Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Nico might get there first.
An Undertow of Sand (Percy Jackson and the Cthulhu Mythos)
- Thread starter Shujin
- Start date
Love this, tried to explain eldrich entity's to someone once as, they don't try to cause harm and may really want to help but it would be like a person trying to explain airplanes to an ant but the only way that would work is if the ant wasn't an ant anymore. They don't even see what they do as harmful they just can't unless they literally alter their own perception so they can vaguely understand a person's perspective. So percys mom *loves his father, and pretends to understand morality* so she could understand how to care at least a little for Percy's human parts.
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Hello! Welcome to the thread. UoS really uses a very Bloodborne sense of the divine, where if they are benevolent, asking for assistance has an 80% chance of being HALPING instead and if they are malevolent then you are SoL. Percy's Mom understands much better than most, but the divide is still very, very clear.
My Rabbit's Big Fat Greek Sleepover
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
AN: Let me know if there are any problems, please.
You know, I once spent three days in a coma when I was six.
Mom had been sitting on my bed when I finally woke up, reading a book. She'd been in black, starry night pajamas with only one sock on and her black hair pinned up with a pen. The memory of her painfully fond sigh, like she had caught me with my hand in the cookie jar and was remembering when she had done the same, a long, long (long) time ago, is burned into my mind.
Because the very next second, she showed me the nightmare that had followed me awake.
I don't remember what it looked like.
I think that was for the best.
She allowed it to lunge for me and I know I screamed.
Mom had crushed the parasite with ease. Dark blood and the kind of viscera that stunk to high heaven and still squirmed drenched my bed sheets. The taste of iron in my mouth, a burning in my eyes and swallowing back bitter tasting bile of sheer terror was nothing next to the gentle hand that passed through my hair. My mother had made a soft, huffing sound of amusement as I tried not to cry and tapped me on the nose.
'What did we learn?' Mom had asked me.
A couple hours later, she was walking me through cutting up strawberries without murdering myself to the sound of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World on cassette tape like nothing had happened. Dad had taken off work and was just so relieved I was finally awake. I remember his awkward hovering, trying to talk to me around and through his wife to make sure I was okay. Mom gave me the week off from training even when I insisted I was fine and guided my dreams for another week after that.
Dad didn't suspect a thing.
Not that he could have. Mom never leaves evidence behind. I was still ignoring him, and well.
There was nothing to suspect?
At the time, I was embarrassed, feeling like a baby that couldn't take care of himself.
I understood the lesson, though.
I took Sam with me whenever I felt like exploring from then on and I never overstayed my welcome in the Dreamlands ever again.
'What did we learn?'
It was the only thing Mom ever needed to say.
The Greek Personification of Sleep had stared at me for a second, pulsed in disbelief and then had nearly exploded in rage. His anger was rough. Grating. Like it was actually peeling parts of my Sleeping soul away. The lights of the mortal souls he was holding flickered with terrible nightmares. A lot of them tore right out of their rest, that lizard hindbrain blaring the alarms and waving red flags that staying asleep was death.
It wasn't. Just unpleasant. Hypnos was more careful than that.
I think.
Look, no one's perfect.
I know Luke said it.
Multiple times.
It wasn't until Hypnos flipped his shit when I told him where Clovis was that I started to accept (just a little) that maybe there was something a bit off with how Mom was raising me.
I just couldn't put my finger on what it was.
The part of me that felt guilty for putting my friends in danger understood why he was angry. It was because he was worried, but having a panic attack never helped anyone, right? Having a crisis just because someone you care about was having a crisis meant you were useless.
There was also the fact that he couldn't deck his mom for putting her grandchild in danger.
Ignoring my mother doing just that causing all our problems, him doing the same would be a bad idea on so many levels. It was just like Artemis said, being angry felt better.
Dad got angry too, but I knew it was because he cared. I guess he and an Elder God had something in common.
Mom was not like my father.
Part of me understood why Hypnos was angry. It was the rest of me that fluttered my spines in bewilderment and said, He's not lost.
My buddy paused mid-tirade.
I told him to go to Ulthar, I continued. None of the cats in that village like me, but I knew they would help. He's only staying to help our friends. He's fine.
I fell in at two years old.
I was alive (and sane), so obviously, it was fine? Clovis already knew all the really important stuff. I made sure to tell him when he started so he wouldn't have to learn on the go like I did: If he saw puddles of tar, he was going in the wrong direction. Always. Don't go too deep into the water. Avoid the Pit. The mountain range to the south? Bad news. Keep track of your thoughts. If they go weird, get the hell out of dodge.
Leave the temples alone.
Trust me, getting haunted out of the corner of your eyes by a twisted altar and its bloodstained knife even while awake is not as cool as it sounds. Me, being a dumbass kid, thought it was way cool. Especially when I found out that Apollo couldn't see it, but Evangeline could.
A month later was when Eva and I finally realized it wasn't cool at all.
Oh, and.
You don't want to go to the moon.
An enterprising dream spirit, drunk on their renewed freedom, latched onto the shadow of my fear. They projected an ominous 'ping……cheep!' of a submarine's sonar at me.
Hypnos and I both turned to glare at them.
Their presence blanched a pale yellow under our combined hundreds of eyes before it quietly slunk away.
Jerk.
Hypnos poked me.
He's fine, I repeated at the fragile relief in Hypnos' form. Clovis was fine. I was just a whole lot less sure about everyone else. Just make sure nothing is trying to follow them awake, okay?
Hypnos grabbed me in a massive hug. I felt like my face was being crushed into a pillow made of koosh balls. I grabbed him back with my wings and squeezed until he wiggled in amusement, but there was an undercurrent of concern.
Two words: Red October. I sighed as I let him go. Don't really wanna talk about it.
Uncertainty.
I'm fine now. My brother helped.
Reassured, Hypnos nudged me questioningly. His grasping presence lightly tugged on the spines and barbs curling off my form. I was a lot bigger than I was used to, finally able to look him in the eyes without needing him to lift me. I also felt like someone had turned me into their origami paper folding project when I wasn't looking, layering me into myself with burning green eyes filling in the spaces in between.
Which was, uh, new.
I shrugged.
Fuck if I know, I said honestly. I fell asleep like this.
I had my suspicions, but it wasn't like I knew for sure. The last time I couldn't keep my eyes on the inside was after Apollo's oracle jumped me. Rhea sealed my Sleeping soul somehow, but I guess I was right back at it after making lunch of Lotus Hotel's manager. Was I going to turn into a freakshow every time I ate someone?
Because that would be kinda lame.
Speaking of, You missed an absolute shit ton while grounded, by the way.
Hypnos was unsurprised.
I only had two kinds of days, after all.
Nothing Happens and Fucking Disaster.
It hadn't seemed like all that much while it was happening, but when I thought about exactly what had happened since Mom lost her shit and made the Night lose her shit and everything else went to shit -
It was a bit much, you know?
Also, an unreasonable number of things that might come back to bite me in the ass later.
Being on Persephone's shortlist wasn't even half of it.
I patted my buddy. Right now, we gotta steal some kind of key for the Queen so our rabbit is less useless so we can find the Bolt in two days.
Or maybe it was more like one and a half now.
Hypnos radiated incredulous disbelief.
Then he slumped with a resigned shrug and gave me another hug. I can't tell you how much I appreciated it. Just a good old fashioned 'hang in there, man' from a friend. Especially when I caught the pulse of dread from him. I pulled back a little.
You know what key she wants. It wasn't a question.
Hypnos pursed, collapsing in on himself. His grip on me tightened, like he was going to try to keep me with him. Safe and sound.
We both startled when his multitude of fingers passed right through.
I was waking up.
Shit, I said. I tried to reach back for Sleep, but he slipped through my fingers. Shit! Tell me quick!
Hypnos sent me a wave of reassurance.
You're going to help? I shouted. The dark world around me was breaking apart as I struggled to stay in the oblivion.
Hypnos was determined.
He was a little less determined when he sheepishly replied that he had to rescue his son first, but he was going to make up for lost time.
He had my back.
Say hi to Nico for me!
That was the last thing I got out before I became aware of my bladder threatening to empty itself right the fuck now, if you don't wake up, I swear to God…
I bolted awake.
Only to discover that the restaurant was nowhere to be seen because I had just woken up in a fucking airport.
"I - okay." I dragged a hand down my face. I could feel where I had drooled in my sleep, dead to the world. I scrubbed my mouth on my sleeve and rubbed the crust out of my eyes. The goddess I had been napping on had replaced herself with a giant Charizard body pillow.
Cute.
"Hecate. I know we just met you properly and you are helping and I am really grateful for it. Honest."
I blearily peered around at the dead looking airport who knows where, hollow faced people all around. I knew saying this out loud was probably a bad idea. I was going to say it anyway.
"But I am already sick of your shit."
Luke snort laughed in the seat next to me as he finished waking up too. He stretched and cracked his back like an old man, still laughing under his breath. It wasn't a 'ha ha' funny laugh. It sounded like he was laughing because if he didn't, he'd burst into tears.
"Are you okay?" I asked quietly.
Luke hunched over, head hanging so low it was almost between his knees. "No."
My stomach scrunched uncomfortably.
Right.
That was a stupid question.
"I failed to get you." I opened my mouth to reassure him that it wasn't his fault, but Luke pressed on. "I failed. I walked in, I forgot, I stabbed myself in the eye - "
I completely forgot what I had been about to say. "You did what?"
"You know," he said slowly. "You could still see the moon from those hotel balconies." I stared at him, not sure what question he was answering. If any. "I was staring at it when I realized something was wrong," he mused idly. "I couldn't even remember when or where I'd heard it, but I still remembered what you said. When you made that summoning circle, remember?"
"Yeah," I said quietly. With Piper. I had drawn the ritual circle Mom had taught me on the ground so we could Call on the Night relatively safely. Apate answered instead. You know the rest. Luke had said then that the circle hurt his eyes.
"Grant me clarity," Luke murmured. "Grant me vision."
He looked up. He had one of those rictus grins on. The kind that made you uncomfortable and vaguely sick just looking at it. His shattered eye stared out at the world with a dozen irises and six pupils blown wide open.
I could see myself reflected in each and every one.
"Grant me eyes," he whispered.
"I didn't say that last part," I said a bit sharply. I knew I didn't. "Getting body parts involved never turns out well."
Never ask for what can't be easily given back.
My bladder chose that moment to remind me that it did not give a damn about any of our problems.
"I gotta go to the bathroom!" I blurted out before Luke responded and ran for it.
I have no idea why airports seem to believe that people are ice cubes who will just melt if the air conditioning isn't only a few degrees above freezing.
The airport was one of those chrome and white plastic structures that looked like it had been put together in a body shop for cars by mechanics instead of by an architect that gave a shit. It just felt functional.
And cold.
