A Crown of Golden Leaves
by Kitty
July 17, 2017


"What we call little things are merely the causes of great things; they are the beginning, the embryo, and it is the point of departure which, generally speaking, decides the whole future of an existence. One single black speck may be the beginning of a gangrene, of a storm, of a revolution." - Henri-Frederic Amiel

Caput XLIX: The Coming Storm


"SMELLS… good…"

There was something wrong.

"Smells… good…"

Annabeth wasn't sure if she was imagining it or not, but she could have sworn she heard somebody keep saying that something smelled… good. But that was ridiculous, because they were all focus on trying to get to Tarentum without any delays or running into unsavory characters.

"Smells good…"

Not only that, but something inside of her was screaming that something wasn't right about this. That there was something or somebody following them, even though she didn't know what. It was similar to the feeling she got occasionally, right before something terrible happened—or when her life was in danger, but she couldn't sense it physically.

It was just a gut feeling.

"Smells… good..."

She bit her lip. Maybe she was reacting to something that wasn't there. After all, nobody else seemed to think that there was something wrong in the air, and everyone else had seen more battles in their lives than she would ever see in her own lifetime.

But there was still something in the air that made her feel uneasy. She couldn't describe it, and there was nothing rational about it, but she just knew that something was going to happen.

She touched Percy's wrist, and he met her gaze. He looked openly confused, and he opened his mouth to say something, but she shook her head minutely so that they wouldn't draw attention to themselves. He paused, and then he slowed down with her until they were both walking in the back of the group. But before she could say something about what she was thinking, he looked over her shoulder and his eyes widened.

"Get down!" he gasped, grabbing her shoulder and falling like a rock. Annabeth twisted around to look over her shoulder, and felt her heart stop. The creature approaching them – the creatures approaching them, some had horns and tails. Some were twisted and shaped strangely. There were even a couple of small cyclops, and the rest she didn't recognize. In all, there was about seven creatures.

Seven monsters.

"Monsters," she breathed.

"Holy sh—" she heard Thalia begin to say loudly, before Nico shushed her. Annabeth was too startled and horrified to even curse at the situation.

"Uh…" said Percy, sounding shaken as well. Annabeth slowly drew her sword out of its sheathe, taking care not to make a sound. Those were monsters, and they had come for them. They had come for them and they were going to eat them if they didn't fight and oh, gods—

How had she forgotten that monsters were attracted by large groups of demigods? The only person here, who wasn't a demigod, was Percy—and even that she wasn't entirely sure about, at times, since he seemed to know too much on an instinctual level about the nature of the gods.

Rising slowly, Annabeth carefully stepped across the forest, taking care not to step on any twigs. Behind her, she could hear the rustling of moving bodies across the floor as they overcame their shock, and started to move forward. Another ten steps through the trees, and she felt Percy at her back— a hand landing lightly on top of her shoulder for a heartbeat, announcing his presence.

"Smells… good…" One of the monsters said, and this time she could see several of their jaws move. No… not only one of them said that—all of them had said that, at the same time, voices overlapping and laying over each other's, in an eerie, sing-song quality. Goosebumps erupted on her flesh, and the hair on the back of her neck rose slowly.

She didn't like this. She didn't like this at all. Oh, no. This was bad. As the turn of the phrase went, this was going to go to Hell in a handbasket about anytime now, and they'd be helpless in the wake of that event.

I really don't want to die like this either though.

Percy touched her elbow, and she looked up at him. He nodded his head in the direction of the monsters, pointedly, and then he tapped her sword with his knife. So, he had unsheathed that too. Was he trying to tell her that they should attack the monsters, or that they should stay here? Or should they sneak up on the monsters?

They needed better hand signals, if another situation like this was going to happen again. Which it likely would, because they were on the run and they were a large group of demigods, who apparently smelled good.

That was going to give her nightmares for months.

"Smells good." The monsters turned their heads, as one, in their direction—as if they knew that they were hiding here, in the trees. Percy went rigid.

"Annabeth?" he whispered into her ear, so quiet she could barely hear him. She nodded, not exactly sure why she was nodding but feeling like it was the appropriate response to his silent question, and then she rose onto her feet. Whatever the case may be, if they had sensed them sitting there or not, she wasn't going to stand still and let them come to her. That would be more that foolish—that would be stupid. And stupid was the last thing she ever considered herself to be.

