Welcome back, to my Minecraft thingy. :P Always, always remember to review! I'm talking to YOU, eight people who've actually read this so far! XD Srsly tho, if you don't review, in all likelihood no one else will either.
Indeed, this chapter title needs to die in a fire. It doesn't even feel guilty after all its awful puns!
Disclaimer: See that url at the top of the page? … FANfiction… dot net. Yup, not Rick Riordan or Notch.
Eleven months, eight days, and four hours, give or take. It had been nearly a year since Gaea had been defeated… so, traditionally, it was time for the next big evil to rise up and try to kill them. Annabeth wondered absently what would be next. Ouranos, maybe?
"Hey," Percy said, from his spot next to her on their picnic blanket. "Are you okay?"
The true answer was that she was jumping at every shadow. "Great," she lied, smiling and taking another bite of her burger. Across from her, Piper was digging into a salad. Her boyfriend Jason had, if that was even humanly possible, more food on his plate than Percy. Well, that was probably because the former had already eaten his weight in beef.
Leo was there too, for once coming out of his hibernation in Bunker Nine. Frank and Hazel were in New York for a visit, along with a couple Romans that had wanted to see the Greek camp, and Jason had decided after the final battle that he wanted to stay at Camp Half Blood for a while. They had all decided to have a picnic by the lake, so that they could sit together instead of by cabin.
If something happened, all seven of them were right there. They could handle it, as a team. She bit into her food again, a bit more savagely than necessary.
"Just checking," Leo said, raising an eyebrow, "But you aren't imagining that hamburger as anyone's face in particular, are you? Specifically mine?"
"No," Annabeth mumbled, "It's just… I have this feeling something's about to go wrong."
"Oh come on," Jason moaned, "Not again!"
"Wait!" she protested, "It isn't anything like… all those other times we felt like something was about to go wrong."
"All those other times, it turned out to be way worse than we expected," Leo pointed out.
"Yeah, but it isn't like my spidey sense is tingling or anything. It's more like… something always happens, every summer."
Percy blinked, as if he'd never noticed that before. "It kind of does, yeah."
"What?" asked Frank, confused.
"Well, including the Titan War," Annabeth clarified, wincing slightly. Those memories were still pretty tender.
"Oh."
They sat in silence for a while, everyone concentrating on their food.
"Well!" Leo said abruptly, making everyone flinch. "We're quite the optimists, aren't we?"
"Hey," Percy said, in that carefree way of his. "Whatever happens, we can work it out. It isn't like we'll have to herd the old group together again."
Percy was right. Besides, nothing was going to happen anyway.
"Okay, someone might as well do it," Leo said, sighing exaggeratedly.
"What?" asked Piper, poking at a piece of lettuce with her plastic fork.
"Jinx it. 'Nah, no way, nothing's gonna happen!' It isn't like we haven't all just done that in our heads anyway." Point one for Leo.
"Is that really how it works?" Percy asked. "I always figured you had to say it."
"If the fates have total power over life and death," Annabeth pointed out, "they can probably‒ ah!" She flicked her hand, positive it had just been stung by something.
"What is it?" Percy demanded, trying to peer over her shoulder.
"Nothing, bee sting," she responded, staring at the small welt on her palm. Blood had started to bead in the cut and run down her hand.
"Are you sure? It looks pretty nasty."
"Yeah, it's‒" she stopped again, sucking in a breath as something jabbed her hand. Another tiny cut had emerged, about an inch from the first one.
"What's going on?" Piper asked, concerned.
"Something's biting me," Annabeth said indignantly.
"What? Is it a mosquito?" Leo demanded, looking around.
"No," she replied, and then yelped again. Another identical cut had appeared, next to the first two.
"Nothing's here," Hazel said, standing up and walking over.
"Something invisible?" asked Frank.
"It's like something tiny is stabbing me," Annabeth mused, frowning.
"Maybe it's a new kind of monster," Percy said.
