An Undertow of Sand (Percy Jackson and the Cthulhu Mythos)

AN: I am so tired of hospitals.


I remember the last time I saw something like Artemis' nightmare. There were many kinds of nasty in the Dreamlands, and more it could conjure up, but this one was familiar.

It was at my old elementary school, funny enough.

First grade.

Sometimes in the Waking world there's a messy breakup and my teacher doesn't know her ex had bought a gun. She still doesn't, you know? I got called to the Principal's office for something real dumb. Or maybe I just thought it was dumb and I had been chafing at the bit super hard.

Sometimes literally. I, uh, hadn't been trained out of biting yet.

Like a dog, I guess.

A small murder puppy.

It was my first week and English class is hell on Earth. I'm still surprised I didn't just bounce that first hour. Mom had promised school wouldn't be all bad, but if I stayed and made Dad happy then she'd see about making things interesting for me. You ever wonder how a kid who thought mortals were useless was convinced to go to school in the first place?

I'll tell you.

Some good old fashioned bribery!

The would-be shooter and I both met a raven in the hallway by the bathrooms.

I didn't eat him, if you were wondering.

I should have.

Instead, I got an in depth science lesson on how you won't actually bleed to death if you are flayed alive, along with how nerves actually work from my mother, though. You know that kiddy science experiment of powering a lightbulb with a potato? My version of that was powering a lightbulb with a person. You'd be surprised how little fiddling it takes. Stomach acid is good for more than just breaking down what you ate! If you ignore everything else about this, actually really interesting? I could talk all day about it, I was enthralled.

And of course, no way was Mom going to just toss out my science project after we finished. He was literally keeping the lights on in that hallway. I told Mom that if she let him make noise, the school would have some gnarly ghost stories passed around in a few years. She had laughed, hugging me to her side in a quick one-armed hug.

Then she froze.

I remember her face going blank in surprise, looking at her own arm around my shoulders like she just caught herself doing the unexpected.

'They might search for the source and end our fun early,' she said, shrugging the moment off. 'Let it be our little secret.'

When we moved to our penthouse, I had to transfer to another elementary school because of zoning rules or something. Mom never leaves behind evidence. If not for that small mercy, I know the guy would still be there strung along the ceiling with the rest of the wiring.

Not dead.

(I should feel guilty, or something about helping Mom with her victim, Dad would want me to, but I don't - )

(guilt for not feeling guilty, maybe but it was faint and barely anything at all)

I should have eaten him. I'd say 'or killed' but back then, if I was going to kill something, not eating it afterwards seemed like such a…waste. I was always hungry when I was little and why not? That was how Mom had explained it, honestly baffled I even asked. Two birds with one stone, right? A complete no brainer.

I told you, remember?

She didn't know any better.

At some point, I started second guessing my snacks with 'not sure where that's been' courtesy of my pet cat asking that same question too many times and then 'what do I say if Dad asks' and 'I'm not that hungry anyway' and eventually I just stopped when the hunger pangs started to fade.

Morality never came into the picture.

You know, Sam had to teach me about 'acceptable targets?' Dad had to refine the parameters a bit because cats were assholes on a good day.

I remember how the very concept had made Mom laugh and laugh and laugh.

She was so tickled pink, I laughed too.

You might think it was because I was a small child mimicking what his mom was doing without really understanding why. But I knew why.

She loved that kind of hypocrisy. That as long as the victim deserved it, as long as the protests were quiet enough to ignore or came from the wrong corner, as long as your victims were sufficiently other…you could justify anything with whatever reason you want. It's all a sliding scale of arbitrary values that only exists in your head.

It's not like their wounds cared why they were inflicted.

It hurt the same, innocent or guilty.

Not an ounce of morality went into the making of the universe.

Even stars die.

I don't know enough about how humans work to put it in my own words why I chose to create a difference between hurting someone for a reason and hurting someone because they were there.

Wasn't that a reason too?

Who gets to decide it was a bad one?

I don't know how to explain why I decided that difference matters.

I think I know when Awake. The words. But here, they were like smoke drifting through my fingers, leaving nothing but a vaguely hungry feeling behind.

I don't like the Dreamlands, but it's familiar. The same way fire is. It can't be domesticated or tamed or even allied with. At the back of your mind, you know it isn't safe. You just become comfortable with how it can kill you. You let your guard down the longer it goes without trying to. Maybe

You still know, though.

And here it is, lurking just beneath something as normal and mortal and boring as sleep.

