the only one you'll ever know."
The words hit me all at once. To which I could only think one word and one word alone.
FUCK!!
I sighed hard, the sound coming from deep in my chest. The exhaustion of the day , fighting the Mormo, meeting Artemis, finding my foster parents dead, fighting Eudoxia, and now this.
My bad streak continues, I guess.
I stood up, my legs protesting after the sprint from the Hydra, and settled down next to her. Up close, I could see more details, mainly the details of the marbles on her necklace and a small scar that ran up her right forearm. It definitely hadn't been easy for her, which meant the same for me.
"Have you ever met other people?" I asked her, hoping against hope that maybe there were others, maybe we could form some kind of community.
"Nope, did have two demigods with me though when I first got dropped here. Rules of three for quests and all that jazz," she said, her voice going flat. "Marcus and Sophia. Children of Demeter and Apollo respectively. They're dead now." She paused, swirling the wine in her bottle. "Then again, no one truly dies here. I just haven't met them again."
Ok I got lost.
"What do you mean?" I asked her.
She turned to look at me fully, and for a moment, the crazy smile dropped completely. She looked tired, really tired.
"Time here is hard to explain, but basically imagine it like this." She grabbed a stick and started drawing in the dirt between us. "This island is a lake, the lake is also everyone's starting point here." She drew a circle. "Then out of this lake, infinite rivers stretch out." Lines radiating from the circle. "These are what I like to call roads or timelines. You also just can't move through them because the lake is surrounded by a dam." She drew a barrier around the circle.
I watched her crude diagram, trying to make sense of it.
"Each time the mist comes up, the dam opens and various rivers start to flow. However, the lake isn't the only thing that opens up, the rivers also open up to other rivers." She drew connecting lines between the radiating streams. "That's what happened to us, by the way. We were on different rivers, met in the middle where two crossed, and now we're on the same one."
She looked up at me to make sure I was following. I nodded, I kind of got it.
"Now imagine you're on this river and you, let's say, die." She drew an X on one of the lines. "That's present you, but past you is still in the lake, ready to find new rivers to go through. So when the mist rises again, another version of you might take a different path, live a different timeline."
My mind reeled. Multiple versions of ourselves, living and dying across different timelines?
"Wait, so we can meet our past or future selves?"
She shrugged, taking another drink. "Not sure, but I think not. Again, time here is hard to explain. I've never met another version of myself, and trust me if fate wanted to I would have met her by now. Would be nice to have a drinking buddy who really gets me, you know?" She laughed, but it was hollow, and when she stopped, the silence was deafening.
"Uhum," she coughed, pointing towards the drawing with the stick again. "So while we can't die in the true sense, since past versions of us are still here somewhere, dying still means the you of now is dead. Gone. Finished. Which kind of sucks when you think about it."
Then a question popped into my head, unwanted and unsettling.
Was I the first me on this island? I mean, sure I was, this was still my first day. But what if it wasn't 'my' first day, but this me's first day here? What if other versions of me had already lived and died here countless times?
Lyssa laughed, startling me out of my thoughts.
"Gods, you really don't act like an Aphrodite kid. I can tell what you're thinking, it's written all over your face. And may I repeat, my two cents is that you shouldn't think about it. It'll drive you actually insane. I've seen it happen." Her voice dropped. "Marcus spent three weeks trying to map out the timeline patterns. Didn't work as you can guess. Just stay alive, that's all that matters," she said quieting down at the latter part, then I heard her mutter under her breath, so soft I almost missed it. "It's all that matters."
I tried not to think about it.
"How did you figure all of this out?" I asked, gesturing at her dirt diagram. "The rivers, the timelines, all of it?"
She smiled bitterly. "Believe it or not, gods and goddesses are quite prideful, even minor goddesses like Hecate. She just told me how the island worked. Appeared in a dream my first night here, all mysterious and cryptic at first, didn't understand shit but then she just... explained it. Probably got tired of me not getting it."
She looked at the bottle in her hand with disgust. "Seriously, it was just two torches. I mean, sure, they were magic torches that could reveal hidden paths and burn through illusions, but still. I think trapping us in a time-loop island prison is a bit of an overreaction, don't you think so?"
"Most definitely," I answered, trying to match her casual tone.
She studied me for a moment, then changed the subject. "You told me an empousa brought you here."