Holding her breath, she swept across the ground, barely allowing her feet to hold her weight before she was moving forward again, shifting from one foot to the next, crossing the distance silently. She clutched her knife so tight that her knuckles ached. Blood pounded between her ears in time with her heart. Her breathing got faster and faster as her vision tunneled. She swallowed back the lump in her throat.

The grins on those monsters' faces… they were so empty, without any real positive feeling behind them. She didn't even want to imagine what they were thinking. Perhaps they thought they were going to be easy prey?

Well, they sure had chosen the wrong demigods to surprise. She was the firstborn daughter of Athena of the seventh son of the seventh daughter of the seventh daughter, even before she was the wife of the Roman Heir and Athena's champion. It was not her destiny to die like this.

She refused to die like this.

Gritting her teeth, she moved as rapid as a viper—and struck the tallest cyclops in its right leg with her knife. It roared, scattering the rest of the monsters, and it made one giant, clumsy step toward where she was—but she danced out of its way. Behind her, she heard Thalia's familiar, fearsome war cry and smelt ozone in the air as the air pressure around them rapidly fell, making her ears pop.

Percy let out a yell, and she swung around just as he jumped in front of a monster—one of the unrecognizable ones—that had aimed for her unguarded back. But she couldn't let herself get distracted—she had a very pissed off cyclops to deal with.

Maybe it wasn't the best idea to stab it, she mused as it stood to its full height and roared down at her. Swallowing back her terror and her very natural urge to scream, Annabeth darted forward and sliced across the calf on its left leg. Monster dust gushed out of its leg like blood would on a human, and she spat some of it out of her mouth.

She needed to find a way to kill this thing. But what were its weaknesses? It only had one eye, so she could blind it and lead it off a cliff… they were high in the mountains, after all, and it couldn't be more than a meter to get to the edge. But she didn't know which direction to go. So, that plan is shot.

Or maybe she could just stab it until she found a weak spot. That might work, too.

Deciding on that role of action, Annabeth leapt toward the cyclops and started to slice into the wounds she had already inflicted on the monster. The cyclops roared at her and swiped at her with its large, meaty hands, but she effortlessly ducked and dodged, weaving out of its way before going back in to hurt it again. She had run away from these creatures, once—not even a year ago actually. But now she could fight it, even if she couldn't quite figure out how to kill it.

The cyclops kicked at her, and a half-mad, half-thought out plan erupted in her head. She jumped onto its big toe and used its momentum to throw herself onto its shoulder, stumbling before she found her footing. She tried not to think about what she just did, or just how reckless it was, or that she didn't have a plan.

The cyclops roared and spun around, as if it was trying to find where she had gone. Annabeth clutched a flap of fat that hung down from its chin, so that she wouldn't lose her balance, as it spun around and 'round in dizzying circles. I didn't think this one through. Oh gods, I'm an idiot. What in Tartarus was I doing?

No, no. She couldn't panic. She had to think of a way to get herself out of this mess. She had to…

Hadn't Odysseus blinded a cyclops that had tried to eat him? He had… hidden underneath the sheep, which she didn't have to do because she was already on top of the cyclops, and she didn't need to get into its lair. He had made a battering stick, and he had rammed it into the cyclops' eye, and… and the cyclops had been blinded.

Could she stick her sword in its eye and blind it that way? She didn't know how she would get her sword out again, but… that could work. And if it didn't, then she was dead—but either way, she was dead, so that wasn't anything that she should care about.

Abruptly, the cyclops halted and stood still.

For a moment, Annabeth wasn't quite sure what she was supposed to do—or what the cyclops itself was doing. But she shook her head, huffed, and eyeballed its iris, trying to project how far she had to jump and how hard she had to push her legs into its shoulder to get the right amount of momentum into the leap. She couldn't afford to hesitate—there were things she had to do, and dying wasn't among them.

She could do this, she could do this… all she had to do was jump, and then she'd be okay… she could do this… all she had to do was jump and stab it… that's all she had to do… it was easy as pie, right? She could do it. She'd trained how to do this, for months and months, even if she hadn't really intended to actually use any of that training like this.

Taking a deep breath to steel her nerves, she nodded, gripped her sword, and leapt, hoping that she had angled her body correctly. She swung her sword around and stabbed it into its eye. The cyclops screamed, coming out of its almost catatonic state, as… oh, gods. She hadn't expected monster dust to leak out of its eye in, too gush out of it. Oh, gods. Oh, gods.

And she was starting to slip, too. The sword was slipping out of its eye—oh, gods. She hadn't accounted for her weight. The sword was slowly falling out of the cyclops eye, and it was slowly severing its skull in half.