"Great. That's comforting," she replied. Again, a sharp pain, forming a little square of red dots on her palm. Shaking her hand violently, trying to fling off whatever kept jabbing her, she stood up. Everyone else followed her lead, crowding around until she asked them to back off a little.
"Should we find Chiron?" asked Jason.
"No, I think it stopped," Annabeth replied.
Then, her hand caught fire.
Well, that's what it felt like. She yelled involuntarily, flailing her arm as a searing pain erupted from her palm.
"Annabeth!" Percy shouted, grabbing her uninjured hand. "What's wrong?!"
Ripping away from his grasp, she stumbled a few steps towards the lake, searching for something that could relieve the sudden agony in her hand. It felt like her blood was boiling!
She could hear people shouting, but all her attention was glued to the pain, and wanting to plunge her hand into the cool water of the lake. Her knees buckled, sending her sprawling onto the grass. Somewhere in some fuzzy corner of her mind, she noticed that she was screaming.
Then, after what felt like hours but was probably minutes, as suddenly as it had started, the pain stopped. Pure relief made her want to laugh, but she was too out of breath.
"Annabeth! Are you okay?" Percy demanded, from where he was kneeling at her side. "The others ran to get help."
"Yeah, it's‒" Once again, she stopped midsentence. Instead of blood, the four little marks on her hand were slowly oozing golden ichor. The blood of the gods‒ it made sense that demigods would have some too. As she watched, fascinated, a single drop trickled down her pinky finger and fell to the ground.
"Weird," Percy muttered, breaking the silence.
"No kidding," she said, rubbing her palm. Ichor smeared all over her fingers, making her feel slightly sick. It had a gross chalky texture, and still felt hot.
Without warning, something in her stomach twisted, and she found herself retching emptily into the grass.
She tried to take a deep breath, but found that the air just wouldn't come. Horrifying wheezing sounds started coming from her throat, and her hand flew to her throat.
"Oh gods," Percy said, starting to panic. "What now?" He slapped her hard on the back, trying to dislodge whatever she was choking on‒ but she wasn't choking. Annabeth knew there wasn't anything stuck in her throat; she just couldn't breathe. Poison? Was whatever had pricked her dipped in some kind of monster venom?
Dizzy, she tried to swallow the air, desperate for oxygen. Blackness started gathering at the edges of her vision, and her hand started hurting again. Panic swelled in her chest, making her head swim even more. Percy was shouting something, but she couldn't seem to make out any words. Her eyes slid shut, but she could still hear yelling, feel the burning in her hand and her lungs.
Suddenly, something burned red across the insides of her eyelids. Symbols, strange letters she could make no sense of. The pain went from her hand, and air, sweet clear air rushed into her lungs.
On second thought, the air wasn't very sweet anymore. It smelled musty, like a room with no windows. She opened her eyes, confused, and started to ask Percy what was going on.
Annabeth blinked, her mouth hanging open.
She wasn't by the lake anymore. There were books everywhere, all along every wall. The floor was made of stone, as was the ceiling, and she was sitting on something… rectangular.
There was a pause, as she tried and failed to figure out where she was.
"Er," said a voice from behind her. She leapt to her feet, whirling around and raising her fists. "Who exactly are you?"
"I was going to ask the same thing," she replied, staring at… well, nothing human. He, well, she thought it was a he, had dark green hair and luminous yellow eyes. They looked a bit like cat's eyes, but with round, human pupils. She thought she could take him; he was short and skinny, a bit like Octavian but without any sort of weapon.
"Well, I think I get to ask first, since you invaded my library," he said, holding up… a spoon?
"No, I'm pretty sure kidnapping is worse than breaking and entering."
"I've got a dangerous weapon you know." She blinked, surprised.
"That's a spoon," she pointed out, raising an eyebrow.
"True, but it's a powerful spoon. Imbued with the blood of the gods, whatever the Nether that means." Blood of the gods! Just before she… teleported, or whatever had happened, some ichor had come from her hand.