"Yeah." The memory of Eudoxia's face, beautiful and terrible, flashed through my mind. The way she'd moved, the way she'd touched my face... I shuddered.
"Kind of hard to believe, if I'm being honest." She tilted her head. "Empousai are Hecate's children, sure, so they probably have access to the island but they don't usually do transportation duty. They're more about the seduction and murder thing."
"She said she was the firstborn of the empousa."
Lyssa's bottle stopped halfway to her lips. Her eyes widened, and for the first time since I'd met her, she looked genuinely shocked.
"A firstborn?" She whistled low. "Shit, guess your luck is just as bad as mine then. Firstborn are really fucking strong. Like, can go toe-to-toe with minor gods strong. How the hell did you survive?"
I thought about Richter, about the fight, about how easily she'd dismissed him. "I have my ways."
She studied me with those sharp red eyes, and I could tell she didn't quite believe me, but she let it go. "Well, whatever your ways are, you're gonna need more of them here." She handed me the bottle. "Drink, you're also gonna need it."
I looked at the bottle in my hands. The red liquid sloshed around like blood, thick and dark. I sniffed the top and immediately gagged. Gods, it smelled awful.
"Any chance you could make it without alcohol?" I asked hopefully, I mean I was still a minor, alcohol wasn't probably going to be good for the development of my prefrontal cortex.
She looked at me like I'd just suggested burning the Mona Lisa. "Without... alcohol? How blasphemous! Give it back if you don't want a taste." She reached for the bottle, genuinely offended.
"No, no, I'll taste it," I said, stopping her from snatching the bottle back. I needed something to dull the edge of this insane day, even if it wasn't exactly healthy.
I put it up to my lips and felt the wine in my mouth.
Eww, it tasted bad, like burning stepped on grapes, but then Lyssa's words echoed in my mind.
You're gonna need it.
Without thinking, I gulped again. The burn was less this time.
And again. The world seemed slightly softer around the edges.
And again. Was that Richter laughing in my head?
"Hey, hey, that's enough," Lyssa said, scrambling from her place and rooting the bottle from my hands with surprising speed. "Jeez Louise, take it slow! You have to savor it. This is wine a divine drink better than ambrosia. You can't just gulp it down like cheap beer!"
"You gulp it down," I replied, my words slightly slurred. When had that happened?
"I am a connoisseur of the grape," she said with exaggerated dignity. "I know how to savor it in little time. You are just a barbarian. A cute, crazy barbarian, but a barbarian nonetheless."
"You should meet the other guy then," I said without thinking, my filter apparently dissolved by divine wine.
"Other guy?" She perked up with interest.
Shit. "It slipped out, don't mind it."
"Eh," she said, shrugging her shoulders. "I already know you're crazy. No need to hide it."
"I'm not-"
She put her hand in front of my face, cutting me off. She brought the wine to her mouth and drank deeply, her throat moving as she swallowed.
"Ah," she released a satisfied sigh that seemed to come from her soul. She handed me the bottle. "Drink slowly this time. Small sips. Let it sit on your tongue before swallowing."
I grabbed the bottle and brought it to my mouth. This time, I slowly poured a small amount in, let it sit as she instructed.
"Better," she approved. "You might make a proper drinking buddy yet."
We sat in comfortable silence for a moment, passing the bottle back and forth.
Then a question popped into my head.
"Hey, I forgot to ask, but why was the Hydra chasing you? Artemis told me monsters follow us because we have a scent. Is that what happened to you?"
She laughed, loud and sudden. "Nope! Scents are dampened here, too much mist fucking with everything. Though there are a few monsters that can still sniff you out if you reek enough. The Hydra however followed me because I stole its tooth."
I nearly choked on my sip of wine. "You what?"
She pointed to her back where the tooth-shaped blade rested. Wait, not tooth-shaped and not a blade, it was a fucking tooth!
This crazy bi-
Lyssa interrupted my thoughts as she added with a proud grin.
"Always thought I'd make a good Hermes kid."
A/N: This chapter was so damn fun to write, Lyssa and Julius bounce off each other well, it feels pretty natural to write. Either way we got Lyssa's backstory and more explanation about the island now time to think about something Lyssa said was impossible, figuring a way out of the Hecate forsaken island.
I hope you all enjoyed it. Send those stones and reviews as they help the story. Author out.