Warnings: Disturbing pseudo-mental break, mild torture
Chapter Nine: When Lewdness Gets You Killed
I WOKE WITH A GROAN.
My head throbbed. I sat up, feeling my world lurch around on its axis. I doubled over and threw up in the grass. I reached up to check my head and found something slick in my hair. I withdrew my fingers to see them red with blood.
I'd abandoned my rucksack on the other side of the barrier before turning on the monster horde, if memory served at all (and I wasn't certain it did). All our supplies were out of reach, then, which meant I had to suck up the concussion and deal with it. It also meant I might never get my mother's novel back, and my heart sank.
But if this went right, it wouldn't matter. I could finally get a happy ending, and better even than that, I could give Sam a happy ending.
First, though, I had to play the game.
No, I thought—I had to break the game. It was the only way to win.
(It's always the only way to win.)
I walked between the volleyball court and arts and crafts building across the creek. I took a deep breath and allowed it to help my concussion and close the cut on the back of my head. I hissed as it knitted together. I couldn't let it heal anything else. I could let everyone think I used the drawbridge to cross, so I remained dry.
Maybe I should have been concerned about the contents of my dreams. Half-bloods tended to see glimpses of possible futures, the past, the present, or some figurative goings-on with bearing on their lives and the fate of Western Civilization. Still, I hadn't had a true demigod dream in years—not since my banishment. I did, however, have terrible nightmares constantly. Most of them had to do with my past. Some, like those, acted as worst-case scenarios.
Although I had no idea why I was afraid of a human torch.
Over twenty-five cabins were assorted where there once was only twelve. They no longer rounded in an inverted U-shape, instead flaring into a Greek Omega. I recognized the bone friezes and obsidian walls as Nico's home—Cabin Thirteen, it read.
I started to head toward them. They made the most sense to badger for Sam's whereabouts, even though I knew where she had to be, considering the Mess Hall beyond the omega sat dim and unoccupied. Everyone had retired for the night.
But something stopped me. I glanced over toward the arena, narrowed my eyes, and wandered toward it.
I found Annabeth surrounded by randomly placed dummies, darting around and bypassing adaptable enemies' defenses fluidly, acting as though she were deflecting a million clever assaults and pivoting to catch them in their newest vulnerability. The dummies must have been somehow spelled to react to Celestial bronze, because her dagger ripped them apart, glinting in the moonlight.
Her powder-blue scrunchie—how hadn't I noticed the color before?—barely clung to the flimsy remnants of her ponytail. Most of her curls hung wildly around her face or stuck to it as she sweat and heaved for air.
I didn't think, wandering over to one of the Corinthian columns and leaning against it with my hands tucked in my pockets. I watched her with my head tilted. I refuse to comment on what my expression looked like.
Annabeth had slaughtered all nineteen dummies except for one behind her. I thought she had forgotten about it, which worried me, because Annabeth never forgot anything, but then she whipped and threw her knife overhand at the dummy.
Somehow, it sank into its heart so deep, it didn't even quiver.
Annabeth gasped for air, unarmed but safe from the imagined army, and I remembered what I had to do well enough to clap—slowly, chuckling lowly.
Annabeth whirled on me, stance defensive. She faltered when she recognized my distinctive deformity.
"Eric?" she asked, confused.
I pushed off the pillar. "In the flesh." I wandered over. "Quite an impressive show you put on there, blondie."
She narrowed her eyes. "Sam said you left." She took a step back warily. She didn't trust me—good. "She said you two had an argument and you left her behind."
"Siblings fight," I told her, shrugging. "I came to my senses and turned back. I can't leave her—at least, not yet."
(Nicely played, Jackson. If you had been any more heavy-handed, you would have caused the next great extinction.)
Annabeth looked bewildered. "I can't read you," she said. "You're all extremes all the time, but Pollux didn't sense any distinct mental illness on you. It doesn't make sense."
I smirked. "Not used to not knowing things, blondie?"
Annabeth considered me for a moment before sighing. She walked over that last dummy and yanked her knife out of its straw chest. "As a matter of fact," she agreed irritably. She walked back over to me, sheathing the knife. ("How'd you like a real monster-fighting weapon?")
"Happy to frustrate." I grinned.
Annabeth shot me a dark look. "I will figure you out," she vowed. "I never stay stumped for very long."
"Awfully big for our britches there, aren't we?"
