ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Every chapter has to have a super-important quote like this one, huh?
An Undertow of Sand (Percy Jackson and the Cthulhu Mythos)
- Thread starter Shujin
- Start date
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
The story is structured like a detective or mystery novel and I've learned from previous works that if I want to write something more cerebral, I need to have repetition of important parts so readers don't get lost with the episodic format and story length.
- Location
- Book Fort
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Erebus is actually pretty cool. Divinity that doesn't quite know how to ape at being mortal, a god that doesn't quite grok humanity. Erebus loves Percy, that much is true, but limited in the way that a god can love a mortal [without understanding them].
I hope you explore more of this godly perspective, it's very interesting to read!
I hope you explore more of this godly perspective, it's very interesting to read!
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they are like beast's from fate they love humanity but don't understand them or something like that right?.
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Depends on who you mean by 'they' honestly. Erebus is fond of his little brother. Ananke cares a lot about her son and husband in that order. Nyx was interested in Percy. The only one I'd be comfortable saying they have any kind of benevolence towards humanity as a whole would be Rhea and even that is conditional on her not being fully aware.
Erebus is just a kind of 'in between' Elder god. You have those that grok humanity like Rhea, Ananke and Hypnos. And then you have those that don't. Tartarus would be an example of that, Nyx is up there as well. Erebus is not really capable of making small talk with the neighbors, but he is capable of parsing through the radio signals that escaped Earth's atmosphere and recognizing a channel he likes the taste of. He pays attention enough to realize those funny vibrations the hole in our heads make is an attempt to communicate and has learned how to string together words to speak back, but that's as far as it goes.
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Another split chapter, but mostly because this was a pain in my ass and had to change my plans for it at least four times.
He had always held that calling the Schlafsland a land der Träume to be a ridiculous, romantic notion.
The Dreamlands, indeed.
To call something a Dream, was to imply that it was a wonder. Something miraculous and awe inspiring. And out of a hundred nights, how many were truly occupied by wondrous dreams? How many instead were fragmented, bizarre, mysterious or confusing? How many lasted seconds, how many seemed to unravel over years?
Did no one else recall?
Nightmares were dreams as well.
He would admit that there were wonders here, but they were as the vibrant coloring of a venomous creature or poison flower. He would take the miracles as they come, but expecting horrors instead was far more practical.
That being said.
He still only half-expected the cat.
The front door of his home slammed open with the sound of the wood cracked back against the stone wall and he snarled as the Dreamlands ripped the association from his mind - Assassin! Male suspect with a shotgun - To the palace - call the doctors - His home was already twisting into a blend of his office and the front foyer as his visitor searched for him. For a moment he was back in that carriage as fire burned through his chest from buckshot but the spike of ice crawling through the left side of his body pulled him back.
Vater!
He swallowed as the phantom man leveled the pistol at him and deliberately closed his eyes.
I am already dead, he reminded himself.
The cold flesh hanging from the left side of his body pulsed in what he knew to be its attempt at reassurance. He refused to feel any gratitude.
In the place of the aborted nightmare, an orange tabby cat with molten fur and burning right eye sauntered in.
It had a name, of course. Wilhelm was seldom comfortable using it even after all these years, simply because it had been all these years. Half the time, it was everything he despised about Englishmen in a four legged fashion, and the other half was spent being viciously reminded that it had been born here.
And he knew better than to trust anything from the Dreamlands completely.
If Carl had remembered that, he wouldn't have died.
(He died, it was death, because he can't afford to think that his body hadn't been completely hollowed out when they trapped him. They smashed his teleporter. Burned everything and the boy had - It wouldn't be getting out)
(He took a second to dig out the worms looking for another nightmare)
"Ya fookin' feel tha', yeah?" The cat said, just as another aftershock rumbled through. Colors faded. Sound hushed. A ripple moved through the air as an invisible guillotine of dread, twisting shadows and shapes until there were screaming, cackling faces in every wrinkle of cloth and hungry eyes in every wall for a moment.
Just a moment.
"I was about to investigate that," he replied sourly, shrugging his right shoulder - his only shoulder - so that the vials caught the feline's attention.
The crooked striped tail flicked back and forth.
"Ya mean you wanna poke at it."
"I'm just looking," he snapped as he limped over to his mirror and carefully set his powders and salts down. Despite his caution, one small vial slipped free and as he fumbled a thin, knobbly gray appendage like a prehensile bone caught it. He snatched it back and ignored the cramp as the false limb pulled back into the pulsating mass where his left arm used to be. "I can look."
"Lookin' is pokin' at it, you daft git," the cat retorted, hopping up on one of the stools, incidentally scattering the pile of papers that had been precariously balanced upon it. It flicked curious eyes across his workbench. Cats don't make expressions the way a person does, but he knew it was frowning. "Ya know those don't actually do anything."
Wilhem frowned as well, hunching over the cauldron embedded in the center of his table.
"I believe they do," he said shortly, eyeballing his measurements. A few sprigs of anise - or whatever passed for the all-spice here, but it looked close enough - and then a pinch of saltpeter…
The cat rolled his eyes. "Obviously."
And they would work, because he believed they did. It had taken (who knows how long) many years for him to wrap his mind around the notion. There would always be a part of him that was surprised when he managed to make rocks float and turn the wind as hard and cold as a block of ice, but that was the land of Dreams for you.
Belief was power here, channeled through conduits worn into the fabric of this reality by the collective unconsciousness of millions of Dreamers until things fell when dropped and burnt when set alight.
Most of the time.
Both Wilhelm and his guest shrugged off another pulse. It had come from the east, which was curious as there was nothing in that direction but the coast and sea.
"Why can't you believe chewin' on a bit of nip or hoppin' on one foot will do tha trick like normal people?" The cat muttered.
"Because I am a learned man of distinction," he lied with a sniff and absently brushed the glimmering medals off his waistcoat. "That wouldn't be caught dead doing something as silly as hopping on one foot to make a window."
"It's a fookin' dodgy bit of complicated, is what it is."
"As opposed to the dignified method of licking one's own ass for a miracle?" He countered snidely.
The cat grumbled.
"Someone's pissy today." It sniffed at the air and Wilhem stubbornly ignored the flicker of shame in his breast when those cat green eyes focused in on the empty wine bottles. "Fuck mate, it that time of year already?"
"It's too close," he said instead. "I need some idea of what I will be dealing with for safety if nothing else - "
The cat made a derisive sound. "If lil' fucker's mum is good for anything - "
"Not for me!" He hissed, nearly turning around, but he controlled himself and glared down into the dark waters of his mirror. "I live here!"
He gestured towards the wall and the window that hadn't been there a second before showed the little village he had grudgingly started to call home in his own mind. It was all built into the massive tree trunks of the forest, rope bridges connecting stories and four eyed birds policing the short, swarthy people that lived there. If anyone had told him he'd be content living in the trees among indigenous natives while he had still been alive, he would have laughed.
And probably would have had them arrested.
He didn't know how long he's lived here. He didn't want to know, really, so it was all the same to him.
"Huh." Out of the corner of his eye, the cat tilted its head and eyed him, trailing over his missing arm and snake leg.
"Surprised I care?" He grunted as he tipped the last of it into the water.
"I thought you lost your balls somewhere up on the moon, s'all," the cat said simply and Wilhem cringed.
Well, it wasn't the first time he'd been someone he was ashamed of.
The Dreamlands tried to draw it out of him, but it only got as far as the distinctive clack of a personal firearm before he pried its tendrils out from his mind. The ladle dipped into the waters and he gave it a slow stir clockwise.
"It's called caution." He said after a moment. "And well-deserved, at that. We can't all be sorcerers and spirits and - "
Demigods.
The Dreamlands tried to latch onto that thought with its relentless greed, onto those memories and emotions but oh, he's far too familiar with that nightmare to afford it even an ounce of power.
" - can we, Sam?"
It looked up at him with too-knowing eyes and he looked into the waters instead as he concentrated his will and want and desire into the ripples. The faint smell of his concoction stings his nostrils and he can almost feel his nasal cavities expand and with it, his mind.
East, he thought, for as much as the cardinal direction only means something to the Waking World, to him, it still means something. As swift as a bird in flight, the reflection in the water blurred over the forest to the pits of black and bubbling and crawling before it hit the wide, blue ocean. The orange tabby cat wisely didn't disrupt his concentration and when the next pulse whispered through his home, his damned, cursed curiosity followed it down…
Down past the dizzying colors and twisted creatures of the shallow sea waters.
Down into deeper, darker waters with three headed sharks and a sliding ocean shelf made of ash gray sand and small, gasping mouths exhaling yellow bubbles of poison.
Down until the last shreds of light have disappeared and he only sees because he wanted to see, even as he knew he would regret it. And it is that creeping cold prickle up his spine the more dark waters his vision dives through that tells him he can't afford to look away now. When the window stops, it does so with such abruptness that at first he can't tell it had stopped in a blur of movement and churning water. The window shook, spreading jagged, sharp ripples through the water of his cauldron before he saw them.
IT was a roiling, seething mass as big as a building; a undulating tail like flowing fabric ending in a needle sharp barb did nothing to soften the antediluvian horror of flailing, coiling tentacles of a sickly shade squirming and shifting in seemingly every direction even as it collapsed into itself like some gelatinous, fleshy slurry rolling down a hill.
IT had the upper body vaguely resembling a dark winged hydra, proudly crested serpentine heads of gnashing teeth beneath the spines and grasping tendrils spilling from its back; it's lower body spills from the lower jaw of one of the heads into a great open maw lined by vicious fangs of teeth, inky shadows leaking between them like saliva and where the throat would be, where the tongue should be, where a mouth wasn't is the abyss of space, populated only by a thousand burning green eyes as distant stars.
He could feel the Dreamlands grip him, freezing him in place with his own need to know like nails through his feet onto a cross of his own making.
Take a good long look.
You wanted to see.
He thought IT saw him as the titans clashed.
He knew IT saw him.
The chill of unnatural flesh had spread beyond his left side, hardening like armor as if it could protect him. He was vaguely aware of the molten fur of an orange tabby cat beside him as the water of his window jumped from the cauldron in spikes, growing higher and higher only to collapse slowly in weak gravity as droplets of pitch.
They tore into each other as wild beasts fighting for territory as the oceans bubbled around them, vaporizing just from the proximity. IT was strong, and its home was the water, but even his throbbing, mortal eyes could see the other was death.
A firm grip. The serpentine head twists and the tentacle shreds.
He could hear it as IT screamed, a tortured, anguished sound with an underlying clicking he can feel in his chest as if it was searching for his heart. He could hear it as IT roared back. He would not dignify it with the word 'sound.' It was a vibration, a movement, the hollow ache of encroaching oblivion.
He felt the aftershock tear through his corner of reality and understood.
"What do you think?" he said.
And the cat's visceral "fuck no" almost made him laugh. The bubble of hysterical humor burned in his throat like the finest of spirits.
I'm going to have to move, Wilhelm thought numbly.
Another man might consider the miles between his village and the ocean and the miles yet into the depths to be a safe distance.
That other man would be an idiot.
IT separated, shedding its seething flesh to create distance between them. IT does not follow, distracted, obsessed with devouring every last scrap of pale meat even as its opponent sprouts more like the stubborn roots of a rotting garden. IT is clever, sacrificing pieces of its own body to escape or to strike as if the flesh were chess pieces.
IT did not show any signs of intelligence. IT consumed.
He saw how even devouring death could falter.
There was a flutter.
IT rearranged, folding into itself as IT pounced upon IT once more. Wriggling tentacles, crawling through the water like worms were ripped away as IT inverted. The trailing tail became a flashing spear. The barb tore right through the rightmost serpent head and IT reeled in a soundless scream.
Wilhelm watched, transfixed as the tables turned, yet unsure if only one would remain or both.
Or none.
His window cracked, a pale line of silver spidering across the surface of the water as it followed the behemoths down further into the ocean depths.
"So that's not a great si - "
He shushed the animal, sprinkling a bit of salt for stability. "It will hold."
IT seemed to almost freefall, plummeting down as IT…
Shrunk?
IT was pulling into itself. The outer reaches faded, becoming undefined, almost immaterial. IT reached, grasping and hazy dark smoke glittering with sleepily blinking green eyes slipped through. IT hit the bottom and the smoke billowed, then collapsed back into itself as -
A boy.
For too long, his heart stopped beating.
He knew that boy.
It was an image straight out of the finest of impressionist artistry. IT looming out of the dark ocean as big as a building, a roiling, seething mass of sickly fleshy tentacles all reaching for the child who stood defiant among pale rocks holding a shining sword high over his head.
Then the blade came down with earth shattering force, steaming vents immediately opening as a molten fault line quickly spread across the ocean floor of a waking volcano. IT recoiled before the boy and even as his eyes went right back to the fault line, perfectly uniform and gently curved, he had a moment to remember that nothing in the Dreamlands was ever what it seemed.
The eye at the bottom of the ocean snapped open.
Wilhelm cried out as the window exploded, his sight fracturing into a hundred different direction - spiraling across a desert - vanishing into the sky - squeezing through a stone tunnel - dancing at the edge of - there was a flash of yellow -
" - ing dead from the neck up, I swear - "
He felt a bit like he had stepped into an empty, dark closet. A moment of complete sensory deprivation, before sound once again filtered through the door. It was an odd sensation, all the more because he wasn't expecting it. Hadn't he just been - well something must have happened. He tried to locate the cat, but the darkness of his sight didn't change.
He'd lost his eyes, he realized.
Inconvenient.
"Nothing but a straight plonker - "
"Sam." He tried to say, but it came out as little more than a hiss of shaped air.
His head felt like someone had scraped his brain from his skull with a rusted spoon, leaving glittering fragments of sharp pain behind. Was he on the floor? Sitting down? He couldn't tell. The rest of him was cold.
He could bargain for new eyes, he thought. If he had to replace his right arm - again - that would be irritating.
"Sam," he tried again and this time, his voice whistled.
The litany of insults and cursing cut off.
"You," the cat snarled, enunciating each word clearly. "Are fucking lucky you're still alive, never mind still yourself."
Wilhelm tried to wiggle his toes, but he couldn't tell if anything happened. At least he still had a stomach, because he felt it sink.
His…'failsafe' must have triggered.
His head felt like his brain had been scraped, because that was exactly what had happened. (He had a flash of memory - of the ice cold gray fingers plucking [ yellow ] barbs from his thoughts - and he can't remember, but he knew it was for the best he didn't)
"How bad is it?" He asked wearily. How much had been infected and what was he left with?
If anything?
The cat huffed. "Remember those water plants you had me get last visit?"
Wilhelm took a moment to process that question.
"I - " He tried to furrow his brow but his face was unsettlingly numb. Did he even have a face right now? "I suppose? They weren't actually plants, but the taxonomic comparison -"
"Right." The cat said tightly. "You currently resemble one of them."
Oh dear.
He sighed and it came out in a high pitched wail.
"The coral or the anemone?"
"Fook do I know?"
For all its faults, it was still just a cat.
"A blob or noodly?"
"Noodles."
He allowed himself to feel relief. "The window," he murmured, wheezing. "It must have shielded - "
"Your gift shielded you," the cat cut him off. And - yes, he knew that, but replacing what you took could never be a gift. "Whatever it was, you really shouldn't have seen it." It sighed and Wilhelm was abruptly aware that he was weightless, yet moving. "Your place is fucked, by and by."
"Oh," he said. He didn't recall that at all. "I don't suppose you informed the chief of the quarantine - "
"I burned the shit out of that slop, mate."
The well of grief was as sudden as it was heavy. He tried to smother it, but it was marginally more difficult than pinching a severed artery together with his fingers. All that hard work, all of his notes and research and the mementos he had gathered over his second lifetime.
All gone.
The glittering shards in his head buzzed unpleasantly and the Dreamlands stayed out of his mind.
"You had to go and poke it," it grumbled. "You had to. You had to."
"Ja," Wilhelm admitted and then, sourly, he admitted to more. "You don't understand what it's like, being only human here." He was accustomed to authority and he knew of his need for control. He had butted heads with Otto often enough to be aware of that much. And to be utterly powerless, at the whim of greater beings - no authority, no control, utterly worthless. "Knowledge is the only thing I have. I've woven it far too deeply in my Dream to excise it now, I'm afraid."
The cat made a thoughtful sound.
"Well, that'll fucking kill you."
He rather suspected it would.
"If you're lucky."
"If I am lucky." Wilhelm breathed a whistling breath. He took a moment to gather his aching, maudlin thoughts. "My wife…she used to hold intellectual pursuits in high regard, despite the pitfalls of her gender." It was his turn to huff. "A verdammte liberal too."
It had taken him far too long to appreciate that part of her. He had hoped that in the there after he would have been able to apologize…
"Even if I could get rid of it, I would not," he finished decisively, even if it made him feel like a fraud.
He couldn't even face his own death with dignity.
The cat let out an exasperated sigh. "I'm surrounded by dumbass motherfuckers. Bloody fucking - why am I doing this? You don't even have your crackin' whiskers anymore!"
"Hmph." Wilhelm ignored it. Of more interest than its grumbling was - yes, he could see shadows now. "How long was I - ?"
"A bit."
They continued in silence.
"Where are you taking me?" He finally asked, tired.
For a long moment, the cat was silent, before it finally huffed. "Where else?"
And he was consumed by a yawning pit of stark gibbering terror.
"We can't! The boy! You didn't see - " A million words were trying to rush out of him all at once, making them slur together in a barely understandable stream. "Do you know what he is?"
