Just a fun idea that popped into mind.
As always, this isn't a full story yet - just a snippet until we see how it goes.
It's also fun for me because it's my first time writing first person in quite some time.
The monsters were nearly on us when the truth finally came out.
"Daniel." My uncle took both of my shoulders in a vice grip and pulled me in closer, a manic frenzy in voice - probably from sheer mortal terror - and looked me dead in the eyes. "Your father is the Greek God Apollo."
I didn't miss a beat.
"Well, I'm screwed."
I could tell that wasn't the reaction he was expecting, but it was either that, or me screaming 'I know, and I'm
still screwed!' right in his face loud enough to wake the dead, and at this point that just seemed counter productive.
To be fair, I didn't know about the Apollo bit specifically.
The fact that I was a demigod?
Sure.
A small part of me had figured that out ages ago while the rest of me ignored the possibility with such force of denial that the river in Egypt was probably seething with jealousy.
But that I was a demigod of
Apollo, specifically?
Nah.
I'd been too afraid to ask.
See, there's this pretty widespread misconception from my first go-around at life - the idea, nay, the
trope, that the average Joe off the street could die, probably instantly and/or traumatically, wake up in a new, fantastical world with equally fantastical dangers and stakes around every corner, and still come out alright.
Sure, there'd be a mandatory period of adjustment. Things wouldn't be too easy - They'd hit a few walls, they'd stumble and they'd fall, probably more than once even, but they wouldn't let that keep them down.
Eventually, in the end, they'd take life by the reigns and rise to the occasion.
That's what you'd do, isn't it?
You'd go in swinging and aiming for the top, overcoming all the challenges in between, even fate itself, right?
Right?
...
The absolute fuck you would, you delusional
hack.
Life isn't an isekai adventure.
If you find yourself in a world where the average supernatural element you're likely to encounter would either want to eat you or could flatten you like a bug on a windshield with contemptuous ease, you don't start messing around and entertaining delusions of grandeur - you keep your head down and you play possum like your life depends on it, because odds are?
It
probably does.
That's what I did.
Daniel Winchester.
Thirteen, nearly fourteen.
Lived and has lived with his uncle's family in the little town of Maple, Upstate New York ever since his mom died in a car crash when he was little.
If you look a little closer, the uncle is distant and more than a little cold at times, and the aunt isn't all that much better even if she does try, but their kids are pretty cool, and that's good enough to even out.
All in all, Daniel's pretty normal.
That's me.
That was who and
all I was happy being.
And it worked.
I don't know if my sheer desire had something to do with it, or maybe it was just the Mist playing ball, but I made it that long through life unscathed, even as the oddities continued to pile up.
Familiar oddities.
The Dyslexia, the ADHD, the blatantly impossible understanding of written Greek I'd tested out on a suspicious whim, and the occasional
things I'd see when I was out and about - people that weren't quite
people. Pets with too many
teeth - and promptly convince myself were tricks of the light I shouldn't be giving any second thoughts to.
False alarm, nothing to see here, move along please.
Despite it all, I was still ordinary.
Still
safe.
But the shitty thing about inordinately good luck?
It always runs out.
I'd had a good run, almost a decade and a half, and it had been good.
Great, even. I wasn't picky.
Until today.
I had been running late after school. I'd signed up for the basketball club this year - and wow, did that make a lot of sense in hindsight - and by the time we were done with practice, it was already getting dark out.
I took a shower, changed into something fresh, horsed around with a few friends for a while before I decided to head home.
Then, I took five steps out of the front gate when I saw them and froze.
Three guys, standing under a street lamp across the street, dressed in dark winter coats and scarves that wrapped around half their lower faces, the upper halves distinct and hazy. Each of them was huge, six foot-something, and with shoulders almost too broad to be physically possible.
Worse, each of them held a leash with a spike-collared dog on the end. They
looked like black labrador retrievers at first glance, but when they scented the air and their heads abruptly snapped to me, growls slipping through their muzzles, their forms seemed to flicker and glitch into something distinctly sharper before reimposing themselves.