She rolled her eyes. "No, I just know my strengths." She kicked some of the substitute guts of the dummies around with her steel-toe. "The thing about demigods—we all get something from our godly parent in particular. Some inherit more abilities than others. My friend, Thalia—she's a daughter of Zeus. She summons lightning. Nico is a son of Hades. He can raise armies of the dead, influence servants of the Underworld, commune with ghosts, and even bypass some of the more flexible rules of life and death."
I stopped, eyes widening. "Sam," I breathed.
Annabeth nodded. "She was, legally, dead. A doctor would have called it. We found out better a few years ago when Pollux—" She pulled up short like she almost said something she shouldn't have. Concern flared in my chest, but I stuffed it down. "Well, he died. Nico lost his mind from grief, screamed that he wouldn't let him go, and made Will heal him. Everyone argued he couldn't heal a dead body, and…well, Nico just threw up his hands and started chanting. It was one of the scariest things I've ever seen, and I've faced down titans." She flexed her hand. "Later, Nico explained that as long as a soul had not crossed the River Styx and entered the line for judgement, Hades had no true dominion over them. Nico can anchor souls in limbo to their bodies while Will heals them."
I glanced down, thoughtful. I wanted nothing more than to grab Nico, hug him close (damn his touch-aversion), and thank him profusely. But I couldn't.
I looked up. "I won't complain," I said.
Annabeth sighed and shook her head. "My point—damn ADHD—was that a lot of people around here get magical abilities from their parents. But me? I'm a daughter of Athena."
I arched an eyebrow, feigning ignorance. "Translation, Ms. Theogony?"
Annabeth faltered. "You know classic Greek text?"
I shifted, suddenly aware how massively I just messed up. "I've heard of it."
Annabeth nodded like that was an acceptable answer. "The goddess of wisdom and battle strategy."
"Useful tricks," I said. "Better than a bolt of lightning, at least."
Annabeth frowned at me. I realized that could be interpreted as flirting. I realized it was flirting. I almost panicked, but then I spotted the blessing in disguise: Percy Jackson never would have come forward and blatantly hit on somebody. Eric, however? He just might do exactly that.
(Do you even know to flirt, dumbass?)
"What?" I asked, smiling wider. It was creepy. I'd have to play into that.
"First thing you should know," she said, eyes narrowing even more, "is that I do not have any interest in anyone—least of all arrogant assholes who think they can throw their weight around and get their way."
Well, at least I could finally smack my teenage self on the back of the head for being an idiot who saw a chance where it didn't exist. At long last.
I knew what I had to say next to keep up the charade and make Annabeth see red. She had to vehemently despise me right away. She already distrusted me. She already disliked me. But I needed unfettered, unabashed hatred.
While gagging internally, I said, "We'll see if you don't change your mind about that."
Annabeth's eyes burned worse than Ares' and she punched me hard in the side of the jaw. I let it land both to support the charade I had never had proper training and to punish myself for the terrible statement. I relished the ache.
Externally, I laughed. "Feisty. I like that."
I imagined performing that Samurai ritual for dishonor on myself. It vaguely comforted me from the disgusting crap pouring out my mouth like audible diarrhea.
Annabeth growled. "Watch it," she warned. "Next time, it's a knife through your gut."
I wanted to throw myself at her mercy. Instead, I smirked wider. "Kinky."
I fully believe that would have been the moment I died (again) if it hadn't been for the way the air chilled, my heart sank, and the voices clamored over each other worse than they had even on the hill facing Hera. I couldn't help it. I whimpered and held my head, shaking from the force. I was sure Annabeth could hear them. She had to hear them. How could I be the only person who heard them when they were this loud?
But Annabeth didn't notice my full-body reaction. Instead, she stumbled. "What in Hades?" she murmured, but I hardly heard her.
(So loud. Make it stop. Cut them out. Cut it all out. No more. Please, make it stop.)
I struggled to focus past it, but it was so hard. Annabeth grabbed my shoulder. Any other time, that would have sent me into a blind panic, careening through an episode under the impression it had been an attack, but everything else was so bad, I didn't care.
"Eric!" Annabeth snapped. "Something's wrong. We have to get out of here."
Her voice was so far away. Why was she trying to talk to me from so far away?
"Er—!" She stopped. "Oh. Good. Look, this one's with me, but something isn't—"
"One, two, three and four. Kill the Seven. Start a war."
That stopped me. My head shot up. A dozen female voices, all scratchy and shrill, overlapped over one another. I whirled.
A crowd of harpies approached us in a daze, eyes glassy, pupils enlarged to encompass almost all of their pupils, even beyond. Mini abysses toiling where spirit and hope were supposed to go.