"Let me get this straight… you used some kind of dark magic to steal my blood and imbue your weapon with strange powers, and you used it on a spoon?!" Then again, she'd heard of monsters that wore chainmail Muumuus.
"That was… sort of an accident," the stranger replied, turning bright red. She opened her mouth to respond, but he interrupted her. "Wait… you're a god?!"
"What?! No!" she blurted out.
"But you said I stole your blood!" he protested, raising the spoon as if to strike.
"No, I'm, uh, half god… technically." Well, it was a bit too late to lie about that. Being transported to some strange place with a spoon-toting monster tended to put her off her game a bit.
"Ah, that makes total sense. I bloody hate magic! Notch damned book…" he said, looking angrily at something behind her.
Not wanting to turn her back on him, she asked, "What book?"
"That one," he replied, pointing. Curiosity overriding her mistrust of the stranger, she turned around. Ah, so that's what she'd been sitting on. There was a small table in the center of the room, made of some strange black stone, with glowing blue corners. In the middle of the table, hovering over a velvety red cloth, was a book.
It looked about as magical as a book could be, flipping its pages on its own and seemingly at random, as if there was a strong wind in the room. Somehow, it managed to turn pages smugly.
"That's the Book of Mysteries," the stranger said. "I'm Tyx, by the way."
"Ticks?" she asked, facing him again. "Like a clock?"
"Well, it's spelled T-Y-X, but that works I suppose."
"Okay…" she said, "So why did you bring me here? I don't suppose you just wanted to show me your spoon?"
"I told you, it was an accident!" Tyx protested, lowering his 'deadly weapon'.
"So, what, you accidentally said some mystical incantation and accidentally drew a pentagram, and poof! I'm here? Accidentally?"
"Well, I did the spell on purpose, but I meant to use it on a sword. And, I was looking for sharpness ten, not some random half-god girl."
It took a moment for that to sink in. "You cast some weird blood magic spell, and you didn't know what it did?!"
"Uh, yeah. It isn't like the words of the spell matter anyway," he said, somewhat bitterly.
"You lost me," Annabeth said, completely confused.
"The words on the page are usually pretty much random. Nobody knows what an enchantment is going to be until they use it."
"So you just keep casting spells until something works?! Aren't you worried about, I don't know, blowing up your library?"
He looked genuinely surprised by that. "Spells can't blow things up! They aren't supposed to do anything except give our weapons buffs."
"Yeah, obviously spells can't do anything else! I must not be here then, thank you so much for that!"
Tyx sighed, ruffling his strange-colored hair. "Okay, this was new… and I'm probably never going to see that spell again."
Suddenly, he yelled something about a notch and threw the spoon hard at the wall. Annabeth ducked instinctively, because spoon or no, it had mystical powers. "A SPOON! I USED THE RAREST SPELL KNOWN TO MAN ON A BLOODY SPOON!"
As the utensil collided with the bookcase, the old volumes suddenly burst into flames. Cursing, Tyx rushed over and started beating at the flames with his bare hands.
"Hey! You'll burn yourself!" she protested, but the fire was out and he looked fine.
"Okay," he said, blowing some hair out of his face. "Let's start over. I'm Tyx, so what's your name?"
She wondered for a second whether or not to tell him, but there wasn't much point lying. Presumably, he could've killed her already with that… spoon.
"Annabeth," she said. "So where exactly‒"
"TYX! I am going to kill you this time, I really am!" A woman with hair such a violent shade of bubblegum pink Annabeth's eyes hurt clambered up a wooden ladder against one wall, with murder in her chocolaty-brown eyes.
"K-Kandy!" he stammered, backing away, "I, uh…"
"Who is that?" she demanded, glaring at Annabeth. "And what was that noise earlier?!"
"Oh… about that. I accidentally used blood magic to summon a demigod."
A statement like that usually stuns people into silence, and this Candy person was no exception.
"Alright… I need to think a bit before I deal with that sentence. So, why in the name of Notch is that spoon glowing?!"
