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

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On Borrowed Time
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    • An Undertow of Sand
    A PJO Fanfiction    ​


    "I see why you like the Christian god," Luke said eventually.

    At some point, he must have gotten tired of failing at Harvest Moon on my Gameboy Advance (don't ask) because he had the small Bible propped up on Artemis' back as she snored away on Greyhound's cheap overnight pillow. If you told me two weeks ago that Artemis would take a nap on Luke of her own free will, and that he would let her after grumbling a bit, of his own free will, I would have thought you were either crazy or had my mother's sense of humor.

    Or both.

    "He actually tells his demigods what to do sometimes," he finished thoughtfully.

    "Uh," I said. "Demigods as in plural?" I had to stop myself from looking over at him, because I was trying not to get killed by a zombie in my own game. "I'm pretty sure it's just Jesus?"

    "Nah," Luke said easily. I heard him turn the page. "I would bet my sneakers Moses was his too."

    "That guy is Cliff's role model," I threw out there.

    Not because it was important or anything. My brain tended to take a subject and just run with it through everything remotely related and when I was distracted, all of that came out of my mouth. And I was distracted because this game's whack-a-mole combat was the most cursed version of First Person Shooter I have ever seen. You know that game at carnivals and malls where there's this slider constantly moving back and forth and you have to smack the button to make it stop on the mark?

    That's how I'm shooting zombies.

    I hope someone was fired.

    "Your friend, the monster looks up to a hero?" Luke asked, just to be sure. "..that's still weird, by the way."

    I shrugged. "Moses was the greatest Magician on record - " and those records weren't buried because it turns out when you get your pharaoh, your gods and your entire organization humiliated by a former prince of Egypt turned hobo, people notice. "- with the worst fashion sense. Very melodramatic, but good dude."

    "I refuse to believe he was a random unrelated schmuck," Luke declared. "There's no way."

    "Hey, don't judge every god by Olympic standards," I pointed out. In Greek mythology, everybody was related to somebody. A lot of the time, that somebody was Zeus. Because Zeus, but he definitely wasn't the only one showing up in hero's family trees and Olympus played favorites like whoa. "Just because Moses kicked a lot of ass doesn't mean - "

    Hold up.

    Doesn't it, though?

    Egyptian Magicians had pharaohs, incarnations of a god in their lineage.

    It was the reason my Magician status went from You're Kidding, Right? to Oh, Shit.

    Because Mom had an Egyptian Name.

    As far as I knew, it was Egyptian legacies or bust for their kind of magic. Even Cliff wouldn't get anywhere if it hadn't been for Anubis way back when. Moses was a prince of Egypt and his brother a pharaoh, but he'd been adopted.

    And he still tore the entire House of Life a new one.

    Shit.

    Was it heresy or blasphemy if I said that maybe Luke had a point?

    I wasn't what you'd call devout by any stretch of the imagination. I only went to mass when I was visiting my grandparents. The holidays were nice, I never remembered Lent and this one time I prayed to Lucifer for some help. The Roman one. If that helps. Or maybe it doesn't. Maybe there's two of them?

    I would not recommend it.

    The Morningstar is a prick.

    Mom came first, but the Big G was always just kind of - okay, so 'backup plan' sounds really bad and I don't mean it the way you're thinking. It should be obvious by now that I'd follow Mom's lead into a lot of shit and it should be really obvious right now that she was perfectly willing to let me do that. Telling me what it was all for and who or what she wanted me to be was clearly not a priority. A kid can get really turned around. You know what a pole star is, right? It always points north, no matter how lost you get.

    I like to think that maybe God doesn't mind.

    "So I need to introduce you to my grandmother," I said blankly as I looked over, feeling a bit overwhelmed.

    Luke glanced at me with a raised eyebrow. "Your grandmother?"

    "It'll be great. She knows a lot more than I do and you can, like, bond over wanting to punch Mom in the face," I said with a cheeky grin to make him think I wasn't totally serious.

    Except I was totally serious.

    "You gotta be quick if you want the first shot though," I continued thoughtfully. "Nana doesn't fuck around."

    Luke's eyebrows flew up.

    "Broke every bone in her arm punching Mom a few years ago," I confirmed. "She had to have surgery and still needs a wrist brace, but as far as she's concerned, worth it - shit!"

    I pouted at the pixelated bloody You Died screen on my Gameboy. Get distracted for a single second, forget everything I had just been doing. Get the main character Leon Kennedy ate by undead.

    Yay.

    I sighed as I chose to reload from the last save and then I frowned as I moved the character around a bit. What was - I didn't even remember this level - weren't there autosaves? There were no autosaves. Are you telling me that my only saves were the incredibly stingy manual ones?

    You know what?

    Resident Evil Gaiden is a dumb fucking game.

    Who bought me this?

    I put my Gameboy Color down. "How are you reading that, by the way?"

    Luke shrugged. "Got curious."

    "No, I mean, how?" I waved a hand at the tiny book and its infinitely smaller letters that even from just one seat away were giving me a headache with how they seemed to float off the pages. The neon orange book cover wasn't helping either. "Without wanting to murder yourself."

    "Oh I - " Luke paused and then he eyed the pocket Bible suspiciously, holding it a bit away from him. "...I have no idea."

    "Oh," I said too. "So, it's not one of your random powers?"

    "I - what - 'the get rid of my dyslexia' power?" Luke drawled sarcastically as he closed the book. He glanced at the sleeping passenger in front of us like he was debating tossing it back, but then I guess he changed his mind because he hurriedly stuffed it back into one of the pockets on his vest like it might bite him. "And one of my random - "

    I could see it coming, I just wasn't expecting it as he flicked my forehead.

    "Ow!"

    "You have no room to talk."

    "Okay, no." I scowled, rubbing my forehead. I don't understand. That hurt more than taking a spear handle to the head from a goddess. "You have, like, three different kinds of super-stealing, super athletics, telekinesis, super swording - "

    Luke blinked. "Super swording?"

    "Can unlock things from a distance - "

    "That's just the tele - "

    "No," I said. Throwing things with your mind was not the same thing. "Your stealth thing and do you have super speed? Could your eyes track Epona - " shit.

    Hope she wasn't paying attention to me saying her Name, because murder Romans out of nowhere would kind of suck right now. Maybe I should get out of the saying Names habit.

    Nah.

    "Like, actually see where she was at all times," I explained and then I watched Luke hesitate to answer. "You've got super speed," I said flatly. "So that's bullshit. How many fucking Names did your dad let you inherit from?"

    "That's - how many did your mother let you?" Luke hissed and that was a question I didn't even want to know the answer to.

    I was kind of curious and kind of not if there was some kind of 'official' word for what kind of demigod I was.

    Some kind of gestalt demigod?

    A mutt?

    Was it an Elder God demigod thing? Was Nyx's demigod half Norse, half Hurrian, half Greek and who knows what else?

    "This isn't about me," I said.

    "You can teleport," Luke said through clenched teeth.

    I blinked.

    "Uh, what?" I said, thrown.

    "You've gotta be - " Luke aborted throwing up his hands to hurriedly hunch over when he nearly launched Artemis off his lap. "Damn - uh, we're fine," and it was pretty funny watching him wave his hands over the rabbit like he was trying to hypnotize her. "Go back to sleep."

    Maybe he was hypnotizing her.

    Luke held his breath until the rabbit began to softly snore again.

    "This is not what I imagined happening when we left Camp," I pointed out. "You. Artemis. Just saying."

    "You're telling me," Luke said. His voice was teasing, but his smile was tight. "We've got an understanding. I tell her when she's being shit - "

    "And she tells you when you're being shit?"

    I almost winced as soon as I said it. Too soon. It's only been a couple of hours since Luke punched me for being an idiot. The bruise was long gone, but my face was still swollen a bit. I think he cracked my cheekbone.

    Luke lifted his nose into the air snootily. "Well, excuse you."

    "You both tell me when I'm being a moron again," I said with a weak smile, relieved that my mouth hadn't gotten me into trouble again. "So that's fair."

    Luke's smile loosened slowly, until it fell into a small, thoughtful frown. "I blame her brother, really."

    "Um." My eyebrows rose. "Blame him for what?"

    Don't get me wrong.

    I'm sure Apollo is guilty of a lot of things.

    "It's - " he blew out a breath and looked away. "I get that you grew up way differently, but Camp…" he trailed off as I frowned, already uncomfortable. I was now very, very aware of how differently I grew up from everyone else. "You get used to the idea that no one cares or not as much as they should and then - then there's Fred." Luke shrugged almost sheepishly. "It actually took me a bit to figure out who that was."

    I boggled. "How?"

    Blond and blue eyed idiot mystery Camper, who else could that possibly be but Apollo in 'disguise?'

    "Hard to believe," Luke said softly.

    My chest hurt.

    "Apollo's good people," I croaked.

    "And I'm…willing to entertain the thought…" Luke started haltingly. His jaw worked and the words just weren't coming out like they went against everything he stood for.

    "She swore an oath."

    "Yeah," Luke blew out quickly, relieved that I said it for him and then he grimaced. "I want to say it doesn't change anything, but it does."

    "That's not a bad thing," I ventured. "Right?"

    He tossed his head back against the bus seat hard enough to make our row rock a little, squeaking. "Ask me again after we get through this."

    "I will," I assured him.

    We fell into a comfortable silence. Luke started up his Harvest Moon save again and I dug around in my backpack for the rest of my Gameboy Color games.

    "...did I really teleport?"

    "D'you remember back right before we met Corey? Running after Artemis?" Luke asked, distracted. I nodded. "You teleported in front of me. I saw it. That's how you got there in time."

    …I did?

    I must have said that out loud because Luke nodded at me. "You did. I assumed it was hard to do, like mine."

    I looked at him in surprise. "You - ?"

    Luke grimaced. "I can…run on the wind. A bit," he said, making a vague swooping motion with his free hand like it was a kite catching a breeze. "It hurts. Chiron warned me off practicing." About fucking time that centaur was good for something. "Said only for emergencies because, get this." Luke turned towards me, sneering. "Apparently sometimes demigods inherit powers that could kill them."

    "Ye - up," I drawled. "Lucky us, right?"

    Luke snorted.

    "Two guesses who also get no warning that's a thing until after they nearly have a heart attack and the first one doesn't count." Ouch. "I was out for days," he whispered harshly. "Throwing up and with a fever and - and I thought now - now surely my father would show up, or send someone else, or give me a message telling me off for being stupid or…"

    Something, I heard in the silence.

    "That was the last straw," Luke whispered. "I gave him an ultimatum, demanded a Quest and…" Luke's eyes were shadowed. "You know the rest."

    I turned back to my Gameboy Color, convinced he was done talking about this pretty depressing topic, but I should have known better.

    Luke didn't know how to let anything go.

    "Your mom didn't teach you about your powers." He said. It wasn't a question. He just looked at me, expecting me to confirm what he already suspected.

    I didn't know I could teleport (and still not sure how. Or why) and I knew either my back or my shadow (or both?) could sprout wings, but no idea how to make that happen without Luke bleeding on me because the last time I tried, I just farted and maybe I could do something with my voice other than sound scary but who knows what -

    "No," I mumbled, my Gameboy hanging limply in my hand. "She didn't think I'd need it," I offered in her defense.

    At the time, it was a pretty good defense because Mom was that little thing called Fate, so her not seeing something coming was a big deal. But for some strange reason, when I repeated it out loud?

    Not gonna lie. It sounded pretty lame.

    Luke didn't buy it.

    Which was fair.

    I wasn't sure I bought it either.

    "I - " he breathed. "Am going to punch her so hard."

    "It's not that big a deal - " I tried.

    "Fate loses out to Hermes in parenting right now," Luke said flatly. "And he's terrible."

    I gave up.

    "Maybe we should be talking about our demigod heist," I changed the subject. "Since we're, what, an hour away from the city of Lost Wages?"

    Luke cracked a smile. "City of Lost - " He stopped, eyes going unfocused.

    "Luke?"

    He refocused. "Might be nothing." He sighed as our Greyhound bus rolled over a rough pothole or bump and Artemis stretched on her pillow, groggily waking up. "Any details on the op?"

    I grimaced and finally put my Gameboy down. I brought it up to get away from Mom's parenting skills, and it still tanked my mood down into the basement. I didn't feel like even trying to play through this conversation.

    "The Lotus Eater," I mumbled.

    "What?" Artemis stiffened, suddenly wide awake.

    "The Lotus Eater," I muttered. "Kore said entering its abode is going to cost me time." I didn't need to see Luke's face to remember that we didn't have a lot of that. "Only what I can afford," I said then too, but I was well aware that I didn't ask if she meant 'afford' as in it won't kill me or 'afford' as in our Quest's deadline, if she was actually aware the Quest was even a thing. "A little bit?"

    "Perseus," Artemis said and her voice was thick with either sleep or horror. "Even gods avoid paying the Lotus Eater's toll." Her silver eyes were wide as she sat up. "How are we supposed to escape it? Were you given - " The rabbit read the answer on my face.

    Persephone expected us to succeed without her divine help.

    I swallowed hard.

    I thought…

    That was when I realized that maybe I was better off not making any deals with anyone else for the rest of my life.

    Luke sucked on his teeth. "There's gotta be a way. Didn't - " I wondered why he stopped when Luke held up a hand with a growing, mean smirk on his face. And then he pointed at me and my stomach sank. "Pop quiz."

    Oh no.

    "Who escaped the lotus eaters in Greek myth?"

    Of all the -

    "I don't know?" I said with a shrug and innocent smile.

    Luke was unamused. "Guess."

    Crap.

    "Um." I wracked my brain. It didn't take too long, because there wasn't much in there.

    Funny.

    I meant about ancient demigods. I only knew a few names and I could count them off on one hand, a thumb and a pinky finger. Two of those were now gods, one was Apollo's dead boyfriend (he has a lot of those), Theseus, my namesake Perseus and Daedalus. I already forgot who the crashed sun chariot dude was and I still don't know who Achilles is or what he did.

    Luke never actually said.

    "O - " I started and Luke nodded encouragingly. "O…deee…?" He waved his hands in a 'come on' gesture. So I was on the right track! "Oedipus?"

