We sat there for a bit, simply drinking, weirdly the buzz seemed to lessen the more I drank. In fact, I could swear my sight was getting sharper, my hearing more acute.
Eh, probably some crazy magic wine, side effect. Couldn't afford to deal with it right now.
I glanced at Lyssa, studying her profile as she stared off into the distance.
"So," Lyssa began, the drink disappearing from my hand like it had never existed. Magic. Right. Still getting used to that being a normal part of life. "No more staying in one place, we've got to-"
She stopped midsentence, her eyes widening as she looked around us. The air felt different suddenly, charged with an energy that made my skin prickle.
"Got to what?" I asked her, also rising from my position. My muscles protested the movement.
I honestly just wanted to sleep.
"Dammit!" she yelled, out of damn nowhere.
It would have made me jump if I wasn't a bottle of magically made wine in. Instead, I just watched as her face contorted with rage and dissatisfaction, in an almost comical manner.
"What now?" I asked, though I had a sinking feeling I already knew.
"I didn't realize the time, and the mist caught up to me, my base is all gone, months of work!!" She turned her face skyward, and her face scrunched up. "I DAMN YOU HECATE! WHY DON'T YOU HAVE A CLOCK, YOU WANT ME TO SUFFER FINE! BUT GIVE ME A CLOCK AT THE LEAST!"
I stared at the spectacle, both dumbfounded and slightly amused. Could you blame me.
"You join me!" she yelled as she pointed towards me, her finger shaking with emotion, before facing upwards once more. "We need to curse that misty ass titaness together! Damn her to the fields of punishment with me!"
"I'm fine thanks," I said, a chuckle almost leaving my lips.
I stared as she continued to throw insult after insult to nothing at all. She threw insults until she was tired, until her voice was hoarse and her shoulders sagged with exhaustion.
"So?" I finally asked when the silence stretched too long. "What was all that about? I heard something about a base."
"Oh the base, yeah," Lyssa muttered. "It was so beautiful, it had walls and a ceiling, it didn't have a floor but who needs those anyway, I'm not a posh rich person. I'd even started carving little decorations into the support beams. Strawberries mostly, from memory of home. It was so, so beautiful, one and a half months of work gone, just like that."
"I get that this has happened before," I said, and it wasn't a question.
She nodded, her crimson hair falling across her face. "Six times, eight if we count the ones I built with Marcus and Sophia. Oh Sophia how I miss your internal sun clock, we never forgot the time with you around. Kids of Apollo have an internal sun clock by the way, that's why they always come fashionably late, they know the exact time for the best entrances."
Then Lyssa began to move, shaking off the whatever it was that had taken hold off, her, it looked like melancholy but then again I had never experienced melancholy so I couldn't be sure.
Then she began to run, wait no, she began to jog, wait no it was speed walking. She began to speed walk with determined, jerky movements.
"Come on," she called over her shoulder, then stopped abruptly. "I just realized I don't know your name!"
There was something almost manic in her voice now, the same as it normally was.
I ran after her, speed walking alongside her when I reached her. "It's Julius, Julius Belmont."
"Well then come on, Julius!" she cheerfully yelled. "Time to show you the scenic route to our new potential home!"
We walked for a long time, mostly in silence. Wasn't great at keeping conversations going. Starting them? No problem. Adding good commentaries or jokes? No problemo as the spanish like to say. But actually keeping a conversation going? That was out of my ballpark.
And while Lyssa seemed quite good at talking, that wasn't a compliment, she was strangely silent, though her maniac grin was plastered across her face.
We finally made it past the treeline, the oriental plane trees giving way to something that took my breath away.
A stone beach stretched before us, but this wasn't like any beach I'd ever seen. What would normally have been sand, was made up of smooth, flat stones in shades of gray and silver that looked beautiful in the now clear moon light. Through the cracks between these stones, silver trees sprouted - though they were few and far between.
These trees were unlike anything in the forest behind us. Their trunks were thin, almost delicate, with bark that looked like it was made of actual silver. The leaves were sparse, but from every branch that existed, silver apples hung like... well apples.
"Don't eat them," Lyssa suddenly said at my side, as she noticed my gaze,
"You tried?" I asked, though something about the trees made my skin crawl. They were beautiful, and remembering Eudoxia, beautiful things were starting to give me the creeps.
"Nope, Sophia did though," Lyssa's voice went flat again. "She walked straight into the sea after eating just one. We pulled her out, even had to tie her to down at the base because she kept trying to walk back into the water. Kept repeating the same thing over and over, no matter what we tried. The same thing she'd been saying for days, the same thing she said as she drowned," her voice dropped to barely above a whisper. "The Mist, I need to join the Mist."
A chill ran down my spine that had nothing to do with the sea breeze. "That's... creepy."
"Yeah, well, welcome to Hecate's island. Everything here is designed to mess with your head one way or another."
We walked onto the beach proper, and as my boots touched the stone, I no longer simply saw the sea.
No, surrounding the entire island, visible now like a wall made of fog, was the same mist that had been rolling across the island mere hours ago.
I guess that's what Sophie meant by mist.
"Yeah that's what's keeping us in here," Lyssa said, noticing my stare. "Even if you built yourself a raft, you go into that Mist and it brings you right back to the island. It was grating at the beginning, and even if you do make it through, may I remind you. Sea of Monsters out there."