It's both harder and easier to lie to yourself here, you know? Sometimes your subconscious knows for certain what you consciously deny, and sometimes it believes what your head knows can't be true. Maybe that's why after ripping everything out, after knowing what I was trying to leave behind here and how dangerous it could be if I slipped up, I still kept coming back.

Like I won't get burned.

Like I won't burn others.

We're kindred spirits, aren't we? The Dreamlands and I.

I have control over who I am, but what I am…it is what it is, isn't it? Wonder if this is just what being a demigod of an Elder god means, or if it's something unique to me. Or unique to Mom? It might just be a Fate thing. Maybe I can ask Nico sometime if he's the same way.

The worst of both worlds.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not angsting about it.

---

The city's shore was dirty.

While the gray sand where we arrived hadn't exactly looked appealing, it was still better than this muck filled sand. There were puddles of bubbling mud, chunks of some jelly like thing quivered by sparkling shards of glass and tossed rubble. My party members stood under the shadow of a bridge that stretched out over the water. It was just as gothic as the city, lined with stone gargoyles frozen in the act of ripping female victims apart. All grey stone and wrought iron before coming to an immaculately clean sudden stop over the waves.

Smooth as glass.

Like an incomplete exchange that never got around to promising an escape.

"What was that?" Luke asked the moment I stepped off the water.

What was what?

"Uh." I shrugged, smiling as I pretended to know what he was asking about. "Subconscious beliefs that girls are ambush predators or traps?"

"Really?" Came Khione's incredulous outburst before she laughed. "Of course…" She shook her head with a fond little sigh as she lightly stepped closer. She was giving me that look again, the one that was part wary, but mostly excited about getting to peel back my skin to see the gears underneath. "But he was asking about how you killed it, or rather how you didn't."

My smile widened. "But I did."

"Eventually," Luke gritted out between clenched teeth.

I nodded, conceding that. "Eventually."

He worked his jaw then, making an effort to relax. "Perce…" He hesitated. "What if something else attacked us while you were busy?"

I shrugged again, lazily swiping a finger in looping, harsh designs that imprinted into the sand. "That's why I sent Sam with you."

Duh?

I didn't like the way they exchanged looks. Luke, pained. Khione, amused.

"...right," Luke said flatly. "I should have known better trying to go at it sideways, because you think about everything diagonally - "

"He's mortal," Khione said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "That doesn't mean he must be human."

"We are human," he harshly threw right back. "He's twelve."

Both of the goddess' dark eyebrows bounced. "He's twelve," she deadpanned. "Do you know who else is twelve or younger? Roughly one point two million children in New York state alone. It is a little late for you to try to protect this one."

Luke…flinched.

"...someone should," he mumbled, eyes lowered.

Khione softened slightly. "He doesn't need it."

Distantly, something in my chest squeezed (but I do! I do I do I do please don't leave me!).

But the sensation was so far away.

My blood was still humming.

Luke looked towards the bridge looming over us, glanced over at the flesh limbs waving in a cold breeze and the twisted gods in the water, flinched away from the moon above, before he sighed mournfully. "Agree to disagree."

"It's just a Dream," I said, crushing the smile off my face. "You - you don't have to worry about me. Here." I finished lamely. "I'm…used to this. Place. Thing."

'This is our shit,' Sam rescued me.

I pointed at the cat. "That."

'He's also aggressively half-muppet, it's a good day if he's not fucking cackling during it.' He continued, throwing me right back under the bus.

"I haven't done that in years." I snarled at him. And only like, three or four times at that. To be completely honest, this cat had a way better memory than I was comfortable with. "Can you stop bringing shit up?"

'No.' Sam hissed back. 'By the by, is anyone going to tell me why Lunch can talk?' He pointed a paw at the small rabbit huddled in a small loaf in a patch of dead grass, staring up at the crumbling Dracula-adjacent brick walls, iron spikes and all, surrounding the gothic city in mute terror.

"Former muppet," I grumbled.

'Ah.'

"Don't eat."

'Hypocrite.'

That's fair as fuck, actually.

I could have said that Artemis was the reason why we were even here. I could have said there were some oaths going on and letting him eat her would be breaking them. I could have said it would be rude.

"Look, I never tried to eat your friends!" I protested.

If you're wondering why that, out of everything I could have said, was what came out of my mouth in response instead of literally anything else?

I got fucking nothing.

Sam stared at me, ears flat.

"Not that I wanted to eat your friends," I tried next. It was a lie, but I was desperate to salvage something. "At any point."

