All rights belong to Rick Riordan - you genius.
My eyes were closed, my breathing growing steadier as I became very aware of the hard ground beneath me. My nails scraped against the surface of the ground and sand collected beneath the base of my nails. My eyes opened with a start. I was here again.
Instinctively I looked behind me and the same vast temple lay before me. The pantheon stretched to be over 80 feet tall and each pillar was heavily engraved with images, too far to be properly studied. Surrounding the temple were large lanterns of green fire licking their way, higher and higher, illuminating the walls behind. Gripping the sand in my newly formed fist, I pushed up from the soft foundations and stumbled, balancing quickly as sand surged down the cliff that loomed just edges from my bare feet. Glancing below the ragged cliff edge I spotted the beautiful blue of the Aegean below.
With a start, a voice behind me spoke, ever so softly. "A thousand ships your face did send, now here you are once again". The voice was a woman's and had a strange edge to it, almost as if she was used to speaking only in rhyme.
And then I woke, my sheets and once fresh pyjamas stuck to the layer of cold sweat that covered my body. My breathing was quick and shallow but steadied as soon as I gripped my familiar bedsheets. It had just been a dream I reassured myself. Though I couldn't help worry that this had become much of a habit the last week.
Thinking on it, this whole week had been out of the ordinary. I climbed out of the sticky sheets, discarding my sodden clothes into the wash basket as I distractedly thought back to the blurry outlines of figures I'd kept seeing in the city. Other strange things too, like the man on the tube who had addressed her as 'Hel' and when she tried to be polite he spoke to her only in riddles and when she promptly put her headphones in, the universal code for 'bugger off you freak', he placed a lily on her lap and just walked away as if this was completely normal behaviour. I'd tried to not read too much into it, after all he clearly had mental issues and there was no rhyme or reason to anything he'd done or said. But the symbolism of a lily and death kept flashing up in my head. Was he trying to tell me something? And then there was the night before. Nothing out of the ordinary had happened, but I had gotten an off feeling, like someone was observing my every move. Studying how perhaps my smile never reached my eyes, how unlike my friends who surrounded me, I never truly relaxed. Passing these worries to the side, I stepped outside my bedroom and soundlessly crept to the bathroom, careful not to wake any of my housemates, many of whom I assumed were probably still out partying. The cold tiles hit my bare feet and I rushed to turn the shower to piping hot, just the way I liked it. As I waited for the water to hit the right temperature, I paced over to the mirror which had already began to steam up before me. I stared at my misted reflection and studied the image.
I was a short girl, no more than 5ft 2 and had a body most would describe as 'curvy', a small waist and slim limbs. My skin, usually naturally tan was now pale thanks to the poor weather that had reigned down on London these past few weeks, it was the worst summer on record and global warming was the root of it all repeated every news reporter. My hair was a light blonde, curly and largely untameable that fell to my waist whenever it wasn't tied up. My eyes I'd been told many times, were my best feature. I had heterochromia – two different coloured eyes. My left eye was a striking ice blue and my right was half ice blue, half intense green. My nose was neat and small and my lips, naturally pigmented a light pink were large and often mistaken for having filler in. Looking away from my tired self I stepped into the shower, letting the water cascade down my back, soak my hair and rid me of the night sweat. I sighed with relief. Then a voice hissed through the steamy room, causing me to turn swiftly in the shower and nearly fall on the slippery surface. "Beautiful you may be, but unless you soon flee, no more will you be"…