A little short, but I'm back.

An Undertow of Sand

I know what you're thinking.

He has nightmares of his mother?

Sometimes.

And maybe that sounds bad. Morpheus' brother Phobetor, the Frightener, wouldn't have anything to work with if you weren't scared of anything. Or anyone. And he taught his sprogs all of his tricks.

I get where you're coming from.

Kids aren't supposed to be scared of their parents.

But you gotta remember, I'm only half-human. The rules are different. We aren't the same.

I don't really Dream like most people. The minor dream spirits don't really…Hypnos, their boss (father - grandfather - great aunt's first cousin, whatever) was probably my next best friend right after Cliff and Sam. If you were a dream spirit, ensnaring me was kind of like playing a prank on the President's nephew while in the White House.

Awkward.

And don't quote me on this, but I think my familiarity with the Dreamlands was also a bit intimidating? There was nothing they could do that wasn't a pale reflection.

And I could tell.

I would take those pale reflections over the Dreamlands when it got its hooks in, though.

A dream is still a dream, no matter the power behind it.

Nightmares all work the same way.

It starts with being afraid.

Mom doesn't want to hurt me. I know it, Dad knows it, anyone who's interacted with her for a minute probably knows. Sam will admit it if you dangle tuna under his nose long enough.

What she wants doesn't mean much when she can't help it.

And nobody's perfect.

My mother is Fate. It takes a bit to sink in what that means and it kind of still gets me. I thought I had a handle on it and then I'm blindsided with the fact that Chaos is my grandfather. It's an open question how much that dude contributed to the making of the entire universe.

He's my grandpappy.

Think about that for a minute.

Mom is so far above me and my Dad that if she didn't ground herself by clinging to us with everything she had, her sense of Time meant she'd blink and hopefully we'd only been dead for a few centuries.

To put it another way, the Fates tried to get Mom to abort me once. And by that, I mean they tried to get Mom - to get Ananke, the personification of Fate to reconsider her demigod child. To have a moment of doubt. They just needed her to entertain the thought for a fraction of a second.

I'm mortal.

All it would have taken was a thought.

Really puts things into perspective, doesn't it?

It still overwhelms Apollo sometimes that Dad went the extra mile and actually asked her to marry him (he gets super smug about it every time Apollo brings it up too).

Mom never has to say she loves us, because we know.

Mom doesn't want to hurt me.

But I know the difference between 'want to' and 'could' from 'would.'

She wasn't as careful with me as she should have been earlier. It's okay. It's only her third, maybe fourth, slip in twelve years. That's a pretty good track record if you ask me, but it also means I can't lie to myself and say it won't happen again.

It was easy to remember when I was awake, when my logical mind was in control with everything I knew to be true, that we were a family. We all fucked up at one time or another and we would fuck up again, but the important part was that we forgive each other and never stop doing our best. My mother loved me.

In my nightmares, she doesn't.

I don't have the power to summon my mother. The best I could get would be whatever my subconscious fears brought to life and it wouldn't be worth it. Not if I wanted to live through this. Logically speaking, I should have nothing to worry about but she's angry

Dreams don't have to make logical sense.

And dreams are what have the power here.

Piiing….cheep!

You could cut the tension with a sword as the pings of the sonar got closer and closer together. All of the servicemen were still and silent, eyes glued to their screens and dashboards covered in knobs, levers and dials with LED lights. Some seemed to look through their stations with a gaze that was a little off to the side as they waited, tensing and relaxing to the rhythm of their own breathing with their hands at ready.

I just tried to keep my inner four-year-old screaming for his mother quiet.

The First Mate was eyeing the Captain out of the corner of his eye. Connery was hunched over in his chair, murmuring under his breath.

Piing -

"FIRE!" The Captain snapped out.

-cheep!

I expected to hear or feel something that would tell me the torpedo was away, but there was just a beat of silence and then an almost bored sounding report from one of the men.

"Torpedo away."

Another checked his computer. "Target lock established. Three hundred meters."

My Russian babysitter hissed under his breath. "Will one be enough?"

Yeah…

Probably not.

The submarine pinged in agreement.