Khione burst into sparkling laughter as Luke's face did a lot of things and one of these days, I will stop trying to defend myself after I do something stupid.

It's not working.

Sam let out this long put upon sigh, little shoulders slumping and crooked tail wilting. 'He's a plonker.'

And with that, he bounded up in the air.

"And you're an ass!" I called after him as he bounced off one of the bridge's thick stone pillars up to the top of the wall.

'Proud of it, you lil' fuck!' He yowled back, setting down on four paws between the black iron spikes lining the top of the stone wall. 'Let's go get fucking murdered!'

Then it was just the last glimpse of his orange tail as he jumped down the other side.

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "Why were we even having that conversation again?"

Yeah I…forgot already.

"You were having fun killing the - "

"Absolutely nothing worth mentioning - "

Luke and Khione both started talking at the same time. It was kind of funny watching them stop to process what just happened and who said what, only to immediately do it again.

"The fuck you mean 'not worth mentioning' - "

"That is what offends your sensibilities, you utter child - "

"I'm happy for you two!" I cut in brightly. "Sorry things turned out this way, I won't do it again! Moving on!"

"Perce - "

"If you get angry enough, you can invert," I said quickly and Luke's mouth shut with a click. You can literally be so happy you could die in the Dreamlands. Don't worry, that's only for the Dreamlands, not just Dreaming or that'd get miserable real quick. "Emotional regulation isn't here. Feedback loops are bad."

Khione let out a slow breath and gave me a short nod. "I…apologize. I am usually much better at - " she grimaced. "I had not noticed this place…"

The bells rang.

Maybe it was because this time, we were closer, but there was a sound underneath the eerie tolling. Something like a wail or scream, like it was costing some poor bastard everything to make the bells ring and the sound crawled along the inside of your skull. When the bells went quiet, the wail lagged behind for a few seconds as wretched sobs.

"Getting to you?" I finished as I turned towards the city walls. "It does that." I looked back. "You good with taking point, Kai?" I threw out nonchalantly.

If you've been pronouncing her name like Key-own, you're doing Greek wrong.

(Kai-oh-nee)

(fyi)

She startled, silently mouthing her new nickname before some emotion scattered across her face like breaking glass. Bright, brittle, sharp, then gone.

A cold breeze rushed past me carrying a flurry of snowflakes up and over the wall. When I turned back, it was just Luke and Artemis left.

His face was too blank.

I shrugged, still not sure why the problem was a problem. "Blame my mother?"

"I am."

"Whatever."

Artemis stared at us blankly. Just a thousand yard stare, silver eyes seeing absolutely nothing at all. Her breath started hitching and then she turned, a rough, discordant honk bursting out of her sounding like a cat trying to hack up a hairball but nothing was coming out.

"I - I cannot - " she rasped, listing to one side and breathing fast enough that I was starting to worry that she was going to pass out. "Y - you do not understand," she gasped. "We are going to die."

If she scared herself into a heart attack and died after all this, I was going to be pissed.

"Arty," Luke murmured. "Breathe."

He picked the rabbit up. For a long moment, they just stared at each other, nose to nose. Tears were brimming in her silver eyes. Luke just looked exhausted.

"I tried," Artemis blindly pleaded, half a sob.

"You needed help," Luke agreed, before he stuffed her into his red vest. She silently curled up against his chest, trembling.

Like a kid, hiding from what went bump in the night.

He glanced downwards and his shoes sprouted silvery little wings by the ankles. "Ah," he muttered. "I get it now."

He jumped, a trail of sharply blowing wind flowing after him as he front flipped over the top of the wall.

I walked through it.

The wall was made of bricks, not a solid piece. Just make the gaps between them large enough, either by changing them or changing you, as easy as hardening the surface of water.

It's a Dream, after all.

And let me tell you.

Artemis' nightmare wasn't any better up close.

"Oh gods," Luke gagged, hand over his mouth as he leaned heavily against the wall. "What is this?"

I hopped down from the wall foundation to the broken street and gave him the jazz hands. "The rabbit's wonderland of mental issues."

It reminded me of that Colonial New England town we were in after Nemesis sabotaged our train, a piece of kept history through either restoration or careful preservation.

And just like that New England train stop, it was a ghost town.

Where you can either find a ghost or become one.

