Chapter 4

The woman was exactly as Leo had described her, sleeping, black hair, made of dirt. Annabeth gasped and tried to run. This is a dream she remembered. Wake up, you idiot, wake up! She pinched her self but she wouldn't wake up. Finally she looked at the woman's closed eyes.

"Gaea," she addressed the woman with malice. "What precisely do you want from me?"

"Don't give me that," the Earth woman retorted her grip tightening. "Since I failed to break lovely Leo, I'm going to give your dashing Prince Charming a try. Even with his memory erased your voice affected him during his test."

"Test?"

"Nothing you need to mind," Gaea replied.

"You don't actually have me. I'm sleeping in Camp Half-Blood." Annabeth stated confidently.

"Yes, well, not any more." Annabeth just gave Mother Earth a look. "You slept walked. Ran through that puny camp of yours yelling 'Percy! Percy!' in your sleep" her imitation of Annabeth's voice was realistic instead of mocking. Annabeth found it slightly unnerving the sleeping woman was so aware. "And they're looking for you now. Speaking of which," Gaea snapped her fingers. Annabeth awoke, still in the woman's grasp, in the middle of a road that was about three miles from Camp Half-Blood. She struggled, screaming in her captors arms. Gaea sighed, "I hate it when my children are beaten. I'll go to any lengths to protect them and according to my prophet . . ."

"What did Medea say this time?" Annabeth demanded with sarcasm, tears, held back for weeks, actually starting to leak from her eyes and leaving wet trails down her face. "That the quest would fail without Percy? That I would break him? With his memory erased? Yeah right. He's probably fallen in love with some other girl at his new camp." Her voice cracked on the last sentence and from grew a sob.

"Oh my dear," Gaea said pulling Annabeth closer. "My dear, he hasn't even gotten there to fall in love with anyone. Hera really didn't want his fatal flaw to get the better of him."

"Well didn't he have others with him like Jason?"

"No, only his pegasus. Again, she didn't want his fatal flaw to interfere with her plan."

"She didn't want Percy to have friends?"

" Exactly. Now, enough chit chat," she said in her sleeping state. "We'll wait for your boyfriend in a place that is filled with," she paused, choosing her words carefully. "Filled with memories to trigger something in your boyfriend's head. Something like feelings for you." The world around them spun. Annabeth couldn't remember reading about Gaea having an ability to travel like this, but she wasn't mentioned much in any mythology after the whole having her kid kill her husband story. Gods knew what powers she was hiding, but being Earth it made sense that she would be able to travel across herself. All Annabeth knew was that what ever Gaea was planning it couldn't be good.

The spinning stopped. Annabeth was gasping for air while tentacles of mud reached up her legs and hardened. She reached for her knife. It wasn't there.

Gaea had let her go and was walking around. They were on a mountain top the San Franciscan Bridge in view. The ruin of a palace lay around them and in the distance a man was holding up something large in heavy. The man wasn't a man though, he was a Titan and what he was holding up Annabeth once held up. The sky.