If you were wondering how airports were faring during the Night?
The answer was no.
It was still pitch black outside. I don't know if that meant we didn't sleep all that long or if it meant the Night was taking her sweet time leaving. The airport we were in was a small two lane regional transportation hub with a single taxi company. The intercom was playing some radio show with commercial breaks for its trapped residents instead of announcing departures.
No one, customer or staff, looked happy.
If there is one thing you should know about my ADHD, it's that I am either the most observant dude on the planet or the most oblivious dude on the planet. And sometimes I am both, which is why I ended up wandering the airport instead of getting back to my adventuring party.
I got distracted.
I noticed the Gello, a Greek daemon of infertility, stalking a couple (and warned it off), gave my last Snickers bar away to a sneaky Kobaloi, a Greek trickster sprite, gave a desperate, stranded college student some tips on how to pronounce the Greek alphabet in his struggle to order a taxi cab, listened to some radio commercials about Athens over the intercom.
And then spent ten minutes in front of the vending machine, wondering why I couldn't recognize half the brands it was offering and why some of it wasn't in English.
Maybe that's not ADHD.
Maybe I'm just stupid.
Artemis was woken from her sleep by the travel brochure Luke dropped on her head.
"We're in Greece," he said flatly.
"What?" The bunny squawked.
"Yup." I tossed him a MASTIQUA lemonade in half an apology for slapping him awake again with the brochure. Luke caught the can out of the air. In my defense, I had panicked a bit at waking up in another country a billion miles and an entire ocean away from where we just were.
So sue me.
"Crete, to be exact." You might have heard of this island off the coast of mainland Greece, but if you haven't, it's an island off the coast of mainland Greece. "Too bad we're not near Delphi. I have a great grandmother over there."
"So do I," Artemis muttered.
That just reminded me.
The Earth Mother is imprisoned in Delphi.
So maybe it was a good thing we weren't near Delphi. Sure, that star-spawn was on ice, but there was no point in tempting Mom.
"Are you okay?" I asked as casually as I could.
Luke's mismatched eyes flickered up at me as he nodded and cracked open his can. I wondered how? Usually, stabbing yourself in the eye was something that had bloody consequences, but instead - then I remembered where he had done it.
No one could die in the Lotus Hotel and Casino.
Everyone reverted back to the way they were when they entered, forgetting the outside world. If you got hurt, you would reset from it, like you were living the same day over and over again.
The time dilation healed his eye.
But it didn't come back the same.
Luke dropped his gaze to his drink. "Why are we here?"
"At a guess?" I sat back in my own chair, nudging the Charizard pillow until it fell onto the floor. "Someone isn't interested in letting us change our minds."
Luke took a miserable sip of lemonade. "Figures," he muttered bitterly. "What did the Lady of the Underworld want now?"
"Uh, what?" I said. Luke stared at me with his mismatched eyes. I stared blankly back until I realized what had happened. In hindsight, Luke would have definitely ridden my ass for sleeping on Hecate's lap if he knew about it.
I was telling no one else about that.
"So we all got knocked out then?"
"I…can barely recall what happened at all," Artemis admitted quietly. "The Night came. And then…it is a bit of a blur." She didn't even remember speaking up. "Or perhaps a dream."
Luke's hand crept up his face to his shattered eye. "I lasted a bit longer. The Lady split apart. It felt like I just had a red hot poker shoved into my eyeball."
Yeah, I could see that. Literally. He had two more eyes opened from when he was in the hotel lobby.
Luke snatched his hand back. His face went pale. "...she said she would remember us."
I'm not sure if it's the Greek way to be a gloryhound. I understood wanting to make your god parent proud and proving yourself. Everyone at Camp Half-Blood hoped for great deeds and important Quests. That kind of thing worked great when all you had to worry about was your god parent and petty Olympic squabbles.
At some point, that stops working.
The Celt way of doing things was a bit different.
Go unnoticed. If you are noticed, be forgettable. If they won't forget, be amusing.
You had a better chance of getting out alive that way.
"If you were thinking of taking Rabbit up on that job offer to be a mercenary," I began, trying to joke about it. "It would be a hell of a thing to put on your resume."
"What happened afterwards?" Artemis wondered out loud.
"Hecate," I said.
Her rabbit ears stood up for a moment. "She made an appearance."
It wasn't a question.
"What is sunlight, but that which banishes the darkness?" I quoted with a grimace.
"Las Vegas. The restaurant. The deal," Luke said, ticking them off his fingers while still holding his drink can. "It wasn't a riddle we were meant to solve."
"Of course not," Artemis muttered bitterly. "That is just like her."
"She wants a key," I dove right in.
"A key?" Luke asked.
I don't think we were talking about the kind of key you hang on a keyring next to your front door and garage keys. It could be anything from a spell to a rock. Whatever it was, the fact that Hecate actually went through the effort of godnapping us told me she wanted it.
Really badly.
Enough to give up a Name for it.
"Yeah." I pointed at the rabbit. "She said you'd know where it was."
"A key?" Artemis parroted, huddled on top of my backpack. "I do not - " Her ears sprung straight up in alarm as her silver eyes got huge. "No," she whispered. "No, she would not dare."
"Uh," I said. "Hate to break it to you, but obviously - "
"And it's not her daring, it's us," Luke said and he was right on the money. It wasn't like Hecate really loses anything if we die trying.
"I cannot." Artemis trembled, curling into herself. "You do not know what you are asking of me. I cannot go back - I - we should abandon this - do not make me - I can't!"
"'Temis!" I used Persephone's nickname for her, hoping to snap her out of it.
"It is folly," the rabbit hissed at me. "It is impossible to succeed - it - " The bunny stared up at me with wide terrified eyes as if just seeing me for the first time. "Oh," she murmured in the flat monotone I heard once before. When she was describing what Adrasteia's soul tearing presence felt like. "That is her game. She thinks it will not destroy you."
That was not what I would call promising.
"Why don't I be the judge of that?" I offered. "I'd really like to know what we're after before we get ourselves killed."
"Artemis?" Luke drawled, looking down at her when she failed to answer me. "Mind educating us poor ignorant souls?"
Her silver eyes shifted in his general direction, but you could tell she wasn't really seeing us anymore. "And we are in Crete," she mused to herself. "A doorway into dreaming. Make me reclaim the fragment I left behind. Send us into the broken nightmare for the ruins of gods - how did I wake up?"
She sounded just as confused as I was.
"She spoke to you wearing white," Artemis said as a fact even though she hadn't seen Hecate at all.
Hecate had been wearing white. Since the first time I met her on the shore of the Crossroads when Mom lost her temper, the goddess had been in white. It was a pretty insignificant thing, until you remembered that Hecate of the Dark Moon was known for the color black. It was why people thought Cerberus was her pet and got her pseudo-adopted by Nyx. It was even on her Mythomagic card.
New Moon. Dark Night. Black Dogs.
…who had I been talking to this entire time?
Artemis looked up at us.
Then she ran.
Luke cursed, almost spilling his drink and falling out of his chair as he tried to catch her. "What the Styx - " He set his can down and got to his feet after the blitzing bunny. "Artemis!"
I sat there like a bump on a log.
A doorway into dreaming. A broken nightmare.
Artemis, goddess of the Moon, knows where the key is.
"Oh, Selene has it," I told no one.
"Now there's a Name I haven't heard in a while," a man's voice said and I turned to look.
A huge Greek basketball player of a dude cleaned his right ear with his pinky finger. He was in a leather jacket over his jersey, rocking the short curly black hair and stubble look as he looked over me with shining blue eyes. The gleam in them reminded me of the Priest of the god at Sea. Like Evangeline. It wasn't like his bright eyes were lit with their own light, but were reflecting themselves, like shining a flashlight into a hall of mirrors or a carnival funhouse.
"You make a habit of calling people out, kid?" he asked, flicking ear wax off his finger.
I stared. "Sorry. Who the hell are you?"
He gave me this look. "I don't know what you did to sneak past me - "
"Uh." I raised my hand like I was in math class. "Fell asleep in Las Vegas?"
"But it wasn't good enough," he said with raised eyebrows.
I raised my eyebrows right back because that was the gospel truth. None of this was my fault! It was not like I asked Hecate to dump us here.
"Great," the unknown god (?) sighed. "Another little shit." I scowled. "Travel to the Old World is forbidden by order of the King of Olympus," he drawled in a bored voice. "Because I am such a nice guy - "
Get a load of this random asshole.
"I'll give you the chance to convince me to not punt you and your out of bounds friends back to America."
I blurted out the first excuse that came to mind. "Not an Olympic demigod."
"Uh huh," Random Ass said skeptically. "You feel like a Greek hero to me."
That was strangely comforting? I had just fully accepted that I wasn't completely Greek, only to be told that whatever else I was, I was still a son of Ananke at the end of the day. It was what gave me the confidence to raise my hand again, but this time when I lowered it, I dragged my sunglasses down with it.
I stared at him with my mother's eyes. His ghost looked bewildered, turning around with a silent 'huh?' before getting obliterated. Around me, the airport fell apart. "Perseus of the Bloody Tongue. You are honored to make my acquaintance."
Don't ask me why I took to using that one of all Mom's titles to introduce myself with.
Just felt right.
"Feel free to tell my mother I'm not allowed to be in Greece." I smiled nastily as my belly button quivered. "I dare you."
Random Ass nodded slowly. "...I'll pass on that, thanks."
I thought so.
"Uh huh," I said as I snapped my sunglasses back up, because I am a huge little shit, thank you very much. "And who the fuck are you, again?"
It turned out the random asshole was Herakles.
Who was surprisingly a lot less of an asshole when off the clock.
"Autograph," I ordered as I slapped one of my notebooks and a pen down in front of Greek Mythology's greatest hero. "Not for me," I clarified when Luke's arguably most famous uncle's eyebrows bounced. "For some friends. You know Camp Half-Blood, right?"
"Chiron still running the place?" Herakles looked bemused as he grabbed my pen from the table.
"You went?"
"For a bit," he shrugged, then he rolled his eyes. "You'd think I was born and then disappeared off the face of the earth for over a decade the way history goes on about it."
There was no good way to tell someone that the stupid way they ascended was the only reason I knew who they were at all.
On a good day, your second wife being dumb enough to accept a gift from a dying enemy you just beat up was terrible. He didn't suspect a thing because the whole 'what kind of dumbass gives me a gift from my dying enemy' bit and then had the worst allergic reaction to hydra venom treated fabric known to man.
Take it from me, burning to death hurts less.
I shrugged. "No drama is boring."
His lips thinned. "Glad I could entertain." I gave him the side eye for that one and the god of Heroes sighed. "I don't mean you or your mother, just - " He waved the pen with a frustrated air.
"I get it," I said. "Olympus wasn't worth it."