"How many times did you try to get through?" I asked her, curious, after all her experience was all I had to maybe make it out of here.
"Five, six? Can't remember anymore. It just got depressing after a while." She shrugged, but I could see the old frustration in the set of her shoulders.
"And where is the Sea of Monsters, exactly? You keep mentioning it."
"It's the Bermuda Triangle."
I stopped walking. "You're serious?"
"Dead serious. Why?"
"I guess some conspiracy theories are right," I muttered, shaking my head. "People have been saying for decades that weird stuff happens in the Bermuda Triangle. Ships and planes disappearing, compasses going crazy, time distortions."
"Conspiracy theories?" Lyssa looked genuinely confused.
"Yeah, planes supposedly get lost all the time when they fly over the Bermuda Triangle. People come up with all sorts of explanations, aliens, magnetic anomalies, government cover-ups."
"There's a conspiracy theory because of that?"
"Oh yeah, I forgot you're from the 1920s," I said, grinning despite our circumstances. "Just know that we advanced a lot when it comes to planes. We have giant commercial planes that can carry hundreds of people, and jets that can surpass the speed of sound by six times or something like that."
"You what?" Her bottle stopped halfway to her lips.
"Yeah, loads of other stuff too. The internet, we can send messages instantly to anywhere in the world. Telephones that fit in your pocket, computers. Cars that also go insanely fast, and franchise restaurants, it's mostly franchise restaurants."
She looked at me like I'd just told her we'd figured out how to bottle lightning and sell it at the corner store. Which, come to think of it, wasn't that far off.
"How..." she started, then shook her head. "How is any of that possible?"
"Not sure how it all works myself if I'm being honest," I admitted. "I know the basics, don't get me wrong, but I'm not entirely sure how I'd explain it all. Science got really, really good at figuring things out."
I paused, looking out at the mist surrounding us. "Too bad I don't know more about planes though, maybe we could have built one and flown out of here. Eh, who am I kidding, why would the materials necessary for a plane be on an island?"
Wait. I looked toward Lyssa, an idea forming. Then I grinned.
"A lot of other stuff has happened since the 1920s. For one, World War 2."
"There was a second one!" she yelled, nearly dropping her bottle. "What demigod decided to start another of those!"
"Demigod?"
"Yeah, the Great War was started by an Ares kid. Killed millions of people just because his daddy issues got out of hand."
That was... actually not that surprising, now that I thought about it. If gods were real and had children, it made sense that some of those children would have the power to influence world events. Made me wonder what other historical disasters had divine fingerprints on them.
"Either way," I continued, warming to my subject, "you missed general relativity, that's a dude figuring out how space and time work, at least normal space and time, not this kind of time. Atomic bombs that can blow entire cities to ash in seconds, hydrogen bombs that make those look like firecrackers. Television got color, then got flat, then got huge. Communism rose, we fought a cold war for fifty years without actually fighting, we went to the moon.."
"You're lying," she laughed. "We didn't go to the moon."
"Honest to god... well, gods."
"Swear on the river Styx then."
I wasn't entirely sure what that meant, I didn't really care. It wasn't like I was lying anyway.
"I swear on the Styx we went to the moon."
Lyssa looked around as if waiting for something to happen, lightning to strike, or the ground to open up, or something equally dramatic. When nothing did, her eyes went wide.
"WE WENT TO THE MOON!!!!" she screamed, her voice carrying across the beach and probably to whatever other timelines were listening.
I nodded, the smile on my face getting bigger. "That's what I've been trying to tell you. July 20th, 1969. Neil Armstrong and a few others, which no one remembers if I'm being honest. 'That's one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.'"
"I need a drink," she muttered, a bottle of wine appearing in her hand. "I guess mortals really do amazing things when they put their minds to it."
And with that she drank deeply. As she gulped, a familiar sound reached my ears, a sound that would have made my throat water if I hadn't drunk so much wine already.
Running water.
It came into view as we rounded a cluster of the silver trees. The river, the same one we'd encountered earlier, wound its way through the beach and emptied into the sea. The water was crystal clear, and I could see smooth stones on the bottom.
"Ufff, that's good," Lyssa said, using her sleeve to clean the droplets of wine that had spilled onto her red lips. "Time for me to give you some knowledge too. This river crosses the entire island, and this place here is where we'll be making camp."
I looked at the spot she'd indicated. It was protected from the wind by a natural curve in the beach, close enough to the river for fresh water but far enough from those silver trees to avoid whatever weirdness they might bring.
It was, I had to admit, a good choice. I wondered how many timelines she had to go through before finding this spot.
"Home, sweet home," Lyssa said toward the rocks where she had built her last base. Smooth rocks, not a dent in them, was all that laid there in this timeline.
She turned to me with that manic grin. "Come on, say it with me. Home sweet home. Three, two, one."
"Home sweet home," we all, yes all, even Richter somewhere in the back of my mind - said in unison.
And as the words left our lips, the first rays of dawn broke over the horizon.
The sun had begun to rise.
A/N: Again super fun chapter to write, Lyssa and Julius bounce off each other really well, I don't have a lot to say since this is mostly just interaction between two characters who haven't got a lot of development yet, but I do hope you all enjoy what I have planned for these rugrats.
See you all tomorrow. Send those stones and reviews, (you may get an extra chap).
Thx for reading.
Author out