And their eyes?
Deep, deep crimson - and no way in hell that shade was natural.
I swallowed roughly as the lead scarf-face turned and stared me down, before raising a gloved hand to pull his scarf down, revealing a too-wide mouth pulled into a sinister grin and filled with sharp, crooked yellowing teeth.
The shimmer to his face burst, then, and I saw his eyes-
No.
Cold, existential fear lanced down my spine.
His
Eye.
Singular. Just the one.
Too large, inhuman, placed right smack dab in the center of his - its - face.
Cyclops.
Three of them.
No, no,
no.
My denial died a violent death right then and there because there was
proof.
Vicious, bloodthirsty proof.
The lead cyclops's smile grew that much more unhinged as I trembled.
They had me.
I knew it, they knew it, and their goddamned dogs probably knew it before either of us did.
In the face of that imminent threat, I did the only thing I could.
Namely, I turned tail and took off at a dead sprint faster than anything I'd moved in my entire soon-to-be-over
life.
Behind me, I could have sworn I heard a laugh, loud and cruel, but it almost immediately faded, replaced by the whistle of cold air in my ear as I ran so hard my feet went numb.
I didn't stop until I got home, running up the driveway to our two-story house and vaulting clear over the picket fence in one bound the way I'd ordinarily skip a step going up the stairs, before tearing across the garden, not even noticing the trampled flower beds over the thrumming of my heartbeat in my head as I reached the door and threw it open hard enough for it to crack against the back wall.
"What the- Urgh!"
"Monsters!" I gasped as I slammed right into my uncle David, and he went still in my grip as I grabbed onto his shirt with both fists and tried my hardest to freaking
breathe. "
Monsters!"
"...What?"
He didn't sound confused, or doubtful.
Instead, he sounded deathly afraid, and that was somehow
worse.
His eyes had gone glassy and distant behind the rim of his square glasses - Like he was seeing something that wasn't there, or maybe even remembering it instead.
"Cyclopes." I managed to say, and swallowing to wet my sand-paper dry throat felt like I was trying to force a brick down an already clogged pipe. "There are cyclopes coming after me."
I wasn't worried about him not believing me - his voice alone was proof enough that he'd known
something like this was possible, which would have raised so many more questions about how's and why's if I wasn't
so damn scared right then.
Sure enough, as soon as the last word was out of my mouth, he staggered back like I'd socked him in the gut.
"Oh god... Susan." He whispered before he abruptly spun around and
roared down the hallway. "SUSAN!"
"What!?" My Aunt yelped and came running our way "David, what-?"
He pointed at me.
"Monsters. They've come for him."
She blanched in horror.
"Oh god." Her breathing went from lukewarm to hysterical gasping in no time flat. "Oh god, oh god,
oh god-"
My uncle took two steps and grabbed her by the arm, giving her a good sharp jolt that had her mouth clamping shut despite the wild look in her eyes.
"Grab the girls, and get our go-bags." He gave her another jerk for good measure. "
Now!"
"Go-bags?" I stared at him incredulously as she took off, the saxophone of fight-or-flight instincts finally smothered long enough for me to think properly. "You have go-bags?"
I know, my priorities are shit, but something about the way he said that just about forced me to do a spit-take - the way my straight-laced, no-nonsense uncle just spat out a line that sounded like something out of a cheesy action flick with a straight face didn't quite compute.
Or it might just been my own hysteria setting in.
Dealer's choice.
Either way, he didn't answer me.
Instead, he took off down the same hallway and took a sharp left, disappearing out of my sight. I didn't pay attention, too busy staring out of the window and expecting the Cyclops from before to leer in at me from the dark at any moment, but I could his frantic footsteps going up the stairs, and then the sharp sound of hinges and a descending ladder from the attic.
When something up above crashed against the floorboards it felt like my heart was about to claw its way out of my ribcage, and I could hear aunt Susan screaming in fright in the other room, but the thump of my uncle going down the stairs kicked right back up again, and not a blink later he was coming back around the corner and running right at me, something held in each arm.