    "Wait." Luke dropped his hands and his smile to look at me incredulously as Artemis snorted. "You don't know Odysseus, but you know Oedipus?"

    So I wasn't on the right track.

    "Okay, look, dyslexic and they start with the same letters," I said in my defense. Or close enough to the same letters. Don't you start - Oedipus has an extra letter, but dyslexic. "It's not my fault."

    "Where'd you even hear about Oedipus?"

    Uh.

    "Good question," I said stiffly. "It's a long story that we really don't have the time for - "

    Luke's smile was too wide and plastic looking as he leaned over me, boxing me in against the bus window. "Try me."

    "Artemis?" I called for help.

    The rabbit sighed as she huddled in her loaf on Luke's lap. "I am afraid Perseus is right."

    "Thank you."

    Her ears bounced. "Which is why he should say it in as few words as possible."

    "I hate you."

    "Out with it," Luke demanded. "Was it a Prophecy thing?"

    "There was a Proph - " shit. "Uh, sure, yeah, duh, of course. Gotta make sure I know all about those…"

    My party members silently stared at me.

    I groaned and copied Luke by throwing my head back against the back of my seat. I palmed my face with both hands and felt like sinking right into the floor. Have you ever been put on the spot like this, your friends both looking at you expectantly waiting to hear about that time you escaped the house wearing no underwear and your pants on your head as a kid? And it's all 'haha I was a dumb kid' whenever your grandmother brings it up, but when faced with telling someone else, it suddenly feels like you should be surprised you could even breathe without instructions?

    I think this was revenge for the Pit thing.

    "Okay, so, you're not telling anyone else, got it?" I ordered.

    Luke crossed an x over his heart.

    I rolled my eyes. I didn't ask Artemis, because between this Quest and Apollo, I've got mountains of dirt on her. "Okay, so, I must have been five or six - no five." Apollo had just arrived, so it had to be right after I turned five. "And my parents, well Dad, went all out on their engagement party."

    "Your parents are married?" Luke cut in.

    "Yeah?"

    Pure disbelief and what looked uncomfortably like awe was on his face.

    I cleared my throat.

    "And that's great and all, but I was five and no one told me what was happening."

    I don't think it was really anyone's fault there. Dad and I were…not and Mom was literally older than marriage as a concept.

    "So I ask and my father explains that he and Mom are getting married and what that means and I was like, but, Mom." I widened my eyes dramatically in an incredulous look. "You could do so much better."

    Luke made a strange huffing sound that was probably an aborted laugh.

    I waved my hands. "I spent the rest of that fucking dinner trying to change her mind."

    I love my father, but I didn't always and he's still kind of a loser. Yeah, sure, corporate lawyer, but also super nerd and if Mom hadn't picked him, I don't know if he would have ever gotten a girlfriend.

    "So I'm there tossing out a bunch of Names she could marry instead like 'whatever Time did so that you guys broke up, I'm sure he's sorry' - " and the Shiva suggestion was Dead on Arrival and I was still a little butthurt about it. Who wouldn't want my mother? Assholes, that's who. " - and Dad's super bummed and everybody else is laughing - " And five year old me hated being laughed at. "And I'm like 'Mom, don't do this!'"

    I threw up my hands.

    "I'll marry you!"

    "Phhhhhhhbbbbt!" Luke cracked.

    Loud, right from the belly laughs came out of him drowning out Artemis' snickers and making other passengers in the bus turn their heads. The laugh creased up his entire face.

    "I was five!" I protested as he dropped his face into his hands, still chuckling.

    Mom had been of negative help during all this, by the way. Did you know the Earth Mother had kids with her own kids Ouranos and Phanes?

    I wish I didn't.

    "It gets worse."

    "Nooo," Luke moaned.

    "Yup," I popped the 'p'. I pointed at Artemis and the rabbit had the sense to look alarmed. "Your dumbass brother told me to marry one of my sisters instead."

    According to Apollo, going after your mom was tasteless, but your aunt is fine.

    Do not look at me.

    Gods are gonna god.

    "And Mom's like 'that is such a bad idea' - "

    I'm talking full on Quantum Stupid face and maybe a little PTSD. That's when I learned three of them tried to abort me, tried again with a Pit Scorpion two years ago and the last one would kill me just by proximity.

    "So then - heh, then I ask - " I started cracking up too, because Luke's snort giggling was infectious and now that it was out there, it was actually hilarious. "So I ask Apollo if he has any spare sisters - " I flapped my hand obnoxiously and put on an exaggerated Valley Girl accent. "Like, wasn't there, like, this huntress chick?"

    That set Luke off again.

    Artemis looked like she regretted everything.

    Good.

    I don't know how much of that stupidity was responsible for the crush later, but you know how that went. Saying it crashed and burned would be an understatement.

    "And that's how I learned about Oedipus," I finished. "Any questions? I am here all week."

    "How are you still alive?" Artemis asked tiredly.

    She was right to ask. Apollo had something of a reputation regarding Artemis' would-be boyfriends. By that I mean he was well known for skipping the shovel talk part and going right to the digging a shallow grave part.

    "Mom was right there and I'm adorable." Probably more of one than the other, but who cares?

    Not me.

    "Eh heh, eh heh heh." Luke was having trouble breathing.

    "Lotus eater," I offered.

    "Right," he wheezed into his hands. "Lotus eater."

    "Odysseus did not escape," Artemis said quickly, clearly eager to move on for reasons that escape all of us, I'm sure. "He was never caught in the first place. It used to rely on lotus fruit to ensnare its victims. People could choose to not partake. They could drag others away."

    "And now?" I asked, my good mood draining away.

    "It joined the 21st century," she replied dryly. "A place of recreation that exacts the toll the moment you step within. Mortals enter. They do not leave."

    I bit my lip.

    That was going to be a problem.

    "Time…" she murmured. Artemis' ears wiggled thoughtfully then as she tilted her head left, then right as she stared at me. "And Kore listened to you. You had her attention. The deal was with you."

    There was a ball of ice in my stomach.

    "What?"

    I wasn't sure I wanted to understand what she was saying. Whatever it was, Luke had caught on. He finished wiping the tears from his eyes as he asked, "Houston?"

    "What?"

    "You were aware during a time stop," Artemis said, her voice low and I remembered the possessed body of the mercenary Torus, and the ticking fractal patterns in her eyes before she stole Luke's…steal.

    Luke was still mad about that.

    "There are minor gods unable to replicate such a feat," Artemis said and that made me blink, because that -

    That didn't sound right.

    "I couldn't do anything though?" I said thickly.

    "And he's not going in alone," Luke nearly snapped at her.

    Artemis' ears fell as she curled into herself and I knew that she was right. I offered to make a deal and Persephone answered. Luke and Artemis hadn't even been on her radar. If I hadn't said anything, we might have just fell.

    "Actually," I said miserably. "I think I am."

    Luke's head snapped towards me. "No - "

    "You went into that school alone because you're the thief," I said and watched him grit his teeth.

    "That's not the same - "

    "Isn't it?"

    Isn't it?

    "If I don't get out in time, you can just come get me," I said quietly. "Right?"

    Luke's face scrunched into an angry neutral, but then it slowly softened out of it into something determined and sad. "I'll come get you."

    The rest of the bus ride passed by slowly, like I was the one stretching out time itself to try to make it last.

    But I was just a demigod. There was only so much I could do.

    Our bus tickets took us to a bus stop right in front of where Persephone wanted us to go. Luke and I shared a despairing look, before we grabbed our bags and got off.

    The Lotus Hotel and Casino looked like all the other buildings on the street.

    Las Vegas, Nevada had an architectural style that was timeless, remaining just as much of a tacky eyesore now as it had been five decades ago. It was like everyone had just collectively decided that movie theaters, carnivals, tasteless hotels and casinos had this one look and this place took that look and ran it right out of bounds. Purple, yellow and orange were the dominant colors, entire awnings made out of hundreds of brilliant fluorescent bulbs, the blocky fifties lettering lined in white or red light, the constant moving pictures, endless booming music, cars clogging the streets and honking horns, flashing lights everywhere demanding your attention -

    It was an ADHD nightmare.

    "I am actually getting a headache," Luke marveled. Artemis whimpered, curling down into his vest to try to save her ears.

    What no one else could see was the rippling, giant tube sticking out the top of the casino in front of us. It reminded me of an eel, or a lamprey worm or one of those nasty looking lipstick tube worms from the ocean growing out of the neon lit roof. As I stared, a contraction rippled up the tube like it had just swallowed.

    I tore my eyes away.

    I learned from Artemis that when someone said the Lotus Eater took your time, they didn't mean 'caused you to waste it.' The demigods we were after were still kids because the Lotus Eater took your time. No one could be born and no one died. You didn't age and you didn't change. You wouldn't need to cut your toenails or hair. Your body still worked, but it was like you were living the same day over and over again.

    The Lotus Eater was some ancient pre-Greek civilization's ideal of a benevolent god. You were compensated. All the distractions and entertainment you could want. All your needs met. Even if something traumatic happened to you in there, you'd quickly forget it and revert back to how you were when you first entered.

    Like blissfully happy fattened cattle.

    Two guesses on how likely anyone was going to figure out something was wrong in the first place and the first doesn't count.

    "So how long are we talking before you come in?" I asked and then I frowned. "And how bad's the time dilation?"

    "I do not know," Artemis mumbled.

    "So…six hours?" I guessed. Get in, get them, get out, right? Persephone did say finding them would be obvious…Aannnnd now I'm really hoping she didn't think my godly eyes came with actual god vision installed and could see auras. Demigods would be super obvious if I could, but I can't.

    Fuck.

    I was half-tempted to ask Mom for a refund. If Quintus was right and you could learn to see through the Mist anyway, what have my eyes really done for me lately?

    "Twelve hours?" I tried. "You gotta have some faith in me, right?"

    "Two days," Artemis said and Luke grimaced.

    Ouch.

    "I won't need two days," I said in false confidence. "Watch me."

    I marched right up to the giant neon flower entrance. The petals were lighting up in a strobe effect that made my temples pulse and the flowery air-conditioning spilling out of the glittering chrome doors did not help.

    Just inside, there was a doorman who had a friendly smile, a professional haircut and closed eyes. "Hey, aren't you going to bring your friends?"

    I looked back.

    Luke stood on the other side of the street with his purple and black backpack slung over one of his shoulders, his yellow fanny pack on his waist and a rabbit in his red vest. He raised a hand. A black SUV drove by and when it passed, he was gone.

    I swallowed. "Later, maybe."

    The doorman nodded agreeably. "Alright then, come on in!"

    The second I stepped inside, I could feel it. My vision swam and I stumbled forward, but the weird vertigo passed so quickly, I almost thought I imagined it.

    "Easy there, son," the doorman said. His smile had shrunk but his eyes were still closed. "You got a reservation?"

    "...not exactly," I said warily.

    He looked like an ordinary guy, just in a white-and-yellow Hawaiian shirt with lotus flower and watermelon designs on it, jean shorts and pink flip flops. I knew that didn't actually mean anything. Hiraya could look like an ordinary person too and my sensitivity wasn't enough to really be sure who was a monster and who wasn't. Relying on my Spidey Sense to tell me when I was in trouble had its risks.

    It only reacted to things that would kill me.

    No one could die in the Lotus Casino.

    "Well," the doorman said slowly. "If you want to stay, you're going to have to check in at the front desk."

    He pointed.

    The whole lobby was a giant game room and I'm not talking about cheesy old Pac-Man games or even the expected slot machines. It looked like an entire theme park, a water park, a carnival fair, a video game store and the New York Roosevelt Field's food court were all occupying the same space. There were even tourist attractions like rock climbing here, completely taking up one side of the ground floor and an indoor bungee-jumping bridge. As I looked around at the water slide snaking around the glass elevator, the virtual reality suits with working laser guns, wide screen TVs hooked up to every game console on the market, snack bars with little holographic flags telling you what country the food came from, my mouth hung open.

    I suddenly understood why the Lotus Eater was considered a cool dude. No wonder Hades and Night stashed their kids here. My childhood was starting to look like a missed opportunity.

    Because this was awesome.

    At the far, very far end of the lobby was a lonely looking, shadowed semi-circle desk with a blocky 1990s computer screen on it. There was a banner of a smiling woman eating a lotus fruit hanging off the edge, but there was no receptionist and I could swear the computer was black, but it looked like it was gray from dust.

    There was no way I would have even noticed the desk was there without it being pointed out.

    I turned back to the doorman. "There's no one there?"

    "There will be," he said.

    O…kay.

    With nothing better to do, I started walking.

    It turned out, walking in a straight line from the entrance to the front desk was a lot harder than it looked. The casino didn't pull any spatial shenanigans. It just took a lot of willpower to walk past all the games and fun things on both sides of the lobby. There were even a few kids around, laughing and having a great time.

    "You new?"

    I turned and saw a small black haired boy a couple years younger than me with that Mediterranean tan I had. He looked like he dressed himself in the dark with a bright pink shirt, khaki shorts and lime green flip flops.

    He had godly eyes.

    They were pure black. The only hint of white were his pupils, a pearl floating in a moonless, starless night sky. As I watched, he seemed to shift, reminding me strongly of Persephone on how he turned pale and the color of his eyes inverted to pure white like a full moon with black pupils.

    "Nico!"

    His head whipped around. "Coming, Bianca!" He shouted guiltily. He gave me a hopeful look. "You play any card games? No one else does, it's all about the telly."

    "Yeah," I said thickly. "I've got a deck too. Mythomagic, I could show you."

    He lit up.

    "Finally someone who isn't a drip!" Nico grinned, open and friendly. "I keep telling people that the old stuff is still reet killer diller and a gas to play!"

    I think I got all that?

    The 1940s was a strange place.

    I had absolutely no idea what to feel standing in front of Night's demigod son.

    I would say it looked like he was happy, safe and looked after. The kind of kid you could tell was growing up without a care in the world, but that was the problem.

    He wasn't growing up.

    Can I just…grab him and book it? I looked around. There were bellhops in tropical beachwear all over, waitresses behind the snack bar and the doorman was still by the door. "I - uh, I've been sent to get you, actually," I said quietly so I wouldn't be overheard.

    Nico looked at me like I just sprouted a second head. "Get me from where?"

    Right.

    He's been here for sixty fucking years.

