Percy / January 12th
Providence was usually really rare, especially for someone like me. Though I didn't have enough power to pull the tsunami back in, I did have enough to drop it and surround my friends and I in a protective bubble. Once the tsunami crashed onto us, I willed it to pull back, but Mera was resisting my force. From the corner of my eye, there was a bright light, and the tsunami curved backwards, spilling back into ocean.
"Poseidon" Mera growled
I turned and both Nico and Annabeth were safe from the impact due to the bubbles I had put up. Next to them stood my dad, probably the least likely person I expected to see, holding his own trident in hand and geared for war.
"Mera. It's been a while" He said
"Here we were, thinking we would need to find Olympus ourselves. Yet you've got enough confidence to come down here and confront me" Mera replied
"You've caused a lot of disturbance across the seven great seas. It was enough for me to come and deal with it personally" Poseidon admitted
"Your presence alone give me power. I will personally see to your death, god of the sea" Mera said, her form shifting into smoke
The smoke arose and she changed back into her smoke dragon form, except it was flickering between darkness and a solid blue color. Dark thunderclouds rolled in overhead and thunder crashed in the distance. The waves began to crash violently, causing the three of us to have to back up.
"That sure took a lot of guts to have done, Seaweed Brain. You could have gotten us killed" Annabeth scowled sternly, folding her arms across her chest
"My dad saved us anyways" I put my hands up in defense
"Yeah, but you didn't know that, did you?" Annabeth pointed out
"Hey, it was that or we died" I argued
"Guys, can we not do this now" Nico said
Annabeth and I exchanged glances before huffing and agreeing with a dramatic "Fine"
Looking back up, Mera was now a solid snake-shaped dragon. Her blue wings expanded out to about fifty feet, and had a purple color on the inside of them. With each and every steady breath she took, ice puffed out of her nostrils.
"Syn said gods taste delicious. I hope he's right" Mera said
Nico swallowed. "Is she saying a God already died?"
"They're already crazy powerful as it is, and they aren't even at their 'full power,' so I wouldn't doubt it" I said
Mera blasted lightning but Poseidon stood in place, simply deflecting it towards the sea with his trident. The Shadow-Dragon continued to blast attacks with different elements, but Poseidon was having no difficult using the sea or his trident to block it.
"Valiant, but let's see you stop this" Mera said
The hairs on my body stood up as I felt a jolt of electricity course through my body. The wind whirred as the color of the sky and sea both turned the same shade of dark red. Thunder kept crashing down around us, but instead of being yellow, it was white and black. Mera flew higher up and opened her mouth as wide as possible. A miniature sun formed, hovering just above her nose as if she was balancing it.
"Oh gods" I muttered
Despite already being large, the ball of energy kept growing and growing until it looked large enough to bust a good chunk of New York if it were to hit. Poseidon lifted his trident and a large hand burst out of the sea and rose up, grabbing ahold of Mera. It tried to pull her down towards the ocean and stop her, but she held on.
There was a loud sound, like a battle horn, and the hand lowered back down into the ocean. The sand out our feet contorted and wrapped around us, keeping us in place. Palm trees collapsed and even my the glow of dad's trident faded as he lost control.
"Taste negative energy!" Mera exclaimed, titling her head forward
After all of those dreams of being vaporized by ki, I finally got to feel it in real life. In an instant, it felt like all my skin had peeled off and my bones had melted into a white puddle. The last thing I saw was the mushroom-cloud-shaped explosion and the following shockwaves as the ball of energy hit the ground.
Somehow, I had survived. When I woke up, I was surprised to find myself in a familiar bed and in a familiar room that was on a familiar ship. I quickly jumped out of the bed and patted myself to find that I was completely alright. In fact, I had no injuries. Opening the door to my room upon the recently repaired Argo II, I heard conversation coming not too far away.
When I reached the dining room in the mess hall, gathered around our usual table was Frank, Hazel, Nico, Leo, and even Reyna. They all took notice of my presence and forced a small smile, though it looked like they had been crying.
"Uh... aren't I suppose to be dead?" I blurted
"No one said you weren't dead" Leo replied, trying to lighten the mood
"Poseidon managed to save you at the last second, and he brought you to us. We were already on the ship, and we're currently sailing as far away from New York as possible" Hazel explained
"So were not going anywhere in particular?" I asked, taking a seat
"No" Frank said simply
"What about Annabeth?" I inquired, my heart rate picking up at the realization
"She's fine. You just woke up before her" Hazel assured
"So... what happened then?"
"That dragon... it completely vaporized half of New York. There was an estimate of about eight million deaths" Nico explained. "Not an estimate I mean. I could feel all the death miles away. Mortals think it was a nuclear attack from another country, but there's no proof for it. Sally and Paul are fine by the way, nothing to worry about there"
I exhaled with relief. "So what's our next move? I mean, how do we stop this?"
"It's no longer our fight" Reyna said. "The dragons have become too powerful in their pure forms. The gods will have to fight this battle themselves"
"So we just have to sit back and watch the world burn" Leo summarized
"Speaking of burning... Percy, I didn't get the chance to tell you earlier, but," Nico hesitated, "Jason died... I felt it"
My mind spun at the thought, and it legitimately began to hurt as I inhaled sharply. It felt like the other day I had talked to Jason, and now... he was gone. There was a loud roar outside that took me out of thoughts, and we all instantly rose and reached for our weapons. Two pairs of feet touched on the balcony with a thud, and we went halfway to meet them.
