Annabeth
Percy said something about naming your friends and them thinking you called them. What was that all about? He said something about being confused. "… How Annabeth feels" Annabeth. That was me. Mostly. I hadn't understood most of what Percy had said, but the being confused part matched, so whatever he had said seemed to be somewhat right. Percy saying something correct sounded like an appropriate situation to be nodding, so I did just that. At least I think I did, but I wasn't really in control of the body at that point. At that point I was only sort of at the front with a few others and I knew I wouldn't be able to get back. "Someone please front" I called to the others, hoping it wouldn't come out too loudly on the outside. I would leave the front, I knew that. I could try to reach that other world, my inner world. I focused on nothing but going there as I was pulled away from the front for good.
It appeared to have worked, because when I stopped being so terribly dissociated, I was sitting in neon green grass. I now recognized from where I knew that color, it was the same as that of the grass in Minecraft. I still didn't know however why the grass here had this color. Maybe it had something to do with creating things in the game and in this inner world. There probably was some sort of reason, but one so complex it couldn't be understood and seemed random. As I looked around, I noticed that the dark fog appeared to be slightly less dense than it had been last time. Maybe that had something to do with my ever so slightly improved communication. I tried to orient myself, but couldn't find anything I recognized. After walking for just a few meters, I saw a building at the edge of the fog. When I reached it, which took like twenty seconds, and opened the door, I saw something that actually looked a lot like a plane's cockpit. The quick glimpse I had gotten the last time I had left the inner world had been correct. On the pilot's seat was a young girl, around seven years of age, which I didn't recognize. Maybe this was the newly discovered Luisa. I decided not to interrupt her in what she was doing. When I left the little shack, I also saw Chris and Annie standing there. "Hey guys. Is this like an alter meeting?" I asked. "No, but when you mention our names, we all just ended up here. The cockpit is where whoever is fronting goes." Annie explained. I didn't like how I literally knew less than this seven year old. "But I guess since Luisa is now at the front, and stable as it seems, we can go back to what we've been doing before now." Chris said. I had originally wanted to follow him, have him tell me more about this place, but he shot of like I had already seen last time. Annie was about to leave as well, but stopped, presumably after noticing how surprised I was by Chris leaving so quickly. "Want me to show you some things?" she asked. "I'd love that" She started running off into the fog. "Hey, wait for me. I can't see very far in here, remember. I can barely see you at this distance." She stopped and I caught up to her. Then we continued at a slightly slower pace than before.
Eventually, we reached the massive tree. Like, last time, I felt very protected as soon as I got near it. "Do you feel that as well?" I asked Annie. "That feeling of being safe" "Yes, it comes from the tree itself. I assume that has something to do with Thalia. She was a tree once, and as a human, she wore mostly black with one blue streak in her hair, and that's also what the tree looks like. I'd say it's meant to make us all feel as safe as she did." I had already suspected something very similar. We now reached the side of the tree where I had met Annie the last time. "Wanna come up?" She asked me. I looked at the bark of the tree. "I'd love to, but I think those indents are too small for my feet." "Fine, I guess we'll have to do this the boring adult way" She said the word adult like an insult. "Hey, I'm only seventeen, I'm not an adult yet." "You're too big to properly climb the tree, so you're an adult." As she spoke, little steps extended out from the tree and Annie began climbing up. "come on" she called. "You know, this doesn't seem very safe. What if I fall down?" "Don't worry about that, gravity works different here. You can't get hurt" I climbed up the tree. After about five meters I got curious as to how gravity was different here, so I jumped down, hoping that Annie had told the truth. Usually, a five meter fall would have taken one second, but here, it was closer to three and I landed softly, like I had only fallen around half a meter. I climbed back up until I passed a low hanging branch after about ten meters. Though branch was probably not the right term here. This one thing was closer to an entire regular tree. And within the branches of this tree was a tree house measuring about three by three meters, with a trapdoor at the bottom to which the ladder led. I climbed to the top, opened the trapdoor, and climbed into the tree house where Annie was already waiting for me.
The inside was a bit crammed but there wasn't much you could do about that, with so little space to work with. On the other hand, if the room had been bigger on the inside, it would not have even surprised me. There was a desk overflowing with drawings and calculations and I had a sneaking suspicion that some of the papers would not have stayed were they were under regular gravity. There was also a bookshelf, a small fridge and two mattresses, a regular one and one filled with air. There even was a tiny bathroom in the corner, consisting of only a toilet on one wall and a sink on the other one. Of course everything was the perfect size for seven to eight year olds, but far too small for me. For example, I would not have been able to use the toilet here because my legs wouldn't fit below the sink. "Do you live here alone?" I asked. "Yes, but sometimes Luisa or another little comes over, that's why I have this air mattress here." "And where do the others live?" "most live in a big house. It's behind this door" She pushed away the bookshelf like it weighed nothing, which was probably the case. Behind that was a corridor. Don't ask me how there can be a corridor in here? I asked Annie instead. "It's complicated. It's not really where the tree house is. But it leads to the mansion." We stepped into the corridor. After a few meters, I saw something lying on the ground. It looked like a marble statue of someone's face, but it was broken in half. I picked the pieces up and wanted to put them back together, but Annie quickly told me to stop. "What even is this statue?" I asked. "That's Euclid. He decided some annoying stuff, like how a straight line is always the shortest path or the 180 degrees in a triangle thing. We didn't like those rules, so we had to get rid of Euclid. We also had to destroy Newton. We reached the end of the corridor. "This door leads to my room in the house. Well, it's not really a room, more like a short distance between this corridor and the corridor in the house because I already have my tree house. It also functions as a sort of airlock between Euclidian and non-Euclidian space" Annie opened the door and revealed a room that indeed wasn't much bigger than a broom closet. She then went through that door, but when I tried to follow, I couldn't. For some reason I was not able to enter the house, the same way mortals couldn't enter camp half-blood "You know what, I think I'll go explore on my own for a bit." "Do that if you want to." I walked back through the corridor. As I did, I accidentally kicked the Euclid statue and the two halves were joined, at least for a moment. This was enough for the corridor to momentarily stop exiting, which sent me back to the ground.