    "I - "

    I almost jumped out of my skin when a large hand came down on my shoulder.

    "You're looking a little lost, buddy!" A bellhop from out of nowhere had a wide grin as he looked down at me and a necklace of flowers around his neck. His eyes were closed. "Loitering isn't allowed."

    Of course it isn't.

    "This one has got to check in first, prince," the bellhop told Nico with a soft smile. "You two can catch up later."

    "Later," Nico told me, just accepting being shooed off.

    I started walking again immediately, not wanting to give the bellhop any reason to do something drastic. The hotel was at least forty stories tall, making it much bigger on the inside than it was on the outside with every floor going up and up, lining the insides of the gullet I had seen. I had no idea how I was going to do this.

    Best case scenario, this took five minutes and Nico was right where I left him so I could tell him what was up. And then find Hades' daughter, somehow.

    I could only hope they kept some kind of guest registry.

    It was just like the doorman said. I arrived in front of an empty desk. I blinked and there was a receptionist.

    "Checking in?" She said with a bright smile with her eyes closed. Like everyone else, she was in beach clothes, a tie dye cut off shirt and a straw hat with lotus flowers on the rim.

    "Sure," I said as casually as I could. "You take Mastercard, right?"

    She laughed like that was the funniest joke in the world.

    "Good one!" She beamed. "Don't worry, we do take payment up front, but there won't be any extra charges or fees and you don't have to tip!"

    I sucked air in through my teeth.

    "Okay, so, it's not that I don't want to pay - " I just don't want to pay. "It's that I don't know how to."

    The receptionist's smile wilted. "Oh."

    There was a really awkward moment where we both just stood there.

    "You are locked up pretty tight," she said eventually, with a thoughtful purse to her lips and wrinkle on her forehead. "Can't you just relax?"

    I gave her an incredulous stare.

    Just relax?

    Really?

    "Right," she sighed, somehow seeing the look I gave her through closed eyelids. "If it were up to me, I'd give you a freebie, might help loosen those shackles you have, nothing like a little fun to make the time just pass you by!"

    I bet.

    "But I really don't want to be unmade again," she sighed for a second time.

    "Uh, yeah," I said, shifting uncomfortably. The plan I had of talking her into giving me that freebie had just evaporated. "Unmade? That's a little excessive." That doesn't mean killed. "Free samples is just good business sense."

    "Exactly!" The receptionist smiled. "You're very sweet, prince, but I shouldn't keep you." She pointed, like the doorman had earlier and there was an elevator door I completely missed somehow right by her in the wall.

    "The manager will see you now."

    The elevator door slid open smoothly with a soft chime. There was just one button to push.

    Down.

    …so what are my chances of not ending up in the Pit if I just walked out of here and asked Persephone for a do over?

    Yeah.

    I pushed the button.

    The doors closed, my stomach did that flip from the g-force of the metal carriage lurching into motion and bland elevator music started playing through the speakers. There was no indicator of how far down I was going, but I could almost feel the minutes crawl past. By the time the elevator finally stopped, my stomach felt like it was eating itself with nerves making me feel nauseous.

    The door opened and the doorman from the entrance was there.

    "Uh…"

    He smiled, eyes closed. "Well, come on then. Don't want to be late to your appointment."

    I don't think I was in Las Vegas anymore.

    The hallway past the elevator doors was made out of sunken brick, the kind of damp, moist clay of a recently flooded tunnel covered in algae and lined with the mosaic carvings of primitive people. My footsteps sounded wet, bouncing back through the hallway sounding like splashing puddles. I could see where the murals had been painted once, but the colors had long chipped away and washed out. The etchings were smooth with erosion, but the bowing figures venerating an octopus like creature were clear to see. A blooming lotus flower was carefully etched at the top of each mural, rays coming from it like it was replacing the sun.

    You wouldn't think childish cave etchings of stick figure people throwing an unlucky dude into a maze where the vague, tentacled form dwelled would be scary, but uh.

    Yeah.

    "Nice art," my mouth said.

    "Wouldn't do to forget our history," the doorman chuckled.

    "And it is history," I said. My stomach was starting to cramp. "Right?"

    "These were made thousands of years ago," he said, waving a hand at the walls we walked past.

    That wasn't what I was asking.

    "Don't you worry, prince," he said reassuringly. "The manager will just clear up this little issue you're having with payment. We have no intention of crossing your father."

    Um.

    Right.

    I kept my mouth shut. I was figuring that being told 'we won't hurt you because your dad is badass' going 'my dad's a mortal lawyer' would be pretty stupid of me.

    "Here we are."

    We stepped out of the hallway into a section that looked like it came from Waterworld. The stone was replaced with glass revealing dark water all around, a pale, almost translucent jellyfish was lazily floating along with tendrils so long they continued out of sight past the stone floor and on the other side closer to the stone doors at the end was a weird, starfish looking thing hanging on to the glass.

    "See you on the other side!"

    I looked at the doorman.

    He smiled brightly.

    I hated every bit of this. My stomach gurgled and not in the hungry kind of way. I was starting to feel like that curry I couldn't remember eating was threatening to make a great escape through my ass. The fact that the back of my neck had been completely silent through everything wasn't comforting. As I approached the doors, I saw that there was a little laminated orange plastic paper attached to the left side with duct tape saying 'Maanegr.'

    I know it was my dyslexia, but come on.

    Really     killing the vibe here.

    Beyond the doors wasn't an office. It was a giant basin of dark water in the middle of the stone floor and a giant shockingly ugly statue of something like looked almost like a prehistoric shark if it had been crossed with an octopus, tentacles with detailed toothy suckers curling off the squat main body, almost dripping with disgusting flesh rolls of fat into the air. I was glad it was made out of stone so I didn't have to see it move. There were broad fins and the whole thing looked almost curled around the giant blood red gemstone centerpiece as its long snout grinned, showing off sharp triangular shark teeth.

    There was no one here.

    Okay.

    Vibe is not dead, it is very much alive.

    "Hello?" I called out. I took a few more steps inside, trying to see if there was anything I was missing.

    Something pushed me into the water basin in the center of the room.

    I gasped, choked, tried to swim back out, but it was much deeper than it seemed. My sneakers felt like they had turned to lead, dragging me down as the light circle of the surface got further and further away no matter how hard I flailed my arms.

    I remembered the bottom of the ocean in a dream. The prickling feeling of doom approaching.

    At ease, a ponderous, deep slow voice burbled. At ease. Our lord takes only what freely flows from the faucet. You need only to turn off the spigot.

    I remembered Erebus' burning touch to my head.

    I yelled.

    The tension in my stomach snapped.

    The water exploded.​





    "Jeepers!"

    Nico leaned over our table and picked up the holographic mythic Hecate, Goddess of Magic card. It was a really pretty card, the silver film flashing all the colors of the rainbow when you tilted it towards the light. Hecate herself was a shrouded female figure on an obsidian throne with a black dog at her feet and a polecat on her shoulder. Twin torches burned at the sides of her chair. She was looking off to the side in the art, dismissive.

    She also had a whopping twenty thousand points of defense for no logical reason.

    Sure, okay, she had zero offense but that didn't mean anything because her special let you spam spell cards and trigger spell effects like they were going out of style. Every player who focused on spell cards and caster monsters wanted a Hecate in their deck, because putting her on the playing field was shorthand for,

    'Get fucked, loser.'

    Too bad getting your hands on one was going to cost you a couple grand on Ebay or your grandkids are going to be the ones with a completed Spell deck, because you're going to be opening booster packs for the rest of your fucking life.

    I'm choosing to believe Mom tossed me a bone so I wouldn't suffer, but I…

    Can't remember when.

    Christmas, maybe?

    "I didn't know cards could be so…"

    "Told you," I said smugly.

    "Now you're just gammin'." Nico rolled his monochrome eyes.

    "He's not bothering you is he?" Nico's sister Bianca swung by our little table with a pina colada looking drink, pink with sliced strawberries and a yellow umbrella sticking out the top. She had black hair like her brother, but it was more like hair, you know? Less shadow. She had black eyes too, but in the normal way. The color was confined to her irises.

    "He's fine," I said a bit sharply and Bianca flushed.

    "It's not - usually people don't want to hang out here, always have something to do or play so I'm just…" She bit her lip. "I know he talks a lot."

    Nico dropped his head.

    "But if you don't mind, then I'm glad he's found a friend," she finished with a soft smile.

    Nico's head shot up.

    "I don't mind," I said. "I'm having a lot of fun."

    Nico shifted in his seat. "Do you wanna…try out bungee jumping?"

    "You promised to teach me how to play Crazy Eights," I reminded him and I grinned.

    Nico's answering smile trembled. "Sure."

    "Awesome. Let me just get these…" I started packing away my Mythomagic deck back into their aluminum tin. There was some kind of trick of the light, or maybe a feature in her holographic card, because for a second when I picked it up, I thought Hecate turned her head to look at me.

    I put the card away with the others, feeling like I was forgetting something important.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Oh, oh shit. Percy is in biiiiig trouble this time. Cause I bet he'll be in there more than two days. Also you are nailing the existential horror in this fic.
     
    Good news: he found them!

    I mean it. This would be way, way worse if it was actively trying to hide them from him, and stall him from completing his mission. Now it's only a matter of escaping.

    The Lotus Eater seems pretty chill so far. Sure, it prevents you from accomplishing anything with your life, but you can enjoy yourself, and you clearly can form relationships. Both parts of the crossover aren't great for normies, though they aren't that bad on average. With that in mind, if you have to choose something spoopy to run afoul of, the lotus eater is probably the best one.

    It's the closest thing to heaven that exists for an atheist in-world. Remember, the afterlife you go to is whatever religion you believe in!
     
    I feel like this is going to turn out worse than it is already.
     
    I Give My Hotel A 0/5 Stars
  • Threadmarks
    • An Undertow of Sand
    A PJO Fanfiction

    ​

    Have you ever had someone tell you about a game or a movie or something and you're just like 'I have no idea what that is.' Then they tell you the name of it and you still don't know what it is. But as soon as they sit you down in front of it for five seconds, you realize you do know what it is, your brain just farted and refused to put the pieces together for no actual reason?

    Yeah?

    That was my brain with Crazy Eights.

    Pretty sure that's happened to everyone at least once. To be honest, I was slowly becoming convinced that whoever made humans had been drunk off their ass the entire time. That someone was probably my mother.

    She was never going to admit it.

    Nico squinted at me from over his hand of cards suspiciously. "Are you sure you've never played before?"

    "It's like Uno," I admitted.

    "What's Uno?"

    "Like this," I said dryly. "Just with special cards. Switch is like this too, but with fewer rules and you just play until you run out of cards or get bored." Which means it's another game Artemis will fail at somehow, I thought with a smile. Then I had to blink, hard, through a dizzy spell. I took a sip of my soda to cover up my confused frown.

    Where had that come from?

    I got the mental image of a small, cute bunny rabbit with reddish fur.

    Oh okay, so not Apollo's sister, just named after her. Someone's pet? That sounded right, but also felt really wrong like I really should know whose pet the rabbit was. I went through the pets of everyone I knew. Neighbors had two small dogs, a fucking tarantula, Eva had a snake and Apollo had a cat he swore wasn't his, but no rabbits. It also did nothing to explain why I thought a bunny would be bad at cards.

    Besides the obvious.

    I put down seven of diamonds and waited for Nico's shadow to take its turn.

    I watched as the black tendril put down four of diamonds only for Nico to play a four of spades. Damn. I picked up cards from the deck fully aware of the hole Bianca di Angelo was boring into the side of my head with her eyes. Nico's older sibling was just as olive skinned as he was half the time with longish black hair, brown eyes so dark, they looked black and a button nose.

    "Yeah?" I asked, a little annoyed at being stared at. "You said you didn't want to play."

    "Not… that," she said slowly.

    Her dark eyes darted across the small round table we were sitting at. It was in the middle of the Lotus Hotel and Casino's food court. Walking all around us, hungry hotel residents and eager kids were stopping for a bite to eat or a sugary drink between games. The delicious smells had me constantly a little hungry, so we parked here so Bianca could make snack runs when she finished off her drink. The latest run had been sushi for her and sticky, sugary crispy pastries filled with nuts and a sweet paste for us.

    So.

    Okay.

    I could have sworn a baklava was a ski mask?

    I was apparently wrong? I felt a bit betrayed honestly. I had to be at least a little right. Clearly, some wires had been crossed in my brain somewhere and I don't think it's my dyslexia?

    It's probably my fucking dyslexia.

    "You really don't have a problem with that?" Bianca jerked her chin across the table where Nico's shadow had taken a seat.

    You heard me.

    It was mostly a blob of darkness just…sitting in a chair like the rest of us. When I say blob, I mean it. A roundish blob of pitch black night. It compacted and gained definition the closer to the floor it was. Or maybe I should say, the closer it was to Nico? Kind of? Nico himself didn't have a shadow of his own, really.

    He had Dark Link, from Ocarina of Time.

    A perfect silhouette branching off his feet into its own being that just pretended to be Nico's shadow sometimes. It was holding its hand of cards in front of it with dark tendrils. It didn't have a face or eyes, but was still doing a pretty good job of giving off the impression of a blank stare into space with peak 'no thoughts, head empty' energy.

    It didn't have a head, but you get what I mean.

    "Most people here can't even see it, and when they do…"

    "They forget," Nico said.

    He and his sister shared a look as his shadow played a card.

    "I was…expecting you would forget too," Nico admitted uneasily. "But you didn't even blink."

    "You can't even see if I blinked," I said snobbily, pushing my sunglasses up my nose with my pointer finger. Bianca's lips twitched as Nico got his big smile back. "Why would I? It's not dangerous, right?"

    "It saved us," Nico said earnestly.

    "And only us." There was something hard in Bianca's voice. I caught a flicker of her eyes towards her brother, but then she relaxed so I don't know if that meant anything. "You really are different from most people here."

    "In a good way," I said with a cheeky grin and raised eyebrows.

    Bianca rolled her eyes and started to get up from her seat. "Yes, in a good way, you - "

    An excited kid chose the wrong moment to run past and our table jolted when his foot caught on the chair that had just been pushed into his path.

    "Woah!"