"A fucking idiot?"
He could have strangled the irreverent fur ball for all that he couldn't move.
"He's - "
"A demigod," the cat said lazily. "We've known that since the moon, mate. His fucking mum gave you that arm."
And the cat's burning right eye.
"He's still the same, you'll see. Less of a wanker - he's gotten better - " it assured him as an aside, " - and taller, but he's still a bleedin' heart…"
Wilhelm gurgled unhappily, finally able to wriggle a bit.
He remembered little of the moon save for a court of abominations. A dark-skinned flamboyant prince with a sharp smile a few degrees off (wrong) from pride for the boy.
And the queen he would give anything to never set eyes on again.
Sometimes he wished to know exactly how Ellie, Podar and Mit died (they died, like Carl), but it was always a fleeting wish born of - of misplaced guilt.
There was nothing he could have done.
" - safest place this side of the Pit," the animal was still talking. "Which really can't hurt, if somethin' feels like fuckin' followin' you."
He let out a whistling breath as the cat dragged him along, but said nothing more.
An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
A PJO Fanfiction
He had always held that calling the Schlafsland a land der Träume to be a ridiculous, romantic notion.
The Dreamlands, indeed.
To call something a Dream, was to imply that it was a wonder. Something miraculous and awe inspiring. And out of a hundred nights, how many were truly occupied by wondrous dreams? How many instead were fragmented, bizarre, mysterious or confusing? How many lasted seconds, how many seemed to unravel over years?
Did no one else recall?
Nightmares were dreams as well.
He would admit that there were wonders here, but they were as the vibrant coloring of a venomous creature or poison flower. He would take the miracles as they come, but expecting horrors instead was far more practical.
That being said.
He still only half-expected the cat.
The front door of his home slammed open with the sound of the wood cracked back against the stone wall and he snarled as the Dreamlands ripped the association from his mind - Assassin! Male suspect with a shotgun - To the palace - call the doctors - His home was already twisting into a blend of his office and the front foyer as his visitor searched for him. For a moment he was back in that carriage as fire burned through his chest from buckshot but the spike of ice crawling through the left side of his body pulled him back.
Vater!
He swallowed as the phantom man leveled the pistol at him and deliberately closed his eyes.
I am already dead, he reminded himself.
The cold flesh hanging from the left side of his body pulsed in what he knew to be its attempt at reassurance. He refused to feel any gratitude.
In the place of the aborted nightmare, an orange tabby cat with molten fur and burning right eye sauntered in.
It had a name, of course. Wilhelm was seldom comfortable using it even after all these years, simply because it had been all these years. Half the time, it was everything he despised about Englishmen in a four legged fashion, and the other half was spent being viciously reminded that it had been born here.
And he knew better than to trust anything from the Dreamlands completely.
If Carl had remembered that, he wouldn't have died.
(He died, it was death, because he can't afford to think that his body hadn't been completely hollowed out when they trapped him. They smashed his teleporter. Burned everything and the boy had - It wouldn't be getting out)
(He took a second to dig out the worms looking for another nightmare)
"Ya fookin' feel tha', yeah?" The cat said, just as another aftershock rumbled through. Colors faded. Sound hushed. A ripple moved through the air as an invisible guillotine of dread, twisting shadows and shapes until there were screaming, cackling faces in every wrinkle of cloth and hungry eyes in every wall for a moment.
Just a moment.
"I was about to investigate that," he replied sourly, shrugging his right shoulder - his only shoulder - so that the vials caught the feline's attention.
The crooked striped tail flicked back and forth.
"Ya mean you wanna poke at it."
"I'm just looking," he snapped as he limped over to his mirror and carefully set his powders and salts down. Despite his caution, one small vial slipped free and as he fumbled a thin, knobbly gray appendage like a prehensile bone caught it. He snatched it back and ignored the cramp as the false limb pulled back into the pulsating mass where his left arm used to be. "I can look."
"Lookin' is pokin' at it, you daft git," the cat retorted, hopping up on one of the stools, incidentally scattering the pile of papers that had been precariously balanced upon it. It flicked curious eyes across his workbench. Cats don't make expressions the way a person does, but he knew it was frowning. "Ya know those don't actually do anything."
Wilhem frowned as well, hunching over the cauldron embedded in the center of his table.
"I believe they do," he said shortly, eyeballing his measurements. A few sprigs of anise - or whatever passed for the all-spice here, but it looked close enough - and then a pinch of saltpeter…
The cat rolled his eyes. "Obviously."
And they would work, because he believed they did. It had taken (who knows how long) many years for him to wrap his mind around the notion. There would always be a part of him that was surprised when he managed to make rocks float and turn the wind as hard and cold as a block of ice, but that was the land of Dreams for you.
Belief was power here, channeled through conduits worn into the fabric of this reality by the collective unconsciousness of millions of Dreamers until things fell when dropped and burnt when set alight.
Most of the time.
Both Wilhelm and his guest shrugged off another pulse. It had come from the east, which was curious as there was nothing in that direction but the coast and sea.
"Why can't you believe chewin' on a bit of nip or hoppin' on one foot will do tha trick like normal people?" The cat muttered.
"Because I am a learned man of distinction," he lied with a sniff and absently brushed the glimmering medals off his waistcoat. "That wouldn't be caught dead doing something as silly as hopping on one foot to make a window."
"It's a fookin' dodgy bit of complicated, is what it is."
"As opposed to the dignified method of licking one's own ass for a miracle?" He countered snidely.
The cat grumbled.
"Someone's pissy today." It sniffed at the air and Wilhem stubbornly ignored the flicker of shame in his breast when those cat green eyes focused in on the empty wine bottles. "Fuck mate, it that time of year already?"
"It's too close," he said instead. "I need some idea of what I will be dealing with for safety if nothing else - "
The cat made a derisive sound. "If lil' fucker's mum is good for anything - "
"Not for me!" He hissed, nearly turning around, but he controlled himself and glared down into the dark waters of his mirror. "I live here!"
He gestured towards the wall and the window that hadn't been there a second before showed the little village he had grudgingly started to call home in his own mind. It was all built into the massive tree trunks of the forest, rope bridges connecting stories and four eyed birds policing the short, swarthy people that lived there. If anyone had told him he'd be content living in the trees among indigenous natives while he had still been alive, he would have laughed.
And probably would have had them arrested.
He didn't know how long he's lived here. He didn't want to know, really, so it was all the same to him.
"Huh." Out of the corner of his eye, the cat tilted its head and eyed him, trailing over his missing arm and snake leg.
"Surprised I care?" He grunted as he tipped the last of it into the water.
"I thought you lost your balls somewhere up on the moon, s'all," the cat said simply and Wilhem cringed.
Well, it wasn't the first time he'd been someone he was ashamed of.
The Dreamlands tried to draw it out of him, but it only got as far as the distinctive clack of a personal firearm before he pried its tendrils out from his mind. The ladle dipped into the waters and he gave it a slow stir clockwise.
"It's called caution." He said after a moment. "And well-deserved, at that. We can't all be sorcerers and spirits and - "
Demigods.
The Dreamlands tried to latch onto that thought with its relentless greed, onto those memories and emotions but oh, he's far too familiar with that nightmare to afford it even an ounce of power.
" - can we, Sam?"
It looked up at him with too-knowing eyes and he looked into the waters instead as he concentrated his will and want and desire into the ripples. The faint smell of his concoction stings his nostrils and he can almost feel his nasal cavities expand and with it, his mind.
East, he thought, for as much as the cardinal direction only means something to the Waking World, to him, it still means something. As swift as a bird in flight, the reflection in the water blurred over the forest to the pits of black and bubbling and crawling before it hit the wide, blue ocean. The orange tabby cat wisely didn't disrupt his concentration and when the next pulse whispered through his home, his damned, cursed curiosity followed it down…
Down past the dizzying colors and twisted creatures of the shallow sea waters.
Down into deeper, darker waters with three headed sharks and a sliding ocean shelf made of ash gray sand and small, gasping mouths exhaling yellow bubbles of poison.
Down until the last shreds of light have disappeared and he only sees because he wanted to see, even as he knew he would regret it. And it is that creeping cold prickle up his spine the more dark waters his vision dives through that tells him he can't afford to look away now. When the window stops, it does so with such abruptness that at first he can't tell it had stopped in a blur of movement and churning water. The window shook, spreading jagged, sharp ripples through the water of his cauldron before he saw them.
IT was a roiling, seething mass as big as a building; a undulating tail like flowing fabric ending in a needle sharp barb did nothing to soften the antediluvian horror of flailing, coiling tentacles of a sickly shade squirming and shifting in seemingly every direction even as it collapsed into itself like some gelatinous, fleshy slurry rolling down a hill.
IT had the upper body vaguely resembling a dark winged hydra, proudly crested serpentine heads of gnashing teeth beneath the spines and grasping tendrils spilling from its back; it's lower body spills from the lower jaw of one of the heads into a great open maw lined by vicious fangs of teeth, inky shadows leaking between them like saliva and where the throat would be, where the tongue should be, where a mouth wasn't is the abyss of space, populated only by a thousand burning green eyes as distant stars.
He could feel the Dreamlands grip him, freezing him in place with his own need to know like nails through his feet onto a cross of his own making.
Take a good long look.
You wanted to see.
He thought IT saw him as the titans clashed.
He knew IT saw him.
The chill of unnatural flesh had spread beyond his left side, hardening like armor as if it could protect him. He was vaguely aware of the molten fur of an orange tabby cat beside him as the water of his window jumped from the cauldron in spikes, growing higher and higher only to collapse slowly in weak gravity as droplets of pitch.
They tore into each other as wild beasts fighting for territory as the oceans bubbled around them, vaporizing just from the proximity. IT was strong, and its home was the water, but even his throbbing, mortal eyes could see the other was death.
A firm grip. The serpentine head twists and the tentacle shreds.
He could hear it as IT screamed, a tortured, anguished sound with an underlying clicking he can feel in his chest as if it was searching for his heart. He could hear it as IT roared back. He would not dignify it with the word 'sound.' It was a vibration, a movement, the hollow ache of encroaching oblivion.
He felt the aftershock tear through his corner of reality and understood.
"What do you think?" he said.
And the cat's visceral "fuck no" almost made him laugh. The bubble of hysterical humor burned in his throat like the finest of spirits.
I'm going to have to move, Wilhelm thought numbly.
Another man might consider the miles between his village and the ocean and the miles yet into the depths to be a safe distance.
That other man would be an idiot.
IT separated, shedding its seething flesh to create distance between them. IT does not follow, distracted, obsessed with devouring every last scrap of pale meat even as its opponent sprouts more like the stubborn roots of a rotting garden. IT is clever, sacrificing pieces of its own body to escape or to strike as if the flesh were chess pieces.
IT did not show any signs of intelligence. IT consumed.
He saw how even devouring death could falter.
There was a flutter.
IT rearranged, folding into itself as IT pounced upon IT once more. Wriggling tentacles, crawling through the water like worms were ripped away as IT inverted. The trailing tail became a flashing spear. The barb tore right through the rightmost serpent head and IT reeled in a soundless scream.
Wilhelm watched, transfixed as the tables turned, yet unsure if only one would remain or both.
Or none.
His window cracked, a pale line of silver spidering across the surface of the water as it followed the behemoths down further into the ocean depths.
"So that's not a great si - "
He shushed the animal, sprinkling a bit of salt for stability. "It will hold."
IT seemed to almost freefall, plummeting down as IT…
Shrunk?
IT was pulling into itself. The outer reaches faded, becoming undefined, almost immaterial. IT reached, grasping and hazy dark smoke glittering with sleepily blinking green eyes slipped through. IT hit the bottom and the smoke billowed, then collapsed back into itself as -
A boy.
For too long, his heart stopped beating.
He knew that boy.
It was an image straight out of the finest of impressionist artistry. IT looming out of the dark ocean as big as a building, a roiling, seething mass of sickly fleshy tentacles all reaching for the child who stood defiant among pale rocks holding a shining sword high over his head.
Then the blade came down with earth shattering force, steaming vents immediately opening as a molten fault line quickly spread across the ocean floor of a waking volcano. IT recoiled before the boy and even as his eyes went right back to the fault line, perfectly uniform and gently curved, he had a moment to remember that nothing in the Dreamlands was ever what it seemed.
The eye at the bottom of the ocean snapped open.
Wilhelm cried out as the window exploded, his sight fracturing into a hundred different direction - spiraling across a desert - vanishing into the sky - squeezing through a stone tunnel - dancing at the edge of - there was a flash of yellow -
" - ing dead from the neck up, I swear - "
He felt a bit like he had stepped into an empty, dark closet. A moment of complete sensory deprivation, before sound once again filtered through the door. It was an odd sensation, all the more because he wasn't expecting it. Hadn't he just been - well something must have happened. He tried to locate the cat, but the darkness of his sight didn't change.
He'd lost his eyes, he realized.
Inconvenient.
"Nothing but a straight plonker - "
"Sam." He tried to say, but it came out as little more than a hiss of shaped air.
His head felt like someone had scraped his brain from his skull with a rusted spoon, leaving glittering fragments of sharp pain behind. Was he on the floor? Sitting down? He couldn't tell. The rest of him was cold.
He could bargain for new eyes, he thought. If he had to replace his right arm - again - that would be irritating.
"Sam," he tried again and this time, his voice whistled.
The litany of insults and cursing cut off.
"You," the cat snarled, enunciating each word clearly. "Are fucking lucky you're still alive, never mind still yourself."
Wilhelm tried to wiggle his toes, but he couldn't tell if anything happened. At least he still had a stomach, because he felt it sink.
His…'failsafe' must have triggered.
His head felt like his brain had been scraped, because that was exactly what had happened. (He had a flash of memory - of the ice cold gray fingers plucking [ yellow ] barbs from his thoughts - and he can't remember, but he knew it was for the best he didn't)
"How bad is it?" He asked wearily. How much had been infected and what was he left with?
If anything?
The cat huffed. "Remember those water plants you had me get last visit?"
Wilhelm took a moment to process that question.
"I - " He tried to furrow his brow but his face was unsettlingly numb. Did he even have a face right now? "I suppose? They weren't actually plants, but the taxonomic comparison -"
"Right." The cat said tightly. "You currently resemble one of them."
Oh dear.
He sighed and it came out in a high pitched wail.
"The coral or the anemone?"
"Fook do I know?"
For all its faults, it was still just a cat.
"A blob or noodly?"
"Noodles."
He allowed himself to feel relief. "The window," he murmured, wheezing. "It must have shielded - "
"Your gift shielded you," the cat cut him off. And - yes, he knew that, but replacing what you took could never be a gift. "Whatever it was, you really shouldn't have seen it." It sighed and Wilhelm was abruptly aware that he was weightless, yet moving. "Your place is fucked, by and by."
"Oh," he said. He didn't recall that at all. "I don't suppose you informed the chief of the quarantine - "
"I burned the shit out of that slop, mate."
The well of grief was as sudden as it was heavy. He tried to smother it, but it was marginally more difficult than pinching a severed artery together with his fingers. All that hard work, all of his notes and research and the mementos he had gathered over his second lifetime.
All gone.
The glittering shards in his head buzzed unpleasantly and the Dreamlands stayed out of his mind.
"You had to go and poke it," it grumbled. "You had to. You had to."
"Ja," Wilhelm admitted and then, sourly, he admitted to more. "You don't understand what it's like, being only human here." He was accustomed to authority and he knew of his need for control. He had butted heads with Otto often enough to be aware of that much. And to be utterly powerless, at the whim of greater beings - no authority, no control, utterly worthless. "Knowledge is the only thing I have. I've woven it far too deeply in my Dream to excise it now, I'm afraid."
The cat made a thoughtful sound.
"Well, that'll fucking kill you."
He rather suspected it would.
"If you're lucky."
"If I am lucky." Wilhelm breathed a whistling breath. He took a moment to gather his aching, maudlin thoughts. "My wife…she used to hold intellectual pursuits in high regard, despite the pitfalls of her gender." It was his turn to huff. "A verdammte liberal too."
It had taken him far too long to appreciate that part of her. He had hoped that in the there after he would have been able to apologize…
"Even if I could get rid of it, I would not," he finished decisively, even if it made him feel like a fraud.
He couldn't even face his own death with dignity.
The cat let out an exasperated sigh. "I'm surrounded by dumbass motherfuckers. Bloody fucking - why am I doing this? You don't even have your crackin' whiskers anymore!"
"Hmph." Wilhelm ignored it. Of more interest than its grumbling was - yes, he could see shadows now. "How long was I - ?"
"A bit."
They continued in silence.
"Where are you taking me?" He finally asked, tired.
For a long moment, the cat was silent, before it finally huffed. "Where else?"
And he was consumed by a yawning pit of stark gibbering terror.
"We can't! The boy! You didn't see - " A million words were trying to rush out of him all at once, making them slur together in a barely understandable stream. "Do you know what he is?"
"A fucking idiot?"
He could have strangled the irreverent fur ball for all that he couldn't move.
"He's - "
"A demigod," the cat said lazily. "We've known that since the moon, mate. His fucking mum gave you that arm."
And the cat's burning right eye.
"He's still the same, you'll see. Less of a wanker - he's gotten better - " it assured him as an aside, " - and taller, but he's still a bleedin' heart…"
Wilhelm gurgled unhappily, finally able to wriggle a bit.
He remembered little of the moon save for a court of abominations. A dark-skinned flamboyant prince with a sharp smile a few degrees off (wrong) from pride for the boy.