"If we were to - hypothetically - if we wanted to nuke it, how hard - " The officer gave me this look and the rest of the question died on my tongue.

It wasn't a dumb question, was it?

I thought it through.

Nuclear ballistic missiles - okay, so maybe they weren't known for precision exactly and trying to tag a sea monster with one while playing keep away sounded…

Yeah, okay.

A hypothetically bad idea.

So.

"Fingers crossed?" I offered weakly.

Piing…cheep!

Push comes to shove, just fire all the torpedoes. Every single one. Which was another way of saying fire an infinite number of torpedoes because I sure as hell didn't know how many missiles a tub like this usually carried. As long as submarines fire torpedoes held strong in my subconscious, nothing else mattered.

You know what?

Fuck it.

I elbowed my minder with my good arm. "Tell the Captain to fire all the torpedoes."

My babysitter opened his mouth just in time for Captain Sean Connery to jump to his feet, hand flying to the peppermint railing above his head.

"Caterpillar drive full reverse, up bubble sixty degrees!"

His First Mate repeated the command as the room spun into action, different voices calling out broken fragments of the captain's command and the deck under my feet had just begun to feel like it was tipping back when the shockwave hit.

I was thrown clear off my feet, right into my USSR chaperone who 'oofed' as I collided with his ribcage, nearly tumbling both of us right over the railing behind him. My arm screamed - definitely fractured - and I braced my spine and threw back my shoulders so that I didn't curl into myself in pain.

I was Dreaming. If I ignored it for long enough, I would forget I was injured and then I wouldn't be injured anymore.

"Tell me that was a hit!" Connery growled as he straightened, sounding like he was garbling small marbles.

"It was a hit," someone said immediately, eyes glued to their computer screen. "But we just barely avoided being rammed - "

"It's still moving!" His neighbor barked. "It's coming around for another pass."

Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.

Don't be afraid. Don't be afraid.

D̴͕̚o̴̝͎̒́n̷̢̾'̴̢̜̃͋ť̸̪̬ ̷̳̫͐b̵̨́̕e̸̼̓ ̵̺̃ȁ̴̩̍f̶̠̉ŕ̵͇a̵̬̖͠ï̸̚ͅd̷͙͋̈

I was …starting to regret not springing for that sleepover with my cousins at the House of Night.

Which was really saying something, because that meant surviving a walk through Tartarus, not letting Nyx's domain drive me mad and worst of all, hanging out with Ethan's bitch of a mother.

Russian orders were flying over my head as I tried to think of something else, anything else, than how I felt like a sardine in a floating tin can.

With a hungry shark prowling outside.

"Can't we just leave?" I asked. It came out weak amidst all the shouting, but my babysitter heard me.

He steadied himself, gripping the rail with white knuckles. He gestured with his head, towards where one of the crew poured over large white sheets of paper decorated with waving, curling lines of different colors.

"We're trying."

"Just head for the surface - can't we just go up?" I was trying really hard not to sound like a whiny, terrified kid but…

I was a whiny, terrified kid.

I can admit that.

A muscle in my minder's jaw jumped. "We would die."

"What?"

His lips thinned. "We took refuge in a submarine volcanic chamber - "

We're in a cave.

My mind went blank for a second.

Then I thought of what would have happened if I had control over the Red October from the beginning and ignorantly made it rocket up as fast as it could go until it crunched against the cave ceiling -

The submarine shuddered, high pitched metal squealing burst from the walls as steam hissed from valves and the men started shouting louder.

I need to -

I'm going to die here.

I lurched forward, ducking under the babysitter's grab and bolted for the hatch out of the control room. I heard several people cry out behind me

"Boy!"

Metal walls, pipes and ladders passed by as I scrambled for - I don't know. I needed to think and come up with some kind of plan. Trying to make my way through underwater caverns in pitch darkness was a non-starter. Lights might as well be a sign that says 'Good with ketchup' and it would be stupid to think my current problem was the only monster in these waters.

But…if I could get into a narrow enough area it wouldn't be able to follow me…and if my next problem was smaller I could probably try to fight it with Damocles. Or maybe, I don't want to tag the sea monster with a missile, I want to get as close to the seafloor as I can fire and fire a nuke up to the cave ceiling and hope it breaks through -

The hatch behind me banged open.