    We all cried out as Bianca tipped and he fell over, his drink going flying and without thinking, I grabbed for it.

    I missed.

    There was a tugging sensation in my gut as the glass shattered all over the floor.

    "Woah," the kid said, softer as I stared at my hand.

    The glass had obeyed gravity, but his lemonade didn't. An arc of spilling pink lemonade hung in the air like it was frozen in time and the only clue was my outstretched hand and the weird feeling in my stomach.

    "How - "

    "Accidents happen!" We all jumped as one of the waitresses cut Bianca off.

    I hadn't seen her arrive, but the loud sound the glass shattering made must have gotten her attention. She was dressed like an airplane attendant in a pale blue uniform, blonde hair pulled back neatly under the blue cap and bland smile. Her eyes were closed.

    She had a new empty glass in her hand that she extended towards me. "Good catch, prince."

    "Um." I said.

    "How?" Bianca demanded again.

    Nico raised his hands when I looked at him. "I didn't do it!"

    "It was not I!" The new kid said, eyes wide and taking several panicked steps backwards.

    Okay.

    So I guess everyone just agreed that I was the one doing this.

    I raised my hand.

    I half-expected nothing to happen. There were literal VR suits and technology with working laser guns just across the lobby. Who knows what is and isn't possible here? Maybe localized time stops were just so no one had to mop up messes and keep the floor from getting sticky. I was also hoping it really wasn't me. I've always loved water, but I never thought about controlling it. Mom never - I had no idea what it meant if I could now.

    Or maybe I always could have.

    The feeling in my stomach seemed to shift and I…did something? My stomach felt like it was reverse-cramping. Instead of twisting up, it felt like it was a loosening rubber band. That weird ache you get when you hold a stretch that doesn't actually hurt but it's definitely not comfortable either. Whatever it was, the lemonade followed my hand and poured itself into its new cup.

    "Well done, prince," the waitress said. For a second, I thought she was going to open her closed eyes (what's with that anyway?), but there was just movement like snakes slithering through sand under her eyelids. "You can let go now."

    I dropped my hand, but my stomach was still weird and I knew that I still had a hold on the lemonade.

    "Um," I said again.

    I didn't even know where to begin. So far my demigod powers have come in two categories: I Have No Idea How It Works or It Didn't Fucking Work. I've never been able to consciously start using one of my powers, so I didn't have even the slightest clue on how to consciously stop.

    "I see." The waitress nodded slowly and there was a pinch to her face as she slowly, warily raised her empty hand. "May I?"

    I nodded slowly. "Sure?"

    The waitress poked my shoulder like she was investigating a bear trap. Then she let out a small sigh, relaxing, like she thought something was going to happen to her before laying her full hand on me.

    I could feel the difference immediately as the stretched pull in my gut faded.

    "There we are." She removed her hand not quite fast enough to seem rude and handed the glass to the new kid. "Watch your step now."

    "Nanty narking!" He breathed and then he trotted off happily like nothing had happened.

    "So," I began. "Thanks? What about - " I stopped talking when I turned back to the floor where the glass had broken and saw that the mess was already gone. "Never mind."

    "We live to serve!"

    It was said cheerfully, but I got the feeling that the waitress with the bright smile actually meant it the one way you don't want to hear anyone mean that phrase.

    "Every one of us is at your beck and call, prince."

    There was a flicker of something in the back of my mind that echoed 'We have no intention of crossing your father' as she beamed and threw her arms out wide. "Please do not hesitate to let us know if you have any concerns. We give only the best of service at the Lotus Hotel and Casino!"

    "I'll keep that in mind," I promised, a little uneasy.

    With a final smile, the waitress walked back to her food booth that was decorated with a flag that…might have been Germany? Or Belgium? I don't know. The red, yellow and black flags are a lot of European countries copying each other's homework and I had the honor of being taught by the American education system. The hungry customers loitering around seamlessly shifted into a new line in front of her like they were just waiting for her to get back without actually waiting.

    Not gonna lie. It was kind of creepy.

    I sat down again and picked up my hand of cards. I also registered the very awkward silence that was going on.

    I decided to keep my mouth shut.

    There was no good way to say 'I don't know what the hell is going on' so I wasn't even going to try.

    "So…" Nico started. His face was scrunched up. I mentally bumped my age estimate down a year or two from ten to more like an eight and a half. Kid was smaller than me, so that was saying something and had lots of baby fat on his cheeks. "You can control lemonade?"

    "Water, I think." I tried to smile, but it probably looked more like a grimace of 'please don't ask.'

    "You control water," Bianca said flatly because I never get what I want.

    I shrugged one shoulder and tried, "Your brother has a sentient shadow?"

    Nico glanced at said shadow.

    It didn't even twitch. Just sitting there holding its cards mutely as it stared into space.

    So maybe 'sentient' was a bit too generous.

    "I mean," he said eventually as he played a card. "He's right?"

    "We don't even know how you do that," Bianca snapped. Her eyes narrowed at me. "But I have a feeling he knows how he did that."

    "I…really don't know," I said, completely honest. "How. I did."

    She crossed her arms, unconvinced. "The why then."

    "Um." I thought about how I was going to find the words to explain this for a couple of seconds while I picked out a card from my hand. Then I thought: Fuck it. "My mother is a river goddess. Technically."

    Bianca's dark eyebrows flew up as Nico's eyes widened.

    It was the obvious answer, but it felt like putting on a sock that was a little too small. I knew somewhere in my head that it was perfectly reasonable to suspect that I actually did inherit something from The Morrigan instead of Ananke.

    I just couldn't remember why or when I figured that out.

    "Technically," Bianca said faintly, arms dropping slightly.

    "I'm a demigod." I shrugged. "It's complicated." Boy was it ever. "But there are like, three surviving rivers in Ireland that Mom made way back in the day. I never really tried checking if I had water powers before but I'm - I'm not that surprised, you know?"

    Bianca looked like she very much did not know.

    "Look, Nico's probably a demi-something too? Some kind of spook gave him that shadow." We all watched said shadow play its turn silently. "He's not adopted, right?"

    "No!" Nico's cheeks puffed, offended. "Same mom," he said at the same time Bianca said,

    "Same dad."

    They looked at each other.

    "Same father," Bianca stressed with the same 'don't argue with me' look Apollo got when I was being an annoying little shit on her face. "Different mother." That hard note in her voice was back for a second. "We're half-siblings."

    Nico chewed on his lip, but stayed quiet as he drew cards.

    "Okay," I said before it got uncomfortable. "Nico's mom is not human, like mine so…"

    "I'm half-Martian?" Nico wondered.

    "What?" I said intelligently as my brain struggled with the whiplash. Where the fuck did he get half-Martian from? Was there something I missed?

    "You said she wasn't human, so she's an alien and aliens are from Mars," he reasoned out loud with the bizarre and slightly concerning little kid logic we all know and love.

    Glad I grew out of that!

    "Not human doesn't automatically mean alien," I tried to explain. "She could be - uh." My ADHD dove down the rabbit hole of exactly how many gods, Elder, Old and Young were technically 'aliens' from outer space. I mentally flailed around before blurting out, "She could be a spirit!"

    Nico gasped. "I'm half-ghost?"

    "You - I don't think you're a halfa, but that's not what - "

    Bianca stared blankly like she couldn't believe this conversation was happening. "Dead people can't have kids."

    The train of my thought patterns blew its fucking whistle as it mutli-track drifted from Danny Phantom to explaining what a spirit was to answering the dead person kid question.

    "Well, I mean - "

    "Dead people can have kids," she whispered in horror.

    "No!" Crap. "Kind of," I corrected myself. "They're only mostly dead or like after they died, but they came back because a god said so so they aren't dead anymore."

    "She's an angel!?" Nico yelled.

    I hate that I completely understood how he got there from what I said.

    "Let's go with aliens."

    "So Martian," Nico said, disappointed.

    This fucking kid.

    "I - look, what do you think this is, Biker Mice from Mars?"

    "There are biker mice on Mars!?"

    I should not have said anything.

    "Wha - no."

    "You just said - "

    "...not all aliens are from Mars," I said desperately. Nico squinted at me. "Some are from Jupiter," I lied through my teeth and his black eyes got round. "Some just stopped by for a visit from the next star over and some just stayed on Earth because they…got work permits to build the pyramids and stuff."

    I can't.

    Work permits.

    Part of me wanted to ask Mom for her green card just to see the look on her face, but most of me just wanted this stupid to stop.

    "My mom made some rivers so I have water powers, your mom worked on something…uh."

    "Dark," Nico said helpfully, waving at his shadow.

    "Right."

    "And scary."

    I blew out a breath. "Sure."

    "...your mother made rivers in Ireland?" Bianca asked the question like it was a drowning man grabbing onto a brick in verbal form. Or someone digging through mud and shit for the tiniest glimmer of sanity.

    I sighed. "Yup."

    She pinched the bridge of her nose. "...why?"

    "...it's what she does?" I offered tiredly.

    Thanks to Mom's complete lack of a mouth filter, I knew the story behind at least one of those rivers was nowhere close to PG-13. Nico and Bianca di Angelo really didn't need to know about The Dagda's love life. I didn't need to know, but for some god forsaken reason, Mom had no issue with telling a nine year old all about it. Don't ask me why I asked. I don't know why I asked.

    I immediately regretted asking.

    "Irish river goddess makes Irish rivers…"

    There was another awkward silence as they stared at me.

    I was just on a roll today.

    "Are you serious?" Bianca finally broke, incredulous. I gave her an incredulous look right back. What did she think I was trying to say? "A goddess?"

    Nico eyed me from behind his cards. "You're Irish?"

    "I - what." I say my mother is a goddess and it's the Irish part that gets him? I raised both eyebrows. "Is there a problem with that?"

    I could strangle this kid, I swear to God.

    I don't care if he's basically six years old.

    If there was a problem with me being Irish, then there was a problem with Mom being Irish and if anyone had a problem with Mom then I had a problem with them.

    It wasn't rocket science.

    Bianca winced. "Nico…we talked about this." She blindly reached out to pat her little brother on the head while keeping her eyes on me. "Forget everything Mrs. Lancashire told you."

    "But - "

    "No buts. She was English," she said. "And English people don't like anything."

    "Well, that's straight up not true," I said. "They like tea and… the Queen. Sometimes."

    Bianca conceded the point with a tilt of her head.

    "That's it though. They hate everything else," I said, mostly joking.

    Mostly.

    Maybe it's because I'm American, but to me, it looked like British humor is all about all the things they don't like (which is everything, including themselves) and why they don't like it. You've got a dead end trading company that barely makes rent and based in an old yellow supervan, your brother is an idiot and your best friend is enough of a moron chasing get rich quick schemes that it's honestly surprising he's still alive?

    That's not depressing.

    That's British comedy gold.

    "Like a-the-ists," Nico singsonged and Bianca's face twisted in pain. "And Catholics and loose women and ho-mo-sex - "

    His sister covered his mouth with her hand. "Yes. That." She waved her other hand at me. "Besides, does he look drunk to you?"

    What.

    "Mrs. Lancashire sounds like a fucking asshole," I said bluntly.

    Bianca choked as Nico's monochrome eyes lit up white in glee and I rolled my eyes.

    Right. Profanity.

    Gotta watch out for those young virgin ears. The reminder just increased the respect I had for -

    For…?

    Weird.

    "She was…" If Bianca di Angelo was looking for an excuse, she didn't find it as she slumped a little. "Better than her husband," she said weakly. So that sounds terrible. She let out a shriek. "You're disgusting," she said, wiping her hand on her pants as Nico stuck his tongue out at her. Rolling her eyes, she turned back to me. "You know, because of the mob. And then when the war started and Italy…"

    "Oh."

    It didn't make it right, but I vaguely remembered that happening a lot on the TV and in my school about people from the Middle East after the Twin Towers -

    Hold up.

    "What does Italy have to do with the war?"

    Nico and Bianca stared at me.

    I stared back.

    "You don't know about the war?" Nico blurted out.

    "Well," Bianca cut in. "It's over now, right? And I don't think Mussolini did a lot?"

    Mussolini?

    I frowned as a sudden feeling of wrong curled in my chest. "Lancashire is an old bat, right?"

    "Ancient," Nico said solemnly.

    Bianca swatted at him.

    "Oh okay," I said as the feeling faded. "My grandparents have a neighbor like that, super butthurt Germany lost."

    I didn't understand why hearing that flooded Bianca's face with alarm. "Tell me they turned him in or at least told someone about a sympathizer?"

    A little harsh. I couldn't blame her though.

    "They called the police on him once?" I reassured her. "Noise complaint. He's not anyone important, just a really old jerk."

    "Oh," she said. "That's good then."

    "That he's a jerk?" I asked, bewildered.

    "What?" Bianca startled. "No, that your folks called the authorities anyway, even if the war's over, you never know what someone like him could do."

    "It was a noise complaint."

    "Funny, isn't it?" She cracked a smile. "Sometimes that's how you get them. Like how Al Capone was convicted for tax evasion."

    I was so fucking confused.

    "Our father's from Greece," Nico said suddenly, filling me with dread. Bianca and I looked at him and his face was scrunched up like he was about to cry. "If my mom's from Jupiter, does that mean I'm not an American?"

    His shadow stared.

    I put down my cards.

    "So who wants to go bungee jumping!?"






    There was nothing like throwing yourself off a sixty foot drop at the end of a rope for your anxiety. You'd either forget your worries for a while or if you really can't forget, try it without the rope!

    Sorry.

    Celtic humor.

    I must have bungee-jumped the lobby four or five times, dragged Bianca into playing virtual-reality laser tag and FBI sharpshooter with Nico and I, climbed the rock-climbing wall, taught Nico how to snowboard on the artificial ski slope because they already knew how to ski and just generally goofed around. It really reminded me of some of the vacations I went on with Mom and Dad. It was a bit of Six Flags, a bit of Disney World in Florida, a bit of the YMCA, a bit of the Boy Scouts and a little of the vacations abroad for Dad's job or when we went to see my great-grandmother one time in Athens, Greece.

    Which meant sooner or later, I was going to gravitate to the pools and the waterslide.

    "Let me get changed," I said, tugging on my jacket and looking down at my sneakers. The light beach wear Nico and Bianca wore was fine for taking a swim, but I knew from experience that wet jeans chafed like hell. "I'll be quick, go on without me."