And the queen he would give anything to never set eyes on again.
Sometimes he wished to know exactly how Ellie, Podar and Mit died (they died, like Carl), but it was always a fleeting wish born of - of misplaced guilt.
There was nothing he could have done.
" - safest place this side of the Pit," the animal was still talking. "Which really can't hurt, if somethin' feels like fuckin' followin' you."
He let out a whistling breath as the cat dragged him along, but said nothing more.
Last edited:
- Location
- Queensland, Australia
Hello Kaiser. I want to say odd to find you here, but then this is the Dreamlands. Odd is an... acceptable description of even the more (actually, truly) innocent things there. And no, not the innocent things because those are probably going to end with you utterly screwed.
That's because those "innocent"looking things are so good at disguising their nature and have such a deep understanding of humanity that they can fake it believably.
It's a camouflage to help them ambush their prey. Im not talking about humans here, but also things that prey on humans.
- Location
- Oregon, USA
It means quite a bit to everyone around you though.
- Location
- Oslo
- Pronouns
- She/Her
That's why I like anti-eldritch horror stories. It doesn't matter how likely you are to go insane or die. As long as you have a chance, you just need to find a stick long enough and throw enough monkeys at the thing.
The Dreamer
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Previous chapter was rewritten due to feedback. Hopefully this is better 
Especially the things that don't make sense.
An old Prussian king lived in a quaint cottage on the top of a hill, surrounded by a jungle village where a tribe of short, dark people prospered in the shadow of four-eyed sentinel birds. Most of the time, it resembled a log cabin, but sometimes bits of an old palace design snuck in.
The orange tabby cat with a crook in his tail slammed the front door open and watched the home he was invading warp and twist at its presence until finally spitting out the old man coming down from a violent start.
Quite literally.
The Dreamlands were true to their name. A land of Dreams. And nightmares were Dreams too. Guard your fears jealously here, for they are not safe.
This nightmare was a shadowy humanoid figure with a revolver, smoking from the shot. The cat banished it with a flick of its tail, ears pressed forward in alarm when the old man fell against the wall, clutching at his bleeding chest with his good arm.
"Ah shit!" The cat yelped as it darted into the house. "I forgot! I forgot, I forgot, I forgot - " the cat chanted, half an apology. The house was already beginning to break down, swapping out a domestic reality for a crowded cobbled stone street in an old city where the old man feebly applied pressure on the gushing wound, staring up at his assassin.
"Willie." The animal snapped. "You are a mortal soul in the Dreamlands!"
The nightmare wavered and the man blinked.
"Come on," the cat needled, batting at the man with a paw. "You're not seriously going to die to your own fucking nightmare like a little bitch are - "
A trembling hand reached out and batted at the feline's ears.
"Thought not."
"Sam! You - " 'Willie' coughed. At first it was wet and hacking, but he deliberately coughed again, brow furrowed in concentration and this time it was dry. The nightmare with the gun disappeared like a popped soap bubble. The street took longer to disappear. Cobbled stone slowly became a shifting floor that couldn't decide what it was made out of, stone, wood or tile, but was absolutely certain that it was made out of floor. A tell tale sign of memories blurring together. The shadows of the faceless gawkers melted back into the walls. The flat surfaces gained and lost details, changing from wood to brick to plaster and back with various designs and patterns arriving and leaving, but at least they stayed in one place.
The austere house at the top of the hill was back in roughly the same size and shape as before. It even had the chimney and the appropriate number of windows. For a Dream construct, the home practically broadcasted the owner's dedication and focus.
The subconscious ruled in the Dreamlands. Every memory was given life here, everything you have experienced, everything you have learned, everything you thought you forgot. From past trauma to something as simple as word association. Keeping your reality focused. Keeping it still took decades of study for Dreamers.
Not that it meant much, to a cat.
Willie was still shite at poker.
Not his fault.
It hadn't even been invented until he was thirty two and a whole continent away.
"You damn little - "
"Sorry Willie, but help." The cat demanded.
"Wilhelm," the man corrected automatically, brushing rust red flakes off his shirt before pausing. "I - help? You came barging into my home - " He stared from underneath heavy brows snowy with age. "Help with what?"
"Finding Percy real quick."
"Finding…" The old man trailed off. "What?"
"You know him, black hair, sparkly eyes." The cat held out a front paw an impressive four inches above the man's shifting floor. "My midget human, 'bout this tall?"
"He's grown since I saw him last, surely. It's been - " He began, still a bit slow on the uptake. "Wait - what happened?" He asked, suddenly alarmed. "Is he hurt?"
"Worse," the cat said gravely and Wilhelm tensed, prepared. "He's fucking lost."
The old man stared, before rolling his eyes upwards before closing them. "Of course he is," he muttered. With a soft grunt, he pushed off his wall, good arm still wrapped protectively about his chest. "Of course he is."
They didn't talk about his bad arm.
It had been a divine gift.
No one worshiped the gods in the Dreamlands. Sometimes Dreamers didn't always understand why not. The shrines had power. The temples were all occupied. At times, you could see the massive forms lumbering across the horizon or crossing the sky. Compared to the Waking world, the gods were obvious and omnipresent. Worship was a natural conclusion.
However, worship here meant getting attention and getting attention was…
Complicated.
They didn't talk about his bad arm.
Wilhelm wanted to forget it and Sam wanted to let him.
"Where did you last see him?" Wilhelm said, all business.
Sam gave a cat shrug. "I don't have a clue where to begin, mate."
"But then - "
"I'm a cat," Sam stressed. "I have ears. And a nose. And fucking eyes. If I knew, I'd just go get his ass."
The man sighed. "Then how do you know he's lost?"
"His apartment wiggled," Sam replied as if that answered everything.
It didn't.
Wilhelm pinched the bridge of his nose. "Elaborate."
"It wiggles, or shivers or whatever when he gets Here," Sam said tightly, compulsively licking his right paw. "Gets more solid. And it did, but he didn't show up." There was a very real, trembling note of concern in its voice. "He wouldn't leave me behind to go explore someplace. He - he fucking knows better. He wouldn't."
"Very well," Wilhelm said softly and the cat ducked his head, turning away grumpily. "We will find him."
"We better," Sam huffed as it brushed past the old man deeper into the house. "So I can kill him for being fucking stupid."
Wilhelm made a sound, little more than a harsh exhale, but the cat still turned back to look at him, eyeing his twitching beard suspiciously.
"By all means, after you," Wilhelm said, eyes creased with amusement as he scratched his chin. "I will need my salts from the study and then -"
He was cut off by Sam's groan.
"Why can't you just chew on a bit of nip or hop on one foot for your magic like normal people?"
The irony was almost painful.
"Take it or leave it," he told the animal and it just grumbled.
Gathering the necessary ingredients was the work of a minute or two of collecting vials and carved wooden bowls holding crushed mineral rich sand or spices.
"This works better," Wilhelm was saying as he set his workbench. The cat perched on top of the stool right beside him, watching attentively. "Because it serves to narrow the focus and allows one to truly hold the spell. Wanting something to happen is not actually enough, this place needs to understand what you are trying to accomplish."
"That's…" The cat gave him a sideways look as the last of the saltpeter was poured into the copper cauldron filled with darkened water. "Sounds fucking risky."
"It is not asking for attention," Wilhelm rushed to reassure it as he picked up his ladle and made a slow clockwise stir. "The Dreamlands already responds to our very existence, what more can we demand of it? This is simply…focusing on its natural inclinations."
They both held their breath as an image appeared within the water, shimmering like a silver reflection. As swift as a bird in flight, the reflection in the water blurred over the forest to the pits of black and bubbling and crawling before it hit the wide, blue ocean.
"The fuck?" Sam leaned in until it was nearly dipping its nose into the picture.
"Perhaps he just went for a swim. He always did love the water…" Wilhelm trailed off when the reflection dove into the sea. Down past the dizzying colors and twisted creatures of the shallow waters.
Down into deeper, darker waters with three headed sharks and a sliding ocean shelf made of ash gray sand and small, gasping mouths exhaling yellow bubbles of poison.
Down until the last shreds of light have disappeared. When the window stopped, it did so with such abruptness that at first they couldn't tell it had stopped in a blur of movement and churning water. The window shook, spreading jagged, sharp ripples through the water of his cauldron before they saw them.
"Fuck!" He vaguely heard the cat exclaim. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
He was staring, frozen until a sharp pain stabbing his wrong hand brought him back to himself. "I - what - "
"Turn it off!"
He upended the table.
The cat leapt away, yowling as dark water black as pitch splashed onto the ground. The liquid hissed, eating through the floor like acid until Wilhelm wrung it out of his Dream.
For a long moment afterwards, neither said a word.
Sam's right eye burned a brilliant bloody orange as the animal batted at its own face as if to pry the eyeball out of its skull.
It, too, had been a gift.
"Fucking…hate that." It rolled his neck like a pro-wrestler about to step into the ring and coughed. "'Kay, I'm getting him."
"Him?" Wilhelm repeated incredulously. "There was no him."
He could still see the fighting behemoths in his mind's eye, tearing into each other like wild beasts over food or territory. One a roiling, seething mass as big as a building; a undulating tail like flowing fabric ending in a needle sharp barb did nothing to soften the antediluvian horror of flailing, coiling tentacles of a sickly shade squirming and shifting in seemingly every direction even as it collapsed into itself like some gelatinous, fleshy slurry rolling down a hill.
Its opponent had the upper body vaguely resembling a dark winged hydra, proudly crested serpentine heads of gnashing teeth beneath the spines and grasping tendrils spilling from its back; it's lower body spilled from the lower jaw of one of the heads into a great open maw lined by vicious fangs of teeth, inky shadows leaking between them like saliva and where the throat would be, where the tongue should be, where a mouth wasn't was the abyss of space, populated only by a thousand burning green eyes as distant stars.
He hoped their spying hadn't been detected.
That would be…
Bad.
"Something must have gone wrong with the magic," he murmured. "They were - they were too close, a kind of gravitational pull on the search…" Wilhelm glanced up, just realizing he had been staring at the floor as he registered that Sam wasn't saying anything. "There was no him," he repeated optimistically. "Why would he be fighting a sea monster? And how would he have gotten to the bottom of the ocean anyway?"
The cat blinked slowly. "I think one of them…" It got quiet. "One of them was him."
Wilhelm stared and his stomach churned. "O - oh?"
"The eyebally one," the cat said with forced nonchalance. "He had eyes like that before."
He was not going to think about that.
Scheiße.
He was already thinking about it.
He'd known that boy since he had been too young for any sense of propriety, running around buck naked with his nappies on his head just because he could. His favorite word had been 'yeah' as an answer to everything, even when he meant no, and was always putting something in his mouth.
He didn't want to think about it.
"Are you…sure it's not some…distant relative of his through his mother or member of her court…" He stubbornly balled his right hand into a fist to stop himself from reflexively reaching for the dead (it's not dead) flesh of his left. The Dreamlands tried to latch onto that memory with its relentless greed, but oh, he's far too familiar with that nightmare to afford it even an ounce of power.
They don't talk about his bad arm.
Sam closed his eyes. After a long moment, it sighed. "Maybe."
"I will need something more personal, a connection to follow so we can be absolutely sure…"
He didn't know what they would do if a second attempt led them right back to the horrors beneath the ocean.
Try to keep the cat from getting itself killed, he supposed.
"Yeah," the cat said, subdued. "Okay. His place is not far, can grab something."
"Not far?" The old man paused in the act of shuffling on his overcoat, hat in hand. "So the reason you broke down my door as if you ran, half-mad across the entire continent was because…?"
"I fucking swear on me mum…" Sam groaned again. "I forgot you're a bitch about loud noises, alright?"
"I was shot!" Willie sputtered. "Nearly assassinated! Three times!"
"You got over it!"
"I most certainly did not - "
"And a fucking cold got you in the end!" The cat jeered as it bounded out the door, crooked tail standing proud.
Indeed, the boy's home wasn't far at all.
"I did not realize he was so close." Wilhelm said with an unasked question. The cat had led him, huffing and annoyed, right to the small valley on the edges of the jungle village he himself lived in. It was little more than a pure white box with a red door, its pristine colors surreal against the dirt ground and dry grass that surrounded it.
It was…surprisingly solid for a Dream construct.
"It moves," Sam said.
"It - " Wilhelm began and then stopped.
The cat marched right up to the red door and opened it with a flick of its tail. "Mind the gap," it called back from over its shoulder. "First step can be a doozy."
"But there aren't any stairs…?"
Reality blurred with a step.
"Wha - " The old man gasped as he found himself in a sterile white hallway lined with windows showing a view ten, maybe twenty stories up as if he hadn't just walked in from the ground. He turned around to see that the wooden red door had disappeared, replaced by a gunmetal gray gate with buttons on one side. There was no way this space would have fit inside the small hut he had stepped into. "How?"
"No idea." Sam huffed. "Lil fucker's bullshit."
A polished wood door led to an expensive looking living space with white leather couches, dark wood and glass furniture and white carpet. There was a fireplace and exotic looking flowering plants in every corner. A wall full of baby pictures was right by the entrance to what looked like the kitchen and behind a glass wall was a balcony with a pool, complete with a yellow rubber duck bobbing up and down in the water. Just like in the hallway, they were inexplicably high up off the ground as if on the top of a very tall building.
"It is so…" Wilhelm gently removed one of the pictures from the wall. It was a memory. A picnic scene with an exhausted, but happy handsome swarthy father beaming at the photographer like his every wish had come true. He had a proud hand on both of his boys, the older one blond and blue eyed with the father's curls and darker skin flashing a thumbs up and winking and the younger…He was a little younger than when Wilhelm saw him last. Five or six, black hair and shimmering eyes. He wasn't smiling at the camera, but up at his mother.
The woman was beautiful, pale and dark haired with a gently amused curl to her lips. Most of her was facing her husband and sons, but it was as if she had turned her head at the last second. Her black eyes stared unerringly into his own.
Everything was crisp.
Solid.
"This is impossible," Wilhelm whispered.
As if spurned by his disbelief, the picture frame faded from his hands only to reappear in its place on the wall.
"Bull. Shit," Sam repeated. "Don't think about it. Just find something."
There was a window that was not like the rest. It did not show the forest canopy with colorful four eyed birds flitting among the leaves. It was a black beach with sand of razor sharp obsidian shards and in the distance a tall black spire rose amid a starry sky that abruptly became dark and empty in the center. The shadow of some winged creature flew in circles around the tower.
He tore his eyes away.
"This…this is not the home of a Dreamer, is it?" Wilhelm said thickly. It was nearly indistinguishable from the Dreamlands itself.
Real.
"I said don't fucking think about it."
The old man ran a weary hand down his face.
"Too late," he said miserably.
"If it helps," Sam began in a reasonable kind of tone as it laid down in that indolent way of felines. "He's still a dumbass."
"That's not the point, you little - "
The door to the apartment clicked open and they both went still and silent as they watched Percy walk into his home.
The boy was filthy. Covered in streaks of an oily, gray substance, a bird's nest of black hair on top of his head, a dozen bleeding scratches underneath tears in his clothing and an impressive shiner on his left eye, swollen shut and leaking a molten silver. He was missing a pant leg and both shoes, trekking barefoot onto the wooden floor and leaking saltwater. An almost hysterical bubble of laughter welled up in Wilhelm's throat at the thought that he looked just like any other ten or eleven year old boy coming back from a scrap in the streets.
So it had been at least five years.
There was relief, that he was still the contrary little shit who had stared up at him in awe, his mouth in a small 'o' of surprise before blurting out, 'You're old!'
Then there was the shame that he had spent half a decade avoiding a child.
When they had first met, he had been horrified by the thought that children, barely more than infants, could find their way into the Dreamlands by accident. He feared he had found the answer to the inexplicable sudden death of sleeping young children. In his mind, the boy was basically an orphan, fending for himself in a strange, savage land.
But he had a mother.
Wilhelm cleared his throat. "Perseus."
The boy startled and Wilhelm held his breath as a hundred burning green eyes blinked open on the boy's form for a moment.
'He had eyes like that before,' Sam had said.
Mein Gott.
"Percy," was the muttered complaint. He blinked his good eye and the dark pupil was blown wide. "Heeeyy, Will! I haven't seen you in a while, man."
The prickling running up and down his bad arm (Percy had a mother) tightened the old man's smile. "Are you well?"
"You got fucked up," the cat translated.
"Uh, no. I mean, yeah?" Percy stared at them blankly, a small wrinkle of confusion forming on his brow as if he heard what they said, but didn't understand. "Maybe."
A shiver went down Wilhelm's spine and he could see it run down the cat's back as well. Something was wrong with him. His stomach sank and he fought not to take a few steps back.
"Like Carl?" He murmured deep in his throat, barely more than a breath of shaped air, trusting the sensitive ears of the cat to hear him.
(Carl was dead.
He had to be dead, because the thought that he was still in there - that he came out of the other end of the teleporter not completely hollowed out by what got him - was a terrible one. He didn't want to go through that again, but Dreams were not wishes. No matter how hard you tried.)
Sam did not reply, but instead rose to his feet, stretching out as cats do. First the front paws, claws out and wickedly gleaming and then the back legs. Perfectly nonchalant, but the fur along the back remained ruffled and slightly raised.
Sam was a blunt creature.
If he didn't attack now, that meant he didn't know who, or what, was in Percy's skin.
The boy was oblivious to the tension, an utterly punch-drunk smile spreading across his face. He'd always had an awkward, but endearing smile, but now the sight of the crowded mouth - more teeth than the human jaw could ever accommodate - curdled milk in Wilhelm's stomach.