"These are for you."
The longbow didn't look like anything special, at first glance.
Well crafted, sure, and the golden brown was a pleasant shade, but it wasn't anything you'd stop to gawk at.
Somehow, though, the moment my uncle pressed it into my hand and my fingers closed around the leather grip, the feel of it still hit like a religious experience.
Which, again, made a
lot of sense in hindsight.
My eyes widened and I exhaled as warmth seemed to radiate from it, leeching up my arm and all the way up my spine, pushing away the terrible fear from before and replacing it with utter
wonder. I twitched and raised it, and it felt perfect, its weight both feather-light and perfectly proportioned even though it shouldn't have possibly been quite so easy to move.
I almost didn't notice it when my uncle moved my free arm to sling the accompanying quiver loaded with arrows over my right shoulder before he grabbed both and finally jolted me out of my trance with real, harried force.
"Daniel, your father is the Greek God
Apollo."
"Well, I'm fucked."
"..."
There. He said his thing, I said mine - All caught up.
And not a moment too soon.
I didn't have time to react to the way the name seemed to thrum in the air, a weight to it that shouldn't have come from a mere word, because some lizard-brained instinct screamed bloody murder at me out of nowhere and I was suddenly throwing myself at my uncle and tackling him down right as the wall behind us
exploded.
I mean that - it sounds pretty straightforward when you put it like that, but I don't think any number of words could actually give you a good picture of what it was like when the solid wall was forcibly retired from being a wall and instead became a
wave of spraying wood, plaster, glass and all kinds of pulverised projectile debris that shot off everywhere with a roar like an avalanche as something massive was driven through it.
For about a solid five seconds, I thought we were goners.
Then the sound of stuff breaking and the instant of stunned silence that followed it took a back burner as my aunt' renewed screaming won out over it, this time with both my little cousins adding to the chorus, and I realized that we were still alive and still
very much in deep shit.
I shot up to my feet, debris and bits of just about everything pouring off me as I staggered back and pulled my uncle to his feet.
Credit where credit was due, he immediately took off again and nearly left me in his sawdust as he clambered across the ruined hallway.
"
Susan!"
The good news was that my aunt was alive and unhurt. My cousin's room was fine, garish pink wallpaper and all - they hadn't been hit.
The bad news was that she looked like she was a step away from going into catatonic shock, four bags slung over one shoulder, little Alex shivering in her grip with her head tucked into the crook of her neck.
Katie, on the other hand, was standing right beside her when we came into the room, and she took one look at her dad and me and burst into big, ugly sobs before she took off like a missile and leaped into his shaking grip.
"David?"
The three of them trembled in terror as they stared at my uncle, who looked like his entire life was both metaphorically and very
literally falling apart, and...
The pieces of some puzzle I hadn't even known I was playing at clicked into place with awful clarity.
We were all going to end up dead if we didn't-
No.
I'm the demigod here.
We were all going to die if
I didn't do anything.
But I could do something.
Better yet, I knew
what to do.
"You guys need to run."
The bow in my hand seemed to pulse with another burst of warmth as they rounded on me in disbelief, almost like it was encouraging me to keep talking.
I decided to oblige it.
"You need to run now," I repeated, feeling strangely, absurdly calm despite the stares and the insanity of the situation. "They only want me. I can keep them busy, but you guys need to leave
right now."
I didn't even understand where the words and the sheer resolve were coming from, but it was another thing I couldn't afford to question right this second.
My uncle looked like he was losing his mind.
"Daniel-"
"It's not up for debate!" I snapped, and then hissed sharply as I heard it - a series of low, sharp growls and heavy thudding - footfalls - echoing out there in the dark.
From the way they paled, everybody else heard them just fine.
"Time to move.
Now."
I didn't wait for them to answer before I turned around and slipped back out of the room, reaching over my shoulder to draw an arrow before nocking it into my bow in a single fluid movement.
I'd never so much as held either a bow or an arrow in my life, but the act was still somehow easy, as natural as breathing.
Son of Apollo, huh?