    "I'll get towels!" Nico exclaimed before he rushed off, his shadow right beside him.

    Bianca lingered. "If there is anything else you want to do instead…"

    "I love water," I said honestly. "Really, don't wait up. You might be okay letting a four year old walk around on his own - "

    "He's almost ten," Bianca said with a wry smile.

    I ignored her. "But I for one am not okay with unsupervised toddlers."

    Her smile faded. "Unsupervised." It almost sounded bitter, but it was gone from her voice when she spoke again. "You're right, who knows what trouble he could get into?" She gave me a half-smile and a nod. "See you by the waterslide."

    "Yeah," I said, trying not to frown.

    I won't claim to be the most observant guy on the planet, but I was starting to get the feeling that Nico's sister really needed a break. The first month of Mom's absence had been rough. Dad didn't want to give up on me, but that didn't keep him from thinking that maybe he should.

    That kind of thing comes out sometimes no matter how hard you try.

    Maybe at knife point is when I finally started taking him seriously as my father. As someone Mom chose for a reason. Because he was capable of scaring me that badly.

    I'm not sure what it said that he scared himself more.

    Bianca wasn't anywhere near as bad as Dad was when he was working through therapy and single parenting, but I knew the Hot - Cold dynamic towards her little brother meant there was a problem.

    Nico's birth mother was a Ghost-Angel-Kryptonian from Jupiter, so she wasn't around, but it sounded like they were growing up with mortal parents. Maybe it wasn't any of my business, but I liked them and wanted to help. I wasn't going to shake my friends down for where their folks were, but maybe if I stuck around long enough until dinner, I could get some answers. I could figure out where to go from there.

    I approached one of the bellhops on the main floor. "Hey, question."

    He grinned at me with a smile big enough to turn his eyes into a bunch of wrinkles. He was wearing a bright yellow tank top with a necklace of lotus flowers and fire engine red shorts. "What's up, prince?"

    "I checked in, but I completely forgot what my room number is," I told him, a little embarrassed. "Should I go back to ask at the front desk?"

    "No need!" He laughed. "There's only a limited number of royal suites at this location and I - " He dug into the pocket of his red shirt and held up a black key card triumphantly. "Have got a master key. Come on, I'll show you up."

    I followed him towards a group of elevators. I heard the soft 'ding' as one of them opened and a beach goer wheeled out a cart full of bedsheets and towels. I thought we were going to take the vacant carriage but as we got closer, my stomach made a funny swooping feeling.

    "We'll take the stairs," the bellhop said, smoothly changing his stride.

    "So, how do you all see with your eyes closed?" I asked as we climbed the empty stairwell.

    He almost missed a step. "Huh," he said, tilting his head up. "It's been a while since anyone was aware enough to ask."

    "That was rude, sorry," I apologized.

    He shook his head. "I was just surprised!" He held the door on the next floor open for me. "The short answer is that you really don't need eyes to see, right?" He said it like that was a reasonable conclusion to make. "And if you don't need them to see, well, no use letting all that space go to waste."

    "Makes sense," I said, suddenly no longer curious about their closed eyelids. "Can't say I see the appeal." He chuckled at the pun. "I like my eyes."

    "Your eyes are great!" He reassured me, completely genuine even though his were closed and I was still wearing my sunglasses that no one could see through. "It's not a popular school of thought on this side of the cosmos, that's for sure, but that doesn't mean it's not still valid!"

    "If it works, then it works." I could understand that.

    "Exactly!" He led me to a door and with a swipe of the keycard introduced me to the 'royal' suite. With a name like that I shouldn't have been surprised, but I still was shocked to see that it was a full penthouse suite. "Here we are, prince."

    "This is too much," I protested.

    "Not at all!" The bellhop grinned at me. "Trust me, we are nothing but honored by your patronage."

    "Thanks," I said helplessly.

    The bellhop's eyebrows knit together in a puzzled look.

    "For what? You deserve this, prince. And it's all paid for." He waved towards the full length coffee table in front of the clustered group of love seats, half-sofas and recliners in front of the big screen television. "There's your keycard." I blinked and he was right. "If you need anything, like extra bubbles for the hot tub, room service or whatever, call the front desk. We'll send it right up."

    I took in a big breath and stepped into the room. In my dirty sneakers and worn jeans, I felt like a hobo being mistaken for royalty.

    I knew what five star hotel rooms looked like. It wasn't as if my family was hurting for cash. We liked having nice things, but that didn't mean we had to go overboard. I assumed 'royal' were just King or Queen sized rooms with beds, couches and amenities, but instead I was faced with a full three bedroom suite with a balcony view over the Las Vegas Strip. The hot tub on the balcony reminded me a little of the penthouse I called home with our pool, but I definitely wasn't the kind of person who took baths out in the open. I expected the stocked bar, high quality towels and linens, not so much the skeet-shooting machine by the balcony sliding glass doors and shotgun for blasting clay pigeons out of the Nevada sky.

    That's a little excessive.

    And probably illegal.

    I picked out one of the bedrooms and shuffled out of my jacket. After I folded it up, I reached for my backpack. It was the canvas under my fingertips that made the wrong feeling come back. If I was staying at a high class hotel like this, why was all my stuff in the Bag of Holding?

    That was for tests.

    And how many times did I just want to sleep in a real bed without anything trying to kill me during a test,     I thought.

    I could easily afford one night, even in a place like this. What was it, three, four thousand dollars? Maybe I was wasting time staying here, but Mom hasn't given me a hard time limit since that time when I was seven.

    If one day was going to screw everything up, that was on her, not me.

    …what was even the test, though?

    I stared at my backpack, feeling unbalanced.

    I wanted to say that if I couldn't remember it, then it must not be important. I couldn't say that though, because I was getting the feeling that it was really important. I tried to think back to how I got here.

    By bus?

    …one of my cousins gave me a ticket, I remembered. I was supposed to be here.

    I changed out of my clothes, threw my dirty jeans, socks and tunic into the laundry basket and found some swimming trunks and a plain white T-shirt in the closet that was just my size. There were new sneakers too. I thought about it for a moment, then threw my old ones into the trash and fished out new socks from my bag. I wasn't going to jump into the pool with socks on, but after I dried off, I'd want some footwear.

    I hung the key to my room around my neck and left my backpack on my bed. I took the stairs back down, feeling a little claustrophobic at the thought of the elevator. I was hurrying a little, so I ended up bumping into someone headed for the elevators.

    "Sorry." I spun around the blond guy to keep my balance. "My bad, wasn't looking."

    "It's fine," he said, cradling a small sleepy rabbit against his chest. He looked me over with an eye color I haven't seen on a human before. They were blue, but it was like he had fog or clouds in his irises. He frowned. "Do I know you?"

    "Nope," I said. I grinned. "I just have that kind of face."

    He huffed, rolling his eyes and turned away. "Whatever, Perce."

    I spun back around, but he was already getting into an elevator. Did he just - I shook my head. I wasn't even sure why I turned around. It wasn't even a matter of mishearing, because that wasn't my name.

    I always introduce myself as Percy.

    I found Bianca and Nico by the biggest pool, the same one that the huge water slide winding around the main elevator emptied into.

    "Go, Nico," Bianca pushed him lightly, exasperated. "You don't have to stop because I'm taking a break."

    He took a couple steps towards the line in front of the ladder, then looked back. There was no trace of her irritation when she nodded, waved and made a show of collapsing into one of the many pool chairs around.

    "So what's that about?" I asked as he dashed off.

    "What's what about?" Bianca raised an eyebrow.

    "That." I crossed my arms. "I can watch him if he's what you need a break from." She froze in her seat and then her bottom lip started to wobble. I swore under my breath. "Look, I really don't mind helping if you don't want - "

    "I do want him around!" She sat up in her pool chair, aghast. "He's my little brother."

    "But?" I prompted.

    She didn't answer. We both watched Nico reach the front of the line by the water slide ladder and start climbing. I saw him glance over his shoulder. When he saw we were both watching, a megawatt grin lit his face and he climbed faster.

    "Where's your parents?"

    She shot me a look. "Where's yours?"

    "Upper West Side Manhattan," I said easily. "Though I just came from visiting a cousin in - " My brain hiccuped. "Los Angeles," I finished slowly.

    Bianca blinked. "Oh. We're…moving from Washington D.C to L.A too. House isn't ready yet, but." Her face darkened. "Soon."

    I opened my mouth, then I closed it. I wasn't sure what to say.

    She sighed. "I'm not perfect, but I'm keeping it where he won't notice."

    "Uh huh."

    She slumped in her chair. "Alright, so obviously I'm not doing as great as I thought I was."

    "You're, what? Thirteen?"

    "Twelve," she said.

    "Same." I shrugged. "You're a kid. Even parents need a minute to themselves someti - "

    "That's not it," she said quietly. "She said I have to look after him." She? "I'm his older sister and father is busy and that's fine." It didn't sound fine. "Half the time I just want to wrap him up in a blanket and never let him go, but then the other half I just can't help wishing…"

    "Take ten," I said gently. "We'll be here for a while."

    "His shadow saved us," she said instead. 'And only us,' I remembered her saying earlier and suddenly, I had a really bad feeling about how their dad was the one that was busy. "We were in a hotel and there was an explosion." Her eyes were glued to her brother on the ladder. "It saved us, but only because I was close to him. Me living? That was an accident."

    "You can't know - "

    "I know that, because he - his shadow didn't save my mother," Bianca cut me off. "She was in the next room. I saw her through the door."

    Yikes.

    "Then the building collapsed." She dragged her eyes away from Nico and back to me. "I don't know how long we were trapped there in the dark, maybe a minute?" She pursed her lips, like not knowing how long she was under the rubble was her fault.

    My stomach sank as I thought of a possible reason why. Her mother had been close enough to see.

    Maybe she didn't die right away.

    "The whole thing was unstable," Bianca said dully, almost clinically. "Whatever blew up was on our floor, so the top was coming down. If our father hadn't gotten us - me out, if he hadn't come as fast as he did…"

    "He can't control it," I pointed out as gently as I could.

    "I know." She looked down at her hands where she had them clenched in her lap. "I know," she repeated. "I don't want him to be able to control it," Bianca confessed. I could almost see the infection drain from the abscess as her shoulders slumped and she laid back on the chair. "I owe him my life and I don't want him to be able to control what let him save me."

    She didn't have to say it, but I knew why she didn't want Nico to learn about his powers. Because if he could control it, then instead of her life being an accident, she'd be wondering about the what ifs. If someone had been around to teach him earlier, like whoever he inherited the ability from. If she had known he could do that from the beginning. If he had just figured it out sooner.

    What if her mom didn't have to die?

    Basically, emotions suck is what I was getting out of this.

    "I'll get over it," she insisted. "It was…a long time ago, I think. A few years. I'm getting over it, I'm just a little stressed, moving across the country and all."

    "I get that," I said. "Still, offer stands. I can watch a two year old, no problem."

    "Thanks," she said with a weak smile. "I needed - I needed to get that off my chest."

    Nico shrieked happily as he came down the twisting slide.

    "I love him. He's my little brother," Bianca said. "But he has a mother."

    I plastered a big smile on my face as Nico splashed out of the pool. "My turn," I said. "Coming with?"

    "Yeah!" Nico beamed.

    "So, do you remember anything about your mom?" I tried to ask as casually as I could while we waited in line.

    Nico blinked up at me. "No?"

    "Nothing?" I felt stupid as soon as I asked. If he did, he wouldn't have been confused on which parent he shared with his sister earlier.

    Nico shrugged.

    I bit my lip as the line moved forwards. I started to have some loud second guesses when I realized the ladder to the top of the water slide was even taller than the bungee-jumping bridge. Wasn't there safety concerns about slides literally a hundred feet long? "I'm in room 4001," I said. "If I die, you can have my stuff."

    "No one's gonna die." I could tell from the tone of his voice that Nico was rolling his eyes at me.

    "You can't know that."

    "Yes, I can."

    "Can not."

    "Can too!"

    He was giggling by the time we got up to the top and I felt a bit better. I let him go first and heard him whoop with joy all the way down. A hotel lifeguard with a whistle around her neck and dark hair bound up under her baseball cap flashed me a thumbs up. I got in the tube and pushed off.

    I laughed all the way down. Spinning and spinning and spinning around the spiral with the water splashing up around and under me in the dark tunnel where every sound echoed.

    It was the longest water slide I'd ever gone on, but it still ended too soon. The tunnel abruptly ended in favor of an open slide the last twenty feet and then I was catapulted into the pool.

    …!

    I launched myself out of the water, feeling like I was about to explode. My heart was beating in my ears and I felt like I was about to throw up all over the pool chairs as my head throbbed. I was vaguely aware that there were people around, but I squeezed my eyes shut. There was a painful lump in my throat as I tried to breathe. I hunched over, clutching at my stomach and it felt like my bellybutton was moving around under my hands. Was I -

    I'm having a panic attack, I thought dimly.

    "Percy - "

    "Don't touch him!"

    I didn't look up. There was - a monster in the pool? That wasn't right. There had been a monster in the pool. It - I -

    'You need only to turn off the spigot,' rang out in the back of my mind.

    "What's wrong with him? Is he going to be okay?"

    "My prince, you need to calm down. Please breathe."

    I was trying.

    "What year is it?" I gasped out. I needed to know.

    "2005," The voice from earlier said very quietly. "You have not been here long, prince. Please, do not be concerned."

    I was supposed to be here, because -

    'Go in, get them, get out.' A black haired woman with no eyes said with a quirked smile in my memory. 'Simple.'

    I forgot.

    Before I could think better of it, I threw myself back into the water and let myself sink even though my heart felt like it was going to beat out of my chest in fear. I could feel it. I remembered the weight pulling me down. I looked up and I remembered the hundreds of thin tendrils covered in toothy suckers creeping over the edge of the pool towards me.

    I looked down and remembered the jaws prying my stomach open -

    I climbed out of the pool.

    Water clung to me like armor. My wet T-shirt made it obvious that my bellybutton was gaping, a sunken hole the size of a watermelon. There was a small crowd nearby. I could see Bianca and Nico staring with wide eyes. The lifeguard from the top of the slide was there too, a hand on her whistle and tense like she wanted to run.