The city was almost exactly like what you would expect out of an older London district. Except the brick the buildings were made out of wasn't the warm red or beige brick, but soot gray stone covered in thorny vines and some dripping kind of moss. Everything was built in that blocky, square design that inevitably ended in a tall steeple with wrought iron fencing, thin rectangular windows typical of Victorian era architecture. A hazy mist wafted off the uneven cobblestone streets, turning the alleyways haunted by distorted silhouettes from dim into impenetrable. The shadows of abandoned horse and buggy carriages lined narrow streets like a fifteenth century garage sale had lost all the shoppers.

Coffins were everywhere.

They probably weren't empty.

And of course there was a clocktower in the distance.

Can't be a Victorian architect without throwing in a clocktower somewhere.

The taller the building, the more they had a subtle lean to them. As if, Leaning Tower of Pisa style, they weren't on solid foundations or at a certain height, the gravitational pull of the full moon clawed at the bricks giving it a vaguely bowl shaped appearance. The gothic bones of the city rose up on either side of us like the giant maw of some mythical beast.

A maw, or a ribcage.

The pulse of an unseen heart pressed against my throat, welcoming the intruders.

Ba- thump.

Ba- thump.

"Feel that?" Luke whispered.

"Selene's remains," Artemis gravely responded, head warily poking out from his vest. "I…I buried them - her," she stammered, pained. "But - but the layout changes so I cannot say where exactly the catacombs are now…"

The many pupils of his shattered eye dilated as Luke turned his head like I imagined a lizard would, a bobbing roll of his head. He pointed off to the left of us, where the city thinned as it approached a distant, foreboding forest. "That direction."

'So nowhere we're going,' Sam grumbled. 'I hope.'

I hope so too.

I'm also not gonna lie. In those catacombs buried with Selene just shot up to the top of my 'Where the Fuck is the McGuffin' list.

"I remember when mortals built like this," Khione murmured, eyes of icy annihilation sweeping over the dreary skyline. There were pyres burning in the distance, trails of smoke rising up all over the city to blend into the overcast sky. "England, initially. Nineteenth century, if I am not mistaken. And long after Selene's death."

There was a question in that cold tone somewhere.

"Yes." Artemis shivered. "And yet it has always looked like this."

On every building corner were broken statues of tortured female figures reaching towards the moon. There was more living artwork. Growing out of masses of flesh on street corners. Impaled on the spires. Nailed to the larger buildings like official monuments. Cut open with guts trailing. Hacked off limbs still bleeding. Joints twisted out of socket. They were all like that.

Deliberate.

Khione raised an unimpressed eyebrow. "Additions included?"

"Not her fault," I shrugged off. "Not really. She didn't do this, it's what she fears she will."

If I knew down to my bones that Mom would never hurt me, I wouldn't have a nightmare about it. The Dreamlands didn't like to spin something out of nothing. Nothing to gain from what you could easily dismiss and disbelieve. Knowing you were Dreaming was half the battle.

(I am a mortal soul in the Dreamlands wasn't a mantra for nothing)

That meant Artemis already knew she could with the certainty that leaked into the subconscious as the insidious whisper not this time, but maybe the next, that would be me. That's me.

Ask me how I know.

Luke gave an almost inaudible sigh as he looked around, face still twisted up in disgust and…something else. "I'm starting to believe that you hate yourself more than I could ever hate you, Arty."

"If - if you see…" Artemis weakly spoke up. "A white deer being attacked by hounds. Do not look away."

"One of the nightmares?" I asked.

Khione made a small sound. "Aktaion?"

I blinked. "What?"

"Not what," Luke snarled in a low tone, sounding like he was considering punching me again. "Who. That you do not know about."

So Achilles 2.0. "Blame my mother."

Luke paused, blue eyes cutting to me suspiciously. "And Apollo."

Yeah.

That one's probably fair.

"Aktaion was a hunter who had the misfortune of catching the eye of our huntress, so she conspired to catch him in a rather…compromising position." Khione drawled before letting out the fakest gasp of concern I've heard since my last homeroom. "Oh, wait, did you want to tell this story or shall I continue?"

"Do not - " Artemis snarled before catching herself. "Do not act as if you are innocent - "

"I have a corridor decorated with once living statues of ice," the Boreide pointed out nonchalantly. "Some deserved it. Most…probably didn't," she admitted after a moment of thought which was…not great, but also not something I could condemn her for. She's Greek. Honestly felt like she deserved a thumbs up for admitting fault.

"And I don't care," she continued.

Spoke too soon.

"If guilt turns into this," was said with her arm flung at the creepy city. "Then it's for the better that I don't have any, isn't it?"