Swallowing bile down the back of her throat—she could vomit later, when she wasn't in mortal danger—Annabeth tried to figure out if she could jump. The cyclops' fist rose toward her, and the part of her head that was clearly half-mad planted her feet against the cyclops nose – and gods, the monster dust falling onto her face and down her legs was disgusting; she needed a bath – and yanked on her sword.

Then she dropped onto its fist, drove her sword between its second and third knuckles to hold herself upright, as it punched itself in its face.

The cyclops stumbled, and she couldn't quite keep herself from screaming as it slowly toppled over. She clutched at her sword, and somehow, miraculously, when its hand thudded against the ground, its palm was facing the grass.

She rolled away from the cyclops, unable to stand up even if a monster had come after her. She took a deep breath and tried not to panic at the lack of feeling in her legs. Maybe that was normal after coming out of a near-death experience? Maybe—

Percy ran in front of her, his face as pale as chalk, as he reached out toward her with one of his hands. She tried to say something—though she wasn't sure what it might have been. Maybe she might have said his name, or thank the gods I'm not dead or I killed a cyclops. Or maybe it would have been all three.

Whatever it was, he cut her off by cradling her face with his large, calloused fingers—and his hands were trembling, and covered in monster dust, the same as hers—and he mouthed her name, a heartbeat before his lips crashed against hers and stole the words she didn't need to say. The world melted away around her, or the world centered around her, because he was her world. It certainly felt like he was all she had left, now.

"That was the craziest, most reckless thing, I have ever seen anybody do." He gasped, pulling away from a split heartbeat and pressing his head against hers in a way that almost hurt.

"At least I'm not boring?" She half laughed, feeling close to the edge of hysteria. She clutched his shoulder, mostly so that she would have something solid to hold on to.

He stared at her, and the next thing she knew, his lips had slammed to hers, and nearly knocked all the wind from her lungs. She ran her fingers down his spine, pulling him closer until there was no space left between and she could feel the beating of his heart against her chest.

Somebody coughed, startling her enough that she jumped away from him. His hands fell from her face, onto her shoulders and stayed there, burning through the layers of her clothing, and a part of her ached and another part screamed and another wanted to weep and she felt branded by him, just like she had felt those few, precious times they had gotten intimate. She sent a poisonous glare at Piper, who at least had to grace to look mildly apologetic.

"You can…" Percy's voice cracked, and she turned to glare at him, too. Only she was allowed to hear his voice when it crack like that. He winced, and offered her an rueful smile after he cleared his throat. Good. Then he looked up and met Piper's eyes again. "You can talk them into killing themselves?" There was disbelief in his voice, but also fear in it as well. Piper went red, and stared at the ground.

"Well, I mean… yes, technically. Though I just asked them to self-destruct. Um. Nothing else seemed to be working?"

Percy burst into a laughing fit, but it sounded more like he was sobbing, and he pressed the heels of his palms into his eyes. "Oh, gods," he said, sounding half mad—or close to hysterical. "Oh, gods. I'm walking with people who have more power in their pinky than I have in my entire body. Oh, gods. You're all demigods. You seem so normal, I forgot. Oh gods. I'm fighting monsters and gods and my friends are demigods who can control lightning and shadows and can tell monsters to kill themselves and my wife can take on a ten-meter cyclops and make it look easy."

Annabeth felt worried. Was he having a mental breakdown? She exchanged a look with Piper, who was watching him with a perplexed expression.

"You're the Heir Apparent of Rome, and this is what breaks your brain?"

Percy slowly pulled himself upright, and smiled at Piper—but it looked off to Annabeth, as if it wasn't genuine. "I'm fine. I'm okay. I just…" Then he looked at Annabeth herself, and said, "You're gorgeous when you're fighting monsters, you know that, right? Terrifying yes, but also gorgeous."

She felt a smile play at the corner of her lips. "I mean, I'd like to avoid to avoid fighting monsters as much as I can, but thanks for the compliment."

He stood up, and she took the hand that he always offered to her even if she didn't accept his assistance half the time, since she didn't trust her legs to hold herself upright. He had a thoughtful expression on his face, before he leaned close to her and tugged on a strand of loose hair.

"I love you," he whispered into her ear, which wasn't exactly unusual for them to say out loud, but they didn't really say it very often. They didn't need to. So, for him to say it out loud like this…

He must have felt as scared as she had been.