I glanced over my shoulder and rolled my eyes when I saw that my babysitter had followed me into the guts of the submarine. Orange Cold War bunker lights were flashing off and on and I was pretty sure the sub was taking on water somewhere if the alarms meant anything.

I could fix it. I will fix it.

But fixing it won't solve everything.

"Do you mind?" I said waspishly. "It's not like I can leave."

"Have you considered punching it," the Russian said from behind me.

"Have you considered - " I started, turning back to him and he was looking at me when something took him over and I couldn't breathe. " - fucking…off."

There were shimmering hues backlit by stars in his eyes.

I couldn't say anything for a good fifteen seconds as I just stared at whatever was wearing my Russian babysitter's skin. I think I even swayed in place, suddenly dizzy.

His eyes looked like mine.

Like Mom's.

"...who?"

That's what I intended to say. I don't know if it even came out of my mouth.

"Guess," the god said as he ran his hand through dark hair that looked less like hair now and more like liquid shadows. He raised an eyebrow at me with the same crooked, trouble-maker smile I've seen on a goddess with grinding teeth for eyes before. "I've been told you're good at that."

"Erebus?" I whispered.

Piiing…cheep!

His head spun a full 360 degrees on his shoulders like some kind of spastic owl before his human guise fell apart.

Or maybe it would be more accurate to say it imploded.

His arms and legs were sucked into his crumpling torso as the navy blues of his uniform darkened until it looked like it was eating light, making my eyes drift as it became impossible to focus on the black hole that was my brother. He was - I thought he was a perfect sphere, but then my gaze wandered just a bit further and I saw there were reaching tendrils spotted with blue eyes burning like neutron stars radiating from his dizzying center. His limbs didn't look like they were in one piece, but were interrupted by empty space in between like they were stitches in reality and I could only see the parts that were on my side of the divide.

I could feel those parts though. He wasn't all here. The rest of him was…

Big.

"Woah," I said, awed. Sure, Mom made sure I looked like Dad and she always said he was handsome, but honestly?

"I want to look like you when I grow up."

I'm pretty sure my god brother laughed, even if the sound hit my ears backwards and dripped down the inside of my skull like oil.

If I didn't already know I was Dreaming, I would have pinched myself.

My brother!

My brother was here!

One of my immortal siblings was here!

HeLlo, Erebus said and his staticky voice pooled behind my eyes. Lii-ii-ii-tle BroTHER!

"Hey, man." I said with just the biggest grin ever, almost splitting my face in two. I checked my face to make sure it wasn't actually splitting in two. You never know. "What are you doing here? " I forced myself to take a breath before I ended up babbling or giggling. "Did you just want to check up on me?"

The Red October's active sonar ping rang out and then echoed back a few seconds later.

Erebus hummed and it ended in a screeching note of electronic sounding feedback.

It's time to come in, you guys, he said with the voice of a tired young woman. It's getting dark out - the voice hitched and changed to an old man with a Texan twang - out here in the countryside, away from the city lights, you can really see the stars, just small - a crackle and his voice changed again to something muffled over a bad quality radio signal. Small step for man, one…giant leap for mankind.

It took me a few seconds to puzzle that one out.

"Oh," I said. My smile shrunk. He's not like Mom. "Uh, in my defense, I thought it was an open door policy kind of thing - "

The slick in my skull sprouted teeth.

I flinched (he's not grading me, he's not Mom, it's okay) and reflexively threw the memory of Thanatos' casual invitation to the House of Night forward and out.

The teeth chewed on the memory.

Then Erebus sighed, sounding like a frumpy old woman. Oh, that boy!

He buzzed, undulating in space like bubbles of ink on water sinking beneath out of sight and then resurfacing, before he hit me with an incomprehensible feeling that felt tight and cold and grated and was maybe something like 'annoyed,' but I wasn't really sure? I think I understand what's going on. Erebus wanted me to come to the House of Night. He either forgot to tell Thanatos that or the god of death didn't believe him, so I got the lame 'come if you feel like it or don't' instead of the offer of protection it was supposed to be.