It made me feel strong and capable in a way I almost certainly wasn't.
Not in this - but the feeling was all I had, so I clung to it like a lifeline as we crept back the way we came.
Behind me, Aunt Susan
choked.
"Is that our
car?"
I blinked in realization and stared, because... yeah.
It totally was.
The family's Dodge Caravan was stuck halfway into our destroyed living room, trunk first, with its windows and tail lights shattered and its tires flattened into an unrecoverable mess. Parts of the roof had collapsed and pinned it in place, and the rest of the ceiling was creaking and tilting dangerously.
I'm no real-estate prospector or anything, but I'd bet you pennies on the dollar that everything from the car to a good chunk of the house was a total right-off.
"Well, look on the bright side." I managed to crack a grin with confidence I didn't feel and a voice that was the fakest thing I'd ever managed in my life. "You guys always wanted to rework the living room, and now...well..."
I kicked a little pile of dust away.
"You kinda have to. And hey, a new minivan wouldn't hurt."
Uncle David's eyes were going all glassy again.
"You're not funny, you little shit."
Swearing in front of the girls?
Yep, forget maybe - that hysteria thing was definitely in the bag now.
"I'm hilarious."
Another set of growls killed the next words on the tip of my tongue like they had a personal grudge against them, and my grip on the bow tightened until it hurt. Out of the corner of my vision, through a gap in the ruined wall, I thought I saw something flicker past, and the adrenaline in my veins shot right back up through the stratosphere.
The cold breeze sweeping into the room was suddenly
arctic, even if the warmth of the bow in my had seemed to offset it.
"
Go." I took a deep breath and another step forwards. "Through the back door and out into the woods."
Aunt Susan looked sick.
"We can't leave you."
Oh, for the love of-!
"You're not leaving me." It was a struggle to keep my breathing even, my attention caught between them and the sounds outside the house. Why hadn't they attacked yet? "You're protecting Katie and Alex."
That got her, I could tell from her eyes. In her grip, Alex shifted, finally raising her head and giving me a confused look, like she didn't understand what was happening.
Katie didn't understand everything either, but she understood enough - kids had sharper instincts than people gave them credit for - that I could see her tearing up again and reaching for me with both hands.
The relief I felt when my uncle held her back was indescribable.
I did
not need a hug from my cute baby cousin right now, because then I'd probably start crying too, and going off to certain death with tears in my eyes like some kind of crybaby would just be embarrassing for everybody involved.
If I was dying, I could at least
pretend to be a badass about it.
"Daniel-"
"I'll be right behind you, Uncle Dave." I gave the quietly distraught man another smile with just about all the strength and composure I had left to offer. "I just have to take care of this first."
Liar, he probably wanted to say, but in the end he could only nod.
"Be safe." He hesitated. "Your mother would be proud of you."
The last I saw of my family was my uncle herding them off through the back in a run, leaving me gaping after them - and him - like an absolute idiot.
"That was..." I swallowed and strangled the feelings welling up inside me with ease of practice. "You absolute
dick."
My eyes didn't sting as I turned around - they
didn't.
"What kind of stereotypical cliché bullshit was that?
Gross."
I turned around and was out into the night in less than ten steps.
The cyclopes were waiting for me in the driveway.
"Finally!"
The leader of the stood at the helm, the one who'd flashed his teeth at me - only, he was worse now.
A lot worse.
Eight tall instead of six, just like his friends, and his upper clothes had melted away leaving only rusty bronze bracers on either arm and orange-tinted skin that stretched over an enormously muscled frame that would have had professional bodybuilders either weeping with envy or recoiling in horror. His biceps alone were probably the size of my head, and
his head was bald and a little too long to look quite human, that one single eye glaring horrible over the crooked maw beneath it.
The other two had stripped down as well, so I suppose the December chill didn't mean all that much to them, and one of them had an enormous, misshapen wooden club that was stained with something I desperately tried not to think about.
The dogs the group had brought with them weren't leashed anymore either - instead, two of them had almost tripled in size, their features growing sharper and more savage, their muzzles barred and slobbering as their own red eyes zeroed in on me just the same as their masters.