A smile tugged at the corners of her lips as she pulled him close, hugging him briefly, before she moved away from him, and stumbled on the first step. Her chest was burning from a lack of air and her knees felt weak and wobbly, barely able to support her.

It was something she didn't like. She didn't like feeling weak, useless—like a burden.

Percy held out his arm for her to use as a crutch, startling her somewhat. But of course he would lend her his strength; this was the same man who taught her how to fight and to read and to write, but also how to love and be loved in return. He had never judged her, even when she judged herself harshly.

So, without hesitating, she looped her arm through his and let him support her.


Thalia was giving Nico the cold shoulder when they finally found them congregated somewhere along the cliffside. Piper, who had silently followed behind her and Percy, stumbled over Annabeth's heels, and she turned to snap at her friend to watch where she was going.

"Why are they ignoring each other, like that?" Percy wondered, interrupting her before she could say something, sounding slightly lost and even more confused. Annabeth shrugged, and tightened her grip around his elbow.

"Who knows," she replied. Nico and Thalia worked well together when there was a large buffer between them or a common enemy to fight, otherwise they would start to argue with each other. Blood hadn't been spilled in over two years, which was a feat Annabeth wanted to keep that way.

"They're always like this," Piper explained.

Percy nodded like he understood what they meant. Annabeth knew better, but wasn't going to call him out on it. He would learn how to adjust to their dynamic eventually. He had to, since they were pretty much stuck with each other.

Either that or he would add fuel to the fire. She wasn't quite sure how their personalities would click together.

"Shouldn't we get away from here?" Nico asked, raising his voice so that they could all hear him. He still ignored Thalia. "I don't really like the idea of standing still and attracting more monsters to this place."

"They were heading in the same direction as we were." Annabeth reminded him, softly. "I don't think that's a coincidence."

"Can't monsters track… demigods by scent?" Here, Percy hesitated a little, as if he was still hung up on the idea that she and the others were actually demigods, and not something that was just vaguely acknowledged but never really pointed out until now. If she didn't feel so exhausted and heavy, she might have sympathized with him.

I want a bath and I want to sleep in my bed, with my husband. For about a week, preferably. With no catastrophes or urgent matters of the state that have to be handled.

"Yes," Thalia said slowly. "Wait, you… didn't already know that? I thought you of all people would be hyperaware of that."

Annabeth shook her head minutely at her old friend, who had been convinced that Percy was a son of Neptune somehow, at the very beginning. Now wasn't the time to bring that up.

"No, I did. Sort of." Percy pressed his knuckles against his bottom lip, his gaze falling on the trees and flitting this way and that. "It just never really applied to me, so I never really considered it, until now."

"There's no way we can do anything to hide our scent." Piper was watching all of them, but she was always watching and observing—rarely partaking in a group discussion unless there was something she felt she had to contribute. "Breaking apart into numbers of three isn't a good idea either."

"Better to stay united and have a unified front in case something happens…"

All eyes turned back to them, and nobody piped up with any other random tidbits of information. None of them really had any direction to go or any useful advice to give—and Percy could see that, as he drew his shoulders up and exhaled slowly. It seemed like the final decision was going to rest on Percy's shoulders again, whether or not he wanted it to.

"I don't think we should alter our course for Tarentum," he said slowly, hesitantly. "It's still a risk, but… it's one we have to take."

She wondered what his plan was, to do after Tarentum. Would they call for assistance from their allies to rid the world of Nox? Or was he going to try to get in contact with the legions—his legions, now—and try to muster a small military force to fight back? Did he even have a plan, beyond surviving the next day?

Gods knew she certainly didn't, and she was usually the one who came up with the plan.

"Okay," Nico said quietly, and Thalia nodded in agreement, standing up once more. There was no fanfare about it—they just started moving forward again, walking toward where they were trying to go.

Even though she tried to put up a brave face about it, and said angry words to keep herself from losing faith, and to comfort Percy, Annabeth felt really terrified about how unknown their future had suddenly gotten.

She didn't want to die like this.


Author's Note: So, I meant to add an extra scene at the end, but I've been fighting a throbbing migraine since yesterday, a sore throat, and sleep deprivation (I got too happy over my SAT scores and excited over college visits; whoops), so you get a semi-but-not-really-filler chapter with badass Annabeth. Because we all need badass Annabeth in our lives.

And the next chapter will be the game-changer one, I promise. Aka I'm terrified about the next chapter, but I'm also very excited. Kind of makes sense, since it's chapter 50. Heh.