Sadie had been extremely disappointed, for some reason, in Nico’s appearance.
He’d tried to ignore her pouts the first minutes or so. But after a while of silence, he finally groaned and turned to her. “What?”
Sadie seemed to know exactly what he was talking about. Her eyebrows furrowed some more. “Most likely because you’re not Egyptian. Or maybe it’s because you’re born from the god of death? So you can control it easily? But, however, I am, too, technically related to the god of death, and I know I had chicken legs when I first woke up here-”
“Excuse me. What?”
Sadie crossed her arms, continuing to walk. It was… very different here. Very dark. And the souls were different-they drifted around, translucent white faceless bodies. In our Underworld, Nico felt slightly proud, the organization is much more effective and efficient.
There were still Rivers, though. At least one River. And it was huge. They were walking alongside of it as they spoke.
“I am just saddened,” Sadie said solemnly. “That you do not have chicken legs. It’s sort of like a tradition. First time you wake up- bam. Chicken legs.”
Nervously, Nico looked down, checking to make sure. He did not, in fact, have chicken legs. He relaxed, relieved.
The thought, for some reason, terrified him.
Especially the way this woman was looking at him, spiky hair sharply poking the air around her face, eyes intensely blue, like she was trying to force the chicken legs out of him.
“Nope,” she deflated, sighing. “No late reaction. God. It must be the Greek blood.”
“Yeah.”
That kind of ended that conversation.
As they walked longer walks, going deeper and deeper into this strange, foreign land, Nico continued to ask the question, over and over in his mind- “Will I able to let go if the time comes?”
And even if it does work out-
What was he supposed to do?
**
It was a long, painful night. It was a good thing that Elena had gone to bed at 7, because she probably stayed up for four hours, wringing in pain as she could feel the muscles and bones in her shoulder morph and separate and grow through her flesh.
Her relief was about 6 hours of dreamless, quick sleep. It’d felt like she’d only fallen to sleep for a second before someone was shaking her awake. Only, somehow, her shoulder… It was…
“Almost perfect,” Lily said with both distaste and immense satisfaction. “And it would have been perfect. If you stayed.”
“Thanks, Lily,” Elena said a little too brightly. Dawn. It was dawn. Fresh, simple clothes- a plain tshirt and jeans- laid out for her, bags ready… her heart skipped a beat.
When she stepped outside, Benji, Greywyn, and the portal- wavy light beams of white and clear distortion- were waiting.
When it came to be her turn, Elena didn’t even hesitate.
She took the jump.
***
The brightness of the day took Elena a second to adjust to. She wavered, and then realized: London.
She could already smell the city in the air. She could feel its heartbeat- the buzzes of buses, cars, people, the wind- pulsing around her. She remembered how much she hated this place, this gloomy place, gloomy even in summer days, like it is now, and how much she came to love it.
And most importantly: the magic.
She was absolutely drowning in the amount of magic in London.
Of course, Elena’d been surrounded by magic in that Egyptian sanctuary in Brooklyn, as well. But that was different- much, much different. There, the spirituality of the place was the same: Egyptian. It was orderly. For the most part, you could see the magic in an organized fashion: Person A would use an energy orb in training. There’s supernatural energy in this object. There’s a shimmering in the air. This is a magical book. This is a magical person. This other person has magic only in one body part. You could trace the energy to items, people, and locations, and that was about it.
Here, it was absolute chaos.
You could trace Egyptian energy to items, people, and locations. But then you could also trace Greek energy to items, people, and locations, and Roman energy, and Celtic, Norse, Chinese, Spanish, Japanese, African energies…. Depending on where you focused, there was different layers of magic- one layer seemed purplish, evil; you’d flip a light and the same image you saw before in the purple layer now shows spots of gold, good magic; then you flip another layer over and you see different bends in time and space; there are so many intersections of the magic, there are so many complex histories to all the energy, all these energies meet each other and move around each other, like wind, ocean, or living beings; there are spirits in the air; there are beings and gods and people living in objects; there are ghosts; if you concentrated very hard, you could see strings looping through and around all of these worlds….
And ALL of this was moving. They’d shift. They wouldn’t stay the same. The layers of magic would change colors, get heavy in one area, get lighter all around, disappear completely. The strings would slither around something else. Spirits will leave people, ghosts will disappear, the ocean of history will shift and move, everything is absolute and utter disorganization.
It was a bit overwhelming at first, it was true. She clutched her head and fell to the ground, hearing the voices and whispers of all this Supernatural energy speaking to her.
But slowly, they tuned themselves into the background, playing like a familiar soft song. These mystical worlds weren’t meant to be seen. They don’t like too much attention. And so the whispers stopped screaming at Elena’s mind and quietly dissolved into the air.
Her mind refocused to the area they were around.
“Oh, my god,” she realized. “Of course.”
“Yep,” Benji grinned, beaming up at the obelisk with the oddest expression. Like he was its proud father, and it just won a science fair, or something. “1/3 of Cleopatra’s Needle. Perfectly placed at the three busiest locations-“
“Paris, London, New York. Yes. I do live here, you know,” Elena mentioned. She bit her tongue before deciding to joke quietly, “I thought I was supposed to be the tour guide.”
Wyn bounded up, her hair a little mussed on one side. Elena reached out to smooth it down, then let her hand drop, awkwardly. She gave a smile. Wyn grinned back. “Lead on.”
***

Notes

soooo excited that I finished this y'all have noooo idea



my chapter titles have gotten SUPER lame. If anyone wants to revise them, donations go in my Message box and/or the comments below! :))