    "Hi," I said. "I need to speak to the manager? I've got an overcharge complaint."

    "Overcharge?" She asked faintly.

    "Overcharge," I confirmed.

    The toll was time.

    Not my fucking memories.

    She flinched when I walked towards her.

    "Don't worry, I don't bite."

    I smiled my wide, toothy grin.

    "Much."
     
  • Threadmarks
    • And he wakes up. Him and the monster in his head.
     
    Percy is an awfully high maintenance customer. Honestly if the servants didn't litterally exist to serve or had rights, it would be very easily argued that the extra charge was a difficulty and therapy fee for the attendants.
     
    You know, I've been thinking, and I'm suddenly really glad that Percy is so young. If he was a bit older, this whole thing would be a lot more uncomfortable.

    Think about how the Lotus Eater would handle someone who had gone through puberty. Yeah.
     
    Nico is getting younger in this chapter - in the previous one he was a few years younger than Percy, then Percy thought he was younger (instead of ten, eight and a half), then mentally says he's six, and he's only two by the end.

    Which is. Kinda sus.
     
    Once again I love the character development and growth Percy's gone through.

    He's more comfortable with himself and both of his eldritch and human morals and thought processes. He's also starting to acknowledge that his childhood was kind of a mess. His mom has been hiding a lot from him and as designs for him. Then him thinking about the whole Hot-Cold dynamics he and his father had.


    "Maybe at knife point is when I finally started taking him seriously as my father. As someone Mom chose for a reason. Because he was capable of scaring me that badly."

    This is the line I think describes his childhood problems the best, messed up as it is. Percy has come a long way from the Son of Fate who tired to be just like his mother and over the course of the quest has grown a lot.
     
    In Which I Take A Lot of Naps
  • Threadmarks
    • An Undertow of Sand
    A PJO Fanfiction    ​


    I don't think I've ever been this angry before.

    I have a temper and a lot of things to get mad about, especially this past week, but this? I felt violated, like I could still feel the slimy lingering stench of tendrils rifling through my memories. Suppressing some, pruning others, all to make sure I wouldn't want to leave.

    I accepted that I would have to pay the toll. I knew what the Price was and I accepted it.

    I felt betrayed. I felt like I had just seen Dylan again.

    Right where Mom said he would be.

    It wasn't quite the same, because my anger then had been made up of a lot of different pieces. Shame and guilt and a desperate need to do something to make Eva's missing arm right and knowing there was nothing I could do. It had been a done deal. Everyone in the Celtic pantheon of the Tuatha de respected Eva's Price.

    Even Mom.

    I had been a bit scared too, because Dylan was so much older and better than me with the spear. I had been worried that his dad, Donn of the Dead would intervene even with what his son did to the daughter of his King.I had still been lost, drowning because Mom had just come back after a year of being gone and I didn't know how to feel or what to do about it. All of those feelings mixed into a toxic cocktail of rage so black, I almost couldn't even see. I moved to attack him with my new unnamed sword immediately. He deflected it with the pitch black and silver javelin and maybe he looked sorry.

    Maybe he even said he was sorry.

    I can't remember. It had been really hard for me to think.

    My next attack he had parried, reached for the sword he dual wielded and it was the exact same movement he had made when he parried Evangeline's long dagger when she realized he had given us up -

    And I had stopped thinking at all.

    I was on the edge of that. I could feel it. I could imagine the fluttering of the blinds in my apartment in the Dreamlands, glimpses of the black beach of razor fossils and the dark tower on the horizon behind the drapes. On the part of me that I locked away.

    As I leisurely walked behind the lifeguard (heh, lifeguard, get it?) my back rippled under the coating of pool water on my skin as everyone stared. No one got in my way. I didn't know what I would have done if anyone did. I was still smiling when we came to the front desk and the receptionist was back between one blink and the next.

    She looked worried. "So, you wanted to see the manager again, right?"

    "Yup."

    She fidgeted and shared an unseeing closed eye look with the lifeguard. "...do you mind waiting? He's in a meeting right now."

    "I think," I said very slowly as I leaned in. "That he has taken enough of my Time. Don't you agree?"

    She obligingly bobbed her head as the lifeguard grimaced and backed away from the desk. "Wholeheartedly," the receptionist said. "Unfortunately, I just don't have the clearance to interrupt him like this."

    "Just bring up the elevator," I said. "I can take it from there."

    "...is there anything you would take in recompense instead?" She frowned. "I can't call the elevator right now."

    "You can't," I repeated blandly.

    She shook her head and bit her lip.

    I considered this blankly, like I was thinking without really thinking. It felt familiar. A vague sense of

    'Going, going, going….'

    I looked around the lobby and felt the world tilt.

    That kid again. Black hair and sea green eyes dragged what looked a lot like Annabeth and Grover past me towards the hotel exit, sparing me a confused, alarmed glance. He opened his mouth, thought better of it and kept moving. One of the bellhops broke off from the crowd and I couldn't tell if he was here with me or there with him.

    Well now, are you ready for your platinum cards? He asked the kid.

    We're leaving, was the reply as the Annabeth look-a-like snatched the Grover-look-a-like's hand back from the card. I watched as he vanished out the door, a heavy backpack warping its way onto his back as they spilled out into the Las Vegas street.

    He cast one last look back through the Lotus Hotel and Casino doors at me and the vision broke.

    I could do that. All of the servants were scared of me. They would let me leave. They probably wanted me too and this wasn't an offense that caught Mom's attention. We would all know if it did.

    Luke and Artemis were here too, I remembered distractedly. I should go find them before too much time has passed. Then I should grab Nico and his sister, Bianca and leave.

    I should leave.

    Run away, like the little mortal I am. My stomach twisted. I was going to have to face my cousin, Persephone again after this. I didn't want to do that, still afraid. Part of me acknowledged that being afraid of the Priestess of the Endless Abyss was the sane response, but most of me didn't care right now. Aren't you supposed to face your fears?

    'Fear' didn't feel like it meant the same thing I thought it meant just minutes ago. Like the definition had changed to something just two dimensions to the left. I felt like my thoughts were floating on the surface of a reflective pool, but I didn't know what it would take to drown them.

    No time like the present.

    I made myself approach the wall behind the front desk. The elevator had been right here. I thought about the doorman when he pointed me towards the front desk.

    There's no one there?

    There will be.

    It was just a wall now. I stared at the smiling poster of the beach goer with a pina colada in their hand taped to the blank white plaster. I couldn't help thinking, I choose my own destiny. To this day, I still don't know why I thought that. It had nothing to do with this. The Lotus Hotel and Casino were just beside reality and I already knew the elevator was there. I paused for a second, thinking again that I should just leave, but it was like my brain was running on a parallel track to my actions. I raised my right hand.

    There was nothing there.

    There will be.

    I reached out and pushed the button.

    The elevator made a dinging noise as it opened.

    "It's fine," I said as the receptionist choked. I looked back and her eyebrows were so high up her forehead, her eyes were even open a little. Just enough for gossamer thin white legs to fold out and curl up to the top and bottom like eyelashes. "I got it. By the way." I got in the elevator. "Do you want his job?"

    "What?" She said faintly.

    "His job. Want it?" I waved a hand as the doors started to close. "You have a better business sense."

    That freebie would have saved us all so much trouble.

    I hummed along with the elevator music as it screeched like cold metal shearing under the twist of the vice. Down and down and down I went. When the doors finally opened again, I felt my smile wilt a little.

    Lining the hallway in front of me were faceless men in suits wielding batons, walkie talkies and sunglasses all with identical haircuts. By faceless I meant faceless, like moving mannequins directed to block the corridor.

    Hotel security.

    "You really don't want to do this," I said slowly. They advanced, all taking the same exact step forward.

    Guess we're doing this.

    I leapt right into them, pulling Damocles from its necklace while in the air and the first guy went down with the bone blade through his forehead. I was immediately smashed over the head with a baton as all their radios screeched with static. I fell with the blow, letting my weight help me free my sword as I fell right into the middle of them.

    "Hi," I said, head pounding, then I lashed out with Damocles aiming for their ankles.

    I wasn't interested in killing them. I just had to get through.

    The entire slog through the corridor was like that, exchanging blunt hits with more permanent bladed solutions. They were built to deal with the average hotel enjoyer. They were trying to restrain me. My water reflexively surged up when I was caught around the neck and lifted off the ground, churning until it was a pressure hose and then lashing back.

    More blood mixed in with the water I was wearing as armor, turning it pink. I was under no obligation to hold back. My Spidey Sense was silent, so I knew I was perfectly safe.

    'No one can die in the Lotus Casino.'

    I swung my hand and my water extended my reach, crushing a few guys against the walls. I was knocked into the wall myself from a vicious kick to my side from my blind spot and I swung Damocles blindly in the direction it pulled in, water coming off the edge just as sharp, cutting through limbs.

    My sword sang.

    I pushed off the wall, blinking the eyes that had opened in my shadow. No more blind spots. I launched myself back at them like a human blender. I just swung and swung with absolutely no skill, because everything I touched came apart. My water started gaining shape, lifting off my body as crude battering rams, to sharp tendrils moving like I had a second mind I wasn't consciously aware of.

    I took a sharp punch to the face, flooding my mouth with an iron taste that turned to saltwater, washing the pain away as my water took the offending arm off. I turned, seeing another approaching behind me and Damocles hit air as he suddenly backed off when his radio crackled.

    They all did, standing still like statues in an art museum.

    I blinked and realized I had made it to the other side of them, my back to the rest of the hallway and it was empty.

    I let out a long breath. "Are we good?"

    They didn't respond.

    "O…kay then." I felt like nothing had happened at all. I knew I'd been hit. A lot. Maybe it was the adrenaline, or maybe I just healed a bit faster than I thought I did.

    I spared them one last wary look and then turned away to get out of the foyer. Right on the other side of the narrow opening into the mural filled hallway was a familiar face.

    Kind of.

    "Oof, that's rough, buddy." I had kind of been wondering where he went.

    The doorman wheezed through his open chest cavity from where he had been impaled to the wall. His face was shredded to the bone and so was most of his torso. One of his arms was straight up gone, sluggishly bleeding from where it had been bit off above the elbow and the other had a flayed forearm. His uniform was just barely holding together. He looked like he had tried to hug a wood chipper and it hadn't appreciated the violation of personal space.

    No wonder the servants all seemed wary of touching me.

    I gave awful haircuts.

    …the manager… The quivering black barb through his guts was one that I recognized because it was mine. …will see you now.

    "I bet," I snorted as I called more of the water to me and it rose from the ground. "I gave you a hard time, huh?"

    The man nodded weakly.

    "I'd apologize, but you know how it is."

    The hallway I was standing in was really different from the room right outside the elevator. They were scoured like a sandstorm had blown through for hours. It had completely wiped the murals clean until all that was left was pitted sandblasted stone and seeping pockets of brackish water. I pulled on the barb. The doorman fell to the floor with a silent groan as the inky viscous material of the spine sunk back under my skin.

    An echoing whale song roared up the hallway as I started walking.

    It took no effort at all to dig into the well of nothingness in my stomach. "You speak to Perseus of the B̸l̴o̸o̶d̶y̵ ̴T̷o̵n̷g̴u̶e̷."

    The walls vibrated loud enough to hum with the second call.

    What was up with the misgendering? I did not have the time nor the inclination for a Tolerance and Diversity session.

    "You did not cross my parent," I admitted as my voice resonated with a dark whooshing howling. "You should have been more concerned with crossing M̵̨͒E̷̙͑."

    The next call was louder. The floor shook.

    "Your Price was Time, amadán," I refuted, the Irish just slipping out. "I do not care that you 'only' nibbled on my memories. I did not agree to that."

    The manager wailed.

    I trailed a hand along the wall and the rock crumbled before the churning water on my fingers. "But do you have the receipt?"

    The walls shook and the hairs on the back of my neck stood up as I came to the glass corridor at the bottom of an alien ocean.

    'No one can die at the Lotus Casino.'

    My Spidey Sense was for what would kill me.

    I stopped politely at the opening and slowly, a giant sickly pale finger emerged from the dark water to gently rest on the glass. It reminded me of the finger of a frog, or maybe a Roswell Gray with an enlarged pad and a bony triple joint before the rest of the finger extended out of sight. Just that single joint dwarfed me by at least fifteen feet. I could feel the water beyond the glass somehow. The impression of vague movement, of hundreds of tentacles waving through the water and a greedy, grinning snout filled with shark teeth.

    Then came the silent touch to my mind.

    Oh.

    The manager, duh.

    Middle management was always incompetent. As Mom always said, if you want something done right, sometimes you just gotta do it yourself.

    If you really wanted to make yourself heard, take it to the owner.

    "Sorry for interrupting your meeting with your employee." I told the Lotus Eater as I opened my mind further and felt the sickly sweet smell of lotus flowers worming their way through my perspective of what happened. "But this really couldn't wait? I am o̶w̷e̷d̵."

    The finger dragged on the glass. The impression of the grinning shark-like snout flickered again in the dark water as a far, far off ghostly light drifted into view.

    I crossed the corridor of glass, aware of death screaming at the back of my neck. I opened the door on the other side and saw that it looked like the aftermath of Woodstock. Everything was smashed and broken and sandblasted clean. The basin that had been in the center looked like a bomb had gone off in it, scattering pebbles all around the room still etched with the geometric designs.

    The statue holding the gem was untouched, but it wasn't smiling anymore.

    There was a squeal of fear.

    An astonishingly small ugly grub-like creature in fluorescent yellow robes and a flowery straw hat made a break for it out from under the statue's shadow, wriggling for the far corner. I don't remember even taking a step before I was suddenly just there behind it. My own hand was too small to fit around its sunken, misshapen skull, but the water surged up from the pool to ensnare it. It looked like it had gone through a meat grinder, with one side of its body bandaged up in seaweed under the robes.

    "I'd ask for a refund, but your boss is actually a pretty cool dude, from one big eater to another," I said. "And really, Time was the actual payment. It's what you skimmed off the top that I have a problem with. You had all the Time in the world to tell me you wanted a tip."

    The water dragged the manager backwards as it futilely struggled, scrabbling at the floor with all six of its backwards limbs.