Between one blink and another, the man was there.

He's disheveled, brown Grecian tunic full of creases and wrinkles to match the light brown curly bird nest on top of his head. He looked confused, staring at the bronze knife he had a white knuckled grip on like he didn't know where it came from.

"Ωχ." he said and my Dreaming brain chugged as it switched language gears. "You lied."

Like he hadn't just slit the throat of the little girl in his arms.

My head filled with white noise.

Red droplets round the curve of his forearm and fell to the sand.

Plip.

Plip.

Plip.

The scene stretched, like we had gotten on opposing elevators, stretching the space between us and Khione. She was frozen in place, eyes wide and the hands at her side starting to tremble.

"You lied!?" The man choked on the yell, disbelieving and ragged as he burst into tears. He brought the knife up again, aiming for his own throat -

Gone.

Like he had never been, just the faint metallic tinge to the air and blood soaked stones.

"What the fuck?" Luke harshly whispered.

"Nothing," Khione's voice shook for a second, then evened out again before the end of the word. She took my warning to heart. "A mistake I never repeated."

"Called your bluff?" Luke snarked.

Khione turned away. "That wasn't guilt."

It certainly wasn't happiness whatever that had been.

"So." I muttered, shuffling uncomfortably. "Aktaion?"

Classic case of entrapment, apparently.

Real old school.

Get baited into hunting an albino buck through the forest, stumble upon a goddess taking a bath. Her hunters had been sent away, the buck he'd been following had been in on it and he decided that refusing the virgin goddess of Olympus with a lot of flattery was a safer option than pissing off Apollo and Zeus.

The sad thing is that he might have been right.

That story ended with Artemis whipping his hunting dogs into a frenzy and then turning him into a white deer for them to rip to shreds for the crime of peeping.

"Alright," I said slowly. I tilted my head to the side and squinted at the cringing rabbit. "Mom's sense of humor is still shit, but her sense of irony is sublime."

In this nightmare, he was still a deer. Still being ripped to shreds by all of his dogs. And as long as you were able to keep him in your line of sight and away from reflections, the amalgamation of tearing flesh wasn't free to hunt you.

Broteas was a weirder, but similar story. Great hunter, prince of some place and who what's it. While out hunting, ended up in a flirty three day hunting competition with a woman he discovered was the goddess Artemis. Didn't really double take so much as burned rubber backtracking to Tartarus because he didn't feel like dating someone that had already killed the rest of his fucking family.

"Really?" I sighed. "You honestly didn't see the problem there?"

"Of course she did." Khione shrugged one of her shoulders. "But she wanted him, so that was that."

"I - " Artemis started, then stopped.

I don't even know what she could have said. Bro had every right to his opinions. Artemis put herself in the position to hear them and 'I didn't have the impulse control to not drive him mad so he immolated himself on my altar he abandoned because I murdered his family' doesn't sound like much of an excuse.

Artemis said he was some kind of preacher here. That was what vicar meant, right? Some kind of religious figure?

"Do I want to know the backstory?" I asked.

"Ah, Princess Niobe," Khione said with relish and a joyless smile. "Not surprised you didn't hear of it from Apollo."

My stomach sank.

Luke's lips twisted unhappily. "Boasted of her victory over the Titaness Leto, for safely delivering fourteen children over two. Those two answered the insult."

"The insult being doing anything better and having the gall to say so out loud." Khione's tone was venomous. "What kind of punishment do you suppose fit this crime of hubris?"

Artemis choked on a sob, shuddering.

I swallowed thickly, feeling more than a little uncomfortable. I was a special kind of stupid, but it didn't take a genius to guess that confrontation did not go well.

"Lots of murder?"

Luke's expression said Yes. "Of at least twelve of her fourteen children."

"Mortal wishful thinking," Khione dismissed immediately. "All of them were murdered, including several nieces and nephews, her husband and the sister those other children belonged to. For being in the way," she continued with an acidic smile. "Can't have that, you understand."

I wish I could say I was surprised to hear that Niobe's "hubris" about having kids was answered by killing her kids, but I wasn't. I understood why Artemis said her regrets were here.

I'd really fucking regret that shit too.

Luke sighed tiredly. "Myth said she lost color from the horror, endlessly crying over her lost children until she turned to stone."

"She did," Khione said dryly. "Someone took pity on her - "

"What is with you people and turning mortals into things?" He said abruptly.

