Rowan
If one day everything ceased to exist, if everything just disappeared into a void would it feel like this? Like a cavity within my mind, eating away at each thought and action which I undertake. Tearing my soul from my heart, constantly reminding me of what has been lost, of what I could have saved if I just tried harder.
"If you continue to let yourself drown, soon you will never be able to come back up," a young male voice spoke from beside me. My years of training and unbearable grief stopped me from jumping in fright. My head slowly turned to see a young boy that looked no older than 15, but still seemed to have ghosts churning through his dark eyes.
"How would you know?" I ventured, prying into this unusual boy.
"Four years ago...my sister went on a quest...and never came back. It was the first time I felt truly alone. Having her by my side through everything, and then one day she is gone," he whispered, voice slowly drifting away. I stared into his eyes with my broken ones to see his words anything but lies.
The boy placed his pale body next to my own. I tore gaze back to the everlasting sea. The sand that I sat on pressing against my skin.
Sand...beach...Aelin.
The first time I truly made her mine...
The first time she was stripped away from me...
Her blood staining the coarse sand red, dripping from her wounds that she inflicted upon her. Her fragile body forced into that coffin of iron, chained like an animal.
I swore on that day I would find her. Just like I swore now to find her once more.
"I will find her," I spoke to myself, forgetting of the other presence next to me.
"She is here, I can feel it. Although, she may be next to you she is further away than the sun, and just like the sun, there is light. Light that will enable you to do anything as long as you have it, because light means hope." The boy stood up from the ground and brushed off the sand on his legs. Letting it fall like the snow in the north, in her home. Our home.
Just as silently as he came, he was gone as if taking the shadows with him. All but the largest one hanging over my head.
Percy
I stood there frozen like ice, petrified of what was before me. How could this be real? I must be dreaming. I am in my cabin at camp lying next to my beautiful girlfriend and this is all a dream. What else could it be?
The present.
My mind seemed to echo to me, saying everything that I did not want to hear.
"You, Perseus, have seemed to be on good terms with the gods," the vast being spoke, venom in his voice on the last word, "and recently the presence of another in my realm was alerted to myself. I do not have the tolerance for trespassers such as this individual. Do you see my problem?"
I opened my mouth to speak, but no words were formed. My head nodded in answer making a few strands of my black hair fall into my eyes.
"And do you now see I have taken you from your camp of the spawns of those pseudo beings?"
I thought about what has been said, of how I fitted in the equation. Take me and the gods will care, they will send a quest to find me without doubt. But then what does the 'trespasser' have to do with it? Unless it is that person that is sent on the quest leading them straight to this powerful being who will probably kill that person.
Finding my words I replied, "Why didn't you just take this trespasser and not me?" I asked curiously.
"Why just kill one person, when you can shatter them and then kill them?" was the reply I received.
My mind was trying it's hardest to make sense of his words but it could not. I wish Annabeth was here...no...I wish she never comes anywhere near here.
"Time for you to go back to your new home," it spoke.
My vision is blurred and I closed my eyes.
Only to open and be greeted with the Stygian surroundings once more.