The Shadow Archer Twins

Tox’s arrow looked too late. I could see Malcolm sleepily trying to put pressure on the gash in his neck, but he wasn’t doing much. His hands quickly became stained with his own blood, and I saw his eyes roll back in his head as he slumped to his right, completely immobile.

I don’t know how, but I could tell from twenty feet away that the Roman spy was already dead. So, no offense to Octavian’s camp, I ignored his body and sprinted to Malcolm, calling for any medic from Apollo’s cabin to come help. Exactly two seconds later, I caught a medical kit that was thrown at me by a half-sister of mine, and we started to dress the wound to Malcolm’s neck. My half-sister, Jessie, put pressure to his neck while I sprayed aerosol nectar on the wound, helping his carotid artery rebuild fibers, close, and then I sprayed again, helping the skin around the cut reform and close the wound, leaving a thin white scar.

Then, we started to address the second wound, the spear to his abdomen. Jessie ripped his shirt away to get a better view. None of the blood had dried, which was not a good sign. We applied liquid nectar to the wound around the broken spear, and I told Jessie to get some Teflon spray out of the medical kit. Teflon is the slipperiest substance known to man, and, even though a mortal invention, works great at pulling things out of wounds, like getting a wooden spear to slip out of a chest wound.

Jessie sprayed the entire wound area with Teflon, and I told her to pull on my count.

“One…Two…Three…pull!”

Thanks the Gods, the spear slipped out of the wound cleanly. As fast as we could, we applied nectar to the wound, and Jessie, who was much better at incantations than I, starting chanting, murmuring to our father for help. I remembered Chiron teaching me the chant a couple weeks before, and I joined in. Instantly, the wound started to close up like a flower blooming in reverse. The outsides of the hole where the spear had been started to close together, leaving a clean white spot about the size of a half-dollar.

I had thought that Malcolm would wake up, but nothing happened. We both seemed to realize this at the same time, and we both checked his vital signs. They were normal. The rest of the Apollo cabin cam rushing forward from their overwatch posts and brought a stretcher. Jessie was too tired from the magic to help carry him, but I felt electric with adrenaline. I helped my cabin mates speed him to the Infirmary, and after they said that they could handle the rest of his wounds, I realized how tired I was, even from the thirty seconds of magic chanting I had done. I collapsed into a chair next to Malcolm’s bed, and breathed heavily.

I was so exhausted, both emotionally and physically, that I couldn’t do anything except for sit there, and look at Malcolm’s face, praying for those grey eyes to open again. And so that’s what I did. Over the next few days, I spent all of my time in the infirmary, staying up until four in the morning, passing out at Malcolm’s bedside, waking up in the Apollo cabin, and rushing over to the infirmary. Izzy was doing the same routine. Except for her, it was even more emotionally destroying. Here was the love of her life, in a coma, non-responsive to her touch, just lying there, He might as well have been dead.

Luckily, the Romans didn’t attack. The officers must have been doing their job, convincing their soldiers to realize the error that their spy had made, trying to delay the muster to war. And so, this meant I had all the time in the world to check Malcolm’s pulse, and Izzy had all the time in the world to cry.

With each passing day of Malcolm being in a coma, she fell deeper into a state of depression. Her hair became disheveled, her eyes broken with red cracks, her voice hoarse from crying, pleading with the Gods to help Malcolm wake up. She was a wreck.

In other news, after Tox had seen the charm of Gaea around the roman’s neck, he had lost it. Not only had he killed someone, he had killed the one guy they were trying to keep alive and quiet. Now, he had Roman blood on his hands, and war was going to be the consequence. He had spent every minute of every day at the archery range, firing arrow after arrow into the bullseye, with the same, determined rage on his face. I could tell the Roman’s face and identity had been burned into his mind, and he was never going to forget it. Murder had changed him. It had hardened him, and taught him an important lesson; Sometimes you have to take one life to save another.

After about a week, I was starting to lose hope in Malcolm. Chiron had been working hard for the last two days to try to get him on the path to waking up, but he said that Death had a temporary hold on his soul, something that couldn’t be healed with normal medicine. Something that would have to be waited out.

At the end of the eighth day, I was walking back to the infirmary after taking a long nap. I hadn’t slept in 25 hours, and had needed the rest. The sight that greeted me when I walked in made me want to cry. Izzy was on her knees at Malcolm’s side, her right hand, warm, in his right hand, cold and near dead. Her other hand was softly rubbing his forearm, a movement that would have woken up any normal sleeper. But that wasn’t Malcolm.

“Izzy,” I said, trying to get her attention. As usual, it didn’t work. She just kept on staring at his face, silently pleading for him to wake up. I realized it wouldn’t be good to bother her, so I just checked his pulse, normal, and his breathing, normal. She again didn’t seem to notice.

I realized that it was around 11:00 at night, and so I packed up my medical kit and headed back to the Apollo cabin. I dropped my stuff at the foot of my bed, and slumped down onto the top of my sheets.

I had only been lying there for about 10 seconds before I feel asleep. And I felt like I had only slept for a moment before I was awakened by a hand over my mouth, and strong arms dragging me out of my bed and out of the open window, silent as a shadow. I tried to kick but it didn’t work. I couldn’t move. The last thing I saw in my cabin was Tox’s midnight blue eyes flashing open, looking me in the eyes as he saw my captor.

Notes