Like last time, I didn't get hurt in the slightest. After experiencing some really bad falls, I really appreciated this "feature" of the inner world. I looked around and noticed I was back at the shack with the cockpit. I decided to explore a different direction this time. Normally, I would have just walked into one direction, but after realizing that the fog wasn't as bad at places I had been at, I decided to go back and forth instead, like someone creating a map would (assuming the map had magical properties und instantly filled in everything you saw). I circled the central shack a few times, going out about ten more meters each time. Eventually, I started to get bored and also hungry. It seemed that this place, which was technically a simulation, was accurate enough to make me have to eat. Given the fridge in the tree house, I should have expected that. I thought about what else I had seen in the tree house and came to the conclusion that I, if I stayed here for long enough, would have to sleep and that the toilet was probably also not just for decoration. I wondered whether using it would be dangerous, for the same reason why you should never trust a toilet in a dream. However, considering that I wasn't fronting when I was here, it'd probably be safe. After walking for a while, this time in a straight line, I reached a fence. Once I found the gate and crossed it, the fog receded a bit, allowing me to see the entire building. It looked… Interesting. Imagine you give a four year old pencils and paper and tell them to draw their dream house and they go like "… So, I also want another bedroom here, and an aquarium on this side, and here we'll have…" and it ends up being a big mess of colored boxes. That was approximately what this house looked like, except everything was arranged in such a way that it was actually very much structurally sound. When I approached the front door, I noticed Chris putting down a large pot onto a wooden table. There were also some plates with spoons. "Oh, hi Annabeth. I was just preparing something to eat. You want anything? I've made potato soup." I vaguely remembered that my dad had often made that when I had still lived with him, before the spiders. "Aren't we going to wait for everyone?" "No, that wouldn't make sense for several reasons. First, overall communication isn't good, so we probably couldn't get everyone here together anyways. Also, it would be hard to find any sort of routine because time can be weird in here. So whoever is hungry usually goes here and either prepares something, or someone else already made something. And you just barely hit the second option." I tried the soup and it actually tasted really good. "So, what do we do with the rest now?" I asked. It didn't seem like there was anyone but us who'd finish it any time soon. "We can just leave it here on the table. The pot is perfectly thermally isolated, so it won't cool down." "If it's perfectly isolated, how did you heat up the soup?" "It's only isolated in one direction" "I'm pretty sure that violates the second law of thermodynamics" "Who cares? This is the inner world. We don't even care about Euclidian geometry. Want me to show you the house?" "I tried to enter it before, through the tunnel to the tree house, but I couldn't." "Makes sense, someone needs to allow you in. Why can't they have that in other places? Like 'sorry, but access to Tartarus is only allowed for monsters, not for mortals unless they have been sentenced by Hades. That would've saved all of us a lot of trouble." I had almost forgotten that I was talking to the guy who held the trauma from Tartarus. "Anyways, you wanted to see the house. I'll allow you to enter." The doorway shimmered for a moment, probably from updating the whitelist of who could enter. Chris showed me everything. In the ground floor were a kitchen, a few bathrooms and some other stuff. In the middle was a large staircase that led up to the second floor. There, the individual alters' rooms were located.
Suddenly, I felt a tug towards the door and asked Chris whether he knew what it was. "Oh, that usually means that something is happening at the front that might interest you, I'd just follow it." I agreed and stopped fighting the pull. I was pulled all the way to the shack with the cockpit. Whatever was happening outside wasn't interesting enough to actually make me front, but it did make me able to somewhat see what was going on on the outside. But it wasn't like on a screen, I could see everything like I was fronting, just at a bad quality. In front of me I saw the inside of yet another cockpit, that of a Sopwith Camel. Above that was the sky. I tried looking around, but couldn't because I wasn't the one in control of the body. All I could do was somewhat influence the movement of our eyes. After a few seconds of me watching, the plane dipped down and I saw the golden gate bridge in front of the sun. I watched in amazement as the plane flew between the two pillars and almost touched the cars, though I was also a tiny bit worried about our safety. Then I remembered that the plane was probably flown by my dad, the same guy who had rained bullets over the army of Kronos a few years back. If there was one pilot I trusted, it was him. Even so I stayed near the front to step in if anything went wrong.
Next Chapter is here. Sorry for the delay, I was busy. The next chapter may or may not be uploaded on time (tomorrow). See you then.