Khione shrugged. "Can't kill them because an Olympian can always just drag them back and if you are going to risk interfering, make sure it sticks." She studied us before slowly stating, "And when it comes to the affairs of the lords of Sea, Sky and the Underworld, it had better."

I kind of hated that Khione sounded like she was very, very familiar with that.

Luke's smile was razor thin and just as sharp. "So he did her a favor, in the end."

"The end is when we usually do, because that is when we remember that you do have an end." Khione offered almost gently.

Who are we talking about now - oh.

Thalia's Tree.

Now was not a good time to tell Luke that Hestia had intervened and Zeus hadn't actually done jack shit.

Dreamlands.

I'm stupid, not suicidal.

"It's not so bad, being a flower, a tree, or a river…" For a moment, Khione's voice trailed off almost wistfully. "Even the dead are aware and can still be hurt. But a stone…it would be much like falling asleep and nothing can wake you. It's a mercy. You are no longer worth the trouble. One way or another, your torment ends."

Niobe was here too.

A forever mourning living statue that stalked the shades of Artemis' young Hunters through this nightmare, through their nightmares when she slipped past Diana, paying back child for child.

"I thought you said this wasn't a prison," I said.

"It isn't," the rabbit whispered, staring at the stained cracked cobblestone street.

Holy shit.

"...so your neuroses are capable of reaching outside?" That explains the god squad on guard duty in the water.

I wish it didn't explain the god squad on guard duty in the water.

Luke twitched. "...how many did she manage to take?"

"Five." Artemis collapsed in on herself. "Five. So far."

"Fourteen to go." Khione murmured. "Might have been better to just get it over with." As the rabbit swung her head wildly, denying, the goddess of winter thawed ever so slightly. "From experience, it's the uncertainty of which child is next, the waiting that hurts the most."

"Wha - to just give them up to be killed because of someone else's wrong?" Luke questioned sharply. "They don't deserve that!"

"They don't," I agreed. "But…I don't think it's about what anyone really deserves."

Khione's face had no expression at all. "It never is."

'Muppets.' Was Sam's contribution.

There were legions of nameless regrets here too. Victims of someone else's wrong. This king forgot harvest sacrifices, so she made her own out of his population with a giant monster pig, nicknamed the Kalydonian Boar. And used paper thin excuses to punish all of the hunters that tried to stop it.

This other guy forgot that she technically presides over births in his prayers. Better flood the expecting mother's chamber with venomous snakes while she and her retinue were inside. Some kids horsing around 'hang' a statue of you with a noose and their village is so afraid of your reaction that they murder the boys before you could.

But they tried to do it quietly, without full honors and begging for forgiveness and all that, so let's just jack up their infant mortality rate to 100% until they figure it out, right? One of Apollo's girlfriends cheated on him? Everyone in her general direction had a message delivered by arrow that his sister was expiring their lease on life.

I knew it was going to be bad.

But Jesus.

This is where Nemesis pulled Aura from.

My niece did say she admired Artemis.

So committed to getting what she deserved.

"How come it was different with Kali - "

I didn't want to hear the sound Artemis just made ever again.

"Never mind."

It was a stupid thing to ask anyway.

There were no more questions.

Just the city.

I had a plan, right?

We go in, avoid all of Artemis' bullshit (that's important), find the key, get out.

By Sam, mostly. Booting me out was one of his jobs, I just had to hope that he could find his own way to safety after that. Maybe…maybe I could ask Mom to make sure he made it okay? I don't know why she wouldn't? He was the best cat. He looked out for me. She wouldn't forget that. I didn't want to rely on Luke's ability to shroud us because Dreamlands but it would work better if I didn't put any suspicion that it might not work in his head by bringing it up early. Sam was a powerhouse in his own right. I could hold my own. Khione learned quickly. We made the decision to come here. We weren't lured here.

That makes a difference.

It was a good plan. It would work.

The bells rang again.

The women on the buildings writhed as they screamed with it.

---

'Without your random bullshit, you mean?' Sam asked as he trotted along. 'Your fucking freezer.'

My cat was not going to let the Kronos thing go.

It wasn't like I made him stuff the Titan Lord into the ice box (or dump all my ice cream to make room). He did that on his own!

How does that make it my fault?

"You know that doesn't have anything to do with this."

'The fuck it doesn't.'

Khione was taking point because, you know, immortal. That still means something in Dreams, even if it's just nixing the subconscious fear of dying. If IDGAF - Can't Die Edition wasn't an officially recognized mood, there was something wrong with the world.