Tyx turned red again. "It may or may not be enchanted with fire aspect…"
"Tyx!"
"…And sharpness..."
"TYX!"
Leaning backwards, as if the extra distance would protect him, he said, "Ten."
Candy drew a sword at that, pointing it at his face. "You didn't use the books, did you?" she said, sounding surprisingly calm for someone who was an inch away from murder.
"Um, no. B-but, I was trying to use a diamond sword‒"
"What kind of half-wit sorcerer are you?! You accidentally enchanted a spoon with sharpness ten?!"
"And something called blood of the gods," he said helpfully, his eyes glued to the sharp sword-tip at his throat.
Candy sighed and sheathed the sword. "I'm very tempted to feed you to the chickens," she said, as if commenting on the weather.
"Uh," Annabeth interjected, "so you're Candy?"
"No," said the girl, clenching a fist. "My name is Kandy. With a K. Not Candy. Actually, it's KandyKrushh, with two Ks and an extra H, but you can call me Kandy. Just not Candy." Annabeth blinked, confused.
Not sure how to respond, she said simply, "I'm Annabeth."
"Tyx, give her the tour. Unless she's a new kind of monster, then kill her with that stupid spoon of yours," Kandy said, turning around and heading down the ladder.
"Well," Annabeth said after a long moment. "She's… blunt."
"Yeah. That's our leader, Kandy. She once singlehandedly killed four creepers with a raw fish!"
"A raw… What are creepers?" Annabeth asked, deciding she didn't want to know about the fish.
"What are‒ But‒ What?!" Tyx spluttered, gaping at her. "Follow me," he said, heading for the ladder.
Her new acquaintance led her down the wooden ladder, past a room full of what looked like pizza furnaces, and into an empty one that seemed a bit like a lobby.
"Come on," he said, opening a door and stepping out into an alleyway. It was definitely not a street‒ proper streets were wider than three feet. Tyx made a right and began striding confidently along an equally narrow path. Whenever they ran into someone headed in the opposite direction, they had to turn sideways and squeeze past one another. Passing a small plot of farmland, they eventually came to a gigantic wall, with a pen of sheep crowding against the road on their left.
It was tall, nearly the height of New York skyscrapers, with a small staircase clinging to it.
"This way," Tyx said, pointing to the narrow path up the wall.
Suddenly, someone came sprinting headlong out of another passageway, slamming into Tyx and pushing him right over the fence into the sheep paddock.
"Watch it," said the stranger, in a deep voice.
Annabeth had to crane her neck just to look at him. He was six feet, easy, with bulging muscles and shining armor strapped to every inch of exposed skin. Two solid black eyes gleamed from beneath a massive jutting brow, like a Neanderthal, and his face looked like it was chiseled from stone‒ literally. His skin seemed to be made of granite.
Towering over her, he blinked once, and started laughing.
"Looks like you finally snapped! Went and spelled yourself a girlfriend."
Tyx, who had just managed to haul himself out from among the animals, turned bright red and started stammering.
"N-no, I-I…"
Annabeth stepped closer, raising an eyebrow.
"Wanna say that again?" she asked sweetly, making a fist.
"Don't mess with me," the stone man replied, drawing… a blue sword?
"Wouldn't dream of it," she replied, smirking.
"Uh, Grease…" Tyx said, going from tomato red to pale as a sheet in about half a second.
The big guy had had enough of her, apparently. Roaring, he slashed out, nearly cutting her in half. Annabeth danced back, still grinning. In truth, she was terrified and wondering why in Hades she'd goaded him. All she had was a knife that wouldn't work on mortals, although this Grease guy didn't know that.
"Annabeth! Catch!" Tyx yelled, tossing her the spoon.
"A spoon?" laughed Grease, swinging the sword again. She caught the spoon, dodging the blow, which lodged Grease's sword half a foot deep in the stone path.