"You should see the other guy." Percy declared.
They did.
"We did," Sam said, deliberately casual. Only the line of raised fur along his back gave it away as not being as relaxed as it seemed. "Fucking ugly bloke, what?"
"Noooo," Percy trailed off. He looked down at his hands and actually wiggled his toes as if he was counting them, like he needed to remind himself how many appendages the human body normally came with. Then he nodded to himself, coming to a decision. "Maybe a little."
Sam snorted.
Another too-wide smile. "Delicious too."
The cat's tail lashed back and forth as Wilhelm stood there like a stump, uncertain what he just heard.
"Why." The cat asked flatly. "Are you always putting shit in your fucking mouth."
The boy had the audacity to look smug.
"'I'm not a baby anymore, Sam'," the cat mocked in a high pitched voice. "'I don't bite anymore, Sam. I'm not teething anymore, Sam.' Fucking liar."
"Oh, come on, Sam, it was - just - I mean basically calamari…" He tried to explain -
But the animal wasn't having it. "Didn't you eat a fucking zombie a week or something ago."
What?
Percy sputtered.
Can they talk about the zombie thing?
"You - " One could see the boy blindly cast about for an argument and it was clear having to think was paining him. "You - uh, you can't tell me what to do!"
"The fuck I can't!" Sam hissed. "Fuck you - who was it that told me not to bite -"
The boy's head reared back in mock outrage, glee shining in his one good eye. "Because you never know where they've been!"
Wilhelm palmed his face.
That had to be Percy.
The cat went blank and still as a statue for a moment. "Did he just - ?" Not even waiting for Wilhelm to respond, it turned back on the boy, spitting. "You fucking hypocrite - "
"Sam, Sam it's okay," Percy attempted to sooth his cat with an odd, lopsided grin. Just an amused curl of one side of his mouth. "It's okay - you cat," he pointed with a trembling finger. "Me half-god." He blinked slowly. "Half. Haaaalf. Not one-eighth. Not demi but…"
His nose wrinkled as he swayed in place. His bad eye opened a sliver and whatever rested within that socket whispered.
…Maybe it wasn't Percy.
"Maybe demi but different demi." The boy looked at them expectantly. "You know?"
"Uh." Sam leaned away from him, wary again as a drop of blood from a star dripped down the boy's face. "I don't - I have no idea what the fuck -"
"My mom. Mom is -" Percy mimed his head exploding, complete with a bassy, reverberating whoosh and expanding smoke effects from his hands. Then he flapped his arms, desperate to explain whatever scattered thoughts were flitting back and forth in his head. "I can't - I won't die until I do!"
The cat stared, speechless.
"That…is rather how it works for most of us," Wilhelm pointed out gently, for lack of anything better to say.
Sam only tilted its head in Wilhelm's direction, unwilling to take its eyes off whatever was masquerading as the boy they knew. The casual gesture was punctuated by the agitated lashing of the cat's tail back and forth.
"Death is a process. It has to happen, mortality itself is a collection of factors that -"
"People die when killed," Sam cut in.
Wilhelm sighed. "Yes. Fine."
Now it was Percy's turn to stare at them, completely and utterly stumped. His mouth flapped open and closed, searching for the words, but Wilhelm could almost see the thoughts dribbling out of his ears until the boy gave up with a whiny,
"Oh."
Sam made a soft yowling sound. "Hoooow's about we have ourselves a bit of a lay down, hmm? Just a small kip."
Percy frowned. "I'm already sleeping."
"You're shaking," the cat replied flatly.
The boy blinked and looked down at himself again.
He was. Tremors were running up and down his slim frame like beetles burrowing into a carcass.
"I can just - "
"Sit.The Fuck. Down."
For a moment, Percy was about to argue. Wilhelm could see it in the stubborn jut of his chin, but then he twitched like a puppet jerked on its string, swayed again, then plopped down where he stood with a loud put upon sigh.
"Happy?" He grumbled as he sprawled across the wooden floor.
"Ecstatic." Wilhelm drawled in response before the cat bit the boy's nose off. He yelped when the apartment shifted around them, the foyer stretching to place the front door far away from them until they were deposited in the middle of the living room. There were no distortions or hints of instability.
The sheer ease of it all!
He snuck a glance at the boy stretching out on the floor, leaving smudges of red blood too bright and shining to be real on white carpet.
"My brain is floating out of my skull," Percy said suddenly, very seriously, staring up at the ceiling. "Are my ears still backwards? I think Erebus turned them backwards. And my asshole ran away."
"Fucking tragic, that is," Sam replied, also very serious.
They were not actually talking about his literal…?
"Does that make me constipated?"
They were.
"Only if you need to shit."
"No. But I can't poop without one, so I better not." The boy's brows furrowed. "I was hungry, but I lost - I'm losing my stomach, Sam."
"Better hold on to your hat then."
"Okay," Percy said, as if that made any sense at all. He wasn't even wearing - a black bowler hat appeared on the boy's head and Wilhelm about swallowed his tongue. "My brother said I need to eat."
The cat blinked. "Aren't your siblings jackasses?"
'Siblings?' Wilhelm mouthed, horrified.
He thought of the smiling blond boy from the photo-memory. There were more like him?
Percy huffed. "Only - only the triplets. Darkness is cool. He helped and then - and then there were some looking," he said, skipping train tracks. "Other gods. And they thought I was cool. And I was. Cool. I won. I cheated, with a volcano," He whispered loudly, as if imparting a great secret. "It woke up," and in the Dreamlands, that could very well be completely literal, "but I didn't die, so it was fine. Not dying was important. And I think I got asked out."
By what?
The boy gingerly rolled onto his side, giving them a heavy, one eyed look as if to ask them something very important. "It's not my fault mom's kids are good looking, right?"
"No," the old man said, completely bewildered.
"Right. Okay." Percy rolled onto his stomach and began to trace the swirling pale patterns in the rug. His hat was tipped rakishly, complete with a blood red feather sticking out of it. "I knew that. I'm too young for a girlfriend anyway."
He was …not going to touch that with a ten foot pole.
"We will get you a snack," Wilhelm offered, trying to escape.
"I could eat," Percy admitted. "Yeah, thanks." He lifted his head, throwing them a bright, hopeful smile. "Mom didn't really mean it, you know? She can't help it sometimes, but she was sorry!"
Wilhelm allowed himself to reach across to touch his bad arm. "I know."
"'Kay." He laid his head down again and his hat slid off. "We can be friends again, right?"
Wilhelm smiled weakly and shuffled the cat back into the next room when Percy's attention shifted to his hand as if it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. And perhaps it was. It was shifting under the attention, fingers merging together, twisting, becoming spindly, becoming smoke before hardening into a dark spine before relaxing back into a human boy's hand.
The heavy wooden door closed behind them with a satisfying click and he let out a sigh. "Verdict?"
"The stupid burns."
"Sam," Wilhelm scolded. "You know what I mean. Is he…" He shrugged his good shoulder in Percy's general direction and whispered out the corner of his mouth, trusting those cat ears to pick it up. "Well?"
"Tripping premium top fucking balls," the cat said. "But yeah, it's him."
He was assuming by the context that 'tripping balls' was another way of saying 'acting drugged.' He wasn't going to ask if he was correct. He's always been a little afraid of asking the cat what it was even saying since he learned that 'clap' was no longer just a word for smacking your hands together.
If it was Percy, he was just under the effect of some kind of hallucinogenic then…
Then…
He was dismayed by how little that actually solved.
Sam tilted its head, wiggling its right ear. "Not convinced he's alone in there. He's too fucking…"
It trailed off, searching for the words.
"Demigod," the old man ventured. "What do we do then?"
"Dunno," Sam said unhelpfully. Its tail lashed back and forth quickly. "If it were anyone else, I'd tell them to never put a fucking mushroom in their mouth ever again, but he's always mouthing shit and nothing ever fucking happens sooooo…" Sam glanced back at the door thoughtfully. And then shrugged. "Dunno."
"And when he wakes up from this Dream…?"
"He's a mortal soul in the Dreamlands, like you." Sam muttered. "You never really wake up, you just leave for a bit."
"I see," Wilhelm hummed.
It was true. You never do wake up from the Dreamlands.
He sighed as he had no ideas making themselves known either. "Well, I did say I would get him something to eat…"
The cat grumbled, turning towards the open doorway leading to what looked like the kitchen. "Right. Do something about the munchies…brat going to eat me out of house and home."
"Is this not his house and home?" Wilhelm asked mildly.
Sam shot him a dirty look.
And then it froze right outside the kitchen, its tail shot straight up, crook and all. "Fuck."
"Now what?" Wilhelm grumbled as he stepped past the animal…and stopped dead right at the door. "...what?"
The kitchen was a disaster.
There were cartoons and plastic bags holding previously frozen food that had been allowed to drip all over the counter top for hours, if not days. Streaks of multicolored brown goop had congealed on the white cupboard doors, right next to nauseatingly sweet, artificially fruity smelling puddles and bloody water from thawed meat pooled on the tiled floor.
The old man moved automatically. Most of it was driven by reflexive disgust at the mess, but he would be lying if he denied a sliver of concern over a black haired boy with a thousand eyes seeing all his spoiled ice cream.
"What even were you doing?" Wilhelm hissed, picking up the most intact packages - brightly colored plastic tubes with pictures of fruit on them - and rushed to the ice box.
"Shit, I had to do something with him - "
Him?
He opened the ice box.
He closed the ice box.
Wilhelm fell against the wall beside it and slowly slid down it, blueberry, raspberry and watermelon Pops!cle bags falling to the floor alongside him.
"There are body parts in the freezer," he said dully.
"Not my fault!" Sam protested immediately and for a moment, he foolishly dared to hope the cat had a reasonable explanation. "He fucking came like that!"
"Explain," he demanded.
The whole story didn't make any more sense.
"...he's got power, sure, but pop him in the noggin and his head fucking flies off. Ain't nothing fucking happening cut up like he is."
"Kronos," Wilhelm repeated in a dead voice. He was no academic in life, but he had been born into the last days of the Holy Roman Empire. There was no escaping that history. "Percy rescued the Titan Lord from the Pit and now he's on ice. Here!"
The cat blinked. "I just said that - "
Wilhelm reached out and swiped at the cat's ears, shutting it up. His head was beginning to spin unpleasantly (the pagan gods of the Waking world were real). "Is he conscious?"
The cat hesitated. "...no?"
He leaned away from the unassuming humming appliance. "You do not know?"
"He can't do anything!"
"Anything can happen in a Dream!"
They glared at each other.
Sam was the first to look away. "I could take him. If he fucked around."
He could take - ignoring the sheer arrogance of that statement, because Kronos was an immortal god and Sam was an orange tom cat: "This is Percy's home."
Sam spit at him, chops curled back into a savage snarl. "You don't get to bitch about his safety anymore. You fucking left, remember?"
His bad arm prickled uncomfortably as the shame came flooding back.
"You are right, of course," Wilhelm mumbled contritely.
"Damn straight." Sam sat proudly, ears bent back against his head. "Which is why he'll be staying with you."
"What!" The old man sputtered. "Absolutely not!"
"He'll be away from Percy."
"He's a pagan god."
"...Okay," Sam said slowly, clearly not understanding the problem. "But, in pieces. He can't do anything you can't handle, seriously."
"You don't know that!" Wilhelm snapped. "He's a god!" His breath was coming fast, too fast. He could feel the weight, foreign and cold, hanging off him as a gangrenous limb fit only to be amputated. He didn't look at his bad arm, he never looked at it if he could help it, because it would look back.
His bad arm was a divine gift.
As much as a replacement for what you took could be a gift.
No one worshiped the gods in the Dreamlands.
Percy, painfully young and absolutely horrified, hadn't realized that insisting - 'it was an accident! She didn't mean it! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!'
(People died.
He almost died and he did not know what would come after, this time)
- only made it worse.
"You don't know that," he repeated, softer.
"He was human once," Sam nearly whispered.
His breath caught.
His curiosity burned. Humans could ascend?
Truly?
There was a long moment of silence.
"I will consider it," Wilhelm said stiffly as he gathered up the popsicles back onto the counter and then he rooted around in the refrigerating unit. "Clean up your mess," he ordered. "I can handle a few sandwiches."
He almost couldn't handle a few sandwiches.
Nothing looked the way it should have. The bread was already sliced right out of the clear, crinkly package. As was the bacon, looking almost like a different cut of meat entirely, and he had to be walked through using the 'microwave' by the cat, because the stove had a lot more knobs than he was comfortable with.
The future was not convenient. It was confusing.
At least the lettuce head was familiar, as was the tomato, albeit far larger than he was used to.
The knives were tucked away. The wood block almost shoved into the corner on the far end of the counter, as if they were trying to hide away. He reached for the closest handle.
Something took hold of him.
'Is that what you think?' A man hissed into his ear. 'Is that what you fucking think!? Come 'ere!'
Blood splashed onto the counter as the back of his hand opened.
'Look! Look at it! It's not silver! It's not fucking gold! It's red! Like MINE!' The man was yelling through tears. The stink of alcohol was almost a physical slap to the face. 'Tell me again what Apollo said, you little shit. You bleed red! She left BOTH of us!'
He felt so very, very small.
A grain of sand on an infinite beach, battered by the waves. Lost and drowning.
'We're. Mortal!'
Then it was gone and the kitchen knives, quietly tucked away in the corner, were silent.
"Willie?"
The old Prussian king grabbed one of the 'paper towels' from the counter and cleaned up the red blood staining the white surface.
"I am well," he answered quietly.
The cat eyed him dubiously. "What the fuck was that?"
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I do not know."
Another memory, like the picture? A nightmare? Both or something in between?
He wanted to ask, but whatever it was, it felt like an old, private shame.
He was familiar enough with those.
They finished making the sandwiches.
Percy was waiting, more or less patiently, in the living room. A small, spinning galaxy was dancing between his fingers as he slouched on the white leather couch before a long glass table. No shoes. A dirty white button up shirt rolled up at the sleeves. A streak of molten tears was still leaking from his swollen eye.
Every inch a bored, young godling resting after a fight.
"BLTs?" Percy asked. "Nice."
"There's a Titan Lord in your ice box." Wilhelm tattled.
Sam glared at him.
"Uh." The boy blinked slowly, hand hovering over a sandwich as his good eye traveled over to the cat. "Zagreus? You didn't throw him back - " He paused. His face scrunched up. "Throwing someone into the Pit sounds like a war crime, Geneva cares about that. So we shouldn't, because 21st century, baby."
…What?
"High as fuck," Sam reminded him as a low hiss.
"Do you care about him being in your ice box?" Wilhelm stubbornly pushed on.
"My ice cream is in there," Percy responded and out of the corner of his eye, Wilhelm saw Sam flinch in the middle of stealing a piece of bacon. "But not really? He's not my problem and he doesn't want to be." Percy smiled guilelessly. "He's smart like that."
Wilhelm had absolutely no idea what to say.
He was saved from having to say anything by a loud, lingering honk. Percy's head whipped around.
"What was that?"
"The signal horn," Wilhelm supplied. "There is something of a market festival in the village today."
"We're near people?" The boy said abruptly. He stuffed the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth and stood up. "I wanna see, let's go!"
Sam bounded right at his heels.
If it pressed a little too long against his shins, a little too eager to keep it friend within its sights, no one said a word.
Wilhelm watched as Sam dug this cute little woven vest from the bottom shelf of the closet by the front door, shimmying into it. It had hooks on the side where Percy painstakingly perched leather pockets. Whoever made it for the animal had a sense of humor. It was decorated with a small orange cat chasing a red bird.
" - I ain't buying you shit," the cat was complaining as Percy tried and failed to clean his shirt. "Get your own fucking money."
"I'll pay you back."
"Do you remember N'ath?"
"Um."
"Because I remember fucking N'ath, you cheap bastard."
"Oy, my parents are married!" Percy barked a laugh. "Luke called me a koala once."
"Yes," it said immediately. "What the fuck's a koala?"
"Sam. Sam! Sam," Percy said. "I love you."
The cat recoiled. "You really are fucking flying, mate."
Eventually, they remembered him and both turned to regard the old man still sitting, nonplused on the sofa.
"Willie. Coming?"
"I have seen more than my fair share of market days," he declined, patting his knee. "Let me rest my legs a little longer."
Percy's smile softened. "Sure. Stay as long as you like."
And he did.
He went out on the balcony to smoke a bit of his favorite pipe, the earthy, bitter taste calming as he contemplated. The yellow duck floating in the pool was free of judgment and he watched it make laps in still water.
He went back inside and glanced over the wall of pictures.
They were all of a very young Percy, from a chubby cheeked baby to a six year birthday party. The blond boy was present only in the last few rows of memories. Sometimes he looked as young as ten, perhaps twelve years old and in others an older teenager or young man with the same features appeared.
Not mortal, then.
Could this be Apollo?
His eyes searched for the picnic photo-memory and it took him longer than it should have to find it.
Because it had changed.
The mother was now returning Percy's smile, a possessive, gentle hand trailing through his black hair, ignoring the photographer entirely.
It had changed.
Goosebumps broke out all over his skin and he hurried away.
The kitchen was just as he left it. After a moment of thought, he retrieved the plate of crumbs and put it in the sink. He busied himself cleaning up the remains of the mess, little stains left behind by the cat's half-assed effort. The knives were still in their dark corner. An echo of their cry (we're mortal!) wailed in his ears. But eventually…
Eventually.