He looked down at the notebook and started scribbling. "It was for a time," he said, almost under his breath.
I snapped my fingers.
That's right.
"Speaking of, got any opinion on your dad getting the throne again?" I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do about the Zeus problem, but I was one hundred percent sure that I was kicking him off the throne the first chance I got.
Herakles looked at me like I sprouted another head. "My father is already on the throne."
"Duh," I said. "I mean your other divine dad."
It should surprise no one that Zeus did just short of bupkis for Herakles considering he forced his 'favorite' daughter Artemis on this Quest as a rabbit. Maybe the fact that the Patron of Heroes gave a teeny, tiny molecule of a shit about the greatest hero of Greek history is a surprise considering her everything, but I would take what I could get.
As far as I was concerned, Zeus could go fuck himself six ways to Sunday.
I'm not a big believer in 'you can't choose family.'
That didn't even make sense.
My family was multiple choice depending on the myth. Assuming strong loving bonds of kinship with people would probably just get me killed horribly. Mom kept me from most of my cousins for a reason. Maybe you can't help who you are related to, but blood didn't make anyone family.
The Fates had made it very clear that I was not their brother.
Herakles as a hero inherited from the Names of Zeus, but Herakles as a god had a suspicious number of Names more closely associated with his eldest sister.
"My other - " Herakles stopped himself and then beamed. "Kid." He waved me to lean in closer. "I will give you my shield if you call Athena that to her face."
Score!
"Deal." We shook on it. His hand completely dwarfed mine. I basically shook hands with his thumb and two fingers.
"What'd I miss?" Luke asked from behind me.
"Uh," I said as I turned around.
I knew I was forgetting something.
I wasn't an Olympic demigod, but Luke sure as hell was.
"Not much?" I said, mind racing. He had a very miserable, wet bunny wrapped up in his vest like a rodent burrito. His entire right side was soaked, which was odd because I didn't see a single fountain when I wandered the place. I thought about asking what the hell had happened, and decided against it. "This is Herakles." Luke's eyes went huge. "Um, Herakles, this is Luke. He's not an Olympic demigod either? He's, uh."
My mind went blank on how I was going to stop him getting tossed back to America and leaving me alone in Crete.
"Erm."
"Blood of Selene," Herakles said, looking mildly concerned as he looked Luke over.
I blinked.
"Right. Blood of Selene. Exactly."
Gotta admit. I was definitely expecting him to call my bluff there.
"You, uh, so you weren't born like that, right?" The god asked, tapping his own cheek under his reflective right eye.
Luke flushed red and then paled. He swallowed hard, looking like he wanted to vomit. He smiled weakly. "Would you believe it looks like this because I tried to gouge it out?"
"Yes, actually," the former demigod said with clear sympathy. "I've got crap luck in great grandmothers." Like that made any sense whatsoever. "Who the Styx is sending Blood after the moon's crap?"
You could hear the capital B. Herakles was a bit old fashioned. Nowadays, we just call them clear-sighted.
"Hecate," I said.
"The Mormones," Artemis rasped from her burrito.
Oh…kay.
"The fearful ones?" Luke translated, raising his blond eyebrows. "I am…fairly certain those are - "
"What we call the goddess of the Crossroads," Artemis said quietly. "When we do not know who exactly it is."
It felt like a pothole just formed in my stomach.
Artemis did know what Hecate was. That just reinforced my suspicion that maybe I had never actually met Hecate at all. Like Young Gods, Old Gods still needed to receive or Take Names for themselves.
And like the Elder Gods, the Old God was always there.
"And above my pay grade," Herakles conceded with a nod and a low whistle. "Also, Artemis?"
The rabbit raised a wet paw weakly. "Brother."
The god of Heroes stared for a moment.
Then he threw back his head and laughed.
Luke's most famous uncle had one of those booming guffaws that came right from the gut, so loud I was sure the whole airport could hear him. It was jolly and infectious. I could see Luke starting to grin as Artemis grumbled wordlessly. Her half-brother had a good chuckle at her expense, holding his stomach like it was about to burst and slapping his knee.
"What'd you do?" He wheezed.
Like, it wasn't even a question of if she had screwed over someone recently, just how.
The rabbit stubbornly kept quiet.
"Tried to kill me," I volunteered. "Mom wasn't a big fan of that."
Herakles choked and had to turn away from us, coughing into his leather jacket by the crook of his arm at that.
Artemis muttered something to the effect of 'it was ill advised' in Olympic Greek, prompting her brother to snort back a 'no shit.'
After he collected himself, he looked up over again. His blue eyes lit up with electricity, shining like he had turned the lights on behind the curtain for a second. He shrugged one of his shoulders. "You lot hungry?"
Luke and I shared a look.
"The rabbit too, my lord?" Luke asked cautiously, remembering Khione and Persephone.
"And draw Nemesis' attention?" Herakles shrugged again carelessly. "I have no interest in making things harder for you than it needs to be." He frowned. "And you aren't working for Hera. Any demigod taking marching orders from that bitch deserves everything they get."
That's fair.
She made Herakles' life hell for the crime of being her husband's bastard. I'm talking 'dead family members and friends' being her fault kind of shit. Throw in everything she did to end Athena's reign and while, yeah, a random demigod maybe couldn't tell the Queen of Olympus 'no' to her face, exactly, but, dude has a point?
"I'll even throw in a free ride to your next stop after, how about it?"
Luke looked a bit star struck. "Thank you, lord Herakles."
"I've been there, kid." He finished his signature for Camp Half-Blood with a flourish and handed me back my pen and the notebook. "And don't call me 'lord,' I'll get a rash."
"How's Herc?" I asked. Short for Hercules, the Roman Name.
There was a flicker of Not-Movement that I could and couldn't see at the same time, like the god had moved in my peripheral vision even though he was right in front of me. Outwardly, nothing seemed to change. Maybe his face was a little bit sharper or his curly black hair a bit less shaggy?
He didn't, like, graft anyone. He was just that popular and was Given the Name. Even Christianity liked him and come on, how many gods could say that?
Mom sure as hell couldn't.
"That works - " The god of Bravery abruptly turned back towards me. "Wait just a damn minute. How the hell are you a Celt?"
Oh right.
The Roman Name.
Whoops.
Short answer: It's complicated.
Long answer: It's complicated and please don't tell Epona we're here.
We found our way to the airport's tiny food court. There were only a few people there, all looking exhausted. Herc had dragged some of the tables together, instructing us to take a load off. Luke changed his shirt while I toweled Artemis as best as I could with table napkins. I also deflated the Charizard pillow and stuffed it into my Bag of Holding. Sure, I was still kind of pissed at Not-Hecate for it, but also, waste not, want not!
Hercules came back with bags of food to Luke brushing the rabbit.
Artemis was never going to live it down.
"The Blood still go to Camp, right?" Hercules said tiredly as he sat heavily. He poked Luke's bicep and shoulder skeptically, like his own eight foot whatever brick shithouse build was the norm.
Poke. Poke.
Still? Huh, I guess that made sense. It gathered them all in one place, following Olympus' orders. If you inherited enough from Selene to see the truth of the world and all its monsters, wouldn't you want to learn how to fight back?
Chances are you had enough godly blood to pull some tricks too.
Then Selene died.
I suppose things kind of unraveled after that.
"What has Chiron been feeding you?" Hercules demanded. Poke. Poke. "Grass?"
Luke stared at his uncle, dumbfounded.
The god of Heroes was a mother hen.
The two joined tables in front of us were covered in platters of gyros, cartons of Greek salad of cucumbers, olives, feta cheese, lettuce and flatbread strips and a few plastic bowls of a beef stew from a small mom and pop restaurant the god swore by. I could taste why. It reminded me a lot of Nana's cooking, with just a bit of a vinegary bite to the meat, but savory with smooth creamy sauces and high quality olive oil.
"So you're the poor bastards charged with returning my father's Bolt, you had to take the Mare's eye because you're the Morrigan's foster-son," Hercules summed up at the end of my long and somewhat rambling explanation. He casually tossed an olive on top of the small pile of spiced lamb and onions on Luke's styrofoam platter. "Bad luck that."
"That's why I was even at Camp," I said. "Cross-pantheon upbringing not allowed, apparently?"
It was nothing personal, but I wasn't going to out Mom's aliases if I didn't have to. Until I was sure outing her wasn't going to drop me into a huge pile of shit, I was keeping mum.
"Remind me to tell you the story of the Hindu demigod with fifteen parents sometime." Herc grimaced.
"How'd you even know?" I asked. "You said I felt Greek."
"Experience. And paying attention to the right pantheon." Hercules stabbed a thumb at himself. "You think I can't identify heroes when I'm near one?"
That's fair.
"I would really appreciate it if you didn't let the Mare know about us?" I tried out a winning smile.
"Peace." Herc held up a hand. "She won't hear it from me. I always found that an annoying practice, getting others to do your dirty work."
I sighed in relief. "Thanks."
"She's a bit of a bitch anyway." He waved it off.
That was an understatement.
I turned back to my food, shooting Herc a quick prayer about Jason Grace. The god startled in his seat, reflective eyes swinging over to me, before he rolled them skywards, pinching the bridge of his nose. You could almost hear him cursing Jupiter out inside his head.
I feel that.
"You're not leaving until you finish that," the god ordered Luke. "You too, midget."
"Oy," I grunted as I speared a roasted tomato on my plastic fork. "Literally twelve, give me a break."
The god's eyes lit up again. "So you're actually a demigod."
"Yup," I popped the 'p.' "What'd you think I was?"
"Dunno." Herc passed me a vanilla milkshake. "You register as a mortal hero, but you sting." He tilted his head. "What the hell have they been feeding you?"
"A well rounded diet," I said.
"Of what?"
"Pizza and Dairy Queen."
Artemis was complaining loudly from underneath Herc's baseball cap as he dragged the bunny back and forth across the table, tumbling the rabbit ears over her tail.
"I think I am being quite reasonable," Herc said loudly over her whining. "I remember a completely undeserved arrow to the ass - " He raised his voice over her protests. "When I was trying to apologize to a certain someone and return her sword - "
"She could have still had it, but you threw it away!" The rabbit finally managed to stick her head out from under the fabric and bit out. "Tossed it over the horizon!"
"Lost my temper," Herc admitted when I raised my eyebrows at him. "My sister's usual charming self isn't, she was still shooting at me and being peppered with arrows still pisses me off."
"Understandable," I nodded. Really, you can't blame a guy for that, can you? I'd be pissed too. "Please direct your complaints to Luke Castellan - "
"What!" Artemis cried out before Herc sent her tumbling again.
"Our resident bunny manager."
Luke's lips twitched. "I'll set up a P.O Box," he promised his amused looking uncle. "First come, first serve."
"I wouldn't if I were you," Herc said dryly as he freed the rabbit when she threatened to vomit into his hat. "Do you know just how much mail you'll get?"