Luckily, we recognized who it was. Piper and Chloe both look they had just gotten out of a war, but what caught my attention was the book in Chloe's hand.
"Thank the gods you guys are alright" Hazel said
"Been better of course, but we did get this" Chloe lifted The Hidden Archives
"You found the book?" Reyna questioned
"It wasn't too far from here. Two other Shadow-Dragons were protecting it, but we managed to escape and grab the book just in time" Piper said
"We were on our way to camp, but Asperox picked up the ship's scent so we came here instead" Chloe added. "We have a problem though. None of us can read the book"
She was right. As we passed the book around, all everyone saw blank pages. In fact, it even hurt our eyes to look at the pages.
"So we can't even read our best shot at victory" I said frustratingly
"There is a legend about an artifact that could be used to read and translate anything in the world. I only know the general location and that it's a two person quest" Reyna revealed
"I'll go" I instantly volunteered
"If you're going into something like this, you'll want Annabeth" Frank pointed out
Opening the door to her room, I was relieved to see her sleeping peacefully on her bed. I hated the idea of waking her up like this and asking if she would join me on a quest, but there really wasn't another option.
"Hmm?" She hummed as I shook her shoulder
"Annabeth, I need you" I said softly
With that said, her eyes opened and she adjusted to the sight around her. Once she set her sight on me, she visibly relaxed and pulled me down for a hug.
"I-I thought I lost you again" She said hoarsely
"We're fine, but I do need you for a quest" I replied
"A quest?" She pulled back and raised an eyebrow
"Chloe and Piper brought The Hidden Archives, but none of us can read it. Reyna knows a place we can go to find something we can use to read it, but it's strictly a two person quest" I explained
January 13th
I always wanted to take a trip to Europe, but not under these conditions. We hovered over an abandoned wasteland in Rhine Valley, Germany. It looked like a permanently injured site from World War II that never healed. Leo dropped the ladder, and Reyna informed us that we'll know what to do.
Once we touched the ground, our friends waved before the Argo II ascended back up and stayed stationary. We walked in silence for about five minutes, and it wasn't the usual calming and comforting one, but a pretty awkward one, which shouldn't be the case with Annabeth. We weren't even holding hands either - also rare.
"Sorry about yesterday. I was being ridiculous" She apologized out of nowhere
"Yeah, you were" I teased, and she gave me her usual really? look. "I'm sorry too. I guess I really was just a bit jealous"
"A bit?"
"Fine, I was jealous"
Annabeth laughed and took my hand, but the feelings stopped because as soon as she did, the ground shook and a large fissure opened up in front of us. We walked up to the edge, and at the bottom was pure lava. Convenient yet strange, there was a ladder leading to a platform that contained a door leading into somewhere in the fissure.
"Ladies first" I said
"Nuh-uh," Annabeth shook her head, "you're my boyfriend, you go first"
I sighed and did as followed, much to Annabeth's amusement. She followed not long after, and we finally hit the bottom after about a minute of climbing down. Walking up to the door, there were two hand indentations - a right and a left made for two people to each place one hand on the door. Our hands somehow fit perfectly, and the iron door opened up automatically, gears clicking into place.
Once we stepped in, I was amazed at the sight. For a second. On the surface, it was just a massive, flat, underground room, but every second, the scene shifted into a familiar place. Camp Half-Blood, Camp Jupiter, the Underworld, Olympus, and so on.
Based on her facial expression, Annabeth was already trying to figure out how this thing worked. Regardless, we walked straight, with the scene shifting to match our walking pattern. After a while, whispers of familiar people began to bounce around the scene.
"Turn back or face death" - Hades
"You're too weak too face what's ahead" - Kronos
"Let the Earth swallowed you up. Face a painless death, it's better than your current fate" - Gaea
"Failures" - Ares
"Death is inevitable. Face it now or suffer" - Xander
"You amount to nothing more than playthings" - Majin Kai
Ignoring the voices were easy - it was something that we had gotten use to by now. Plus, I knew that all of the people talking were either dead or harmless.
"Percy, turn back. Don't die, please" - My Mom
I stopped in place. Out of all of the voices, that one seemed to be the most powerful and compelling. It made me question just what we were doing right now, and what we were getting into. Were we really about to go straight into the unknown just to read a book?
"It's not her, Percy" Annabeth said, rubbing circles with her thumb against my hand. "She would know how important this is"
Simply nodding, we continued on our way and past a thousand more scene changes. Finally, we reached a wall with two metal doors. Inscribed on top of them was: "One per door, or else"
"We... have to split up?"
"I guess so" Annabeth exhaled as we approached the doors
"We'll just have to hope that whatever is on the other side isn't so bad" I said. "Meet you there"
We kissed for as long as we could before placing one hand on to the door each. She flashed a smile at me before we entered though our own door, and on the other side, I was back up top the abandoned wasteland, except I was standing on the curve of a massive bowl-shaped crater.
"It's the end of the line" the last voice I ever wanted to hear said
I focused my eyes on the opposite side of the crater, and in flickering armor stood the demigod of my nightmares.