Hellhounds, or something. I didn't know enough to tell.
The third one, though...
It didn't change size. It didn't shift - it just stood there, a little labrador with its hackles lowered, ears drooping, looking vaguely miserable even as the lead cyclops took a step forward and forced me to turn my attention away from it to him.
"Demigod!" His voice boomed, joyous and nasty all at once. "There you are!"
Another thrum of warmth from the bow had me raising an eyebrow, trying to look indifferent.
"Do I know you?"
He actually frowned
"No-"
"STRANGER DANGER!" I roared and loosed the arrow I'd been pulling back on with all my strength, and it sailed through the air with perfect, supernatural accuracy, a bronze-tipped shot fuelled by the ghost of a chance and sheer audacity.
The cyclops's eye barely had time to widen before the arrow struck it and went right through, the arrowhead piercing out the back of his skull with a sound I'd never forget
ever.
For a moment, even the air seemed to hold its breath. The cyclops's mouth twitched and opened, almost in disbelief, and then he swayed, once, twice, before promptly exploding into a cloud of raining golden dust that was quickly cast into the night breeze and dissipated into nothingness.
Only my arrow was left, falling down into the asphalt with a faint, almost anticlimactic clatter.
".."
"..."
"..."
The other two cyclopes looked at the spot where their boss had just been standing, before exchanging a look and turning over to me. Even the dogs seemed to have their jaws hanging wide open.
You could almost hear disbelieving crickets chirping in the background.
"...Holy shit, that actually
worked?" I muttered, just as stunned as them even as I drew another arrow and quickly nocked it "Like, seriously, how the hell did that even work?"
Then I quickly readjusted my aim and prepared to fire again-
"!"
-before cursing viciously and leaping over the porch and to my left as the first of the hellhounds went from standing to attention to murder mode in the blink of an eye, a rabid growl tearing out of its throat as it charged up the path between us and leaped for mine. It slammed into the debris behind me with another thunderous crash that signaled the start of the carnage in earnest.
It felt like the neurons in my brain were firing off a mile a minute as I landed on the balls of my feet, eyes and ears screaming warnings as I tried to keep every threat in sight.
The cyclopes were slow-moving, but bad doggie the second was already closing in on me even as the first poked its snout out of the house and let out a baleful noise like a chainsaw cleaving through rock.
Seems that it was pissed.
Joy
Two hellhounds coming at me, one arrow, and not a chance in hell of nocking a second after taking the first shot without ending up with a face full of teeth.
No time to think, no missteps.
Only non-stop movement.
So I pulled what was, at first glance, the most insanely suicidal stunt I could have under the present circumstances, following instincts I'd never exercised a day in my life.
Instead of running away from the charging hellhound, I charged
towards it.
The hellhound obviously didn't see that one coming, because its jaws snapped halfway shut and it almost seemed like it was about to try backing up out of its run to figure out what kind of stupid it was dealing with here - or maybe that was just me - but I didn't give it the chance to do a thing.
I made it five feet away from it before I leaped, planting my foot straight down on its forehead before shooting off of it and launching myself even higher up into the air.
For the second time that night, it was as if everything paused - and there I was.
Flying through the air, upper body twisting to one side in the same motion, locking my sights on the second hellhound just now clawing its way out of the house and almost
enjoying the absolute sentient incredulity in the way it balked as I took aim and
fired.
One second my arrow was shooting through the intervening space between us, and the next it was buried right up to the fletching in the wanna-be Cujo's skull.
It didn't even get to whimper before it, too, was bursting into golden dust.
Watching that happen in what felt like slow motion was... an indescribable sensation. The victory was almost heady, and coupled with the instant relief and the idea that, hey,
I might actually not die here...
For a second, I felt like a hero - invincible.
And then the cyclops with the club swung it and caught me right in the chest, and that feeling, plus all the air in my lungs and what felt like a good number of my ribs all collectively called it quits.