As she passed under a living lamp post, the ice melted away to reveal a twisted stem riddled with cancerous looking growths, a venus flytrap thing in her stomach, the wooden heart thumping away and then she passed back into shadow.

No one else seemed to notice.

When I stepped into the light, dozens of burning green eyes blinked open on my body for a disorienting moment before closing again. Beside me, Sam's borrowed eye was a parasite, small tendrils leading back into his brain as the main organ pulsed with its own heartbeat.

Luke pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes as he muttered to himself. He was next, his skeleton flickered into view as if spontaneously flayed. His skull had three eye sockets and elongated eye teeth. Thin jointed legs that looked like they belonged to one of those long legged crabs were wrapped around every bone.

"Where are we headed?" He murmured, his shattered eye rolling upwards at the large black birds staring down at us from the rooftops. "The clocktower?"

I frowned. "What, because Time? That's racist."

Khione snorted.

We needed that moment of levity.

Every building was a cathedral, brick, twisted wrought black iron fencing and dark windows. The little light from the living lamp posts bounced off surfaces strangely, making our shadows dance demented jigs behind us.

Away from the briny stench of the water, the city had a smell of its own.

Dead things don't smell like blood. Not really. It's red, it's obvious and everyone knows that losing too much is bad news. Don't get me wrong, there was a strong metallic tinge to the air. There were stains on the walls and the street, but it smelled fresh, like every storm drain was clogged to the brim with the stuff.

It was more than blood though.

It was the piss and shit of emptied bowels, it was the smell of offal, leaking stomach acid, bile, pus and burst fluid sacs. The sickly sweet stench of rot was here too, like I was back in the throat of Tartarus standing on the giant putrefying hand beside my cousin, the goddess of Murder.

And above it all, charcoal, smoke and grilled meat that made my mouth water.

My stomach rumbled.

It smelled like a butcher shop.

And the butcher was in.

Rhythmic wet 'thwack' sounds echoed through the streets, getting louder the further we walked.

Thwack.

Thwack.

Thwack.

Wet tearing.

Luke's hand slipped into his pocket for his father's lighter. The fur on Sam's back rippled. Khione turned her head towards the sounds, a smile pulling at her lips.

As for me?

…I was wondering what was up with these fucking crows.

I promise, it was probably not the ADHD.

Large black birds the size of small dogs were littering all of the side paths and dark alleyways, on top of roofs, sitting on the tormented living art and starting to take over the larger window sills. As I watched, one of them yawned. Its mouth split the head and neck vertically, two barbed tentacles instead of a tongue reaching out around a gullet filled with serrated slabs instead of teeth.

Huh.

"Heeeeey, Sam, buddy?" I asked out the side of my mouth. "You seeing this?"

I was immediately rewarded with airplane ears. 'I am seeing a lot of things.' His replacement eye was glowing softly. 'And I like fucking none of it.'

"So, the birds?"

'Yeah,' he sighed as his crooked tail lashed back and forth. 'Here likes playing with you.'

Uh, cool.

Cool cool cool.

Mhm, just love hearing that about an intelligent murder death place, you betcha. "The feeling…is not exactly mutual."

'Could have fooled me.'

It took me a minute to remember what the hell he was talking about. "Okay, I was quoting my mother who said this was my favorite playground and I was five."

"Quiet!" Luke hissed. I almost made another joke to ease the tension, but after looking at his face, I…decided not to?

He wasn't just tense, his face was almost bone white with sweat beading his forehead and staining the neck of his shirt dark, pupils blown wide open. He had a white knuckled grip on his dad's lighter and his shattered eye was swinging wildly, looking into every too dark shadow.

He was terrified.

"Luke, you need to calm down." I tried to say it as neutrally as possible.

He swallowed, throat bobbing. "I - I'm trying."

The next 'thwack' echoed and he flinched almost violently.

A bad feeling settled in my stomach.

The butcher was in, but Artemis hadn't mentioned them. "'Temis…"

The bunny shook her head.

Well, shit.

"If we must run," Artemis whispered. "Will you trust me?"

I barely stopped the 'hell no' from shooting out of my mouth. Where was this trust when we were gonna have to run from Nemesis' monster and she didn't even give me a chance to explain before taking off? We've come a long way since Crash and Burn o'clock, but just because she was on parole didn't mean I forgot why.

I couldn't say it though. Not when those big bunny eyes were looking at me like she was hoping I wasn't about to tear her last hope out from under her.