Woah, she thought. Whatever that thing was made of, it could cut through stone. She so shouldn't have picked a fight with this guy…
Sighing, imagining how hard Leo would laugh if he could see her fighting a giant with a spoon, she stepped forward.
The sword was stuck; she could just come up to him and‒
Grease gave one tug, and his blade slid free with a menacing rasping noise. Oh Styx…
There wasn't time to step back again, so Annabeth did the only other thing available. She stabbed him with the spoon, right between his breastplate and shoulder pads.
She'd expected him to be hurt. After all, being stuck with a sharpened wooden spoon is always at least annoying. Of course, being made of stone would make Grease completely invulnerable, as far as sharpened spoons were concerned. Naturally, she only remembered this a split second before contact.
The spoon connected‒ and went right through his seemingly impenetrable hide like butter. He staggered back, and burst into flame.
"Ahh!" she yelled, horrified, the now bloody spoon still in her hand.
"AHH!" Grease screamed, waving his arms.
"The farm! Go for the farm!" Tyx shouted above the noise, pointing at the small pool of water among the crops.
Sprinting as fast as he could, the big stone guy who definitely shouldn't be flammable made a beeline for the water, jumping in and curling in a ball, submerging himself completely.
"Somebody get a healing potion!" Tyx yelled at the small group of bystanders.
Annabeth stared uncomprehendingly at the spoon.
"Kandy is gonna kill you," said a tallish guy with a bright red Mohawk. "Nice fighting skills, by the way. Oh, and where in all the Nether did you get that spoon?"
It took a little over a minute for help to arrive in the form of a little girl. Annabeth thought she looked about six, with a massive golden sword almost as tall as she was strapped to her back and blood red hair bound in a braid down her shoulder. Pushing people out of the way, she jogged up to the burned and bleeding Grease.
He yelped in pain as she shoved a glass vial at him, full of some pink liquid.
"Here. Now stop whining," she said, apparently not fazed by his size. "This is the third time, Grease. Seriously, we're going to have to arm you with a stick if you keep picking fights."
"Hey, I can't help it," he said, chugging the potion. "I'm just angry all the time!"
As he spoke, his burns just… faded. In about a second, third degree burns had become a sunburn, and his stab wound was barely a scratch.
"Woah…" Annabeth blurted, amazed. Even ambrosia couldn't do that!
"Right," the girl said, turning on Annabeth. "Now you half killed him, so you are going to get me the ingredients for a new potion."
Tyx gulped, running his hand through his hair again. ""K-Kitty, you d-don't mean g-go t-to the‒"
"Nah, I want her to get some netherwart from that spot on the beach!" she replied sarcastically.
"Er, K-Kitty," he persisted, "She c-c-can't go in the N-Nether alone, it's t-too‒"
"No. On second thought, Grease!" Kitty yelled, turning on the victim of the… spoon. "You're going too. If you kill each other, it's not my problem. I am sick and tired of you brawny idiots maiming each other and leaving me to clean up your mess! One bit of netherwart, that's all I need. We've already got melons coming out of our ears, and gold is pretty easy to get."
Annabeth had no idea what netherwart was, but she was pretty sure that gold shouldn't be able to dissolve in a potion, and a melon? That just seemed… odd.
"Um, this Nether place… what's it like, exactly?" she asked, hoping that the look on Tyx's face was coming from her working with Grease.
"Uh, K-kitty? I-I want t-to g-g-go t-too," Tyx said, making an honest effort to look brave but failing rather miserably.
"Whatever. You helped start it, I guess. Bring what you want, but no diamonds. Kandy's orders."
Grease nodded curtly, and then strode off into one of the side alleys. The crowd of people that had come to watch the fight had all dispersed, probably scared off by their healer. Kitty shrugged. "Good luck," she said, then turned and jogged off, back where she came.
Tyx looked ready to keel over; he was pale and shaking slightly. Despite feeling a bit annoyed with how easily the guy was intimidated by someone even smaller than he was, she was glad he was coming along. Grease was so not the person she wanted to trust with her life.