He opened the ice box.
"Lord - " What had Percy called him? "Zagreus."
Something shifted.
He could feel it as the temperature dropped and the shadows lengthened.
The Titan of eld stirred.
"I have questions," he continued.
The deep voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Speak."
An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
Everything in the Dreamlands makes sense. Even the things that don't make sense.A PJO Fanfiction
Especially the things that don't make sense.
An old Prussian king lived in a quaint cottage on the top of a hill, surrounded by a jungle village where a tribe of short, dark people prospered in the shadow of four-eyed sentinel birds. Most of the time, it resembled a log cabin, but sometimes bits of an old palace design snuck in.
The orange tabby cat with a crook in his tail slammed the front door open and watched the home he was invading warp and twist at its presence until finally spitting out the old man coming down from a violent start.
Quite literally.
The Dreamlands were true to their name. A land of Dreams. And nightmares were Dreams too. Guard your fears jealously here, for they are not safe.
This nightmare was a shadowy humanoid figure with a revolver, smoking from the shot. The cat banished it with a flick of its tail, ears pressed forward in alarm when the old man fell against the wall, clutching at his bleeding chest with his good arm.
"Ah shit!" The cat yelped as it darted into the house. "I forgot! I forgot, I forgot, I forgot - " the cat chanted, half an apology. The house was already beginning to break down, swapping out a domestic reality for a crowded cobbled stone street in an old city where the old man feebly applied pressure on the gushing wound, staring up at his assassin.
"Willie." The animal snapped. "You are a mortal soul in the Dreamlands!"
The nightmare wavered and the man blinked.
"Come on," the cat needled, batting at the man with a paw. "You're not seriously going to die to your own fucking nightmare like a little bitch are - "
A trembling hand reached out and batted at the feline's ears.
"Thought not."
"Sam! You - " 'Willie' coughed. At first it was wet and hacking, but he deliberately coughed again, brow furrowed in concentration and this time it was dry. The nightmare with the gun disappeared like a popped soap bubble. The street took longer to disappear. Cobbled stone slowly became a shifting floor that couldn't decide what it was made out of, stone, wood or tile, but was absolutely certain that it was made out of floor. A tell tale sign of memories blurring together. The shadows of the faceless gawkers melted back into the walls. The flat surfaces gained and lost details, changing from wood to brick to plaster and back with various designs and patterns arriving and leaving, but at least they stayed in one place.
The austere house at the top of the hill was back in roughly the same size and shape as before. It even had the chimney and the appropriate number of windows. For a Dream construct, the home practically broadcasted the owner's dedication and focus.
The subconscious ruled in the Dreamlands. Every memory was given life here, everything you have experienced, everything you have learned, everything you thought you forgot. From past trauma to something as simple as word association. Keeping your reality focused. Keeping it still took decades of study for Dreamers.
Not that it meant much, to a cat.
Willie was still shite at poker.
Not his fault.
It hadn't even been invented until he was thirty two and a whole continent away.
"You damn little - "
"Sorry Willie, but help." The cat demanded.
"Wilhelm," the man corrected automatically, brushing rust red flakes off his shirt before pausing. "I - help? You came barging into my home - " He stared from underneath heavy brows snowy with age. "Help with what?"
"Finding Percy real quick."
"Finding…" The old man trailed off. "What?"
"You know him, black hair, sparkly eyes." The cat held out a front paw an impressive four inches above the man's shifting floor. "My midget human, 'bout this tall?"
"He's grown since I saw him last, surely. It's been - " He began, still a bit slow on the uptake. "Wait - what happened?" He asked, suddenly alarmed. "Is he hurt?"
"Worse," the cat said gravely and Wilhelm tensed, prepared. "He's fucking lost."
The old man stared, before rolling his eyes upwards before closing them. "Of course he is," he muttered. With a soft grunt, he pushed off his wall, good arm still wrapped protectively about his chest. "Of course he is."
They didn't talk about his bad arm.
It had been a divine gift.
No one worshiped the gods in the Dreamlands. Sometimes Dreamers didn't always understand why not. The shrines had power. The temples were all occupied. At times, you could see the massive forms lumbering across the horizon or crossing the sky. Compared to the Waking world, the gods were obvious and omnipresent. Worship was a natural conclusion.
However, worship here meant getting attention and getting attention was…
Complicated.
They didn't talk about his bad arm.
Wilhelm wanted to forget it and Sam wanted to let him.
"Where did you last see him?" Wilhelm said, all business.
Sam gave a cat shrug. "I don't have a clue where to begin, mate."
"But then - "
"I'm a cat," Sam stressed. "I have ears. And a nose. And fucking eyes. If I knew, I'd just go get his ass."
The man sighed. "Then how do you know he's lost?"
"His apartment wiggled," Sam replied as if that answered everything.
It didn't.
Wilhelm pinched the bridge of his nose. "Elaborate."
"It wiggles, or shivers or whatever when he gets Here," Sam said tightly, compulsively licking his right paw. "Gets more solid. And it did, but he didn't show up." There was a very real, trembling note of concern in its voice. "He wouldn't leave me behind to go explore someplace. He - he fucking knows better. He wouldn't."
"Very well," Wilhelm said softly and the cat ducked his head, turning away grumpily. "We will find him."
"We better," Sam huffed as it brushed past the old man deeper into the house. "So I can kill him for being fucking stupid."
Wilhelm made a sound, little more than a harsh exhale, but the cat still turned back to look at him, eyeing his twitching beard suspiciously.
"By all means, after you," Wilhelm said, eyes creased with amusement as he scratched his chin. "I will need my salts from the study and then -"
He was cut off by Sam's groan.
"Why can't you just chew on a bit of nip or hop on one foot for your magic like normal people?"
The irony was almost painful.
"Take it or leave it," he told the animal and it just grumbled.
Gathering the necessary ingredients was the work of a minute or two of collecting vials and carved wooden bowls holding crushed mineral rich sand or spices.
"This works better," Wilhelm was saying as he set his workbench. The cat perched on top of the stool right beside him, watching attentively. "Because it serves to narrow the focus and allows one to truly hold the spell. Wanting something to happen is not actually enough, this place needs to understand what you are trying to accomplish."
"That's…" The cat gave him a sideways look as the last of the saltpeter was poured into the copper cauldron filled with darkened water. "Sounds fucking risky."
"It is not asking for attention," Wilhelm rushed to reassure it as he picked up his ladle and made a slow clockwise stir. "The Dreamlands already responds to our very existence, what more can we demand of it? This is simply…focusing on its natural inclinations."
They both held their breath as an image appeared within the water, shimmering like a silver reflection. As swift as a bird in flight, the reflection in the water blurred over the forest to the pits of black and bubbling and crawling before it hit the wide, blue ocean.
"The fuck?" Sam leaned in until it was nearly dipping its nose into the picture.
"Perhaps he just went for a swim. He always did love the water…" Wilhelm trailed off when the reflection dove into the sea. Down past the dizzying colors and twisted creatures of the shallow waters.
Down into deeper, darker waters with three headed sharks and a sliding ocean shelf made of ash gray sand and small, gasping mouths exhaling yellow bubbles of poison.
Down until the last shreds of light have disappeared. When the window stopped, it did so with such abruptness that at first they couldn't tell it had stopped in a blur of movement and churning water. The window shook, spreading jagged, sharp ripples through the water of his cauldron before they saw them.
"Fuck!" He vaguely heard the cat exclaim. "Turn it off! Turn it off!"
He was staring, frozen until a sharp pain stabbing his wrong hand brought him back to himself. "I - what - "
"Turn it off!"
He upended the table.
The cat leapt away, yowling as dark water black as pitch splashed onto the ground. The liquid hissed, eating through the floor like acid until Wilhelm wrung it out of his Dream.
For a long moment afterwards, neither said a word.
Sam's right eye burned a brilliant bloody orange as the animal batted at its own face as if to pry the eyeball out of its skull.
It, too, had been a gift.
"Fucking…hate that." It rolled his neck like a pro-wrestler about to step into the ring and coughed. "'Kay, I'm getting him."
"Him?" Wilhelm repeated incredulously. "There was no him."
He could still see the fighting behemoths in his mind's eye, tearing into each other like wild beasts over food or territory. One a roiling, seething mass as big as a building; a undulating tail like flowing fabric ending in a needle sharp barb did nothing to soften the antediluvian horror of flailing, coiling tentacles of a sickly shade squirming and shifting in seemingly every direction even as it collapsed into itself like some gelatinous, fleshy slurry rolling down a hill.
Its opponent had the upper body vaguely resembling a dark winged hydra, proudly crested serpentine heads of gnashing teeth beneath the spines and grasping tendrils spilling from its back; it's lower body spilled from the lower jaw of one of the heads into a great open maw lined by vicious fangs of teeth, inky shadows leaking between them like saliva and where the throat would be, where the tongue should be, where a mouth wasn't was the abyss of space, populated only by a thousand burning green eyes as distant stars.
He hoped their spying hadn't been detected.
That would be…
Bad.
"Something must have gone wrong with the magic," he murmured. "They were - they were too close, a kind of gravitational pull on the search…" Wilhelm glanced up, just realizing he had been staring at the floor as he registered that Sam wasn't saying anything. "There was no him," he repeated optimistically. "Why would he be fighting a sea monster? And how would he have gotten to the bottom of the ocean anyway?"
The cat blinked slowly. "I think one of them…" It got quiet. "One of them was him."
Wilhelm stared and his stomach churned. "O - oh?"
"The eyebally one," the cat said with forced nonchalance. "He had eyes like that before."
He was not going to think about that.
Scheiße.
He was already thinking about it.
He'd known that boy since he had been too young for any sense of propriety, running around buck naked with his nappies on his head just because he could. His favorite word had been 'yeah' as an answer to everything, even when he meant no, and was always putting something in his mouth.
He didn't want to think about it.
"Are you…sure it's not some…distant relative of his through his mother or member of her court…" He stubbornly balled his right hand into a fist to stop himself from reflexively reaching for the dead (it's not dead) flesh of his left. The Dreamlands tried to latch onto that memory with its relentless greed, but oh, he's far too familiar with that nightmare to afford it even an ounce of power.
They don't talk about his bad arm.
Sam closed his eyes. After a long moment, it sighed. "Maybe."
"I will need something more personal, a connection to follow so we can be absolutely sure…"
He didn't know what they would do if a second attempt led them right back to the horrors beneath the ocean.
Try to keep the cat from getting itself killed, he supposed.
"Yeah," the cat said, subdued. "Okay. His place is not far, can grab something."
"Not far?" The old man paused in the act of shuffling on his overcoat, hat in hand. "So the reason you broke down my door as if you ran, half-mad across the entire continent was because…?"
"I fucking swear on me mum…" Sam groaned again. "I forgot you're a bitch about loud noises, alright?"
"I was shot!" Willie sputtered. "Nearly assassinated! Three times!"
"You got over it!"
"I most certainly did not - "
"And a fucking cold got you in the end!" The cat jeered as it bounded out the door, crooked tail standing proud.
Indeed, the boy's home wasn't far at all.
"I did not realize he was so close." Wilhelm said with an unasked question. The cat had led him, huffing and annoyed, right to the small valley on the edges of the jungle village he himself lived in. It was little more than a pure white box with a red door, its pristine colors surreal against the dirt ground and dry grass that surrounded it.
It was…surprisingly solid for a Dream construct.
"It moves," Sam said.
"It - " Wilhelm began and then stopped.
The cat marched right up to the red door and opened it with a flick of its tail. "Mind the gap," it called back from over its shoulder. "First step can be a doozy."
"But there aren't any stairs…?"
Reality blurred with a step.
"Wha - " The old man gasped as he found himself in a sterile white hallway lined with windows showing a view ten, maybe twenty stories up as if he hadn't just walked in from the ground. He turned around to see that the wooden red door had disappeared, replaced by a gunmetal gray gate with buttons on one side. There was no way this space would have fit inside the small hut he had stepped into. "How?"
"No idea." Sam huffed. "Lil fucker's bullshit."
A polished wood door led to an expensive looking living space with white leather couches, dark wood and glass furniture and white carpet. There was a fireplace and exotic looking flowering plants in every corner. A wall full of baby pictures was right by the entrance to what looked like the kitchen and behind a glass wall was a balcony with a pool, complete with a yellow rubber duck bobbing up and down in the water. Just like in the hallway, they were inexplicably high up off the ground as if on the top of a very tall building.
"It is so…" Wilhelm gently removed one of the pictures from the wall. It was a memory. A picnic scene with an exhausted, but happy handsome swarthy father beaming at the photographer like his every wish had come true. He had a proud hand on both of his boys, the older one blond and blue eyed with the father's curls and darker skin flashing a thumbs up and winking and the younger…He was a little younger than when Wilhelm saw him last. Five or six, black hair and shimmering eyes. He wasn't smiling at the camera, but up at his mother.
The woman was beautiful, pale and dark haired with a gently amused curl to her lips. Most of her was facing her husband and sons, but it was as if she had turned her head at the last second. Her black eyes stared unerringly into his own.
Everything was crisp.
Solid.
"This is impossible," Wilhelm whispered.
As if spurned by his disbelief, the picture frame faded from his hands only to reappear in its place on the wall.
"Bull. Shit," Sam repeated. "Don't think about it. Just find something."
There was a window that was not like the rest. It did not show the forest canopy with colorful four eyed birds flitting among the leaves. It was a black beach with sand of razor sharp obsidian shards and in the distance a tall black spire rose amid a starry sky that abruptly became dark and empty in the center. The shadow of some winged creature flew in circles around the tower.
He tore his eyes away.
"This…this is not the home of a Dreamer, is it?" Wilhelm said thickly. It was nearly indistinguishable from the Dreamlands itself.
Real.
"I said don't fucking think about it."
The old man ran a weary hand down his face.
"Too late," he said miserably.
"If it helps," Sam began in a reasonable kind of tone as it laid down in that indolent way of felines. "He's still a dumbass."
"That's not the point, you little - "
The door to the apartment clicked open and they both went still and silent as they watched Percy walk into his home.
The boy was filthy. Covered in streaks of an oily, gray substance, a bird's nest of black hair on top of his head, a dozen bleeding scratches underneath tears in his clothing and an impressive shiner on his left eye, swollen shut and leaking a molten silver. He was missing a pant leg and both shoes, trekking barefoot onto the wooden floor and leaking saltwater. An almost hysterical bubble of laughter welled up in Wilhelm's throat at the thought that he looked just like any other ten or eleven year old boy coming back from a scrap in the streets.
So it had been at least five years.
There was relief, that he was still the contrary little shit who had stared up at him in awe, his mouth in a small 'o' of surprise before blurting out, 'You're old!'
Then there was the shame that he had spent half a decade avoiding a child.
When they had first met, he had been horrified by the thought that children, barely more than infants, could find their way into the Dreamlands by accident. He feared he had found the answer to the inexplicable sudden death of sleeping young children. In his mind, the boy was basically an orphan, fending for himself in a strange, savage land.
But he had a mother.
Wilhelm cleared his throat. "Perseus."
The boy startled and Wilhelm held his breath as a hundred burning green eyes blinked open on the boy's form for a moment.
'He had eyes like that before,' Sam had said.
Mein Gott.
"Percy," was the muttered complaint. He blinked his good eye and the dark pupil was blown wide. "Heeeyy, Will! I haven't seen you in a while, man."
The prickling running up and down his bad arm (Percy had a mother) tightened the old man's smile. "Are you well?"
"You got fucked up," the cat translated.
"Uh, no. I mean, yeah?" Percy stared at them blankly, a small wrinkle of confusion forming on his brow as if he heard what they said, but didn't understand. "Maybe."
A shiver went down Wilhelm's spine and he could see it run down the cat's back as well. Something was wrong with him. His stomach sank and he fought not to take a few steps back.
"Like Carl?" He murmured deep in his throat, barely more than a breath of shaped air, trusting the sensitive ears of the cat to hear him.
(Carl was dead.
He had to be dead, because the thought that he was still in there - that he came out of the other end of the teleporter not completely hollowed out by what got him - was a terrible one. He didn't want to go through that again, but Dreams were not wishes. No matter how hard you tried.)
Sam did not reply, but instead rose to his feet, stretching out as cats do. First the front paws, claws out and wickedly gleaming and then the back legs. Perfectly nonchalant, but the fur along the back remained ruffled and slightly raised.
Sam was a blunt creature.
If he didn't attack now, that meant he didn't know who, or what, was in Percy's skin.
The boy was oblivious to the tension, an utterly punch-drunk smile spreading across his face. He'd always had an awkward, but endearing smile, but now the sight of the crowded mouth - more teeth than the human jaw could ever accommodate - curdled milk in Wilhelm's stomach.
"You should see the other guy." Percy declared.
They did.
"We did," Sam said, deliberately casual. Only the line of raised fur along his back gave it away as not being as relaxed as it seemed. "Fucking ugly bloke, what?"
"Noooo," Percy trailed off. He looked down at his hands and actually wiggled his toes as if he was counting them, like he needed to remind himself how many appendages the human body normally came with. Then he nodded to himself, coming to a decision. "Maybe a little."
Sam snorted.
Another too-wide smile. "Delicious too."
The cat's tail lashed back and forth as Wilhelm stood there like a stump, uncertain what he just heard.
"Why." The cat asked flatly. "Are you always putting shit in your fucking mouth."
The boy had the audacity to look smug.
"'I'm not a baby anymore, Sam'," the cat mocked in a high pitched voice. "'I don't bite anymore, Sam. I'm not teething anymore, Sam.' Fucking liar."