I think he has a good idea.
Luke had a mean smirk as he loomed over the disgruntled rabbit. "Job security."
I laughed.
We got through lunch/dinner/whatever pretty quickly. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes tops to down enough food for six people. It was almost like we hadn't eaten for four days or something.
Well, fine, I ate, but come on. I'm a growing boy.
Herc watched Luke mop up the last of his gyros like a hawk while I munched through the remnants of the flatbread soaked in the beef stew broth. "Where are you headed?"
Luke and I looked at the rabbit miserably eating blueberries on the table.
She stopped chewing.
Her eyes closed.
She said nothing.
"Artemis." Luke reached out and gently cuffed her upside the head. It was almost affectionate. "We have to."
She shuddered.
"I have to," she agreed quietly, opening her eyes. If a bunny rabbit could look like they were about to march to gallows, that was her. Ears down, eyes wet and little nose twitching sadly somehow.
I didn't understand what the problem was. "Selene's dead," I said. "So it can't be that bad?"
Hercules' smiled sadly. "So we hope."
Rhea hadn't been too sure if Selene had actually bitten it or not. Luke had been staring at the moon in the Lotus Hotel. Something made him stab himself in the eye.
'What is death?' The Sun Voice had asked me in Houston. 'But the sleep of the gods?'
Artemis bobbed her little head. "It is in her realm," she murmured. "But the key we seek belongs to your step-father."
My brain stalled. My step-father.
Chronos.
Time.
It really wasn't as bad as I thought. It was so much worse. I met Luke's eyes. He looked grim and gave me an equally grim nod.
I held up a finger.
"Son of a bitch."
Spinalonga, Greece.
The small island off the northeast coast of Crete looked like a pimple on the water on the Gulf of Elounda. All I could really see of it was a vague rounded silhouette in the distance. Maybe what could have been a wall? A cool breeze was blowing in from the ocean, cooling off the warm humidity of the Grecian summer. All around us was a sandy beach, gentle sloping hills covered in sweet smelling grass and the occasional shrubbery. Our rabbit was trembling, teeth chattering with tears welling up in her eyes as she stared out over the water.
"This is it," Hercules said somberly, also looking out.
Luke's brows were furrowed so hard, creases covered his whole forehead. He had his normal eye closed, peering around with his shattered one as he twisted Khione's ring around his finger.
"Why is - " Luke swallowed thickly. "The wind is weird here."
"I think I know what you're feeling." Herc glanced over. The light of Rhea's torch twisted into Luke's backpack strap glanced off his eyes in all directions. Then he looked down at the rabbit who was still staring over the water, like we weren't here. "But it's not the wind."
I didn't feel anything.
I felt a strange kind of numb, like I was feeling too many feelings and just couldn't sort any of them out to actually tell what was going on. The other shoe had finally dropped. I couldn't help thinking about the what ifs, like if I had just left Artemis to Nemesis right from the beginning instead of trying to go against my mother. I didn't have it in me to feel bad about wondering. I was still going to try. We'd come this far after all and we didn't really have the time to try anything else. Maybe I should have panicked.
Or gone hysterical.
It was like I had just blown past freaking out all the way around to calm. Stealing from Ares was whatever. Stealing from the Lotus Eater was concerning.
I had no words for what stealing from Time was.
Terrifying didn't cut it.
I didn't feel that, though. It was more like a detached: 'Welp.'
In order to get Artemis a Name, we had to steal Chronos' key for Hecate.
This rabbit was going to owe me free lunches for the rest of my life.
"You know," Hercules spoke up. "You can take on more than one Quest at a time. I know that from personal experience." He crossed his arms, scratching at the scar on his chin when we looked at him. "And the interference clauses for a Quest are counted separately."
That was a bit familiar. I know Artemis had said that instances of interference in a Quest were counted for each god separately. I wasn't sure how that was important right now, but by the sudden, sharp look in Luke's eyes, he had some idea.
"An errand for the Mormones is unrelated to our search for the Bolt," he said casually.
And that was…
Technically true?
Our mission was getting Zeus' sparkler back, not undoing Mom's punishment. The latter would (hopefully) help with the former, but the latter was something I…
Something I chose to do.
'You needed a thief,' Mom had said. Hermes, god of Thieves, had been one of the cards of my Prophecy, drawn weeks before Artemis ever came to Camp in the first place.
She always told me that I chose my own destiny.
And instead, I came around in a full circle, doing what I foretold myself doing.
I felt cold.
" - gerous for you especially," Herc was telling Luke with a frown. "Exposing Blood to too much, too fast is never a good idea. I would join you - " His jaw clenched. His neck muscles stood out sharply as a collar of gold light briefly flashed around his throat. "But I'm a bit stuck," he drawled acidly. "Call it house arrest."
Luke looked horrified.
I wasn't much better.
Artemis flinched on the beach. "You do not want to join us."
"Hell, of course I don't want to," her brother spat back. "But I want leaving them to this crap even less." He shook his head and tugged at his basketball jersey. "Look, if you can call in any big favors, any Debts, if you can get anyone who would laugh about following you into Tartarós, now is the time."
A dull pain in my chest broke through the numbness.
A few years ago, that would have been Eva, but now, there was a different Name that I had in mind.
I took a deep breath. The ocean air was salty. The breeze ruffled my hair and tugged at my jeans.
"Thanks, Herc," I said quietly.
The Greco-Roman god had sad eyes. "No problem, kid."
He shoved his hands into his jacket's pockets, turning around like he was just going to walk back up the grassy hill and was gone.
"Artemis?" Luke said softly.
The rabbit hiccuped, but didn't respond.
He looked at me with a grimace. "I don't think it's just the theft that's bothering her," he murmured. I was getting that feeling too. Artemis had kind of accepted dying, but it was like we were back at square one (or maybe square negative two). She was paralyzed with fear. "Are you thinking what I am thinking?"
Luke held up his hand, showcasing the cold silver ring on his finger.
"Yup," I said.
There was a cool breeze blowing in from the water.
"I told Hypnos," I mumbled, shuffling my feet a bit. "He went to get Clovis and Annabeth and the others…"
Luke's face had tensed, then softened. The pupils in his shattered eye narrowed. He let out a long sigh. "Good," he murmured. "That's good."
"Sorry."
Knowledge was dangerous.
Both you and I know that.
Luke shook his head and started walking. I followed Luke further down the beach, trying to think positive. I was reasonably sure Chronos and Mom were still on good terms, so maybe Not-Hecate was right, and I'd be able to get away with it by looking cute. What were the odds he was anything like Tartarus? He was Erebus' dad and my brother cared about me.
And I knew the Dreamlands, right?
Sure, maybe not Selene's corner of it, but it couldn't be that - nope, I am not going to jinx myself here!
With a final glance back towards the rabbit, Luke cleared his throat as he came to a stop. "Khione Thrêikion."
The wind blew hard enough to force me to blink. In that one moment, the rock just to the left of us became occupied with the Greek goddess of Ice and Snow. She looked like how I saw her last with the white cowboy hat and light blue poncho, but with her black hair in a single braid.
There was a long moment of silence where we just stood there as she stared back from her perch.
"You are still alive." Her voice was icy as she looked over us with frozen eyes, snowflakes turning and twisting in entrancing patterns. Her gaze flicked down along the beach. "All of you."
Luke smiled mockingly. "I apologize for the disappointment."
I elbowed him in the gut.
What was his problem?
"Have you ever been in the Dreamlands?" I laid it out there. I wasn't aiming to trick her into anything.
"No, I have not," she said slowly as the discordant symphony in her eyes began to play. "I know of no one on Olympus that would dare." She looked past us out at the water and towards the silent shadow of the island, then back down the beach where a rabbit sat. "...this is not about the Bolt."
"Not directly," I admitted. 'It's a personal favor."
"A personal favor," she repeated neutrally. Her gaze darted around again, putting the pieces together. She had who knows how many college degrees. She was smart enough to figure it out without us saying anything. Khione went as still as a statue. I was afraid she was going to just disappear, not even bothering to tell me to fuck off, when her lips curled into a bitterly cold smile,
"For Artemis?"
I sighed. "Yes."
"I told you I would help you in her place," Khione cajoled. "You still have over a day left. I am…" She raised an eyebrow for a second. "Unsure how you ended up in Crete, but I can - "
"Khione." I stepped forward and beat down my pride.
Then I bowed to her.
I bent right at the waist, all the way until I was staring at the ground. I gritted my teeth as the memory of the last and only time I ever bowed to a god like this tried to surge to the front. I heard Khione's breath hitch.
She offered to help us get to Houston, but Artemis' everything had burnt that down to the ground. This was a second chance.
If she wanted it.
"I would owe you," I choked out. "Help me. Please."
I was putting a lot of faith in the Boreide. Debts were dangerous and this was going to be a huge one. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn't even know how to calculate just how much this was going to cost me.
It was weird.
We were going to steal from Mom's baby daddy and I didn't feel much of anything. The thought that Khione was going to prove herself to be so very Greek in the end made the tips of fingers go numb.
At first I thought it was just the breeze pulling at my hair, but then the tug on my scalp sharpened to something almost painful that caused me to look up. Khione was kneeling in front of me, a lock of my hair around her finger as she searched my face. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to pull my attention away from her eyes.
"I will hold you to this," she said quietly, warning me. I didn't see malice or greed in her gaze, just the discordant, haunting melody.
I risked a smile as a hopeful warmth welled up in my chest. "Of course you will."
Her expression didn't warm so much as it got less cold. She scoffed as she let my hair go. "Heroes."
"That isn't an insult," Luke said dryly.
"Oh, yes it is."
"No, it isn't."
"You will also owe me for this, Luke."
"What?" He yelped under her sharp look, daring him to disagree with her. He dared. "I don't remember agreeing to that."
I knew I was grinning stupidly. I couldn't help it.
I…think I really like Khione.
She patted me on the shoulder as she stood up, absently sweeping sand off her pants. "I have been told the Dreamlands are filled with horrors that could kill gods, similar to what lies beyond the Edge in the lands beyond us. Is that true?"
"Nope," I said, straightening, still smiling. "It's worse."
She rolled her pretty eyes. "Lovely." She looked between me and Luke's judgy frown, his arms crossed. "How is this done then?"
The answer to that was by taking a nap.
There was a ferry that was used to take tourists to the island of Spinalonga, but our way in was a long collapsed tunnel called 'Dante's Gate.' It had been built out of the same pale crumbling beige brick common to old Greek architecture, a flat top triangle tunnel leading from a small hill on the beach down into darkness. The island itself was some kind of fortress city or town. It had been occupied by a bunch of people throughout history, but now it was a ghost town, completely abandoned and empty.