    My stomach opened wide.

    "So I'll just have to settle for a little charge back."

    I left the room, burping.

    Why did everything always taste like pork or calamari?

    Or both.

    "No hard feelings?" I asked the Lotus Eater, just to make sure. I smelled lotus blossoms. "Sweet. If it helps, your receptionist is A tier, just a bit unpolished."

    The acknowledgment brushed the inside of my skull and then the pale finger slowly fell out of view.

    I backtracked through the halls and to the elevator. I felt a little bad for having ruined most of the murals on the walls. It wasn't really my fault and I didn't have the memories anymore, but it was the principle of the thing. Tens of thousands of years of history, gone just like that.

    Everything ends eventually, I thought. A stray half-thought/feeling/impression made me pause before entering the now empty and clean foyer. "Hey, has there ever been another boy that looked like me, staying here?"

    The doorman wheezed a dubious negative.

    "There could have been?" I clarified and he nodded weakly from the floor.

    "Huh," I said. "Thanks."

    I got into the elevator. I wondered for a moment at the two buttons, because I clearly remembered there only being one when I first came to the Hotel. I shrugged it off and pressed to go back up. At least this time, there was better music playing.

    When the elevator opened again, Luke was there, holding my backpack in one hand and my jacket in the other with Artemis still out of it in his vest.

    "I hate…" he began slowly. "...everything about this Quest."

    "We didn't know you were a prince," the receptionist insisted with the air of having already said it multiple times and was now wondering if his IQ surpassed the room temperature. Her closed eyelids scrunched further like she was squinting. "Or half of one…? Semi - demi…?"

    There was blood leaking down his face from his shattered eye.

    The left looked the normal cloudy blue. The right looked broken. It resembled one of those perspective puzzles. Looking at it head on made it similar to the left, but as soon as you paid any actual attention, you could see the half-dozen blearily staring blue irises reflecting off each other making the eye gleam in the bright Hotel lighting.

    "Huh," I said again. I turned to the staring Nico and his looking-like-she-was-going-to-pass-out sister. "Hi, I'm Percy and was actually here to rescue you."

    Bianca flinched, clinging to her brother tighter like she was seconds from snatching him away and forgetting I ever existed. "Rescue…?"

    "Something came up," I said. "Your stepmother sent me on your dad's behalf." Her mouth fell open into a little 'o.' "Yeah, I got turned around."

    "Stepmother?" Nico said quietly, eyes black as he mournfully gazed between his sister and me.

    "Not yours," I said gently. "Because we're going to see your mom too."

    His eyes lit up. Literally.

    "Please?" He turned to his sister. "We can always come back."

    "We're not supposed to - " Bianca was hyperventilating. "We can't just walk off with anyone that says they know our parents - !"

    "He's not a stranger!" Nico protested. "He's nice - '' He winced when Bianca swayed on her feet. I then realized that maybe the dark spines poking out from my shoulder blades, the blood on my T-shirt, my shadow full of burning green eyes and all the tentacles made of water waving around me was not the greatest impression I could have made if I wanted the 'Come with me if you want to live' thing to work.

    My bad.

    "Change of plans," I said. "Luke - "

    He was already gone, appearing behind Bianca in a blur of motion, picking her up and cutting off her scream by turning on his heel and fading away. Nico gaped.

    "Trust me?"

    He nodded slowly.

    "Then let's go." I retraced the steps of the other boy through the Lotus Hotel and Casino lobby, holding Nico's hand. I felt the weirdest sense of deja vu when one of the bellhops plucked up the courage to call out before we hit the door.

    "You sure you don't want to say a little longer?" He said plaintively. "We just added a new floor of games for platinum card members and VIPs."

    "We're leaving," I echoed. "But I'll probably come back, it was fun without the whole…" I circled my head with my free hand vaguely.

    He nodded sadly and then we were out.

    I had barely taken two steps into the humid Nevada air when a newspaper was shoved into my face. When I finally managed to pin the floating numbers down, my heart sank.

    June 19th.

    Forget only being in there for twelve hours or my limit of two days. I was there for four.

    "Two     days left," Luke snarled.

    "So that's bad," I agreed. The water I was holding splashed onto the ground. "But, look, I am about to fucking pass out - "

    I woke up mid sentence.

    " - so I would appreciate it if you could get us someplace…" I peered around dizzily at the blobs of color, finally recognizing that I was in a completely different location. And laying down on something soft. "Oh, come on!"

    I was annoyed at myself for interrupting myself by fainting. I had been in the middle of a fucking conversation -

    I blinked as my vision cleared up and I realized the monochrome blob I was staring at was actually a very annoyed looking Bianca di Angelo. I wasn't sure if her irritation was because she had just been kidnapped, because I had keeled over or because she had duct tape over her mouth.

    It was probably the kidnapping. What kid would want to be pulled away from all those awesome games and food?

    "Luke," I sighed. "You could have just stolen her voice?"

    "Did that." Luke came into view then too. I was lying down on…a restaurant booth? There was a table low enough to nearly brush my nose when I turned my head. "Turns out, it makes me sound like a little girl so I gave it back." Bianca's left eyebrow twitched as her dark eyes pinned a glare on him. He ignored her. "How are you feeling?"

    I rolled over onto my side and threw up all over his sneakers.

    "Oh," Luke said.

    I passed out again.

    I woke up into the middle of a conversation over my head.

    " - can't be, gods aren't real!" That was Bianca.

    "You know what, I think I agree with you," my mouth said and she blinked down at me. "What?"

    "What?" Artemis said, a fuzzy face peering over the table at me too.

    "What?" I said. "Where are we?"

    "Still in Las Vegas," Luke's voice said slowly. "Las Vegas is Spanish for 'The Meadows' in case you were curious."

    "That's cool," I said, vaguely remembering what he was even talking about. Hecate's riddle. "So we just need to find the sunlight and new construction and shit?"

    "...you gonna explain that god thing?" Luke asked as Nico loudly slurped up his soda from a can. "And yes."

    "Sure," I said. "So the thing is, gods are like, a political term - "

    And I was out like a light.

    " - almost eight thousand years ago so Mom doesn't really pay attention to things like that anymore." I woke up to finish my thesis and then noticed that everyone but Nico had left.

    Jerks.

    "I am sure that was very interesting," the little shit said as he munched on a twinkie in the restaurant booth across the aisle from me. "In your head."

    "Shut up," I rasped. I had a fever blazing out of control again making my head feel like it was a radiator on max settings and a bone deep cold pain in my shins. "Gimme a twinkie."

    Nico hesitated as he pulled Luke's backpack closer to himself. "Are you going to sick up again?"

    "Probably," I admitted, feeling my stomach gurgle unhappily. I waved a hand. "Help me up."

    My head swam a little, but all in all, I could tell that I was doing much better than I had been at Rhea's. Like instead of being knocked out with pneumonia, I was getting over a cold or the annual flu and was just tired, achy and a little nauseous.

    Progress!

    "Where is everybody?"

    "Bianca is talking with the…rabbit," Nico said with his face scrunched up. "You didn't tell me there were rabbits on the moon," he accused.

    "The hotel manager took my memories." I gave up before I even started. "Couldn't exactly tell you what I couldn't remember."

    "I'm sorry," he said quietly. "I…wasn't really paying attention earlier, but…" He looked at me with sad black eyes. "We were in that hotel for a very long time, weren't we?"

    "I - yeah." There was a lump in my throat as I considered what it would be like going to sleep for a bit and waking up to find out that everyone I knew and loved had died ages ago. Mom solved that problem by rarely loving anyone that wouldn't last.

    "World War 2 against Hitler ended about sixty years ago."

    He blinked rapidly and then looked away, sniffling. "I'm an old man now," he tried to joke. His eyes shined wetly. "Nonno always used to say I'd know everything about everything when I got to his…age…" He sniffled again and rubbed his nose on the sleeve of his bright yellow shirt. "...we missed Mama's funeral. It was only supposed to be for three weeks…"

    "Sorry," I said helplessly.

    "...not your fault," Nico said almost thoughtfully with a dark whisper and tears in his voice. "Not your fault." He buried his head in his hands as it had finally all sunk in. His shadow spoke up for him instead.

    it is Zeus' fault






    "Is he lucid?" Was the first thing out of Luke's mouth when he came back inside the restaurant.

    "Uh, excuse me?" I'd been lucid this entire time!

    "English!" He exclaimed as he shuffled over to my table. The place we were stashed in was a brand new building, so new it wasn't even open yet with appliances in the kitchen still missing and everything but the plumbing turned off. Rhea's torch was providing the light, wedged in the design of the chandelier above us by someone who was too tall for his own good.

    "You were talking in your sleep."

    I shrugged. Honestly, not the first time someone told me that and it probably wasn't going to be the last. "What'd I say?"

    "No idea!" Luke said with mock cheer. His right eye was still shattered and looked almost bloodshot. I opened my mouth to ask about that, because what the fuck but Luke kept going. "I heard Egyptian, some kind of Gaelic, Persian, something my brain only registered as Aboriginal Australian, Sumerian - "

    "I understood that one," Nico spoke up from where he fiddled with my Gameboy. Don't judge me. Nico was practically a baby. That was the only thing I knew what to do with miserable little kids: throw some video games at them. His cheeks were still puffy and red from crying. "You still didn't make any sense."

    "Greek - "

    "And I understood that," Bianca admitted miserably, clutching Artemis to her chest from where she stood behind Luke.

    "And fffff - " Luke cast a glance at Nico. "Freaking Chinese."

    I really didn't know what to say to that other than, "So… what Name gives Hermes god of Diplomacy again?"

    He flicked my forehead. I nearly threw up again. He looked a bit ashamed. "You've been out for about three hours, I just had to kill this…thing sniffing around four demigods and a rabbit in a bar so I am a little on edge," he explained in a Not Apology.

    "I get that," I gasped as I tried to make sure whatever was trying to crawl up from my stomach didn't make its way out. Demigod scent. Hera's Curse was still a thing. "Let me just - " I closed my eyes as I tried to beat the nausea back down. I Called out in Ancient Greek, "Persephoneia?"

    I was a bit disappointed that nothing seemed to happen. When I was sure I wasn't going to spew, I opened my eyes to see Luke eyeing me in concern. "Is that…all it takes?"

    "Yeah," I said. "But they've got to be - "

    "Listening," Persephone finished from beside me and I nearly jumped an entire foot out of my skin when her cold hand rubbed my back. My Spidey Sense screamed. "Oh, you are adorable."

    "You couldn't have…given a warning, cuz?" She let out a small, musical laugh as my heart tried to beat out of my chest and Luke did jump nearly a foot in the air with a yell when he registered the goddess sitting next to me.

    "You Called me. Why weren't you prepared?" She looked the same as before, with long dark hair strung with rolling eyeballs in glass cages, but with a black and white dress and her pomegranate flower broach on her collar already withered and dry. She turned her face to 'look' across the table when Bianca gasped, taking a short step forward before she faltered and her face fell.

    "Let me guess," Persephone said. "I look like your mother?" Bianca nodded hesitantly, like she wasn't sure if the woman would take offense to that. "Honestly, that man," the dark goddess sighed fondly. "And you," she said a lot less fondly as her face turned to Nico. He stiffened in his seat as all of the eyes in her hair focused on him. "You look like your mother," Persephone offered gently, but the skin where her eyes should have been was tight. "Hello, nephew."

    Nico slowly relaxed. "Hello," he said shyly. "Aunt Persephone?"

    The woman inclined her head.

    Luke opened his mouth, blanched and closed it again, backing up a few panicked steps when Persephone stood up, ghosting right through the table like she was just an illusion. I pressed back into my seat.

    My stomach hurt.

    "Bianca," she said and the girl jumped. "I already prepared your rooms. Don't worry about missing anything, trust me. I missed nothing." She raised her hand, fingers pressed together like she was about to snap them. "Ah, please put down the rabbit," she said dryly.

    "Oh!" Bianca rushed to put the shivering Artemis down on the nearest table and then paused. "What about - "

    "Your half-brother?" Persephone flashed a charming smile as the siblings stared at each other. "He is no longer your concern."

    Bianca bit her lip. "I…I don't understand any of this - "

    "Can you not feel it?" The goddess interrupted her. "The comfort in stillness, the ease with the cold, how I feel safe to you?"

    Hades' demigod daughter stared with wide eyes. I didn't blame her. My demigod sense was constantly shrieking that I was looking at Death.

    Then again, Hades was the God of the Dead.

    "It means 'welcome home,' girl. Your father and I will teach you what you need to know, I promise." Everyone ignored Artemis' small gasp of surprise. "Now, are you ready to go?"

    Bianca nervously brushed some of her long hair back behind her ear. Nico hugged himself when she nodded, not sparing him a glance. "I am."

    She was gone in a snap of the goddess' fingers.

    "Well done, Perseus," Persephone mused and a shiver went down my spine hearing my name when she turned back to me. "It will take her, hmm, perhaps a few months to reconstitute from perishing so suddenly - "

    What!

    "You killed her!?" Nico burst out.

    "Technically," the goddess said. Nico jumped to his feet, but he only made it two steps before suddenly falling into a dead faint right into her arms. "You are definitely your mother's child."

    I found my voice. "You killed her? You said - "

    "Exactly what I meant," Persephone said coolly. "Oh, don't give me that, I adopted her, silly boy."

    "You - " My mind went blank. "You adopted her," I said slowly. Persephone's dad was Tartarus, an Elder God. I would bet money that she was like Hypnos, an Elder God as well. They adopt? That happens? "And for that she had to - "

    "There is only so much her gifts from my husband will do for her in the Underworld," the Priestess of the Endless Abyss said easily as she cradled Nico on her hip with his head against her shoulder like she was just taking him to bed. "The human condition is a hindrance."

    Artemis scoffed tightly. "You would say that."

    "Because it is true," Persephone said just as tightly. "The same way Nyx will have to put in a bit more work into this one to make sure he doesn't drive himself mad - well," she corrected herself, looking down at Nico's sleeping face dubiously. "She might not have to, but to be on the safe side - the safe…"

    She trailed off with dawning horror on her face.

    "The safe - I'm turning into my mother!"