"Oh, come on, Sam, it was - just - I mean basically calamari…" He tried to explain -
But the animal wasn't having it. "Didn't you eat a fucking zombie a week or something ago."
What?
Percy sputtered.
Can they talk about the zombie thing?
"You - " One could see the boy blindly cast about for an argument and it was clear having to think was paining him. "You - uh, you can't tell me what to do!"
"The fuck I can't!" Sam hissed. "Fuck you - who was it that told me not to bite -"
The boy's head reared back in mock outrage, glee shining in his one good eye. "Because you never know where they've been!"
Wilhelm palmed his face.
That had to be Percy.
The cat went blank and still as a statue for a moment. "Did he just - ?" Not even waiting for Wilhelm to respond, it turned back on the boy, spitting. "You fucking hypocrite - "
"Sam, Sam it's okay," Percy attempted to sooth his cat with an odd, lopsided grin. Just an amused curl of one side of his mouth. "It's okay - you cat," he pointed with a trembling finger. "Me half-god." He blinked slowly. "Half. Haaaalf. Not one-eighth. Not demi but…"
His nose wrinkled as he swayed in place. His bad eye opened a sliver and whatever rested within that socket whispered.
…Maybe it wasn't Percy.
"Maybe demi but different demi." The boy looked at them expectantly. "You know?"
"Uh." Sam leaned away from him, wary again as a drop of blood from a star dripped down the boy's face. "I don't - I have no idea what the fuck -"
"My mom. Mom is -" Percy mimed his head exploding, complete with a bassy, reverberating whoosh and expanding smoke effects from his hands. Then he flapped his arms, desperate to explain whatever scattered thoughts were flitting back and forth in his head. "I can't - I won't die until I do!"
The cat stared, speechless.
"That…is rather how it works for most of us," Wilhelm pointed out gently, for lack of anything better to say.
Sam only tilted its head in Wilhelm's direction, unwilling to take its eyes off whatever was masquerading as the boy they knew. The casual gesture was punctuated by the agitated lashing of the cat's tail back and forth.
"Death is a process. It has to happen, mortality itself is a collection of factors that -"
"People die when killed," Sam cut in.
Wilhelm sighed. "Yes. Fine."
Now it was Percy's turn to stare at them, completely and utterly stumped. His mouth flapped open and closed, searching for the words, but Wilhelm could almost see the thoughts dribbling out of his ears until the boy gave up with a whiny,
"Oh."
Sam made a soft yowling sound. "Hoooow's about we have ourselves a bit of a lay down, hmm? Just a small kip."
Percy frowned. "I'm already sleeping."
"You're shaking," the cat replied flatly.
The boy blinked and looked down at himself again.
He was. Tremors were running up and down his slim frame like beetles burrowing into a carcass.
"I can just - "
"Sit.The Fuck. Down."
For a moment, Percy was about to argue. Wilhelm could see it in the stubborn jut of his chin, but then he twitched like a puppet jerked on its string, swayed again, then plopped down where he stood with a loud put upon sigh.
"Happy?" He grumbled as he sprawled across the wooden floor.
"Ecstatic." Wilhelm drawled in response before the cat bit the boy's nose off. He yelped when the apartment shifted around them, the foyer stretching to place the front door far away from them until they were deposited in the middle of the living room. There were no distortions or hints of instability.
The sheer ease of it all!
He snuck a glance at the boy stretching out on the floor, leaving smudges of red blood too bright and shining to be real on white carpet.
"My brain is floating out of my skull," Percy said suddenly, very seriously, staring up at the ceiling. "Are my ears still backwards? I think Erebus turned them backwards. And my asshole ran away."
"Fucking tragic, that is," Sam replied, also very serious.
They were not actually talking about his literal…?
"Does that make me constipated?"
They were.
"Only if you need to shit."
"No. But I can't poop without one, so I better not." The boy's brows furrowed. "I was hungry, but I lost - I'm losing my stomach, Sam."
"Better hold on to your hat then."
"Okay," Percy said, as if that made any sense at all. He wasn't even wearing - a black bowler hat appeared on the boy's head and Wilhelm about swallowed his tongue. "My brother said I need to eat."
The cat blinked. "Aren't your siblings jackasses?"
'Siblings?' Wilhelm mouthed, horrified.
He thought of the smiling blond boy from the photo-memory. There were more like him?
Percy huffed. "Only - only the triplets. Darkness is cool. He helped and then - and then there were some looking," he said, skipping train tracks. "Other gods. And they thought I was cool. And I was. Cool. I won. I cheated, with a volcano," He whispered loudly, as if imparting a great secret. "It woke up," and in the Dreamlands, that could very well be completely literal, "but I didn't die, so it was fine. Not dying was important. And I think I got asked out."
By what?
The boy gingerly rolled onto his side, giving them a heavy, one eyed look as if to ask them something very important. "It's not my fault mom's kids are good looking, right?"
"No," the old man said, completely bewildered.
"Right. Okay." Percy rolled onto his stomach and began to trace the swirling pale patterns in the rug. His hat was tipped rakishly, complete with a blood red feather sticking out of it. "I knew that. I'm too young for a girlfriend anyway."
He was …not going to touch that with a ten foot pole.
"We will get you a snack," Wilhelm offered, trying to escape.
"I could eat," Percy admitted. "Yeah, thanks." He lifted his head, throwing them a bright, hopeful smile. "Mom didn't really mean it, you know? She can't help it sometimes, but she was sorry!"
Wilhelm allowed himself to reach across to touch his bad arm. "I know."
"'Kay." He laid his head down again and his hat slid off. "We can be friends again, right?"
Wilhelm smiled weakly and shuffled the cat back into the next room when Percy's attention shifted to his hand as if it was the most fascinating thing he'd ever seen. And perhaps it was. It was shifting under the attention, fingers merging together, twisting, becoming spindly, becoming smoke before hardening into a dark spine before relaxing back into a human boy's hand.
The heavy wooden door closed behind them with a satisfying click and he let out a sigh. "Verdict?"
"The stupid burns."
"Sam," Wilhelm scolded. "You know what I mean. Is he…" He shrugged his good shoulder in Percy's general direction and whispered out the corner of his mouth, trusting those cat ears to pick it up. "Well?"
"Tripping premium top fucking balls," the cat said. "But yeah, it's him."
He was assuming by the context that 'tripping balls' was another way of saying 'acting drugged.' He wasn't going to ask if he was correct. He's always been a little afraid of asking the cat what it was even saying since he learned that 'clap' was no longer just a word for smacking your hands together.
If it was Percy, he was just under the effect of some kind of hallucinogenic then…
Then…
He was dismayed by how little that actually solved.
Sam tilted its head, wiggling its right ear. "Not convinced he's alone in there. He's too fucking…"
It trailed off, searching for the words.
"Demigod," the old man ventured. "What do we do then?"
"Dunno," Sam said unhelpfully. Its tail lashed back and forth quickly. "If it were anyone else, I'd tell them to never put a fucking mushroom in their mouth ever again, but he's always mouthing shit and nothing ever fucking happens sooooo…" Sam glanced back at the door thoughtfully. And then shrugged. "Dunno."
"And when he wakes up from this Dream…?"
"He's a mortal soul in the Dreamlands, like you." Sam muttered. "You never really wake up, you just leave for a bit."
"I see," Wilhelm hummed.
It was true. You never do wake up from the Dreamlands.
He sighed as he had no ideas making themselves known either. "Well, I did say I would get him something to eat…"
The cat grumbled, turning towards the open doorway leading to what looked like the kitchen. "Right. Do something about the munchies…brat going to eat me out of house and home."
"Is this not his house and home?" Wilhelm asked mildly.
Sam shot him a dirty look.
And then it froze right outside the kitchen, its tail shot straight up, crook and all. "Fuck."
"Now what?" Wilhelm grumbled as he stepped past the animal…and stopped dead right at the door. "...what?"
The kitchen was a disaster.
There were cartoons and plastic bags holding previously frozen food that had been allowed to drip all over the counter top for hours, if not days. Streaks of multicolored brown goop had congealed on the white cupboard doors, right next to nauseatingly sweet, artificially fruity smelling puddles and bloody water from thawed meat pooled on the tiled floor.
The old man moved automatically. Most of it was driven by reflexive disgust at the mess, but he would be lying if he denied a sliver of concern over a black haired boy with a thousand eyes seeing all his spoiled ice cream.
"What even were you doing?" Wilhelm hissed, picking up the most intact packages - brightly colored plastic tubes with pictures of fruit on them - and rushed to the ice box.
"Shit, I had to do something with him - "
Him?
He opened the ice box.
He closed the ice box.
Wilhelm fell against the wall beside it and slowly slid down it, blueberry, raspberry and watermelon Pops!cle bags falling to the floor alongside him.
"There are body parts in the freezer," he said dully.
"Not my fault!" Sam protested immediately and for a moment, he foolishly dared to hope the cat had a reasonable explanation. "He fucking came like that!"
"Explain," he demanded.
The whole story didn't make any more sense.
"...he's got power, sure, but pop him in the noggin and his head fucking flies off. Ain't nothing fucking happening cut up like he is."
"Kronos," Wilhelm repeated in a dead voice. He was no academic in life, but he had been born into the last days of the Holy Roman Empire. There was no escaping that history. "Percy rescued the Titan Lord from the Pit and now he's on ice. Here!"
The cat blinked. "I just said that - "
Wilhelm reached out and swiped at the cat's ears, shutting it up. His head was beginning to spin unpleasantly (the pagan gods of the Waking world were real). "Is he conscious?"
The cat hesitated. "...no?"
He leaned away from the unassuming humming appliance. "You do not know?"
"He can't do anything!"
"Anything can happen in a Dream!"
They glared at each other.
Sam was the first to look away. "I could take him. If he fucked around."
He could take - ignoring the sheer arrogance of that statement, because Kronos was an immortal god and Sam was an orange tom cat: "This is Percy's home."
Sam spit at him, chops curled back into a savage snarl. "You don't get to bitch about his safety anymore. You fucking left, remember?"
His bad arm prickled uncomfortably as the shame came flooding back.
"You are right, of course," Wilhelm mumbled contritely.
"Damn straight." Sam sat proudly, ears bent back against his head. "Which is why he'll be staying with you."
"What!" The old man sputtered. "Absolutely not!"
"He'll be away from Percy."
"He's a pagan god."
"...Okay," Sam said slowly, clearly not understanding the problem. "But, in pieces. He can't do anything you can't handle, seriously."
"You don't know that!" Wilhelm snapped. "He's a god!" His breath was coming fast, too fast. He could feel the weight, foreign and cold, hanging off him as a gangrenous limb fit only to be amputated. He didn't look at his bad arm, he never looked at it if he could help it, because it would look back.
His bad arm was a divine gift.
As much as a replacement for what you took could be a gift.
No one worshiped the gods in the Dreamlands.
Percy, painfully young and absolutely horrified, hadn't realized that insisting - 'it was an accident! She didn't mean it! I'm sorry! I'm sorry!'
(People died.
He almost died and he did not know what would come after, this time)
- only made it worse.
"You don't know that," he repeated, softer.
"He was human once," Sam nearly whispered.
His breath caught.
His curiosity burned. Humans could ascend?
Truly?
There was a long moment of silence.
"I will consider it," Wilhelm said stiffly as he gathered up the popsicles back onto the counter and then he rooted around in the refrigerating unit. "Clean up your mess," he ordered. "I can handle a few sandwiches."
He almost couldn't handle a few sandwiches.
Nothing looked the way it should have. The bread was already sliced right out of the clear, crinkly package. As was the bacon, looking almost like a different cut of meat entirely, and he had to be walked through using the 'microwave' by the cat, because the stove had a lot more knobs than he was comfortable with.
The future was not convenient. It was confusing.
At least the lettuce head was familiar, as was the tomato, albeit far larger than he was used to.
The knives were tucked away. The wood block almost shoved into the corner on the far end of the counter, as if they were trying to hide away. He reached for the closest handle.
Something took hold of him.
'Is that what you think?' A man hissed into his ear. 'Is that what you fucking think!? Come 'ere!'
Blood splashed onto the counter as the back of his hand opened.
'Look! Look at it! It's not silver! It's not fucking gold! It's red! Like MINE!' The man was yelling through tears. The stink of alcohol was almost a physical slap to the face. 'Tell me again what Apollo said, you little shit. You bleed red! She left BOTH of us!'
He felt so very, very small.
A grain of sand on an infinite beach, battered by the waves. Lost and drowning.
'We're. Mortal!'
Then it was gone and the kitchen knives, quietly tucked away in the corner, were silent.
"Willie?"
The old Prussian king grabbed one of the 'paper towels' from the counter and cleaned up the red blood staining the white surface.
"I am well," he answered quietly.
The cat eyed him dubiously. "What the fuck was that?"
He pursed his lips thoughtfully. "I do not know."
Another memory, like the picture? A nightmare? Both or something in between?
He wanted to ask, but whatever it was, it felt like an old, private shame.
He was familiar enough with those.
They finished making the sandwiches.
Percy was waiting, more or less patiently, in the living room. A small, spinning galaxy was dancing between his fingers as he slouched on the white leather couch before a long glass table. No shoes. A dirty white button up shirt rolled up at the sleeves. A streak of molten tears was still leaking from his swollen eye.
Every inch a bored, young godling resting after a fight.
"BLTs?" Percy asked. "Nice."
"There's a Titan Lord in your ice box." Wilhelm tattled.
Sam glared at him.
"Uh." The boy blinked slowly, hand hovering over a sandwich as his good eye traveled over to the cat. "Zagreus? You didn't throw him back - " He paused. His face scrunched up. "Throwing someone into the Pit sounds like a war crime, Geneva cares about that. So we shouldn't, because 21st century, baby."
…What?
"High as fuck," Sam reminded him as a low hiss.
"Do you care about him being in your ice box?" Wilhelm stubbornly pushed on.
"My ice cream is in there," Percy responded and out of the corner of his eye, Wilhelm saw Sam flinch in the middle of stealing a piece of bacon. "But not really? He's not my problem and he doesn't want to be." Percy smiled guilelessly. "He's smart like that."
Wilhelm had absolutely no idea what to say.
He was saved from having to say anything by a loud, lingering honk. Percy's head whipped around.
"What was that?"
"The signal horn," Wilhelm supplied. "There is something of a market festival in the village today."
"We're near people?" The boy said abruptly. He stuffed the remainder of his sandwich into his mouth and stood up. "I wanna see, let's go!"
Sam bounded right at his heels.
If it pressed a little too long against his shins, a little too eager to keep it friend within its sights, no one said a word.
Wilhelm watched as Sam dug this cute little woven vest from the bottom shelf of the closet by the front door, shimmying into it. It had hooks on the side where Percy painstakingly perched leather pockets. Whoever made it for the animal had a sense of humor. It was decorated with a small orange cat chasing a red bird.
" - I ain't buying you shit," the cat was complaining as Percy tried and failed to clean his shirt. "Get your own fucking money."
"I'll pay you back."
"Do you remember N'ath?"
"Um."
"Because I remember fucking N'ath, you cheap bastard."
"Oy, my parents are married!" Percy barked a laugh. "Luke called me a koala once."
"Yes," it said immediately. "What the fuck's a koala?"
"Sam. Sam! Sam," Percy said. "I love you."
The cat recoiled. "You really are fucking flying, mate."
Eventually, they remembered him and both turned to regard the old man still sitting, nonplused on the sofa.
"Willie. Coming?"
"I have seen more than my fair share of market days," he declined, patting his knee. "Let me rest my legs a little longer."
Percy's smile softened. "Sure. Stay as long as you like."
And he did.
He went out on the balcony to smoke a bit of his favorite pipe, the earthy, bitter taste calming as he contemplated. The yellow duck floating in the pool was free of judgment and he watched it make laps in still water.
He went back inside and glanced over the wall of pictures.
They were all of a very young Percy, from a chubby cheeked baby to a six year birthday party. The blond boy was present only in the last few rows of memories. Sometimes he looked as young as ten, perhaps twelve years old and in others an older teenager or young man with the same features appeared.
Not mortal, then.
Could this be Apollo?
His eyes searched for the picnic photo-memory and it took him longer than it should have to find it.
Because it had changed.
The mother was now returning Percy's smile, a possessive, gentle hand trailing through his black hair, ignoring the photographer entirely.
It had changed.
Goosebumps broke out all over his skin and he hurried away.
The kitchen was just as he left it. After a moment of thought, he retrieved the plate of crumbs and put it in the sink. He busied himself cleaning up the remains of the mess, little stains left behind by the cat's half-assed effort. The knives were still in their dark corner. An echo of their cry (we're mortal!) wailed in his ears. But eventually…
Eventually.
He opened the ice box.
"Lord - " What had Percy called him? "Zagreus."
Something shifted.
He could feel it as the temperature dropped and the shadows lengthened.
The Titan of eld stirred.
"I have questions," he continued.
The deep voice came from everywhere and nowhere at once.
"Speak."
KillingYouNicely
I've seen things. They weren't really interesting.
- Location
- Australia
Honestly, I liked the last chapter just fine, but this version's certainly a bit more fun~
- Location
- United States
I like both chapters! I get why you have to chose one or the other given the character interaction and continuity, but I really like them both as character studies for Wilhelm. Though how on earth the old Kaiser got here, well, I suppose that's a story for another time. Thanks for the update, and take care of yourself! We can wait as needed for things to get better on your end.