"It used to be a leper colony," Artemis said absently as we hunkered down just inside the tunnel entrance. Rhea's torch was put in the middle as we circled around it. "The sick would walk beneath the stone and the waves in darkness, unaware of what lay on the other side, but still hoping."
"Naturally," Khione said neutrally. "Anything would be better than squatting in caves at the edges of civilization."
"...some cures are worse than the disease," the rabbit whispered.
The ice goddess frowned, but didn't reply to that.
"Last chance," Artemis said. Her silver eyes shone in the dark.
No one backed out.
We had all just slept. Normally that would be a problem, but Khione had waved it off as an easily inflicted symptom of hypothermia. True enough, I had just barely set my head down on a patch of grass before suddenly feeling exhausted, like my muscles should be burning from running a hundred miles.
I closed my eyes.
I opened them in a field of pale flowers, a sky dotted with strange stars and dominated by a massive, full moon. Diana looked down at us as her giant form loomed, the bloody teeth of her flayed chest cavity fluttering open and then closed. Her exposed spine of pitted and warped vertebrae bent as she leaned closer. The mask of her left side turned towards the moon. There was another creature far down the beach. Long spindly gnarled legs planted in the ground like stilts, but it was holding a bulbous, sickly gray body with long mandibles and gossamer thin feelers drifting beneath it. The twisting eyestalks swiveled in my direction. Its presence washed over me.
Familiar.
Corey had gotten its attention once.
I inclined my head. "Tsukuyomi."
The attention slipped away.
Khione was luminescent, as if she was lit from within. Physically flawless save for a bored hole that went straight through the middle of her sternum, exposing a gnarled, wooden knot that thumped like a heart and creeping vines burrowing under her skin. Luke stared up at the moon, eyes shining.
The human half of Diana silently raised her arm, pointing out over the water.
A hazy city of tall gothic spires and steeples shone on the lone island both too close and infinitely far away.
The statuesque figures of more warped creatures, moon deities, rose up from the waters and disappeared into the hazy clouds, surrounding the island like guards watching a prison. The tunnel of Dante's Gate was pristine and smoothly carved as if it had been built just yesterday, leading into darkness towards the city. And waiting beside it, curled up on a patch of grass was an orange tabby cat with a crook in his tail. I couldn't breathe. I felt like if I did, I would break into a million pieces. That couldn't be my pet cat. He couldn't be here.
"Sam?" I whispered.
The cat's ears twitched.
Hypnos said he would help me. He knew about the key we were looking for.
Sam would laugh at following me into Tartarós.
He followed me to the moon.
The small auburn bunny rabbit hopped forward, out from under Diana's shadow. Her sigh then sounded like terror, it sounded like despair and it sounded, bizarrely, like relief. Like coming back home after a storm and finding everything just like you left it.
"Some nightmares never end," Artemis murmured.
Distant bells rang.
An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
A PJO Fanfiction
You know, I once spent three days in a coma when I was six.
Mom had been sitting on my bed when I finally woke up, reading a book. She'd been in black, starry night pajamas with only one sock on and her black hair pinned up with a pen. The memory of her painfully fond sigh, like she had caught me with my hand in the cookie jar and was remembering when she had done the same, a long, long (long) time ago, is burned into my mind.
Because the very next second, she showed me the nightmare that had followed me awake.
I don't remember what it looked like.
I think that was for the best.
She allowed it to lunge for me and I know I screamed.
Mom had crushed the parasite with ease. Dark blood and the kind of viscera that stunk to high heaven and still squirmed drenched my bed sheets. The taste of iron in my mouth, a burning in my eyes and swallowing back bitter tasting bile of sheer terror was nothing next to the gentle hand that passed through my hair. My mother had made a soft, huffing sound of amusement as I tried not to cry and tapped me on the nose.
'What did we learn?' Mom had asked me.
A couple hours later, she was walking me through cutting up strawberries without murdering myself to the sound of Robert Jordan's Eye of the World on cassette tape like nothing had happened. Dad had taken off work and was just so relieved I was finally awake. I remember his awkward hovering, trying to talk to me around and through his wife to make sure I was okay. Mom gave me the week off from training even when I insisted I was fine and guided my dreams for another week after that.
Dad didn't suspect a thing.
Not that he could have. Mom never leaves evidence behind. I was still ignoring him, and well.
There was nothing to suspect?
At the time, I was embarrassed, feeling like a baby that couldn't take care of himself.
I understood the lesson, though.
I took Sam with me whenever I felt like exploring from then on and I never overstayed my welcome in the Dreamlands ever again.
'What did we learn?'
It was the only thing Mom ever needed to say.
The Greek Personification of Sleep had stared at me for a second, pulsed in disbelief and then had nearly exploded in rage. His anger was rough. Grating. Like it was actually peeling parts of my Sleeping soul away. The lights of the mortal souls he was holding flickered with terrible nightmares. A lot of them tore right out of their rest, that lizard hindbrain blaring the alarms and waving red flags that staying asleep was death.
It wasn't. Just unpleasant. Hypnos was more careful than that.
I think.
Look, no one's perfect.
I know Luke said it.
Multiple times.
It wasn't until Hypnos flipped his shit when I told him where Clovis was that I started to accept (just a little) that maybe there was something a bit off with how Mom was raising me.
I just couldn't put my finger on what it was.
The part of me that felt guilty for putting my friends in danger understood why he was angry. It was because he was worried, but having a panic attack never helped anyone, right? Having a crisis just because someone you care about was having a crisis meant you were useless.
There was also the fact that he couldn't deck his mom for putting her grandchild in danger.
Ignoring my mother doing just that causing all our problems, him doing the same would be a bad idea on so many levels. It was just like Artemis said, being angry felt better.
Dad got angry too, but I knew it was because he cared. I guess he and an Elder God had something in common.
Mom was not like my father.
Part of me understood why Hypnos was angry. It was the rest of me that fluttered my spines in bewilderment and said, He's not lost.
My buddy paused mid-tirade.
I told him to go to Ulthar, I continued. None of the cats in that village like me, but I knew they would help. He's only staying to help our friends. He's fine.
I fell in at two years old.
I was alive (and sane), so obviously, it was fine? Clovis already knew all the really important stuff. I made sure to tell him when he started so he wouldn't have to learn on the go like I did: If he saw puddles of tar, he was going in the wrong direction. Always. Don't go too deep into the water. Avoid the Pit. The mountain range to the south? Bad news. Keep track of your thoughts. If they go weird, get the hell out of dodge.
Leave the temples alone.
Trust me, getting haunted out of the corner of your eyes by a twisted altar and its bloodstained knife even while awake is not as cool as it sounds. Me, being a dumbass kid, thought it was way cool. Especially when I found out that Apollo couldn't see it, but Evangeline could.
A month later was when Eva and I finally realized it wasn't cool at all.
Oh, and.
You don't want to go to the moon.
An enterprising dream spirit, drunk on their renewed freedom, latched onto the shadow of my fear. They projected an ominous 'ping……cheep!' of a submarine's sonar at me.
Hypnos and I both turned to glare at them.
Their presence blanched a pale yellow under our combined hundreds of eyes before it quietly slunk away.
Jerk.
Hypnos poked me.
He's fine, I repeated at the fragile relief in Hypnos' form. Clovis was fine. I was just a whole lot less sure about everyone else. Just make sure nothing is trying to follow them awake, okay?
Hypnos grabbed me in a massive hug. I felt like my face was being crushed into a pillow made of koosh balls. I grabbed him back with my wings and squeezed until he wiggled in amusement, but there was an undercurrent of concern.
Two words: Red October. I sighed as I let him go. Don't really wanna talk about it.
Uncertainty.
I'm fine now. My brother helped.
Reassured, Hypnos nudged me questioningly. His grasping presence lightly tugged on the spines and barbs curling off my form. I was a lot bigger than I was used to, finally able to look him in the eyes without needing him to lift me. I also felt like someone had turned me into their origami paper folding project when I wasn't looking, layering me into myself with burning green eyes filling in the spaces in between.
Which was, uh, new.
I shrugged.
Fuck if I know, I said honestly. I fell asleep like this.
I had my suspicions, but it wasn't like I knew for sure. The last time I couldn't keep my eyes on the inside was after Apollo's oracle jumped me. Rhea sealed my Sleeping soul somehow, but I guess I was right back at it after making lunch of Lotus Hotel's manager. Was I going to turn into a freakshow every time I ate someone?
Because that would be kinda lame.
Speaking of, You missed an absolute shit ton while grounded, by the way.
Hypnos was unsurprised.
I only had two kinds of days, after all.
Nothing Happens and Fucking Disaster.
It hadn't seemed like all that much while it was happening, but when I thought about exactly what had happened since Mom lost her shit and made the Night lose her shit and everything else went to shit -
It was a bit much, you know?
Also, an unreasonable number of things that might come back to bite me in the ass later.
Being on Persephone's shortlist wasn't even half of it.
I patted my buddy. Right now, we gotta steal some kind of key for the Queen so our rabbit is less useless so we can find the Bolt in two days.
Or maybe it was more like one and a half now.
Hypnos radiated incredulous disbelief.
Then he slumped with a resigned shrug and gave me another hug. I can't tell you how much I appreciated it. Just a good old fashioned 'hang in there, man' from a friend. Especially when I caught the pulse of dread from him. I pulled back a little.
You know what key she wants. It wasn't a question.
Hypnos pursed, collapsing in on himself. His grip on me tightened, like he was going to try to keep me with him. Safe and sound.
We both startled when his multitude of fingers passed right through.
I was waking up.
Shit, I said. I tried to reach back for Sleep, but he slipped through my fingers. Shit! Tell me quick!
Hypnos sent me a wave of reassurance.
You're going to help? I shouted. The dark world around me was breaking apart as I struggled to stay in the oblivion.
Hypnos was determined.
He was a little less determined when he sheepishly replied that he had to rescue his son first, but he was going to make up for lost time.
He had my back.
Say hi to Nico for me!
That was the last thing I got out before I became aware of my bladder threatening to empty itself right the fuck now, if you don't wake up, I swear to God…
I bolted awake.
Only to discover that the restaurant was nowhere to be seen because I had just woken up in a fucking airport.
"I - okay." I dragged a hand down my face. I could feel where I had drooled in my sleep, dead to the world. I scrubbed my mouth on my sleeve and rubbed the crust out of my eyes. The goddess I had been napping on had replaced herself with a giant Charizard body pillow.
Cute.
"Hecate. I know we just met you properly and you are helping and I am really grateful for it. Honest."
I blearily peered around at the dead looking airport who knows where, hollow faced people all around. I knew saying this out loud was probably a bad idea. I was going to say it anyway.
"But I am already sick of your shit."
Luke snort laughed in the seat next to me as he finished waking up too. He stretched and cracked his back like an old man, still laughing under his breath. It wasn't a 'ha ha' funny laugh. It sounded like he was laughing because if he didn't, he'd burst into tears.