I'd only seen something like that once before.
I staggered back as the episode clawed at me, pulling me under. ("This, little hero, this would be your new home. You see, some lucky types attract so much attention, cause so much hope in the world above, I become all aware of their existence. I rather enjoy the spunk your kind have. I like to dissect your better qualities, dig out the dark parts of them you don't want to admit to. You could call it my hobby.")
Annabeth stepped forward, guarding me with her body. She rested a hand on the hilt of her dagger while I struggled to reassert control over reality. "What did you just say?" she demanded.
"Five, six, seven, eight. Heroes always take the bait."
("What are you talking about?" I coughed on the sulfuric air scorching my insides.
"Didn't I just say?" The slender wraith of midnight veins and empty expanses of blackness for eyes tilted His head. "For such a brilliant ray of hope, you certainly aren't very bright, now are you?" He laughed at His own pun.
The chains holding against me against the wall turned to dry ice the same moment the entire cell exploded white with heat. I screamed as the battling extremes wreaked havoc with my vulnerable body. It lasted forever, before it stopped and I slumped, panting. My head hung down to my chest.
The wraith lifted my chin, clicking His tongue. "This is the best the Hero of Olympus can give me?"
I coughed. "Wh—who are you?"
He chuckled. "They never gave me a name," He admitted. "Probably afraid such a thing would give me too much power, I suppose. All my prisoners come up with their own. Some are vastly superior to others. I hope your nicknaming capabilities are better than your basic comprehension." Somehow, the nothingness of His eyes twinkled with mirth, like He'd just told a hilarious joke and expected me to laugh.
"I—" I coughed again. "I've never heard of anything like that."
He hummed. "No, you wouldn't have. I'm a pariah, you see—struck from the history books, left barren, ripped away from my power base." He smiled. "I understand you and I are very similar in that way."
"I'm nothing like you," I said, but even then, I didn't believe it.
"Oh, but aren't you?"
I rested my head back against the wall. "You never told me…told me where this prison is. The last thing I remember…" I faded back to the exhaustion, then the terror, then the soul-crushing pain.
"You died," He said.
I looked at Him, a terrible thought occurring to me. "No," I breathed. "No. There's no way. Uncle wouldn't—is this the Fields of Punishment?"
That time, His laugh echoed around the cell. "Oh!" He cried. "What a delightfully optimistic thought." I didn't sense any sarcasm in his voice.
I stared at Him and shook my head. "B-but…if it's not the Fields of Punishment, then…?"
He grinned even wider. "Oh, think, little pet. What place could ever be worse than those lackluster fields my great-nephew thinks so vicious?"
I stared at Him for a while before remembering the stench of pure evil, the flashes of wretched rituals and terrible things. My eyes widened. "No," I breathed again.
He laughed again, smile stretching impossibly wide, and this time, the entire prison laughed with Him. "Yes, little pet. Welcome to Tartarus. Get comfortable, because the eternities have a tendency to last—well, forever.")
"What is wrong with you?" Annabeth screeched. "Snap out of it! Chiron! Clarisse! Somebody!"
"Nine, ten, eleven, twelve," they continued, coming closer. "You are far beyond help."
Annabeth staggered back, but then she whirled around. "No," she hissed. "Eric, I need you to snap out of whatever this is right now. We're surrounded. The harpies turned on us."
One of the harpies—blue-green feathers, like the color my eyes used to be—shot into the air and landed in front of me. Unlike the others, her eyes were all black.
She hissed an ancient language, too terrible to spell, and only I knew what it meant.
"Come home."
In case I get anyone telling me otherwise (it's happened), let me tell you I am not just writing Percy's struggle with schizophrenia and PTSD based on research. I live a firsthand account of those trials myself. The vaguely clearheaded moments overcome by hallucinations can, by far, be worse than the psychotic breaks which deceive you into believing this is all normal. You may be scared. You may be convinced of terrible things. But those terrible things occupy the majority of your worldview. You know little else, or, at the very least, they invade reality to such an extent discerning between your mind and the truth becomes impossible. Knowing you are not sane, however? Knowing something you cannot control is eating you from the inside-out? Few things are as excruciating.
Also, some episodes can be more feelings, flashes, while others can be like crisp playbacks of trauma, frame-by-frame. I am writing my experience with these issues; if someone else has a contradictory understanding of it, it differs from person to person. No one's is worse than another. This is only what I know.