The blow knocked me right out of the air and I the ground
hard, gasping and nearly swallowing a mouthful of displaced dirt, but I didn't have the luxury of a moment to get my breath.
Move or
die.
I managed to scramble onto my feet and take off into the beginning of a run just as the hellhound whose skull I'd used as a springboard darted past, its growl filled with hate.
Before, I was just a convenient chew toy, but now?
Now it was
personal.
I tried to move off to the side again, nocking another arrow, but the other cyclops was right there and nearly took my head off with a backhanded swing of his fist that I dodged by the skin of my teeth. My ribs cried foul at all the rapid movement, but the pain seemed so distant I barely felt it.
"Hold still!"
I took several steps back, but both cyclopes were closing in on my right and left respectively, while the hellhound remained directly in my line of sight, prowling forward with a promise filled with deadly malice.
I couldn't even turn back and take off into a run across the woods behind - I knew with almost iron-clad certainty that the hellhound would run me down in a straight race if I tried, and then I'd be toast.
I exhaled, fingers white against the fletching of my third arrow, frame wired with enough tension to grind diamonds into dust and ready to bolt anyway at a split-second's notice.
"I don't suppose we could talk about this, fellas?"
I tried for a smile, but it fell flat. Sweat ran down my brow and stung my eyes, and my heartbeat was back to ringing in my ears again.
The cyclops with the club grunted at me.
"You killed my brother."
... That was...
"Sorry?"
"I hated him." The cyclops actually shrugged, which made me blink before his one eye narrowed pointedly. "But I'm still going to eat you."
Worth a shot.
"You shouldn't do that. I taste awful."
The other cyclops seemed to pause.
"Really?"
"Downright terrible," I said with a completely straight face while cursing out to every god and goddess and everything in between that I could think of at the moment for this utter
bullshit. "Have you seen me? I'm only thirteen. A shrimp. Not even ripe by demigod standards."
"Oh."
He seemed disappointed, and I blinked again.
Was this seriously-?
The other cyclops scowled at his friend.
"He's lying."
Damn it.
"Oh!" The gullible cyclops perked up, taking another step toward me, before he suddenly reared back. "Eh?"
He'd nearly stepped over the third hellhound - the one that still hadn't made a move and instead seemed to have hunched down and focused on making itself as small as possible.
"Oi. Why aren't you helping?" The little dog whimpered, eyes flickering all over the place, and the cyclops's frown twisted into something ugly. "Stupid mutt."
He gave it a sharp kick that sent it tumbling away and had me backing up several paces in case it got too close.
"You really shouldn't be calling anyone stupid, buddy." I couldn't help but blurt it out - I blame my terrible survival instincts going haywire for it. "That dog probably has more braincells than you do eyes."
The cyclops stared at me funny.
"I only have one eye."
"...
Exactly."
Honestly, I doubt he actually understood the insult, but he must have eventually figured out that it
was one because his face screwed up in rage and he took a heavy step froward.
The other hellhound growled at me and picked up the pace of its prowling in return, and I felt real fear closing in again as they did, and I barely noticed the runt of the pair taking it's chance and bolting off away from
all of us, to busy trying and failing to find a way to do anything to save myself.
But I had nothing.
There was no way I was coming out of this alive, not at this range.
I'd need a damned miracle to even-
...
...
There's an idea.
Hope was a killer, but it was better than death by hellhound, so I desperately tried to clear my mind and play the only card I
might have left to play.
Apollo?
Greek Gods in this world paid attention to their kids entirely depending on their whims, but maybe, just
maybe-
Dad?
Nothing.
Look, I know you're probably really busy doing all kinds of super important sun god stuff, but if you could help me out here, that'd be awesome.
Still nothing.
I swallowed again, trying very hard not to let my fear consume me as the monsters got even close.
Dad, I'm only thirteen. I don't want to die yet.
I closed my eyes, just for a second.
Please.
"Alright." The cyclops with the club grunted again. "Time for dinner."