"Are you okay?" I asked quietly.
Luke hunched over, head hanging so low it was almost between his knees. "No."
My stomach scrunched uncomfortably.
Right.
That was a stupid question.
"I failed to get you." I opened my mouth to reassure him that it wasn't his fault, but Luke pressed on. "I failed. I walked in, I forgot, I stabbed myself in the eye - "
I completely forgot what I had been about to say. "You did what?"
"You know," he said slowly. "You could still see the moon from those hotel balconies." I stared at him, not sure what question he was answering. If any. "I was staring at it when I realized something was wrong," he mused idly. "I couldn't even remember when or where I'd heard it, but I still remembered what you said. When you made that summoning circle, remember?"
"Yeah," I said quietly. With Piper. I had drawn the ritual circle Mom had taught me on the ground so we could Call on the Night relatively safely. Apate answered instead. You know the rest. Luke had said then that the circle hurt his eyes.
"Grant me clarity," Luke murmured. "Grant me vision."
He looked up. He had one of those rictus grins on. The kind that made you uncomfortable and vaguely sick just looking at it. His shattered eye stared out at the world with a dozen irises and six pupils blown wide open.
I could see myself reflected in each and every one.
"Grant me eyes," he whispered.
"I didn't say that last part," I said a bit sharply. I knew I didn't. "Getting body parts involved never turns out well."
Never ask for what can't be easily given back.
My bladder chose that moment to remind me that it did not give a damn about any of our problems.
"I gotta go to the bathroom!" I blurted out before Luke responded and ran for it.
I have no idea why airports seem to believe that people are ice cubes who will just melt if the air conditioning isn't only a few degrees above freezing.
The airport was one of those chrome and white plastic structures that looked like it had been put together in a body shop for cars by mechanics instead of by an architect that gave a shit. It just felt functional.
And cold.
If you were wondering how airports were faring during the Night?
The answer was no.
It was still pitch black outside. I don't know if that meant we didn't sleep all that long or if it meant the Night was taking her sweet time leaving. The airport we were in was a small two lane regional transportation hub with a single taxi company. The intercom was playing some radio show with commercial breaks for its trapped residents instead of announcing departures.
No one, customer or staff, looked happy.
If there is one thing you should know about my ADHD, it's that I am either the most observant dude on the planet or the most oblivious dude on the planet. And sometimes I am both, which is why I ended up wandering the airport instead of getting back to my adventuring party.
I got distracted.
I noticed the Gello, a Greek daemon of infertility, stalking a couple (and warned it off), gave my last Snickers bar away to a sneaky Kobaloi, a Greek trickster sprite, gave a desperate, stranded college student some tips on how to pronounce the Greek alphabet in his struggle to order a taxi cab, listened to some radio commercials about Athens over the intercom.
And then spent ten minutes in front of the vending machine, wondering why I couldn't recognize half the brands it was offering and why some of it wasn't in English.
Maybe that's not ADHD.
Maybe I'm just stupid.
Artemis was woken from her sleep by the travel brochure Luke dropped on her head.
"We're in Greece," he said flatly.
"What?" The bunny squawked.
"Yup." I tossed him a MASTIQUA lemonade in half an apology for slapping him awake again with the brochure. Luke caught the can out of the air. In my defense, I had panicked a bit at waking up in another country a billion miles and an entire ocean away from where we just were.
So sue me.
"Crete, to be exact." You might have heard of this island off the coast of mainland Greece, but if you haven't, it's an island off the coast of mainland Greece. "Too bad we're not near Delphi. I have a great grandmother over there."
"So do I," Artemis muttered.
That just reminded me.
The Earth Mother is imprisoned in Delphi.
So maybe it was a good thing we weren't near Delphi. Sure, that star-spawn was on ice, but there was no point in tempting Mom.
"Are you okay?" I asked as casually as I could.
Luke's mismatched eyes flickered up at me as he nodded and cracked open his can. I wondered how? Usually, stabbing yourself in the eye was something that had bloody consequences, but instead - then I remembered where he had done it.
No one could die in the Lotus Hotel and Casino.
Everyone reverted back to the way they were when they entered, forgetting the outside world. If you got hurt, you would reset from it, like you were living the same day over and over again.
The time dilation healed his eye.
But it didn't come back the same.
Luke dropped his gaze to his drink. "Why are we here?"
"At a guess?" I sat back in my own chair, nudging the Charizard pillow until it fell onto the floor. "Someone isn't interested in letting us change our minds."
Luke took a miserable sip of lemonade. "Figures," he muttered bitterly. "What did the Lady of the Underworld want now?"
"Uh, what?" I said. Luke stared at me with his mismatched eyes. I stared blankly back until I realized what had happened. In hindsight, Luke would have definitely ridden my ass for sleeping on Hecate's lap if he knew about it.
I was telling no one else about that.
"So we all got knocked out then?"
"I…can barely recall what happened at all," Artemis admitted quietly. "The Night came. And then…it is a bit of a blur." She didn't even remember speaking up. "Or perhaps a dream."
Luke's hand crept up his face to his shattered eye. "I lasted a bit longer. The Lady split apart. It felt like I just had a red hot poker shoved into my eyeball."
Yeah, I could see that. Literally. He had two more eyes opened from when he was in the hotel lobby.
Luke snatched his hand back. His face went pale. "...she said she would remember us."
I'm not sure if it's the Greek way to be a gloryhound. I understood wanting to make your god parent proud and proving yourself. Everyone at Camp Half-Blood hoped for great deeds and important Quests. That kind of thing worked great when all you had to worry about was your god parent and petty Olympic squabbles.
At some point, that stops working.
The Celt way of doing things was a bit different.
Go unnoticed. If you are noticed, be forgettable. If they won't forget, be amusing.
You had a better chance of getting out alive that way.
"If you were thinking of taking Rabbit up on that job offer to be a mercenary," I began, trying to joke about it. "It would be a hell of a thing to put on your resume."
"What happened afterwards?" Artemis wondered out loud.
"Hecate," I said.
Her rabbit ears stood up for a moment. "She made an appearance."
It wasn't a question.
"What is sunlight, but that which banishes the darkness?" I quoted with a grimace.
"Las Vegas. The restaurant. The deal," Luke said, ticking them off his fingers while still holding his drink can. "It wasn't a riddle we were meant to solve."
"Of course not," Artemis muttered bitterly. "That is just like her."
"She wants a key," I dove right in.
"A key?" Luke asked.
I don't think we were talking about the kind of key you hang on a keyring next to your front door and garage keys. It could be anything from a spell to a rock. Whatever it was, the fact that Hecate actually went through the effort of godnapping us told me she wanted it.
Really badly.
Enough to give up a Name for it.
"Yeah." I pointed at the rabbit. "She said you'd know where it was."
"A key?" Artemis parroted, huddled on top of my backpack. "I do not - " Her ears sprung straight up in alarm as her silver eyes got huge. "No," she whispered. "No, she would not dare."
"Uh," I said. "Hate to break it to you, but obviously - "
"And it's not her daring, it's us," Luke said and he was right on the money. It wasn't like Hecate really loses anything if we die trying.
"I cannot." Artemis trembled, curling into herself. "You do not know what you are asking of me. I cannot go back - I - we should abandon this - do not make me - I can't!"
"'Temis!" I used Persephone's nickname for her, hoping to snap her out of it.
"It is folly," the rabbit hissed at me. "It is impossible to succeed - it - " The bunny stared up at me with wide terrified eyes as if just seeing me for the first time. "Oh," she murmured in the flat monotone I heard once before. When she was describing what Adrasteia's soul tearing presence felt like. "That is her game. She thinks it will not destroy you."
That was not what I would call promising.
"Why don't I be the judge of that?" I offered. "I'd really like to know what we're after before we get ourselves killed."
"Artemis?" Luke drawled, looking down at her when she failed to answer me. "Mind educating us poor ignorant souls?"
Her silver eyes shifted in his general direction, but you could tell she wasn't really seeing us anymore. "And we are in Crete," she mused to herself. "A doorway into dreaming. Make me reclaim the fragment I left behind. Send us into the broken nightmare for the ruins of gods - how did I wake up?"
She sounded just as confused as I was.
"She spoke to you wearing white," Artemis said as a fact even though she hadn't seen Hecate at all.
Hecate had been wearing white. Since the first time I met her on the shore of the Crossroads when Mom lost her temper, the goddess had been in white. It was a pretty insignificant thing, until you remembered that Hecate of the Dark Moon was known for the color black. It was why people thought Cerberus was her pet and got her pseudo-adopted by Nyx. It was even on her Mythomagic card.
New Moon. Dark Night. Black Dogs.
…who had I been talking to this entire time?
Artemis looked up at us.
Then she ran.
Luke cursed, almost spilling his drink and falling out of his chair as he tried to catch her. "What the Styx - " He set his can down and got to his feet after the blitzing bunny. "Artemis!"
I sat there like a bump on a log.
A doorway into dreaming. A broken nightmare.
Artemis, goddess of the Moon, knows where the key is.
"Oh, Selene has it," I told no one.
"Now there's a Name I haven't heard in a while," a man's voice said and I turned to look.
A huge Greek basketball player of a dude cleaned his right ear with his pinky finger. He was in a leather jacket over his jersey, rocking the short curly black hair and stubble look as he looked over me with shining blue eyes. The gleam in them reminded me of the Priest of the god at Sea. Like Evangeline. It wasn't like his bright eyes were lit with their own light, but were reflecting themselves, like shining a flashlight into a hall of mirrors or a carnival funhouse.
"You make a habit of calling people out, kid?" he asked, flicking ear wax off his finger.
I stared. "Sorry. Who the hell are you?"
He gave me this look. "I don't know what you did to sneak past me - "
"Uh." I raised my hand like I was in math class. "Fell asleep in Las Vegas?"
"But it wasn't good enough," he said with raised eyebrows.
I raised my eyebrows right back because that was the gospel truth. None of this was my fault! It was not like I asked Hecate to dump us here.
"Great," the unknown god (?) sighed. "Another little shit." I scowled. "Travel to the Old World is forbidden by order of the King of Olympus," he drawled in a bored voice. "Because I am such a nice guy - "
Get a load of this random asshole.
"I'll give you the chance to convince me to not punt you and your out of bounds friends back to America."
I blurted out the first excuse that came to mind. "Not an Olympic demigod."
"Uh huh," Random Ass said skeptically. "You feel like a Greek hero to me."
That was strangely comforting? I had just fully accepted that I wasn't completely Greek, only to be told that whatever else I was, I was still a son of Ananke at the end of the day. It was what gave me the confidence to raise my hand again, but this time when I lowered it, I dragged my sunglasses down with it.
