Percy's POV

"How could you possibly come to hear that name?" Cliodhna questions with annoyance.

"She...did something to me. Held me within my own head and made me see the reality I wanted, what she wanted." Adam tightly grips his fist.

"Wait! The mirror? Where is it?" Her panicked expression leaves us a little bit stunned at her overexertion of emotion.

"Here" Athena extends the empty plate of gold towards her.

She glides her hands down it, releasing a small sound from her nails sliding against it. "I-...there were six." she deadpans, completely lost for words.

"Six what?" I call out.

"Six individuals who were deemed dangerous enough to be kept within this prison. Only a few of them had names, the others had nothing more than titles, at least from what I remember. We were obnoxious to believe it would all return to peace after Fenrir." She places it down delicately on the table beside her.

"And Hemsa was one of them?" Adam asks.

"I was alone for so long I began researching my own kind, understanding where we came from and why we came to be. All of the trails I followed, dead ends through and through. I visited tombs, learned forgotten languages, exchanged info between the gods. Nothing. Not until I saw Oracion once again." She looks towards Jackson briefly.

"A person travelling with him came up to me and helped me answer the questions I've always wanted to know. The truth...it brings nothing more than pain, I can't express that enough." She laughs out with a sigh, "The origin of us, tortured, damaged, broken and rebuilt until our species were made. And not just her, there was a man...a species I couldn't identify with just a single glance."

"What about the others?" I beckon her to continue.

"The Spirit, the one who feasts upon the forgotten."

Adam shifts awkwardly with a tensed face, "And the fuck is that supposed to mean?"

"If you've forgotten someone...something important. I'm sorry but they're already gone, it's as monochrome as that." She completes, causing him to visibly be strained as if trying to remember something.

"Athena...what are we not remembering?" He asks with a plea but she simply shakes her head, not understanding either.

"If I may continue. The Vampiric, a race that's no longer present within this era but long thrived in primordial times. These empty moulds that held the remnants of DNA we see in our common day, never named further than titles. Broken apart piece by piece until they were reconstructed to perfection through agony and dread." She explains further. "The Hollow, but that was long sealed within the underworld for not even the mirror could hold it."

"What does it actually look like? All we were able to conceive of it was a pile of...ink?" Nimue tries to describe it.

"You saw it!? None other aside from the Moon Goddess and one other, who I believe would do a better job at this than me." Cliodhna looks towards a doorway as if contemplating something.

"Well it was exactly that thing that attacked us while Hemsa was with Adam. Another was in the underworld running around and choosing fights with us, namely Gabriela. So I'd assume that's why she had to defend herself?" Athena looks towards her for confirmation which Gabriela promptly responds with a nod.

"I-" Cliodhna fights for her words, struggling to say something. "As for the last one, it wasn't a Shade. It was a creature within it's own right. Existing alongside none other than Oracion, The Friend."

"What sort of title is that?" Nimue laughs out.

"One that was much deserved. He was one of if not the only people who accepted Oracion for his new body, only to grow jealous of it and so he began to...consume. Growing into something that could be comparable to Cerberus' form. A chimera of sorts that pieced together parts from different beings he came across."

"Chimera?" I confusingly question, feeling left out from it all.

"Something that's been heavily desired but can be seen as nothing more than an illusion, that's one interpretation of it from what I know." Nimue explains, still not really allowing it to click within my head.

"It's nothing more than an amalgamation of many, a creature. I'm however still interested in how this individual was able to access the underworld, much-less make its way through the palace without anyone noticing?" Cliodhna returns to the subject, looking towards anyone who can answer.

Jackson steps forward, "I...I saw him use the mirror to break it open, past that I unknowingly carried it past Cerberus and into the palace..." Jackson speaks up with guilt.

"You couldn't of known, it's fine" Athena comforts him, "Cliodhna, you seemed hesitant to talk about something. What is it?" She pry's.

"It was nothing more than aggravating to hear my daughter having to defend herself from one, but to hear that the hollow has shown itself. I cannot fathom what could of awoken it." Her jaw snaps a little bit in rage. "The friend I mentioned earlier...she can explain this all far better than me. I-you'll see why once you meet her. She can help you Jackson, she can help you a lot." She hesitates again.

"Then what are we waiting for?" He jumps up a little bit with unexpected energy.

"...If I may Jackson, there is something I must say before you find out the truth." She grabs hold of his shoulder, looking down at him with a sad expression. "Shades weren't given a body, they never had a need for one and so to put it straight, they cannot exist within this world."

"Yeah?" He replies pre-emptively.