"Yeah, sure," I lied.

Up front, Khione clucked her tongue. "We have company."

I had already drawn Damocles when I saw it. The narrow roads had opened up into an intersection, one of the thin alleyways was blocked off by a pile of rotten wood and an overturned buggy. There was a pyre burning in the center of the crossroads and in front of it, casting a long thin shadow is a woman.

Thwack.

Thwack.

Tall, but spindly like a scarecrow, white hair sticking every which way in matted tufts. I don't consider myself an expert in women's fashion, but the only word for her dress was 'dumpy' like it had been made in the 1850s for a convent and was more patchwork than fabric now, all of it stained with soot, grease and old blood. Under a heavy brow, her grey eyes were too wide, almost manic and unfocused. It was the look of someone who belonged in an asylum.

Those eyes were multitudes, reflecting off each other like two mirrors facing each other until they all shined.

Thwack.

She had Luke's nose.

He was frozen, face white as snow and shaking like a leaf.

Thwack.

The massive cleaver came down. She bent over with a grunt, picking up the arm she just cut off. It was diseased, covered in crusting sores and with little fanfare, she threw it into the flames where a pile of body parts already burned.

Explains where the smell of cooked meat came from. My subconscious chose that moment to remind me that the last time I was in the Dreamlands, I ate one of the locals.

Fuck.

Now I was hungry. I caught myself starting to eye the pyre, a stray thought

I could eat.

Sam noticed. 'Remember, nothin' I wouldn't.'

Cats weren't vultures.

Anything that was dead and rotting before I got to it was off limits.

Thwack.

A head rolled.

She lashed out a foot to stop it from escaping down the road. There was a crunch and all that was left under her slippers didn't look like a head anymore. She grunted and absently picked a clinging sliver of skin from her knife and brought it to her mouth.

Luke whimpered.

The woman stilled.

One second. Then two. Then five.

Just when I thought I could breathe again, her head snapped in our direction.

Damocles slammed point first into her left temple, knocking her head back in a spray of blood before she collapsed.

Sam and Khione turned to look at me.

I stared back incredulously. I've seen this movie. "No."

"Lu -u -u -u -uke, my darling boy. Is that you?" The insufficiently dead body warbled. "You've come back! I knew you would! I made…your favorite!"

Like a puppet still on strings, the limbs lifted into the air first and then her torso catapulted upright. Her legs twitched like she'd been struck by lightning, knocking rotting limbs away. Damocles had taken a chunk of her skull with it, but instead of bone and brain matter, the gap was filled with a slimy white goo. A grey eye swam around in it as tendrils reached outwards as soft spines, mimicking her hair.

Alright.

Fuck me, I guess. "So that's a proper Nightmare."

Capital N.

A simple subconscious manifestation this was not.

Because Luke can't do anything by halves, apparently.

'Yeaaap,' Sam said warily. One of his ears tilted towards my fellow demigod. 'Good job, fucker.'

Luke ground his teeth in an attempt to break his own jaw. "It's…not her." He gritted out. "Right?"

Half her fucking head was gone and she was still trying to stand up!

"You can't tell?" I boggled.

"Wo -o -o -o -on't you introduce me to your friends?" The Nightmare's vacant smile was full of sharp teeth.

Khione tutted. "Well? You have some manners, don't you, Castellan?"

So the Amarok was not a one off, this goddess just treats every terrifying probable death like its Tuesday.

"Yo -u- -u -u -u!" Nightmare Mommy gasped, a shaky finger pointed right at the Boreide. "I've seen you!"

Khione blinked slowly, glancing at Luke. "And?"

That was when those hazy grey eyes turned a luminescent green and Luke went so stiff I felt sympathy pangs in my own spine. "It wasn't you, it wasn't you!" She screamed. "No heart, broken mind, tattered soul, for what? Revenge? Not even the earth could break those chains! What was left? A feeble, shriveled, wicked thing - "

I don't know what exactly Khione tried to do, but whatever she did, it didn't work.

With a tinkle like shattering glass, the ice shattered all over the street.

All of the sudden, the air was filled with the flapping of large wings. What had once been a good sized murder of huge crows now covered every roof in sight with more spiraling in the overcast sky above.

The Dreamlands likes playing with me.

I get it now.

This was a trap.

The Nightmare of Luke's mother threw back her head and howled.

The streets of the city lit up with echoes of answering calls.

Luke grabbed the back of my shirt and nearly threw me in front of him. "Go!"

We ran.