"Okay, seriously," she said, poking the guy in the shoulder. "What's the Nether?"
He stared at her for a full second. "Okay, come on. I want to show you something."
She had no choice but to follow him as he sprinted the last few yards of path and began to climb the stone steps, panting loudly as he did so.
"Hey, Tyx?" she asked. "Not that I'm not glad you're coming… but do you know how to fight?"
"Oh, yeah. I'm just not really built for it… but I can handle myself. Um, usually."
"What do you mean usually?"
"Well, I don't much like the heat. And I'm allergic to pigs."
"What?!" she demanded, at a complete loss again.
"In the Nether, there are these things. We call them zombie pigmen. They're like pigs, but bipedal zombies. And they have swords," he replied, finally reaching the top of the wall.
"Great, just great," she sighed, coming up next to him.
"Luckily, they leave us alone as long as we don't bother them. Otherwise, they'd pretty much disembowel us." Tyx looked like he wanted to be sick.
"Hey," she said, glancing over at him. "You don't have to go if you don't want to."
"I want to," he insisted. "'Sides, I have got to get out of this stupid fort and away from all these people."
Annabeth blinked. "If you hate them so much, why don't you leave?"
"Well," he replied, rumpling his hair, "It isn't so much that I hate them, specifically. I just don't like people in general."
"Any particular reason?" she asked, somewhat offended.
"Yep. I was a hermit for at least ten years, never saw a soul‒ besides people who wanted me to enchant things, that is."
"Oh," she said, feeling a twinge of sympathy. The poor guy had been alone for that long?
"I don't mind so much if there's one or two people that I like. Well, I should be able to tolerate Grease for a few days," he clarified, grinning.
"This'll be a piece of cake," she assured him.
"Kitty's not so bad, you know," he said, studying his spoon carefully.
"No, she just sent us all on a death mission. Not bad at all."
"Yeah, but she's… fed up. She's our healer, so every time a couple of people beat each other up, it's her responsibility to clean up the mess. I guess we're all just… sick of each other."
"So why don't you leave?"
"Oh! I forgot to mention it… see there?" he asked, pointing straight up at where the sky was blushing a bright red.
"Yeah," she said, confused.
"Watch."
Just as she was sure sunlight was about to peek over the horizon, something… happened. The stars jumped into different places, and instead of the sun, the moon begun to rise.
"What the…"
"Someone made some kind of machine that changes the time to night whenever morning arrives," Tyx explained, leaning on the stone parapet.
"Great," she moaned.
"And see that?" Tyx asked, pointing off the wall. Annabeth crossed the top of the wall and looked down at… something green. It was leaf-colored and had a vaguely leafy texture. Actually, there were quite a few of the weird leaf things. In fact, there were monsters everywhere. There were humanoid things with rotten skin and shuffling steps, probably zombies, human skeletons armed with bows and arrows, and… gigantic spiders. That was so just her luck. "That's a lot of baddies."
"Yeah," he sighed. "They spawn‒ er, pop into being, I guess, in darkness. In the morning, most of them burn and only the creepers are a threat anymore."
"Which no longer happens."
"Yes. That's a creeper by the way," he said, nodding at the green things.
"It doesn't look that bad," she mused, peering out over the battlements.
"They explode," he said simply.
"Oh. Okay, why not?"
"The world hates us. Not to mention, there's worse things in the Nether. Like… giant monsters called Ghasts that shoot fireballs." Tyx said, getting a bit pale again. "And lots of lava. It's underground, deep underground. Hell, basically."
Wonderful, thought Annabeth. Hell. Again.
"I'm sorry by the way… about bringing you here."
He almost looked like he was about to cry, his creepy yellow eyes all wide and kitten-y. First Percy, now this. Why was it that everyone she met could pull off that innocent… look.
"That's okay!" she said hurriedly. "After our suicide mission, you can figure out how to undo the spell."
"Yeah," he mumbled, not sounding very confident.
