The Tyrant's Tomb

Then he exhaled deeply. We watched, stunned, as he began to crumble,
his face cracking, his crown collapsing like a sand-castle turret. His last
breath, a silver glimmer of fading life force, swirled into the glass jar to be
with the Sibyl. He had just enough time to twist the lid closed before his
arms and chest turned to chunks of dust, and then Harpocrates was gone.
Reyna lunged forward, catching the jar before it could hit the floor.
“That was close,” she said, which was how I realized the god’s silence
had been broken.
Everything seemed too loud: my own breathing, the sizzle of severed
electrical wires, the creaking of the container’s walls in the wind.
Meg still had the skin tone of a legume. She stared at the jar in Reyna’s
hand as if worried it might explode. “Are they…?”
“I think—” I choked on my words. I dabbed my face and found my
cheeks were wet. “I think they’re gone. Permanently. Harpocrates’s last
breath is all that remains in the jar now.”
Reyna peered through the glass. “But the Sibyl…?” She turned to face
me and almost dropped the jar. “My gods, Apollo. You look terrible.”
“A horror show. Yes, I remember.”
“No. I mean it’s worse now. The infection. When did that happen?”
Meg squinted at my face. “Oh, yuck. We gotta get you healed, quick.”
I was glad I didn’t have a mirror or a phone camera to see how I looked.
I could only assume the lines of purple infection had made their way up my
neck and were now drawing fun new patterns on my cheeks. I didn’t feel any
more zombie-ish. My stomach wound didn’t throb any worse than before.
But that could’ve simply meant my nervous system was shutting down.
“Help me up, please,” I said.
It took both of them to do so. In the process, I put one hand on the floor
to brace myself, amid the shattered fasces rods, and got a splinter in my
palm. Of course I did.
I wobbled on spongy legs, leaning on Reyna, then on Meg, trying to
remember how to stand. I didn’t want to look at the glass jar, but I couldn’t
help it. There was no sign of Harpocrates’s silvery life force inside. I had to
have faith that his last breath was still there. Either that, or when we tried to
do our summoning, I would discover that he had played a terrible final joke
on me.
As for the Sibyl, I couldn’t sense her presence. I was sure her final grain
of sand had slipped away. She had chosen to exit the universe with