"There was an exception to this...Kindreds, ones that were mostly bound to an object. Acting as its own being, the soul, attached to nothing more than a constructed material."

"Is that why you're always carrying that sword around?" Nimue asks.

"This?" She grasps the illuminated blade, "Oh no, it's nothing more than memorabilia of sorts. But, if you truthfully want an example then look towards Oracion's blade." She throws her own sword into the air nonchalantly as it bursts back into smoke.

"None of us can even lift it, what could we possibly get out of it other than a nice antique?" Nimue keeps questioning with a thirsted interest.

"It's not the blade specifically, it's what's inside of it. Once you meet with this person, you can ask her all you desire."

"This friend of yours?" Arthur takes over.

"Yes" She confirms.

"So then how come we haven't gone straight to her first?" He continues.

"I-Percy, you've been within the mirror. Correct?" She ignores him to direct the attention to me.

I feel my stomach weighing down a little bit, placing my hand there to comfort myself. "Twice...although it mostly wasn't by choice."

"That place was called the Theatre of truth-" She lingers on, heading to a room in the back. Echoing the noises of heavy objects being slid around and tossed around as if in search for something.

Arthur whispers amongst us in the meantime, "Is anyone suddenly uncomfortable? I just barely understood wolves...and now we're getting slapped around with new information back to back?" He stresses.

"We'll learn, we always hav-" Athena gets cut off by Cliodhna re-entering the room.

"This is the friend I was talking about." She brings a blank canvas to us, setting it upon a wooden frame and stares back at us for a response.

"Clio...that's just a blank canvas, is it not?" Nimue speaks up through the silent room.

"I had the Moon goddess inform me of its location, and so I began my search it. A year after the events of Fenrir, only then was I able to free my people from their constraints of that orb. I don't know how it got there, and I quite frankly do not want to know. But there it was, placed neatly by a pond of water covered by overgrowing ivy and nature."

"But is tha-" Nimue tries to speak again while approaching, flinching back when an eye forms on the material.

"She's searching" Cliodhna explains.

"Searching for what!?" Nimue backpedals to the table, bumping into it out of fear.

"For inspiration." She finishes as the eye looks between us all.

A sudden splash of ink covers half of it, creeping towards the centre and reforming into the shape of a wolf. Two of them. Another a simple human between the two, surrounded by blobs of colours within the air. And the final two figures with a split crown between the two, constructed with an overwhelming size and undetailed features past a pair of eyes for each.

"And what's that supposed to mean?" Nimue approaches it, reaching her finger into it just as Cliodhna bolts to her, pulling her back from the inked canvas. "What's the-" She tries to call out, interrupted by a rushed ink made hand reaching out as if in search for something. Reforming back into the eye.

"Her name was Eurynome. Eury. She's the one who made them...all of them."

"What do you mean by, 𝘸𝘢𝘴 her name?" Jackson picks out.

"She didn't want to make them, she 𝘩𝘢𝘥 to make them. She left her own name behind in an attempt to compare herself to them, feeling a state of emptiness and incompleteness from having given such an incoherent, unbearable life to them all. Does this design look familiar to you Percy?" Cliodhna looks towards me.

"No, not at all." I admit.

"This canvas was hers, it came before the mirror of Amaterasu. What she painted there-"

"Was the truth?" Jackson completes, walking up to it as if unphased by what just happened to Nimue.

"Wait!" Athena tries to reach for him but Cliodhna stops her as well. "You're just going to let him get harmed by it!?" She screams out.

"Watch" She states.

The canvas glows a dim white, clearing itself of the previous painting and swirls a bit as if responding to Jackson's reaching arm. "Not even I could bring her forth, perhaps he can. I'd advise you all follow well behind him." She lets go of the two, all of us now standing and slowly inching our way beside each other. 

Jackson's head turns to the side of him, pausing as he stares at an empty space. A tear runs down his eye, "I need to remember, please" He sounds out with a mumble.

Even if it was the wind, something chimed through my ears that strung together like words through the air. "Don't forget me" The feminine voice whispers as he places his hand onto the canvas, causing it to ripple like a water dew onto a calm pond.

"Three" He calls out without context.

"Two" Nimue and I realise, dashing to him and grabbing hold of his hand.

"One" The others try to follow, my stomach feeling sick from the sudden vertigo in my vision.

It plucks us from the ground, removing pieces of us inch by inch like an eraser. "We'll be back!" I barely word out through a drowned out gurgle. Not truthfully knowing what's happening or where we're going.  The only thing I can be sure of is that someone else grabbed my hand, someone I didn't previously realise was in the room.

 

Author's Note: This chapter was impossibly hard to write my god lmao.