I stared at him with my mother's eyes. His ghost looked bewildered, turning around with a silent 'huh?' before getting obliterated. Around me, the airport fell apart. "Perseus of the Bloody Tongue. You are honored to make my acquaintance."
Don't ask me why I took to using that one of all Mom's titles to introduce myself with.
Just felt right.
"Feel free to tell my mother I'm not allowed to be in Greece." I smiled nastily as my belly button quivered. "I dare you."
Random Ass nodded slowly. "...I'll pass on that, thanks."
I thought so.
"Uh huh," I said as I snapped my sunglasses back up, because I am a huge little shit, thank you very much. "And who the fuck are you, again?"
It turned out the random asshole was Herakles.
Who was surprisingly a lot less of an asshole when off the clock.
"Autograph," I ordered as I slapped one of my notebooks and a pen down in front of Greek Mythology's greatest hero. "Not for me," I clarified when Luke's arguably most famous uncle's eyebrows bounced. "For some friends. You know Camp Half-Blood, right?"
"Chiron still running the place?" Herakles looked bemused as he grabbed my pen from the table.
"You went?"
"For a bit," he shrugged, then he rolled his eyes. "You'd think I was born and then disappeared off the face of the earth for over a decade the way history goes on about it."
There was no good way to tell someone that the stupid way they ascended was the only reason I knew who they were at all.
On a good day, your second wife being dumb enough to accept a gift from a dying enemy you just beat up was terrible. He didn't suspect a thing because the whole 'what kind of dumbass gives me a gift from my dying enemy' bit and then had the worst allergic reaction to hydra venom treated fabric known to man.
Take it from me, burning to death hurts less.
I shrugged. "No drama is boring."
His lips thinned. "Glad I could entertain." I gave him the side eye for that one and the god of Heroes sighed. "I don't mean you or your mother, just - " He waved the pen with a frustrated air.
"I get it," I said. "Olympus wasn't worth it."
He looked down at the notebook and started scribbling. "It was for a time," he said, almost under his breath.
I snapped my fingers.
That's right.
"Speaking of, got any opinion on your dad getting the throne again?" I wasn't exactly sure what I was going to do about the Zeus problem, but I was one hundred percent sure that I was kicking him off the throne the first chance I got.
Herakles looked at me like I sprouted another head. "My father is already on the throne."
"Duh," I said. "I mean your other divine dad."
It should surprise no one that Zeus did just short of bupkis for Herakles considering he forced his 'favorite' daughter Artemis on this Quest as a rabbit. Maybe the fact that the Patron of Heroes gave a teeny, tiny molecule of a shit about the greatest hero of Greek history is a surprise considering her everything, but I would take what I could get.
As far as I was concerned, Zeus could go fuck himself six ways to Sunday.
I'm not a big believer in 'you can't choose family.'
That didn't even make sense.
My family was multiple choice depending on the myth. Assuming strong loving bonds of kinship with people would probably just get me killed horribly. Mom kept me from most of my cousins for a reason. Maybe you can't help who you are related to, but blood didn't make anyone family.
The Fates had made it very clear that I was not their brother.
Herakles as a hero inherited from the Names of Zeus, but Herakles as a god had a suspicious number of Names more closely associated with his eldest sister.
"My other - " Herakles stopped himself and then beamed. "Kid." He waved me to lean in closer. "I will give you my shield if you call Athena that to her face."
Score!
"Deal." We shook on it. His hand completely dwarfed mine. I basically shook hands with his thumb and two fingers.
"What'd I miss?" Luke asked from behind me.
"Uh," I said as I turned around.
I knew I was forgetting something.
I wasn't an Olympic demigod, but Luke sure as hell was.
"Not much?" I said, mind racing. He had a very miserable, wet bunny wrapped up in his vest like a rodent burrito. His entire right side was soaked, which was odd because I didn't see a single fountain when I wandered the place. I thought about asking what the hell had happened, and decided against it. "This is Herakles." Luke's eyes went huge. "Um, Herakles, this is Luke. He's not an Olympic demigod either? He's, uh."
My mind went blank on how I was going to stop him getting tossed back to America and leaving me alone in Crete.
"Erm."
"Blood of Selene," Herakles said, looking mildly concerned as he looked Luke over.
I blinked.
"Right. Blood of Selene. Exactly."
Gotta admit. I was definitely expecting him to call my bluff there.
"You, uh, so you weren't born like that, right?" The god asked, tapping his own cheek under his reflective right eye.
Luke flushed red and then paled. He swallowed hard, looking like he wanted to vomit. He smiled weakly. "Would you believe it looks like this because I tried to gouge it out?"
"Yes, actually," the former demigod said with clear sympathy. "I've got crap luck in great grandmothers." Like that made any sense whatsoever. "Who the Styx is sending Blood after the moon's crap?"
You could hear the capital B. Herakles was a bit old fashioned. Nowadays, we just call them clear-sighted.
"Hecate," I said.
"The Mormones," Artemis rasped from her burrito.
Oh…kay.
"The fearful ones?" Luke translated, raising his blond eyebrows. "I am…fairly certain those are - "
"What we call the goddess of the Crossroads," Artemis said quietly. "When we do not know who exactly it is."
It felt like a pothole just formed in my stomach.
Artemis did know what Hecate was. That just reinforced my suspicion that maybe I had never actually met Hecate at all. Like Young Gods, Old Gods still needed to receive or Take Names for themselves.
And like the Elder Gods, the Old God was always there.
"And above my pay grade," Herakles conceded with a nod and a low whistle. "Also, Artemis?"
The rabbit raised a wet paw weakly. "Brother."
The god of Heroes stared for a moment.
Then he threw back his head and laughed.
Luke's most famous uncle had one of those booming guffaws that came right from the gut, so loud I was sure the whole airport could hear him. It was jolly and infectious. I could see Luke starting to grin as Artemis grumbled wordlessly. Her half-brother had a good chuckle at her expense, holding his stomach like it was about to burst and slapping his knee.
"What'd you do?" He wheezed.
Like, it wasn't even a question of if she had screwed over someone recently, just how.
The rabbit stubbornly kept quiet.
"Tried to kill me," I volunteered. "Mom wasn't a big fan of that."
Herakles choked and had to turn away from us, coughing into his leather jacket by the crook of his arm at that.
Artemis muttered something to the effect of 'it was ill advised' in Olympic Greek, prompting her brother to snort back a 'no shit.'
After he collected himself, he looked up over again. His blue eyes lit up with electricity, shining like he had turned the lights on behind the curtain for a second. He shrugged one of his shoulders. "You lot hungry?"
Luke and I shared a look.
"The rabbit too, my lord?" Luke asked cautiously, remembering Khione and Persephone.
"And draw Nemesis' attention?" Herakles shrugged again carelessly. "I have no interest in making things harder for you than it needs to be." He frowned. "And you aren't working for Hera. Any demigod taking marching orders from that bitch deserves everything they get."
That's fair.
She made Herakles' life hell for the crime of being her husband's bastard. I'm talking 'dead family members and friends' being her fault kind of shit. Throw in everything she did to end Athena's reign and while, yeah, a random demigod maybe couldn't tell the Queen of Olympus 'no' to her face, exactly, but, dude has a point?
"I'll even throw in a free ride to your next stop after, how about it?"
Luke looked a bit star struck. "Thank you, lord Herakles."
"I've been there, kid." He finished his signature for Camp Half-Blood with a flourish and handed me back my pen and the notebook. "And don't call me 'lord,' I'll get a rash."
"How's Herc?" I asked. Short for Hercules, the Roman Name.
There was a flicker of Not-Movement that I could and couldn't see at the same time, like the god had moved in my peripheral vision even though he was right in front of me. Outwardly, nothing seemed to change. Maybe his face was a little bit sharper or his curly black hair a bit less shaggy?
He didn't, like, graft anyone. He was just that popular and was Given the Name. Even Christianity liked him and come on, how many gods could say that?
Mom sure as hell couldn't.
"That works - " The god of Bravery abruptly turned back towards me. "Wait just a damn minute. How the hell are you a Celt?"
Oh right.
The Roman Name.
Whoops.
Short answer: It's complicated.
Long answer: It's complicated and please don't tell Epona we're here.
We found our way to the airport's tiny food court. There were only a few people there, all looking exhausted. Herc had dragged some of the tables together, instructing us to take a load off. Luke changed his shirt while I toweled Artemis as best as I could with table napkins. I also deflated the Charizard pillow and stuffed it into my Bag of Holding. Sure, I was still kind of pissed at Not-Hecate for it, but also, waste not, want not!
Hercules came back with bags of food to Luke brushing the rabbit.
Artemis was never going to live it down.
"The Blood still go to Camp, right?" Hercules said tiredly as he sat heavily. He poked Luke's bicep and shoulder skeptically, like his own eight foot whatever brick shithouse build was the norm.
Poke. Poke.
Still? Huh, I guess that made sense. It gathered them all in one place, following Olympus' orders. If you inherited enough from Selene to see the truth of the world and all its monsters, wouldn't you want to learn how to fight back?
Chances are you had enough godly blood to pull some tricks too.
Then Selene died.
I suppose things kind of unraveled after that.
"What has Chiron been feeding you?" Hercules demanded. Poke. Poke. "Grass?"
Luke stared at his uncle, dumbfounded.
The god of Heroes was a mother hen.
The two joined tables in front of us were covered in platters of gyros, cartons of Greek salad of cucumbers, olives, feta cheese, lettuce and flatbread strips and a few plastic bowls of a beef stew from a small mom and pop restaurant the god swore by. I could taste why. It reminded me a lot of Nana's cooking, with just a bit of a vinegary bite to the meat, but savory with smooth creamy sauces and high quality olive oil.
"So you're the poor bastards charged with returning my father's Bolt, you had to take the Mare's eye because you're the Morrigan's foster-son," Hercules summed up at the end of my long and somewhat rambling explanation. He casually tossed an olive on top of the small pile of spiced lamb and onions on Luke's styrofoam platter. "Bad luck that."
"That's why I was even at Camp," I said. "Cross-pantheon upbringing not allowed, apparently?"
It was nothing personal, but I wasn't going to out Mom's aliases if I didn't have to. Until I was sure outing her wasn't going to drop me into a huge pile of shit, I was keeping mum.
"Remind me to tell you the story of the Hindu demigod with fifteen parents sometime." Herc grimaced.
"How'd you even know?" I asked. "You said I felt Greek."
"Experience. And paying attention to the right pantheon." Hercules stabbed a thumb at himself. "You think I can't identify heroes when I'm near one?"
That's fair.
"I would really appreciate it if you didn't let the Mare know about us?" I tried out a winning smile.
"Peace." Herc held up a hand. "She won't hear it from me. I always found that an annoying practice, getting others to do your dirty work."
I sighed in relief. "Thanks."