The hellhound snarled its agreement, and all of them made to
move-
Suddenly it hit me - a flash of inspiration, somewhere in between a gut instinct and a literal premonition that slipped into my head out of nowhere, along with a feeling of reassurance that had me nearly going weak at the knees - And I knew what to do.
"WAIT!" I yelled, and they paused. Then they stared as I let the arrow I'd nocked slip from my fingers and hit the ground at my feet. "I give up!"
"..."
The cyclops with the club slowly lowered it, eye twitching for some unknowable reason.
"...Really?
"Well-"
My hand shot up, far faster than it had before, and pulled an arrow from my quiver that hadn't been there before.
It glinted a shade of brilliant gold that seemed to light up the night as I nocked and aimed with a furious glare of my own this time around.
"-
no."
I let it rip just as the hellhound leaped, and threw myself off to the side - but I wasn't fast enough.
The golden arrow flew-
Fire lanced across my chest as a clawed paw tore across it, the pain instant and blinding, and instead of my feet, I hit the ground on my side, blood quickly spreading through the shredded remains of my shirt.
But I still grinned savagely, because I'd already
won.
- before hitting home and sinking into just the right spot in the asphalt between the cyclopes
The unholy, cataclysmic eruption of noise that followed seemed to split the world in half. Impossibly loud and off-pitch and
wrong in all the worst ways, and attack that shook and wrecked the ground around us as echoed right down to my bones - but it didn't actually hurt me.
Not even a little.
The cyclopes, on the other,
suffered and wailed silently as the noise quite literally ripped them apart, their forms buckling and twisting this way and that before they were reduced to golden dust and banished away, not with a bang, and not even with a whimper that anyone would have cared to hear.
Good freaking riddance.
The murderous hellhound lasted just a second longer - Long enough for me to get my head off the ground and stare it dead in the eyes as it staggered in pained terror before I gave it another grin, this one as nasty as it was victorious, and flipped it off.
"
Bad doggie."
And just as soon as I'd finished mouthing the last word, it popped like a balloon full of dust, and the world abruptly went silent.
...
"...Huh. Is it really over?"
At least, that's what I tried to say.
Instead, it came out as a garbled, wordless mess around the same time as I registered the taste of iron in my mouth.
Blood. Lots of it.
That's when the pain hit, and my head was on the ground again as everything seemed to go cold and hot all at once, and I lost nearly all strength in my limbs.
Wow.
I'd felt it when it happened, but that hellhound
really messed me up, didn't it?
The realization only made the pain get
worse, and my lungs rattled in my chest in a way that was all wrong even as I tried to swallow down the blood in my mouth uselessly.
I couldn't move to see the wound, but I knew that it was
horrific
I'm actually dying, aren't I?
Then things started going numb, and a part of me began to
really panic.
Uh, dad?
Wasn't Apollo the god of healing?
It might be ungrateful to ask for more, since you just saved my bacon and all, but...
I couldn't even finish the prayer.
My vision was starting to go black around the edges. The contrast made the stars up above in the sky seemed that much brighter.
Help
Everything was growing distant. I couldn't move at all anymore
Somebody.
I was drifting away, feeling as heavy as an anvil.
Please.
Abruptly, the agony in my gut changed.
It didn't grow any less horrible, but the quality of it shifted. It went from a burning to a
tugging, like something inside of me was bieng torn out by an inexorable force.
I would have screamed, but I didn't have the strength and that would have just ended up with me gargling my own blood like a total loser.
The parts of the world I could see seemed to
glitch, the way the monsters had earlier before it unraveled, and...
L̵͚͑͆i̶̗͒̊g̵̠͖͆h̸̡̖̀̆t̷͚̗̓͑s̵̜̰͠
For a beat, space itself seemed to
melt into some kind of collapsing vortex of multi-fractal lights, filled with things I didn't have the presence of mind to even register.
Pretty, I thought, utterly delirious.
And then those lights went
supernova, scorching and all-consuming, and I was suddenly weightless and tumbling into nothingness like a feather in the wind, and the last thing I heard was something that sounded strangely like a canine whimper of fear.
What was that about?
And then-
...
The lights went out.
...
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