The Last Hunter - Ascent (Book 3 of the Antarktos Saga) by Jeremy Robinson

shakes the floor beneath me. “You gave yourself to him!”
    “And I rejected him!” Cronus saw this in the memory, but he might have been so distracted by the rest that he failed to register why Nephil left my body.
    “You set him free!”
    This, unfortunately, is the truth. Without me present, Nephil would have remained bound to Tartarus forever. “I had no choice!”
    The tail pulls back a few feet so Cronus can look at me. His yellow eyes burn into me, searching for deception. “There is always a choice.”
    “You understand what it means to surrender something important to save the ones you love,” I say. “You did the same thing for humanity. You left and came to Tartarus, but the Nephilim escaped. You tried to do the right thing, but there was a negative consequence.”
    Cronus says nothing. He’s listening.
    “I did the same thing,” I say. “Nephil needed me to leave Tartarus. It’s true. And I willingly offered myself to him. That is also true.”
    Cronus tenses, so I speak fast. “But I never intended to let him survive. I thought he would cease to exist once I forced him out. I didn’t know he would find another vessel. I didn’t realize how strong Ninnis was. You have to believe me. Search my memories again. Go back further.”
    And he does.
    Since I’m a willing participant this time, the experience is far less disturbing. We watch my life in reverse: my recent merging with Ull, the battle with Nephil outside the gates of Tartarus, Luca—the reason for me being there. Cronus pauses.
    “You were there for the boy?”
    “Yes.”
    “He is innocent.”
    “He is.”
    “He is…you.”
    I don’t answer. Cronus finds it in my memories of Luca. He understands. But then he goes back further. To my time as a hunter. The awful things I did. My training under Ninnis. My breaking. My kidnapping.
    Further now. The trip to Antarctica. Mira. Aimee. Merrill. My parents, my birthday and Justin. My childhood. He slows the rewind around age six. My hair is cut in a ridiculous bowl cut, but I’m otherwise identical to Luca. The rest of my life in reverse plays back in a flash, ending with Aimee’s smiling face. He lingers here, sensing the significance of this moment. But it’s not Aimee’s smile or the love radiating from her that has caught his attention.
    It’s something else.
    Something I never noticed before.
    The memory starts over at the beginning. The very beginning.
    I am warm. And then…cold. The darkness breaks and blurry light stabs my eyes. I’ve never seen light before. The pain makes me squirm. But I can’t cry out. My lungs are filled with fluid. But I’m not in danger. I can feel the life giving pulse at my stomach. I didn’t know what it was back then, only that it gave me life, but now I realize it was my umbilical cord. The pulse slows, and then, it’s gone, separated from my body. I try to scream now, but the liquid in my lungs is still there and everything feels wrong.
    My tiny mouth is pushed open and something enters my throat. The pressure in my chest disappears. Instinctually, I take a breath.
    And that’s when it happens. A wave of energy ripples through my newborn body.
    The cold disappears.
    My senses clear.
    As does my vision.
    I can feel the world outside. As though it’s a part of me.
    Somewhere, far away, an ice shelf the size of Los Angeles breaks free from the continent. The snap is powerful and violent. I start screaming, unable to comprehend first being separated from my mother, and then being connected to something so much larger. The memory ends as Aimee draws me up to her face and smiles.
    I snap out of the past and back into the present. Cronus stumbles back and plops back onto his chair. He’s lost. And to be honest, so am I. I’d never gone that far back. My memories begin with Aimee’s face. But in the few seconds before that, when I drew my first breath, I bonded with the continent, and I could feel it. It strengthened me. Made me immune to the