They stood in silence for a minute, looking up at the stars or down at the army of monsters.
"We'd better get to the barracks," Tyx muttered, and started heading down the stairs. "There's a spare bed in there somewhere. Second row, I think.
"Okay," she said, following him down the stairs and through the narrow paths.
"Well, if we die, we won't have to stay in this dump anymore." Tyx chirped optimistically.
"It isn't that bad," she protested.
"You haven't seen the barracks yet."
"You have got to be kidding," Annabeth said flatly.
"Nope," Tyx assured her. "That bed there is empty," he added, pointing to a slot in the middle of a massive heap of beds that looked ready to collapse under its own weight.
"How the‒ What the‒ How do you sleep?!" she spluttered.
"With much difficulty. On my back actually; there isn't much room to be sideways."
"There's no way I can sleep in that."
"No, but eventually you'll be tired enough that you just pass out."
"But we've got a dangerous mission tomorrow! And is Grease seriously going to sleep in that top row?"
"Yes," Grease said simply, climbing up the ladder and squeezing into the space between the bed and the ceiling. His face was actually crushed against the stone, with his nose bent sideways. How exactly it bent when it was apparently made of rock too, Annabeth had no idea.
"Hopefully the adrenaline can keep us awake while we fight evil demons. Personally, I like to take naps in my chair in the library when I can't sleep well at night," Tyx said cheerfully.
Annabeth opened her mouth to protest some more, but decided against it. She hadn't really seen anyplace else they could fit a bed. Well, they probably wouldn't let her haul one of the beds out onto the wall.
Giving Tyx a venomous look, even though it wasn't strictly his fault that the sleeping arrangements were so pathetic, she climbed awkwardly into the empty bunk.
With the next bed inches from her face, smelling like sweat and wet wool, she figured it would be a long while before she fell asleep. Annabeth wondered absently what Percy was doing. And just like that, she was obsessing over whether they were okay, whether something else had happened, if they knew where she was. Probably not, but how long would it take to get back? What if time moved faster here, or Tyx couldn't undo the spell? This quest into the Nether was ridiculous; they could be using this time to figure out what exactly had happened. Maybe it was an easy fix, just burn the spoon or something.
Someone, maybe Grease, was snoring like a chainsaw. How was she supposed to stop thinking if she couldn't sleep? Cursing softly, she pulled her pillow out from under her head and tried to smother her ears, but it was no use. She would just have to lie here until morning, unless…
Very carefully, mindful of how unstable the pile of beds probably was and hoping to Athena nothing creaked, Annabeth slid herself off her mattress and into open air. Grabbing the ladder, she slowly turned herself around, easing herself onto the stone floor.
It was surprisingly cold outside, the air biting at her bare arms. Still, it was quiet, peaceful… and didn't smell like Percy's dirty socks. The stars blazed above her, much brighter than she'd ever seen them. They were strange stars though, new constellations, part of another world. Well, she assumed this was another world. The rules here were different; magic was for enhancing weapons, there were potions that could instantly fix someone who'd been on fire, and something else… something more.
Annabeth climbed the stone stairs up to the top of the wall, rubbing her arms. The air had something else to it, a strange smell. Not a smell, exactly. It was more like this world had a feeling floating on the wind, one that just didn't exist back at home. Like the future was full of possibilities, adventure. She was no stranger to excitement; the last few years had given her more than enough, but here it felt like all she needed was her fists and her feet. She could do anything, go anywhere, and anyone that got in the way could go jump in a lake.
Reaching the top of the stairs, Annabeth leaned against the nearest battlement and slid to the ground. Huddled up against the cold, she leaned her head back and closed her eyes.
It was uncomfortable, all hard cold stone. Still, the air was silent as the grave, with the occasional odd noise from the monsters below. Better yet, that exhilarating feeling of power, the strength to overcome any obstacle, still swelled in her chest. Leaning against that frigid wall, Annabeth felt freer than ever before.
Well then! :P
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