- Location
- france
- Pronouns
- He
I prefer this chapter. Still very confusing but in a good way.
In particular, I like that bit. I don't understand it but I like it. The fact that Percy makes a sharp distinction between Half and Demi seems very important.
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Yup! The 'demi' morpheme has two definitions: Half or partial.
The vast majority of demigods in both Greek mythology and PJO are no where near strong enough or durable enough to convincingly be actually 50% god. Just the fact that they die if they eat any more than an extremely small amount of godly food makes the case that they are majority human, rather than true hybrids.
That does make sense because Percy is showing traits of a god but not all of them, and Dionysus said he pulled of seeing through the mist which he couldn't do until his 40s. So Percy is naturally on the level of a person well on their way to ascending to goodhood.
DoubleThought
Bad at Communicating
- Location
- The Moon. The? There are so many
My mind was wandering and my thoughts came across the myth of Tantalus, specifically the part where, after Tantalus killed and boiled his son, Pelops, to make a meal to serve the gods and test their omniscience, Demeter ate part of Pelops's shoulder. I'm wondering if this will have any bearing on the more eldritch parts of this fic. Likewise, with Pelops's resurrection (being resurrected by being boiled in a sacred cauldron, Hephaestus having made a replacement for the missing shoulder out of ivory.
My Soul Needs Chicken Noodle Soup
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
A PJO Fanfiction
I laughed at Cliff for his 'superhero' Dreams.
We're besties, that means we're allowed to be assholes to each other sometimes.
Anyway, some random Dream spirit would manage to squirm through his wards and give him the most obvious, ridiculous Dreams. Ones where he was on top of the world, being awesome and rich and famous and all that jazz. I've heard everything from the Mist being gone and he was an actual dog-headed superhero to him being voted to Chief Lector of the House of Life, the head honcho of all the Egyptian magicians.
Yeah, right.
Then his alarm would go off and he'd remember that, actually, everything sucks! He had chores to rush, his half-finished homework to bullshit and if he didn't get up right now, he was going to be late for the school bus.
I didn't understand how he could let himself get suckered that badly. His disappointed grumbling was hilarious. Dreams were Dreams for a reason. What was the point of wishing they were real?
So.
I'm an idiot.
And a hypocrite!
I was the one who asked Morpheus to let me see my parents in a Dream when the Quest got to me. I hadn't known Mom'd actually be there when I asked. I was prepared to settle for a shade.
And I would have given anything for last night's Dream to be real.
I felt like I could take on the entire world, and every god on it at the same time. I had my cat buddy ready to kick ass with me, reconnected with an old friend and was allowed to forget about my Quest. For the first time in a long time, I wasn't afraid, because there was nothing to be afraid of. My big brother Darkness was there! I could feel his awareness of me the entire time, like I was worth something! I wasn't small and weak anymore! Mom had nothing to be ashamed of, because I was like him! Like all of them! I was -
I
I was
And then I woke up feeling like absolute, utter dogshit.
That had been tap danced on by someone in razor sharp stiletto heels.
Before they wiped me off on a wet curbside and threw me into a burning dumpster.
"Blarghable!"
It was worse than just waking up and remembering that Luke nearly died yesterday, my asshole rabbit party member was at fault for being her asshole self and that we had ten days to find where Ares' stashed the Master Bolt.
Way worse.
Because it was all that and I was fucking sick!
Every inch of me hurt with this tight, dry pain making me feel strangely bloated, like if I moved too much, I would tear out of my paper thin skin. I had a stuffy nose and a killer headache. I felt like I had a concussion. The world was tilting back and forth like I had water in my ears, my clothes were sticking to me with sweat because I needed out of this sauna that was my immune system and my stomach…
"Urghhuah!"
My stomach hated the ever living shit out of me.
I was hanging halfway off the bed, trying not to vomit all over my sheets and getting most of it on the hardwood floor and the yoga mat. And let me tell you, Rhea's lasagna and her chocolate chip cookies did not taste the same coming back up.
It also squirmed in my mouth.
I was blaming the lasagna.
"Guurgghah!"
Or maybe the cookies.
I also wouldn't put this past Alecto's cooking skills.
Mom's given me some questionable shit to eat before, sure. And maybe I had a habit of trying out stuff like those honey ants and fried greasy three-headed snake sticks I got Sam to buy for me, but nothing I ate in the Dreamlands counted!
None of it could move after being swallowed!
I want a refund!
I threw up again.
I don't know how long I spent upchucking, but the tank ran on empty pretty quick. Nothing but scorching bile and wriggling chunks I was starting to think were pieces of my intestines. I would not be surprised if I was actually spitting up my entire digestive system. The way my stomach ached and burned, twisting itself even tighter into knots, sending a sick flush right through my skull was not filling me with confidence.
I laid there, half off the bed, head hanging down hearing blood rush in my ears as I panted, coughing. The yoga mat was covered in what Sam would call a dog's breakfast. A thick slurry the color of kibble filled with mushy chunks and writhing bits of a gelatinous, sickly pale meat that I vaguely remembered eating.
At the bottom of an ocean.
I don't -
I don't know how that's a thing.
Damocles was the only thing capable of following me out of the Dreamlands. Because Mom made sure it could. Even now, it hung from my neck back in its place of honor as a silver pendant.
Nothing I eat in the Dreamlands counts.
This can't -
It's got to be Rhea's chocolate chip cookies. They were too good.
That's how you know they're evil.
The guest room door opened soundlessly as the star-spawn baker from hell poked her head in.
"Are you - " she started. I tilted my head just enough to see her out of the corner of my eye as I stared at the steaming pile of vomit. Or maybe it was smoking? I think the yoga mat was melting. We both watched as one of the flailing pieces, like a demented severed limb flopped its way under the bed.
I blinked slowly.
Um.
Okay.
Rhea pinched the bridge of her nose for a second.
"Why?" She asked me.
I wanted to answer that.
But I -
I got nothing.
I can't think straight and I have no clue.
"Right. I'll just - " Zeus' mom was honestly in a tie dyed belly shirt and blue sweatpants as she waved a hand in my general direction. I felt something in the world change as the smell of bile disappeared.
I could do that, I thought fuzzily.
I had done it.
"You're - I heard that? I think your brain is leaking," Rhea said.
It was just like when I fixed the tears in my couch because Sam hated scratching posts and authority. A simple exertion of will. I painfully flopped back onto my bed and feebly tried to kick my sheets off. My legs were noodles, so I didn't get very far. Everything I was wearing was sticking to me.
I had the thought.
Why don't I just do it right now?
Rhea barked. "Don't - !"
My stomach tore.
It felt like Zeus tagged me with a lightning bolt to the belly button. Pain seared right through the center of my navel to my spine, then crawled up it. Everything locked up. My limbs. My thoughts. My blood.
I couldn't even scream.
Rhea caught me as I fell off the bed.
The jolt of halted movement was all it took.
I threw up all over Apollo's grandmother.
Not my best moment.
Not gonna lie.
She stiffened and blew a harsh breath out her nose.
"...yup. Just like your sister," she said blandly before willing the mess off us.
I didn't even have the energy to cringe.
On a scale of one to ten, with one being 'miserable' and ten being 'doing great' I was at 'demigod shaped turd bucket.' So maybe a negative five. Aftershocks were making my fingers curl into twitching claws. I hurt all over. My fever was a billion degrees. I doubted I would be able to keep down water right now.
Am I dying? I thought slowly, draped all over Rhea.
Maybe?
Was my very first illness actually going to take me out?
Lame.
I tried to straighten, but from the way her hands hovered, purposeless around my shoulders, I wasn't doing a good job. I knew I was swaying in place, taking deep breaths to try to scrounge up some strength.
I opened my mouth to apologize for throwing up on her -
And then pressed my lips together when my stomach launched a surprise attack, sending a rush of burning bile to the back of my throat. Rhea's expression scrunched up in sympathy as she pressed a cool hand against my burning forehead. It took the edge off of the nausea, letting me swallow it back down.
"Easy, now," Rhea said softly as that smokeless fire swirled around the hand on my head. "Don't push yourself."
I leaned into that hand.
I knew she was trying to help me.
I knew that.
I still felt the heady rush of a greedy, molten tug in my gut as my stomach painfully snapped at her, like a starving dog offered a treat going for the whole bag instead.
She gently clapped back.
I say gently (and it had to be real gentle) because if the Matriarch of Swarms actually decided to metaphysically haul off and punch me in the gut? I'm not sure there would be enough of my soul left to complain to Mom about it.
Even if it definitely felt like she just hauled off and punched me in the gut.
My stomach cratered.
I bowled over as air rushed out of me in a harsh cough that was followed by a torrent of searing hot liquid iron. My hand flew to my mouth, because I didn't want to throw up on her again, but I couldn't hold it back.
I coughed again. Bright red blood dribbled through my fingers.
Oh.
Fuck.
I really am dying.
"Ah," Rhea said after a moment.
Then she picked me up.
Pain suddenly lanced down my back over my shoulder blades. My stomach was stitched shut into a cold ball of ice. My head felt like it had just spun right off my neck and some part of me, hurt and scared, lashed out like a dumbass.
I felt like I had just snapped a tripwire holding a ton of concrete blocks over my head.
The hairs on the back of my neck quivered as Rhea slowly raised an eyebrow at me. The hum of a thousand gossamer wings buzzed in the back of my head as I felt a rumble travel my bones, like something massive had just shifted right underneath my feet. The floors and walls of the unassuming light blue bungalow home actually buckled with just the threat of Rhea paying attention to me.
Attention I did not want!
At all.
I went limp like a puppy held up by the scruff.
"That's what I thought," the former Queen of the Gods snorted. "You're adorable."
I was never going to get any respect on this Quest.
Her home shifted around us as she took a step, transporting us from the guest room to the living room. The living room looked a bit better from earlier with my and Apollo's help. It was more blank, with the piles of newspapers and photo albums and collections of fine china mostly packed away into their cardboard boxes. The sewing table with the ruler attached to it and folded bolts of cloth and sewing machine was still there and so was the randomly placed ratty sofa, looking as if someone had just dropped a piece of doll house furniture into the room. Like every room in her house, there were lions. A pair was lounging on some flat boxes before a recliner chair.
Rhea slammed the door shut behind her with her foot.
Someone squawked in surprise.
"Wha - oh." That someone sounded a lot like Artemis. But, uh, she's currently a rabbit so it can't be her. I inclined my head, trying to take a look. "Is - what happened to him?"
"Domain sick," Rhea answered absently as she bumped one of her curious lions away with her hip. "Probably."
What?
Was that bad or do I just have a god cold?
I was set down into the blissfully cool reclining chair. Was this real leather? I burrowed into it as much as I could. Rhea tossed a feather-light sky blue duvet decorated with rainbows over me. My arm was immediately nudged by an ice-cold cat nose. Just flopping my hand on top of the fluff so I could pet the lion laying his head on my armrest was exhausting.
'Who's a good boy?' I mouthed at the lion, because my stomach was threatening to rebel if I put any more effort into it. He gave me that deadpan look cats do so well, but clearly the scritches were worth more than his pride.
Rhea flapped her hands in my direction, sending the bangles around her wrists clicking. "A real downer, but he can tough it out, I think."
"What?" The Artemis-sound-alike said blankly.
I felt like asking that too.
But I was just too strung out.
Miserable.
Thinking was hard.
The second lion shuffled a bit closer. A female, since she didn't have a mane, and there was a small auburn rabbit perched on her head as both of them stared at me.
I blinked, hard.
Nope.
Rabbit is still there.
Wow.
My fever must be bad.
The lioness huffed and actually rolled its eyes at me.
Rhea was already turning away, folding my Celtic shirt into a neat square with my jeans slung over her shoulder. I looked down at myself and weakly picked at the black silk chiton she replaced my clothes with. The blood on my hands was gone too.
I hadn't even felt her do it.
Come to think of it, I hadn't felt Nemesis swipe our train tickets either.
Mom graduated me from my Sensitivity lessons with a D- and just didn't want to tell me I sucked, apparently.
"What?" the rabbit said again and I could feel my eyes try to pop out of my head. The rabbit's nose was twitching, and it's mouth was moving a little, but it was more like the voice was being thrown into my ears rather than actually coming from it.
"Domain sickness," Rhea repeated, turning to the animals with raised eyebrows. She tossed my clothes into the air where they vanished. "You…do know what that is - "
"I know what it is!" The bunny snapped. "Why - he is mortal. That is not possible - "
"Ha!" It was Rhea's turn to cut the bunny off with a harsh bark of laughter. Her compound eyes shimmered blood red for a second, before settling back into emerald green. "And who are you," the Matriarch of Swarms asked slowly. There was ice in her voice and something more than a little cruel. "Has Selene's chariot gone to your head, that you would tell me what is and is not possible, child?"
The rabbit shrunk back.
Selene's chariot?
"Artemis?" I rasped in disbelief.
I saw that same disbelief mirrored in the rabbit's eyes as her head snapped towards me.
She was missing my jacket.
Maybe it was in the laundry. Blood and seawater are hell on fabrics.
"How - ?" She swung back to Rhea. "Are you - ?"
"No," Rhea hummed as she paced along the walls of the room, trailing symbols glowing with her smokeless fire along the paisley wallpaper. I could almost read them, like I had learned the language a long time ago and if I just thought about it for a few more minutes, it would all come rushing back. It's got to be some form of Greek, right?
"It seems he doesn't need help to speak, unlike you," she said, stepping over some of the boxes and around the easel in the corner. "Either he received leave or he is strong enough to resist."
What?
I searched the room with aching eyes until I found the window. My breath caught as my stomach twisted uncomfortably. Underneath the bamboo blinds and behind the glass was an abyss. I couldn't see even an inch beyond the walls of the house.
It was still Night.
I wanted to believe I'd only been Dreaming for an hour. Time is weird in the Dreamlands, right? A thousand years could pass in five minutes if you were unlucky. Wilhelm loses track all the time.
But I knew better.
"Strong enough - of course," the rabbit spat, her disbelief turned to anger. "Even now Fate mocks me. A boy I refused and her own personal perversion of divinity, her spawn."
My head pounded. "I'm not - "
"Save your lies for someone who would believe it!" Artemis snarled. Her ears were pinned back against her head, auburn fur bristling. "You think I did not notice how easily you shed your humanity when in danger?" But I - "Stop pretending! I do not require your pity!" The bunny was nearly hyperventilating. "What did you want from - "
The lioness tossed the rabbit off her head.
I bit my tongue as Artemis hit the beige carpet hard, rolling once before her former perch placed a heavy paw on her back.
I don't understand.
Was this about - about what I said on the beach?
"Ata…" the bunny squeaked, betrayed.
"Atalanta," Rhea said softly as she traced the windowsill with a burning finger. "Take her back to her room, if you would. And keep her there, until she decides to behave." The lioness obediently dropped its head, picking up the small woodland creature up within its massive jaws.
Artemis went very, very still between those teeth.
I don't blame her.
I turned to my lion buddy. If that was Atalanta, then was this one her dumbass boyfriend? Apollo said there was an IQ threshold and anyone that went out of their way to piss off a god just to get their rocks off fell far below it.
Can't argue with that.
I tilted my head questioningly.
He chuffed under my hand and then licked the leather arm rest. I gave him a narrow eyed look back.
Maybe not.
"But - " Artemis protested weakly.
Rhea turned away from her designs to regard the room with a cool look. She retraced her steps back around the room as the lioness padded to the door, rabbit in mouth.
"I - Grandmother, why - " The rabbit wiggled a little, prompting the lioness to pause.
"You disappoint me," was the simple reply. Rhea checked her work, completely dismissive. This wasn't Apollo's groovy grandmother speaking. This was the Queen. "I will not tell you how to treat your nephew, the son of Hermes," the boy Artemis said she refused. Luke. What did that mean? When did that even happen? "But this one is my cousin. You forget yourself."
That sparked a warm, fuzzy feeling in my chest that had nothing to do with my fever.
My cousins were awesome.
"It's okay," I croaked at Rhea. "I'm not offended."
In return, she tilted her head in my direction, but didn't spare Artemis a look. "But I am."
Ouch.
The rabbit blanched as the lioness trotted out of the room and the silence was allowed to hang for a moment.
I shifted in my recliner.
That had -
That had probably been about what I said on the beach.
'If he dies, you die.'
Now that I didn't have Luke's blood on me, I felt a little ashamed about threatening Artemis like that.
Because I knew Dad would be.
I guess I'm more like my mother than I thought.
"I had - " I began, trying to explain what the problem was. More for Rhea's sake than Artemis'. "On the beach, I - "
"I heard," Zeus' mother murmured. "As was your right."
"What?" I blurted out and regretted it as my head spiked with pain. My stomach roiled. This was her granddaughter we were talking about, an Olympian. "But I'm just - " The Queen of the Titans looked at me. The words 'a demigod' died in my mouth. I looked down at my hands again, half-expecting them to be painted red with my blood. "It was too far."
"Was it?" Rhea gently shooed my lion buddy away as she took a seat on the couch beside me. She reached for the table that hadn't been there a second ago to pick up a glass of water that also hadn't been there earlier. She passed it to me with a quiet, "Slowly."
I took a cold sip. It hurt going down.
"You have no idea what her punishment means, do you?" She asked.
"She's mortal," I said.
And a rabbit.
Maybe there was something more to it than Mom's terrible sense of humor?
Rhea blew out a breath like she was banishing the Titan Queen from the room. "Rabbits." She paused. My heart sank. "Rabbits are a species that do not need disease or starvation to turn to cannibalism."