    Persephone quickly turned around and headed straight for the back door of the restaurant without another word.

    I looked at Artemis. Artemis looked at Luke. Luke looked at me.

    We all bolted for the door after her.

    Outside in the empty parking lot, the Night sky overhead felt low and oppressive. Like the darkness was just a few feet over our head instead of hundreds of miles away. Even the bright lights of the Las Vegas Strip in the distance seemed muted and hollow. Persephone stood against the darkness with her head tilted up, the white diamond patterns on her long dress glowing like the sun.

    "She suspects," Persephone said as we approached, turning her head just enough to show the curve of her cheek. "She will recognize him, but does not truly know who the boy is, so you will let me do the talking, understand?"

    "Yeah," I croaked as pitch black shadows started to gather in the center of the lot.

    I heard Luke whimper as a figure rose from the black as the void closed in until we were standing in a small patch of tar and pavement, just like when I had Called Apate. At first glance, the feminine figure looked like Deception too with stars in her eyes and a dress splattered with the colors of a cold nebula and developing stars. A pressure was building behind my eyes and pounding in my head as the shadow at her feet got bigger and bigger, at twenty feet tall and then fifty and then a hundred before the mouths sprouted.

    Too close, my brain gibbered. Too close.

    "Sister," Persephone said. Her voice was very, very even in that way people who are spitting mad and determined not to show it sounded. She stepped forward. "This is the boy you forced my husband to sire. Do you recognize him?"

    The star eyes blinked slowly.

    Mine​

    The darkness whispered with all of her thousand mouths, scraping at my ribs.

    "It is within my right as my Father's Priestess to Claim him - '' She broke into an eerie multi-toned gurgling rasp of grinding bones and the Night pulled back from where She had moved. "Do not be rude. Our cousin went through the trouble of retrieving him for you. You owe him."

    The weight of Night's attention fell on me.

    My knees buckled as I choked. It was nothing like and exactly the same as when I was Dreaming. I didn't know how much of it was Hypnos shielding me or if my Sleeping Soul was just more resilient, but I could swear I heard my entire skeleton creak. The unrelenting pressure was like I was falling into the center of a star, endlessly on the verge of swallowing me whole, but satisfying itself with simply tasting my soul.

    After a few deep breaths, I was able to stand through it again.

    Nyx projected something like affection and something like pride at me before letting Persephone command her attention again.

    Favor​

    "Remove yourself from this plane of existence for a Gaian cycle," Persephone said sharply before softening. "You have a demigod to take care of, sister. Just like you wanted."

    Joy glittered in the shadows as the pale woman with dark hair finished taking shape.

    Nico did look like her.

    He and Bianca shared a chin and ears, but it was something about how his features were spaced and the shape of his face that really made me think he was Night's son.

    Persephone woke Nico up, setting him on the ground. Before he could yell, she knelt in front of him with her hands on his shoulders.

    "Your mother is right there," she said and his mouth snapped shut as he whipped his head around, his monochrome eyes white and surprised. "Go to her."

    Nico looked at me with wide black eyes.

    I tried to smile confidently. "Auntie's great."

    He stared for an uncomfortably long time. His eyes flashed between white and black before he eventually smiled a trembling smile back. "I'll see you again?"

    "Definitely," I said. "We're friends and family." Some fucking how? "Count on it."

    The other child of Prophecy took in a deep breath, then before his courage broke he ran to his Mom who gathered him up in her arms. The void retreated from around us, sinking back into the sky and the ground and the spaces in between as he babbled to Her, crying.

    My​

    The entire Night sky sighed.

    Baby​

    Nyx's toothy shadow collapsed over top of them and then they too were gone.

    In the silence that followed, Artemis' whispered from the ground,

    "He is Hades' demigod."

    "My husband made a deal," Persephone replied. She folded her hands in front of her and they were trembling. "That boy was his payment for this millennia and he is no more capable of resisting than any random human on this planet." She smiled coldly. "Wonder what it is like to have a child you know is yours and at the same time you know they aren't. You can feel it. You can see it!"

    The eyeballs spinning in their glass cages swept over me.

    "I would have said nothing. I did say nothing when he chose to pass the boy off as his own. He would have made sure the Night in him was buried, even if it meant dipping the boy in the Lethe."

    I felt a chill that had nothing to do with Persephone's presence.

    The Lethe.

    The Lethe was a river in the Underworld, the one where souls that wanted to be reincarnated took a bath in so that they forgot everything about who they used to be. To do that to someone still alive by force was dangerously close to what 'being unmade' meant. To have everything that made you you stripped away, not just exposed.

    Scoured clean.

    And you remembered it happening. At least the Lethe would make you forget.

    "Anger no longer means the same to me," Persephone said almost airily. "But if there is one thing that still infuriates me is someone - "

    Her body split apart like a 3D puzzle and there in the center were her eyes.

    "F̷u̸c̸k̴i̸n̷g̷ ̷w̶i̸t̴h̴ ̸m̶y̷ ̷h̷u̶s̴b̵a̵n̸d̵!̵"​

    There was blood in my mouth and dark spots in my vision as I reeled back from her, unable to recall what exactly I just saw. My head was pounding. I felt like I had just taken a rusty spoon through my ear to scoop out a few tablespoons of my brain. There was a thud as Luke hit the ground with a groan, a hand over his shattered eye as blood streamed from it. Artemis convulsed on the ground, teeth clattering.

    "Competent demigods are so rare these days and all so weak. I will remember this. Your mother must be proud." Persephone clicked back together primly.

    "She is," I slurred, dead on my feet. "Really proud."

    "The Night is retreating, but it will take some time for the natural order to reassert itself." That old Hollywood movie star smile and chuckle from the daughter of my uncle, the Priestess of the Endless Abyss and the Goddess of Murder. "Three villages, one plague! A pleasure doing business with you, cousin."

    As I wondered what exactly she got from this, grasping bony fingers erupted from the ground and dragged her under.

    I wasn't sure when I passed out again, but when I woke up this time it was to a skinny black dog draped over my legs back in the restaurant we broke into. I was leaning against someone that I assumed was Luke and I grunted as my head throbbed like I'd taken a brick to the face.

    Maybe I did take a brick to the face.

    Or at least a parking lot.

    "And so the prodigal son awakes," Hecate murmured.

    "Shit," I said.

    I had been sleeping on her.

    "Wait - "

    "I said that you will not be late," the goddess of the Crossroad said softly. "And what is sunlight, but that which banishes the darkness? You are where you should be."

    My mouth hung open.

    Really?

    That was it?

    I looked around the new restaurant to see a Luke curled up in that minimized space kind of way in Hecate's white cloak on the floor and her polecat was cuddling an auburn bunny rabbit on the table.

    "What do you want?" I asked warily, feeling exhausted.

    It's been a long fucking day.

    "A key," she replied. "But not right now. Go back to sleep."

    I eyed her.

    What I could see of the goddess' chin and mouth under her white cowl looked amused as she pulled me back against her. She started humming and against my will, I felt my eyes droop. Has she ever done this for Alabaster or any of her other kids? I was vaguely aware of her handing me a Mythomagic card.

    "She knows where it is."

    Artemis, the Goddess of the Moon.

    "Now, sleep."

    I could have cried in relief.

    Hypnos was finally there to carry me away.
     
  • Threadmarks
    • Okay so lots of things happened and we learned lot's of stuff.

    Percy's hatred of Oathbreaking and Betrayal comes from this Dylan guy who is the Son of Donn, Celtic God of the Dead. We also see Cannon Percy.

    Shujin said:
    It was just a wall now. I stared at the smiling poster of the beach goer with a pina colada in their hand taped to the blank white plaster. I couldn't help thinking, I choose my own destiny. To this day, I still don't know why I thought that. It had nothing to do with this. The Lotus Hotel and Casino were just beside reality and I already knew the elevator was there. I paused for a second, thinking again that I should just leave, but it was like my brain was running on a parallel track to my actions. I raised my right hand.

    There was nothing there.

    There will be.
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    Percy has his dare to be badass moment, where he embraces who he is and does a bit of reality warping. I'm so proud of him.

    Shujin said:
    I pushed off the wall, blinking the eyes that had opened in my shadow. No more blind spots. I launched myself back at them like a human blender. I just swung and swung with absolutely no skill, because everything I touched came apart. My water started gaining shape, lifting off my body as crude battering rams, to sharp tendrils moving like I had a second mind I wasn't consciously aware of.
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    Looks like Percy is using his inside eyes as well as the eyes in his eldritch shadow. Also damn he's really good with his water given he's only been using it for a bit.

    Shujin said:
    It took no effort at all to dig into the well of nothingness in my stomach. "You speak to Perseus of the B̸l̴o̸o̶d̶y̵ ̴T̷o̵n̷g̴u̶e̷."
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    Look at Percy go, using his eldritch power to announce who he is, he's come so far. Also something tells me he's unlocked the mental block he had on his powers.

    Shujin said:
    "...not your fault," Nico said almost thoughtfully with a dark whisper and tears in his voice. "Not your fault." He buried his head in his hands as it had finally all sunk in. His shadow spoke up for him instead.

    it is Zeus' fault
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    Welp looks like Zeus is on Nico's shit list.

    Shujin said:
    "No idea!" Luke said with mock cheer. His right eye was still shattered and looked almost bloodshot. I opened my mouth to ask about that, because what the fuck but Luke kept going. "I heard Egyptian, some kind of Gaelic, Persian, something my brain only registered as Aboriginal Australian, Sumerian - "
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    Shujin said:
    "And fffff - " Luke cast a glance at Nico. "Freaking Chinese."
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    Okay a list of what Percy is guaranteed to have inherited probably in order or prominence.

    Shujin said:
    "You - " My mind went blank. "You adopted her," I said slowly. Persephone's dad was Tartarus, an Elder God. I would bet money that she was like Hypnos, an Elder God as well. They adopt? That happens? "And for that she had to - "

    "There is only so much her gifts from my husband will do for her in the Underworld," the Priestess of the Endless Abyss said easily as she cradled Nico on her hip with his head against her shoulder like she was just taking him to bed. "The human condition is a hindrance."

    Artemis scoffed tightly. "You would say that."

    "Because it is true," Persephone said just as tightly. "The same way Nyx will have to put in a bit more work into this one to make sure he doesn't drive himself mad - well," she corrected herself, looking down at Nico's sleeping face dubiously. "She might not have to, but to be on the safe side - the safe…"

    She trailed off with dawning horror on her face.

    "The safe - I'm turning into my mother!"
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    Percy freaking out about Elder God adoption while Persephone is having a crisis about turning into her mom, is a vibe I didn't think I would like but I do.

    Shujin said:
    I heard Luke whimper as a figure rose from the black as the void closed in until we were standing in a small patch of tar and pavement, just like when I had Called Apate. At first glance, the feminine figure looked like Deception too with stars in her eyes and a dress splattered with the colors of a cold nebula and developing stars. A pressure was building behind my eyes and pounding in my head as the shadow at her feet got bigger and bigger, at twenty feet tall and then fifty and then a hundred before the mouths sprouted.
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    Nyx casually roaming the earth and breaking reality with her mere presence as you do.

    Shujin said:
    Nyx projected something like affection and something like pride at me before letting Persephone command her attention again.
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    Nyx seems to like Percy which is good.

    Shujin said:
    The other child of Prophecy took in a deep breath, then before his courage broke he ran to his Mom who gathered him up in her arms. The void retreated from around us, sinking back into the sky and the ground and the spaces in between as he babbled to Her, crying.

    My​
    The entire Night sky sighed.

    Baby​
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    That is surprisingly heartwarming, I was a little worried about returning Nico to Nyx but now I'm not nearly as concerned. Still really concerned but not as much.

    Shujin said:
    "My husband made a deal," Persephone replied. She folded her hands in front of her and they were trembling. "That boy was his payment for this millennia and he is no more capable of resisting than any random human on this planet." She smiled coldly. "Wonder what it is like to have a child you know is yours and at the same time you know they aren't. You can feel it. You can see it!"
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    So confirmation that Nico was born from Hades but the Night kinda highjacked the birth. Through her deal with Hades. Apparently it's a millennia favor thing, wonder what other millennia payments where.

    Shujin said:
    I had been sleeping on her.

    "Wait - "

    "I said that you will not be late," the goddess of the Crossroad said softly. "And what is sunlight, but that which banishes the darkness? You are where you should be."
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    Hecate "All According To Keikaku" as she gives Percy a lap pillow.
     
    I already commented on ao3 but I realized I forgot something. Based on Percy's propensity for eating things he shouldn't, is he going to eat Zeus master bolts?
     
    The son of a VIP uses his status to demand a meeting with the manager, only to find it was the middleman skimming off the top. Then, an unforgettable family reunion and scheming relatives. A classic and timeless story.
     
    Alioth said:
    I already commented on ao3 but I realized I forgot something. Based on Percy's propensity for eating things he shouldn't, is he going to eat Zeus master bolts?
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    At this rate he might eat Zeus some day. Hopefully to greater success than Kronos.
     
    ArcanaVitae said:
    Percy freaking out about Elder God adoption while Persephone is having a crisis about turning into her mom, is a vibe I didn't think I would like but I do.
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    I can see the Progressive Insurance commercial now:

    "It happens to all newly ascendant deities. One day they wake up and realize they've become their parents. But there's hope. Dr. Azathoth Will See You Now is the sure-to-be bestselling guide from Dr. Azathoth himself. Filled with tips and tricks to keep you from acting like your parents, it's a must-read for anyone who has taken on a new aspect or gained a Name. It may be the single most important book ever written about Parentamorphosis. Also, the only one."
     
    Last edited:
    RandolphCarter said:
    "It happens to all newly ascendant deities. One day they wake up and realize they've become their parents. But there's hope. Dr. Azathoth Will See You Now is the sure-to-be bestselling guide from Dr. Azathoth himself. Filled with tips and tricks to keep you from acting like your parents, it's a must-read for anyone who has takrn on a new aspect or gained a Name. It may be the single most important book ever written about Parentamorphosis. Also, the only one."
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    "Progressive can't protect you from becoming your parents. But it can protect you from paying out an arm and a leg--perhaps literally--when your dumb demi-god ass thinks you're invincible and takes on a Quest that's far beyond your abilities."
     
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