My brother thought I was shitting all over the rules of hospitality and came to find out what the fuck, I know Mom taught you better than that.

Sheesh.

Good thing we're bros or this might have been a little awkward for me.

Or a lot awkward.

"Yeah, sorry about that," I said with a weak smile. 'I didn't know."

He's not like Mom.

He can pretend for a while and communicate, but I don't think he really understands.

Mom had always been pretty strict about introducing me to any of my 'cousins.' No matter how much I complained about humans, the answer was usually no. I thought they'd be just like Hypnos.

'When you are older,' she'd say. 'And less fragile.'

I didn't learn what demigod really meant until she left us on my seventh birthday. It's a bit like being the one finally realizing what the word 'bastard' meant and why you kept hearing people say it around you. Except worse.

I'm half-human. Erebus is my half-brother. I can die.

He probably doesn't know what that means.

I don't know if he's even capable of learning.

"I didn't - " The submarine's sonar pinged, reminding me I was somewhere I'd really rather not be. "You know, actually - "

It only took a second to echo back and that was all the warning I got.

I was thrown off my feet for the second time tonight as the submarine lurched. I twisted just enough to bring up my arm to save my head and couldn't help the pained gasp as my arm snapped completely on the valve.

Ow.

Better my arm than my head.

The alarms were ripping through my eyes, lights flickering on and off as water poured in. I watched the walls of the Red October buckle inwards like it had been caught in a vice that was slowly squeezing.

iT HunGErs, my brother mused, idly spinning as his own gravity well as the cold, salt water sloshed around my ankles. The Cold War lights flashed brilliant and orange one last time before they all winked out in a hiss of smoke and white sparks that red shifted as they streamed towards him. IT SlePT, it WOke aNd sTIll DReaMS. thrEAt. WhERe iS it? WHERE IS IT?

"Erebus," I wheezed, squinting into the dark. "Help me?"

Growing boys need their nutrition, he said in a patronizing, thin and reedy voice. If they want to grow big and strong.

"Uh, that's nice, but I'm the one on the menu!" The steel of the submarine was groaning, creaking and squealing with the staccato pops of breaking rivets. The hallway was becoming uncomfortably narrow. "Look, get me out of this and I - I'll owe you one and - "

Erebus shushed me with a slimy feeling that burned my lips and tongue.

Mother gave you too much and too little, he whispered as a small child with an echoing dark undertone lagging just a second behind that slithered into my left ear. (Too much, too little)

Beginning and end.

(Begin, end)

Success and failure both.

(Succeed. Fail)

Do not be afraid.

(Be very afraid.)

He was big.

In the crushed hallway of a Typhoon class Russian submarine with maybe half a foot of room to spare, I stood underneath the stare of a burning gas giant. I could feel him thinking. The weight of his concentration made bubbles in the Dreamlands, feeling a lot like pebbles and grit blown by a strong wind against my skin.

You are a slow learner, little brother, Erebus said, sounding just like he had at the start when he was teasing me with a crooked smile and human face. But THEY are not watching. I will loosen your shackles this time.

I had a flash of memory of my first night at Camp and the Oracle of Delphi screaming into my face.

Hear me, son of the Ruiner! Loosen the shackles and relinquish control!

"Erebus?" I asked, trying to keep myself from trembling as the giant burned.

I've got no strings to hold me down, he sang, warbling. To make me fret, to make me frown.

Something touched my forehead.

It felt like my brain flipped upside down and then scattered, leaving a mote of consciousness dangling in an infinite expanse studded with wailing stars.

Next time, my brother hummed. Remember you hold the key.

I felt my Dream construct break apart like an older sibling casually smashing their younger brother's sand castle and the dark, cold waters rushed in. I choked - trying to remember - I am a soul in the Dreamlands, I don't need to breathe - but it was cold or was I on fire? It was hard to think, as if my neurons were stretched between those screaming stars in my head, flickers of light traveling back and forth as I opened hundreds of my burning green eyes and my back shivered as it struggled to open against the surge of water pressing in -

Going, Erebus said softly as I opened my mouth - but I don't have a mouth - and (divinity is soul deep). Going, he repeated, quieter. Going, going, going…

Gone, I thought in a burst of light.