She said it so easily.
Like it was an interesting factoid she read about in a magazine one day and not something she had personal history with.
My stomach twisted. I put the cup down.
Rhea studied me for a moment. "A mother rabbit when frightened, overwhelmed and… sometimes for no reason at all, will kill and eat her newly born young."
Artemis was the goddess of Childbirth.
All of her Names regarding children…
I felt like someone had just jabbed me in the throat. I could almost see Luke's wry grin and equally wry, 'What symbolism! Apropos, isn't it?'
If anyone could pass judgment on a god for - for dereliction of duty…
It would be Fate.
"Her transformation is an open invitation," Rhea continued, running a hand through her dark hair. "Fate's a bit unglued, this is the culprit, real 'will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest' energy, except they might actually be rewarded for it."
Like a pirate's black spot complete with a bounty.
A mark for death.
I wasn't stupid all the time.
My sisters, the Fates, gave Artemis that Domain just like they gave Apollo his Prophecy. They should have stepped in sooner. The Domains they grant are their responsibility. And if they slack off, our mother was the Supreme Court.
Which usually meant they could do whatever they wanted.
This was thousands of years in the making, and would have continued for thousands more because Mom didn't really care. I knew she would have continued not giving a shit until I was involved. The Quest could have chosen any god. Athena would have worked, she had a War Domain. Apollo's Archery might be able to swing something. Going on a Quest with Heracles or Nike would have been awesome.
Hindsight let me see the trap. I was twelve. Mom gave Artemis just enough rope to hang herself.
But Artemis didn't know that.
It was her final offense.
And Mom was not a forgive and forget kind of person.
This is why Nemesis and Khione did what they did. The Quest doesn't matter. Even if we succeeded, Mom had no intention of letting Artemis make it out alive. Ever. The only thing I could use to buy her life was my boon.
And I gave that to Luke so he could help me help her survive.
No wonder she didn't answer any of my pleas.
This is what fighting Fate feels like.
Like shit.
"Does she know?" I whispered.
"The former goddess of the Forest and all the wildlife within it, rabbits included," Rhea reminded me gently. There was that soft, pitying look again. "Fate was not subtle, not this time."
Yeah.
She knows.
I was going to ask if Zeus knew, but honestly, who cares if he knew the difference between 'probably will die' and 'definitely will die' when he made her go anyway.
Fuck him.
"But you - " I started, before I realized I was dumb. There were rules. If Erebus got in serious trouble, I couldn't do anything either. It'd have to be Mom. Real old school hierarchy setup, but. Gods. "You can't do anything."
Fuck.
I didn't let myself think about abandoning Artemis for too long, because I swore to give Luke my boon for helping me protect her. As long as Luke was onboard, I couldn't be seen trying to renege on it by sabotaging his efforts, because I swore I would.
Luke almost died.
Asking him to give up now?
The Styx was always watching.
I -
I think I fucked myself over.
The star-spawn paused and pinned me with a hard look that made my spine tingle.
"Can't?" She questioned me, deliberately light as she leaned her chin on a hand, propped up on the couch arm rest. "Not won't?"
"Uh," I said, taken aback. "Isn't the Pit - "
"Father still sleeps, yes," Rhea nodded.
Oh phew, I was worried for a second there.
"And you wouldn't ask your mom to petition my mom," I reasoned out loud. "Because…a lot of reasons?"
"Plenty," she drawled, amused.
Like I said, Rhea was loyal.
The Earth Mother hadn't been.
And also holds one hell of a grudge.
"So…"
"I do wonder what your mother has in mind for you," she said instead with iridescent compound eyes as she leaned in and flicked my nose with a finger. "You are just as right as you are wrong."
Um.
"I am not able to intercede on my granddaughter's behalf before the god within Fate, because that would never be an option." Huh? "I could only do that if Artemis was not Young." Her lips tugged into that almost smile she had when she heard my Prophecies. "And if I was not using the Name Rhea."
Oh.
God within Fate.
She means Mom's original Name. The First Name.
The Names of an Elder God were more like avatars. Sockpuppets. Mom calls them Masks, you get the idea. They are always there, but drawing attention to that is stupid and probably wouldn't end well. You gotta know what you're doing. They are probably using that Name for a reason, like not wanting to kill you by proximity damage and, if they're anything like Mom, also wouldn't appreciate the game being ruined.
So be polite and call them by their preferred pronouns.
There you go. Elder God Etiquette 101.
Elderquette.
"Qetesh can, perhaps, on the behalf of Selene's successor," Rhea said thoughtfully and the buzzing, humming undertone in her voice slid through my bones with hollow knives. You couldn't see the difference in her eyes, but you could feel it. Elder Gods were always there.
Even when asleep and Dreaming.
Especially when Dreaming.
"Athirat, maybe," she mused. "Or - ah, Cybele."
And I -
I was going to throw up again.
Rhea breathed in a sharp breath and the pressure disappeared. "Man. You are…hella sensitive, aren't you?"
"I - " I swallowed hard and nearly regretted those sips of water. "I don't think so?"
"More sensitive than Dionysus was, for sure," she said. Sections of the fiery writing on the walls of the room lit up and changed around, casting an eerie light on the cardboard boxes and the vine pattern in the beige carpet. "I'll keep that in mind. Don't worry, I'll have you back right cherry in a bit."
My head was spinning.
Was she just talking about demigod Dionysus in general or was he sick too when she met him?
"If I'm sick, then maybe Apollo - " I tried.
She shook her head. "The absolute last thing you need is more divine energy anywhere near your soul, hun."
That didn't sound great.
"Besides, he is of the sun." Her lips ticked up in a mirthless smile as she glanced at the dark window pointedly. "He is likely occupied."
I nodded weakly.
"Domain sick?"
"A failed apotheosis," she explained in words that made no sense, because she was talking about me. "Overextended divinity, so much so that it starts changing things." She crossed her arms and legs, absently. "And burning other things for fuel." Like mortality. "But you didn't have enough to keep it up."
"Oh," I whispered.
"Yeah, 'oh.'" She clucked her tongue. "If that's not what happened, whatever you did is close enough. Don't do it again. You might shatter."
Like Aphrodite did.
Rhea waved it off as she stood up, almost springing from the couch. "You can recover, one hundred percent. It's a drag, but burn out is temporary."
Breaking, not so much.
If it was, Aphrodite would be whole.
I guess that made more sense. I was mortal, and Artemis was surprised because she didn't know my brother gave me a boost. She thought Rhea was saying I did this to myself. I didn't. I guess Erebus did me a favor and it gave me a sugar high. This was the fallout.
The crash.
…
I probably shouldn't have eaten the sea monster.
"- this'll be your pad while you're here," Rhea was saying as I regretted every decision I made last night. "Bathroom is that door, kitchen is this door, boob tube - " a large flat screen TV appeared on the wall opposite me, complete with a flare of the writing on the wallpaper and a remote on the couch arm rest by me. I don't want to know why the television has a name like 'boob tube.' The 60s were weird.
"Sleep in the chair."
"And the…" I waved a weak arm at the walls.
"Suppressors," Rhea said bluntly. Like my room at Camp Half-Blood. "Keeps the ambience in check so I don't off you by accident. The excess has to go somewhere because I don't want you poppin' off, freaking out and blowing yourself up, you dig?"
That's fair.
"Gimme some skin if you understand, lil' cuz," she held out a hand. I grinned as I gave the Titan Queen a high five. The warm and fuzzies were back. Lil cuz. I could get addicted to meeting relatives that wanted me in their family tree. And weren't jerks. "Far out," she grinned back, all teeth. She ruffled my hair. "I wish your mother told me about you," she said wistfully. "I missed babysitting sprogs."
"I threw up on you," I quipped faintly.
"'Teia and Aether did the same. Weak stomachs," she quipped back with a sage nod. "Plagues all your mom's kids."
…the last time the Stele household heard from Aether, he was sleeping off the indigestion that came from eating a cold gas giant in the Boomerang Nebula.
Weak stomachs?
"Oy," I grunted.
She made a raspberry sound. "Just shout if you need anything. You're family, I'll hear you."
That fired a few of my neurons.
"That's why you heard Luke?" I asked quietly.
"That dropout?" Rhea blinked. "Nah, he - " She tilted her head, pausing. "He caught my attention."
A small lion cub darted into the room, looked around with big, blue eyes and then ran out again. His sibling tumbled in after him and decided to stay, trotting over to Rhea who picked her up and tucked her underneath her arm.
"Your voice might go away in an hour or two," she tossed out as she made her way to the door that led to the kitchen, tickling the cub underneath the chin. "But don't be surprised if it doesn't - " Rhea hesitated. This strange expression I couldn't read scrunching up her nose and brow. "Demigod."
The door shut behind her.
"'Kay," I whispered.
I lasted maybe three minutes sipping water before I figured out that I had no idea what you're supposed to do when sick. I don't think taking care of Dad when he had a bit too -
Oh shit, Dad!
I flung my hand out for my backpack. Hauling it up onto my lap left me feeling like I'd run a marathon, but I found my phone and money purse.
"Oh Iris, goddess of the Rainbow, please accept my offering." I fished out a gold drachma and tossed it into the enchanted rainbow.
The coin bounced on Rhea's beige carpet.
A lump lodged itself in my throat as the small rainbow silently hung in the air in front of me.
Right.
It's still Night.
She's…probably busy.
I swiped my thumb across the hieroglyph and the rainbow faded. I bit my lip and tried not to think about how Mom was too angry to think about me.
There was a chime, like someone just rang Rhea's doorbell.
A rainbow flickered in front of my face.
My heart leapt as an image appeared in it and then I regretted it when said image nearly burned out my eyeballs.
There was a giant coruscating flashing neon lights thing made of spinning discs, like someone had taken the idea of an astrolabe and a rave party and not only built a ten sided starfish out of it, but decided to glue golden butterfly wings to its back for good measure. It was bright, spitting sparks of blue lightning and looking at it did not do my head any favors.
"Oh crap!" The starfish said and then it was a person.
A gold butterfly winged…gorgon…mermaid…person standing before absolutely massive ebony wood and silver doors etched with art-deco, framed in a pitch black metal that matched my Stygian Iron dagger.
She had thin sea-green tentacles for hair lashing about a sharp featured emotionless face that looked more like a shark than a human, with sharp scales, fluttering gills and dappled patterns that slithered across her form. She glowed like a humanoid firefly and her three eyes were those spinning rings of neon colors.
"You - are fine." For a moment, her look changed again to a dark haired human woman with the gold butterfly wings and a shimmering tie dye toga with a silver shawl, but then she seemed to change her mind and just stayed fishy. Her hair-tentacles pointed at me. "You're Hypnos' little buddy, aren't cha?" she asked in a burbling, watery voice. "My bad, I assumed only gods would be able to call me."
She said it matter-of-factly, but I still felt like there was a question.
"Sorry," I said quickly. "I know you're busy. I just wanted to check up on my father."
She glanced back at the closed doors. "Yeah, I got a moment. Remind me who he is?"
"Dorian Stele, Manhattan."
There was a beat of silence and then she shook her head. "I'm sorry, those are some nasty wards around him and at least half of them are Mr. Apollo's. I probably could punch through them - "
"That's okay," I breathed, feeling like a weight had been lifted off my chest. Dad's fine. "I can talk to him later, just wanted to know he's okay."
Amphitrite's first cousin inclined her head. "Anyone else?"
I thought about it. I could call Camp Half-Blood? I don't know what to say though, besides 'not dead yet, but not for lack of trying.' I sure as hell wasn't going to spill the beans on Ares having the Master Bolt. Clarisse and Mark and Ryan of Ares Cabin were kind of friends. It would make them pariahs overnight.
Telling the Hunters about Artemis would just be cruel.
Hypnos was at his Mom's house, Sam had been sick and tired of my shit when I left and I doubt Iris could reach the Dreamlands anyway, I can just pray to Apollo and everybody else…
Wasn't Greek.
"Not unless you're doing cross-pantheon again."
She made a bubbling sound. "Not for another seven years, unfortunately."
I did the math.
It physically hurt.
"What happens in 2012?" I asked slowly.
That got me a wide shark toothed grin.
"Nothing!" Iris chirped.
Should I be worried?
I feel like I should be at least a little concerned.
…I'll worry about it after my Prophecy is up.
"Now, you really need to detox," the Messenger Goddess of the Rainbow lectured. "Water's nice," she pointed at my glass. "But green tea. Or lemon water. Eat lots of fruit, brown rice and some asparagus and kale, oh! Greek yogurt really helps cut down on the repeats and honestly? Go Vegan. I swear by it."
The rainbow blinked out.
Butch's mom…
…is odd.
I dialed Cliff next.
The high pitched squealing only sounded for a second before he picked up.
"You're fucking alive!" Was the first thing he said. "Now is this crap your fault or no? I have a bet riding on this."
That was the second thing my best friend said.
"Seriously?" I deadpanned.
"Absolutely."
"Cliff."
"Hey man, last thing I heard, you were asking about an experimental prototype teleport function because of the Rhamnousia and who's her mom again?"
The Night.
Even the Egyptians knew that messing with her kids was a game of Russian Roulette.
"This isn't my fault," I protested.
"Damn."
Just feel the love.
"How are you talking, by the way? We've got the Nome warded up the ass - "
"I'm…" I looked around my new 'pad' in Rhea's house. The lettering on the walls shimmered. "Someplace that's warded too."
"Cool. Stay there."
I rolled my eyes, even though he couldn't see it. "Duh."
"Just saying."
"This has nothing to do with Nemesis." I dragged us back on topic. "Her mom just…thought I was interesting a while back?" I didn't know how else to explain it. "And my mom…just found out and didn't like it?"
"So it is your fault!" Cliff said triumphantly.
In the background, someone swore colorfully. I could hear the thuds of frantic footfalls leave the room.
Guess I was on speakerphone.
"I didn't do anything!"
"If you didn't exist, would this be happening right now." He said it like he already knew the answer.
Because he did.
"That's not fair!"
"Yeah, so, two of them. At the same time. Just - "
"Blame my mother?" I offered.
"Oh, I will." Cliff made a whining noise. "I've been up for over twenty four hours thanks to someone calling me at unholy hours for random bullshit and then that same someone - "
"Oh my god, I get it! I'm sorry!"
"Yeah, yeah." I heard the rustling of paper. "But…look, I know you're on an errand for the Greeks, but if you get the chance - maaayyybeeee stop by? It's your birth mother. And Houy will vouch for you."
"Really?" I felt my stomach sink. "I'm Greek. In an Egyptian Nome."
That hasn't happened for…
A long time.
Cliff sighed. "Yeah."
"How bad is it?"
"Not as bad as it could be!"
That…really wasn't saying much.
"I mean, we're still panicking," he continued. "Have you seen the news?" He asked, like I wasn't on a cross country road trip for Olympus. With a time limit. "There's a bunch of people dying in their sleep and the White House press conference was held on a fucking whiteboard and passed notecards because people can't make noise. No one really knows what to do. The last time was before the House stuffed the gods into a fridge."
"That was kind of a shit decision." I sniffled as my stuffy nose got a little unstuffed by starting to run and dug a packet of kleenex out of my backpack.
Something about said shit decision was also giving me a fucking wild sense of deja vu.
Something about gods in a fridge.
'Don't." Cliff sighed again. "I've been hearing that from a dozen different people using different words and three different Egyptian dialects - " his voice picked up. "For the past twenty four hours! That I've been up - "
"Bye, Cliff," I said.
"Because someone - "
He was laughing when I hung up.
My friends.
Are just the worst kind of people.
I spent a little bit playing Golden Sun on my Gameboy and nibbling on a plate of flat bread and feta cheese that came out of nowhere. I did watch the news for a bit. He was right. It was all writing.
And I'm dyslexic.
A few lions wandered in and out of my room, like they were just checking to see if I was still miserable.
I was.
Just to make it clear how much this god flu was fucking me up, it took me another fifteen minutes before I realized: Rhea could not petition the god within Fate. But she never actually said she can't do anything for Artemis.
Or if she even wanted to.
I fell asleep at one point.
I think Rhea enchanted my chair without telling me, because the Dreaming part of my soul, what Cliff would call the ba, stayed put. Snugly tucked away in my mortal coil.
That was okay.
I understood.
Dreams aren't real, anyway. Not mortal ones. Not where it counts.
That's why they're called Dreams.
ExNihilo
SPACE!
- Location
- USA
- Pronouns
- He/Him
Rhea is really good at this.
Always good in any case, but it's preferred proper nouns in this instance, right?
I am surprised more people aren't comparing him to Dionysus. Born technically mortal, lots of powerful ancestry, it's a good comparison, but I suppose comparing him to Dionysus while the god of wine was around has it's own flaws.
Let's add planet killer to the power level feats, huh? It was assumed, but it's good to get confirmation of the scales we're working with.
Given 'as bad as it could be' has an upper bound that is probably not expressible in mortal consciousness, that isn't saying much, huh?
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Both. Percy's Mom is a shapeshifter and it's not like he's the only one with a shape shifter parent that flips genders whenever or has an Eldritch parent with any or every gender. It's mostly an anachronistic tongue-in-cheek reference that's actually true in story lol.
- Location
- france
- Pronouns
- He
Percy is a man after my own heart and as the author, you have my thanks for this reference.
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Man, I fucking loved Golden Sun, 1 and 2. Underrated games, imo.
- Pronouns
- They/Them/Their
Golden Sun 3 is also pretty good, but it sorely needs a fourth entry in the series.