"She's a bit of a bitch anyway." He waved it off.
That was an understatement.
I turned back to my food, shooting Herc a quick prayer about Jason Grace. The god startled in his seat, reflective eyes swinging over to me, before he rolled them skywards, pinching the bridge of his nose. You could almost hear him cursing Jupiter out inside his head.
I feel that.
"You're not leaving until you finish that," the god ordered Luke. "You too, midget."
"Oy," I grunted as I speared a roasted tomato on my plastic fork. "Literally twelve, give me a break."
The god's eyes lit up again. "So you're actually a demigod."
"Yup," I popped the 'p.' "What'd you think I was?"
"Dunno." Herc passed me a vanilla milkshake. "You register as a mortal hero, but you sting." He tilted his head. "What the hell have they been feeding you?"
"A well rounded diet," I said.
"Of what?"
"Pizza and Dairy Queen."
Artemis was complaining loudly from underneath Herc's baseball cap as he dragged the bunny back and forth across the table, tumbling the rabbit ears over her tail.
"I think I am being quite reasonable," Herc said loudly over her whining. "I remember a completely undeserved arrow to the ass - " He raised his voice over her protests. "When I was trying to apologize to a certain someone and return her sword - "
"She could have still had it, but you threw it away!" The rabbit finally managed to stick her head out from under the fabric and bit out. "Tossed it over the horizon!"
"Lost my temper," Herc admitted when I raised my eyebrows at him. "My sister's usual charming self isn't, she was still shooting at me and being peppered with arrows still pisses me off."
"Understandable," I nodded. Really, you can't blame a guy for that, can you? I'd be pissed too. "Please direct your complaints to Luke Castellan - "
"What!" Artemis cried out before Herc sent her tumbling again.
"Our resident bunny manager."
Luke's lips twitched. "I'll set up a P.O Box," he promised his amused looking uncle. "First come, first serve."
"I wouldn't if I were you," Herc said dryly as he freed the rabbit when she threatened to vomit into his hat. "Do you know just how much mail you'll get?"
I think he has a good idea.
Luke had a mean smirk as he loomed over the disgruntled rabbit. "Job security."
I laughed.
We got through lunch/dinner/whatever pretty quickly. Maybe ten, fifteen minutes tops to down enough food for six people. It was almost like we hadn't eaten for four days or something.
Well, fine, I ate, but come on. I'm a growing boy.
Herc watched Luke mop up the last of his gyros like a hawk while I munched through the remnants of the flatbread soaked in the beef stew broth. "Where are you headed?"
Luke and I looked at the rabbit miserably eating blueberries on the table.
She stopped chewing.
Her eyes closed.
She said nothing.
"Artemis." Luke reached out and gently cuffed her upside the head. It was almost affectionate. "We have to."
She shuddered.
"I have to," she agreed quietly, opening her eyes. If a bunny rabbit could look like they were about to march to gallows, that was her. Ears down, eyes wet and little nose twitching sadly somehow.
I didn't understand what the problem was. "Selene's dead," I said. "So it can't be that bad?"
Hercules' smiled sadly. "So we hope."
Rhea hadn't been too sure if Selene had actually bitten it or not. Luke had been staring at the moon in the Lotus Hotel. Something made him stab himself in the eye.
'What is death?' The Sun Voice had asked me in Houston. 'But the sleep of the gods?'
Artemis bobbed her little head. "It is in her realm," she murmured. "But the key we seek belongs to your step-father."
My brain stalled. My step-father.
Chronos.
Time.
It really wasn't as bad as I thought. It was so much worse. I met Luke's eyes. He looked grim and gave me an equally grim nod.
I held up a finger.
"Son of a bitch."
Spinalonga, Greece.
The small island off the northeast coast of Crete looked like a pimple on the water on the Gulf of Elounda. All I could really see of it was a vague rounded silhouette in the distance. Maybe what could have been a wall? A cool breeze was blowing in from the ocean, cooling off the warm humidity of the Grecian summer. All around us was a sandy beach, gentle sloping hills covered in sweet smelling grass and the occasional shrubbery. Our rabbit was trembling, teeth chattering with tears welling up in her eyes as she stared out over the water.
"This is it," Hercules said somberly, also looking out.
Luke's brows were furrowed so hard, creases covered his whole forehead. He had his normal eye closed, peering around with his shattered one as he twisted Khione's ring around his finger.
"Why is - " Luke swallowed thickly. "The wind is weird here."
"I think I know what you're feeling." Herc glanced over. The light of Rhea's torch twisted into Luke's backpack strap glanced off his eyes in all directions. Then he looked down at the rabbit who was still staring over the water, like we weren't here. "But it's not the wind."
I didn't feel anything.
I felt a strange kind of numb, like I was feeling too many feelings and just couldn't sort any of them out to actually tell what was going on. The other shoe had finally dropped. I couldn't help thinking about the what ifs, like if I had just left Artemis to Nemesis right from the beginning instead of trying to go against my mother. I didn't have it in me to feel bad about wondering. I was still going to try. We'd come this far after all and we didn't really have the time to try anything else. Maybe I should have panicked.
Or gone hysterical.
It was like I had just blown past freaking out all the way around to calm. Stealing from Ares was whatever. Stealing from the Lotus Eater was concerning.
I had no words for what stealing from Time was.
Terrifying didn't cut it.
I didn't feel that, though. It was more like a detached: 'Welp.'
In order to get Artemis a Name, we had to steal Chronos' key for Hecate.
This rabbit was going to owe me free lunches for the rest of my life.
"You know," Hercules spoke up. "You can take on more than one Quest at a time. I know that from personal experience." He crossed his arms, scratching at the scar on his chin when we looked at him. "And the interference clauses for a Quest are counted separately."
That was a bit familiar. I know Artemis had said that instances of interference in a Quest were counted for each god separately. I wasn't sure how that was important right now, but by the sudden, sharp look in Luke's eyes, he had some idea.
"An errand for the Mormones is unrelated to our search for the Bolt," he said casually.
And that was…
Technically true?
Our mission was getting Zeus' sparkler back, not undoing Mom's punishment. The latter would (hopefully) help with the former, but the latter was something I…
Something I chose to do.
'You needed a thief,' Mom had said. Hermes, god of Thieves, had been one of the cards of my Prophecy, drawn weeks before Artemis ever came to Camp in the first place.
She always told me that I chose my own destiny.
And instead, I came around in a full circle, doing what I foretold myself doing.
I felt cold.
" - gerous for you especially," Herc was telling Luke with a frown. "Exposing Blood to too much, too fast is never a good idea. I would join you - " His jaw clenched. His neck muscles stood out sharply as a collar of gold light briefly flashed around his throat. "But I'm a bit stuck," he drawled acidly. "Call it house arrest."
Luke looked horrified.
I wasn't much better.
Artemis flinched on the beach. "You do not want to join us."
"Hell, of course I don't want to," her brother spat back. "But I want leaving them to this crap even less." He shook his head and tugged at his basketball jersey. "Look, if you can call in any big favors, any Debts, if you can get anyone who would laugh about following you into Tartarós, now is the time."
A dull pain in my chest broke through the numbness.
A few years ago, that would have been Eva, but now, there was a different Name that I had in mind.
I took a deep breath. The ocean air was salty. The breeze ruffled my hair and tugged at my jeans.
"Thanks, Herc," I said quietly.
The Greco-Roman god had sad eyes. "No problem, kid."
He shoved his hands into his jacket's pockets, turning around like he was just going to walk back up the grassy hill and was gone.
"Artemis?" Luke said softly.
The rabbit hiccuped, but didn't respond.
He looked at me with a grimace. "I don't think it's just the theft that's bothering her," he murmured. I was getting that feeling too. Artemis had kind of accepted dying, but it was like we were back at square one (or maybe square negative two). She was paralyzed with fear. "Are you thinking what I am thinking?"
Luke held up his hand, showcasing the cold silver ring on his finger.
"Yup," I said.
There was a cool breeze blowing in from the water.
"I told Hypnos," I mumbled, shuffling my feet a bit. "He went to get Clovis and Annabeth and the others…"
Luke's face had tensed, then softened. The pupils in his shattered eye narrowed. He let out a long sigh. "Good," he murmured. "That's good."
"Sorry."
Knowledge was dangerous.
Both you and I know that.
Luke shook his head and started walking. I followed Luke further down the beach, trying to think positive. I was reasonably sure Chronos and Mom were still on good terms, so maybe Not-Hecate was right, and I'd be able to get away with it by looking cute. What were the odds he was anything like Tartarus? He was Erebus' dad and my brother cared about me.
And I knew the Dreamlands, right?
Sure, maybe not Selene's corner of it, but it couldn't be that - nope, I am not going to jinx myself here!
With a final glance back towards the rabbit, Luke cleared his throat as he came to a stop. "Khione Thrêikion."
The wind blew hard enough to force me to blink. In that one moment, the rock just to the left of us became occupied with the Greek goddess of Ice and Snow. She looked like how I saw her last with the white cowboy hat and light blue poncho, but with her black hair in a single braid.
There was a long moment of silence where we just stood there as she stared back from her perch.
"You are still alive." Her voice was icy as she looked over us with frozen eyes, snowflakes turning and twisting in entrancing patterns. Her gaze flicked down along the beach. "All of you."
Luke smiled mockingly. "I apologize for the disappointment."
I elbowed him in the gut.
What was his problem?
"Have you ever been in the Dreamlands?" I laid it out there. I wasn't aiming to trick her into anything.
"No, I have not," she said slowly as the discordant symphony in her eyes began to play. "I know of no one on Olympus that would dare." She looked past us out at the water and towards the silent shadow of the island, then back down the beach where a rabbit sat. "...this is not about the Bolt."
"Not directly," I admitted. 'It's a personal favor."
"A personal favor," she repeated neutrally. Her gaze darted around again, putting the pieces together. She had who knows how many college degrees. She was smart enough to figure it out without us saying anything. Khione went as still as a statue. I was afraid she was going to just disappear, not even bothering to tell me to fuck off, when her lips curled into a bitterly cold smile,
"For Artemis?"
I sighed. "Yes."
"I told you I would help you in her place," Khione cajoled. "You still have over a day left. I am…" She raised an eyebrow for a second. "Unsure how you ended up in Crete, but I can - "
"Khione." I stepped forward and beat down my pride.
Then I bowed to her.
I bent right at the waist, all the way until I was staring at the ground. I gritted my teeth as the memory of the last and only time I ever bowed to a god like this tried to surge to the front. I heard Khione's breath hitch.
She offered to help us get to Houston, but Artemis' everything had burnt that down to the ground. This was a second chance.
If she wanted it.
"I would owe you," I choked out. "Help me. Please."
I was putting a lot of faith in the Boreide. Debts were dangerous and this was going to be a huge one. I felt sick to my stomach. I didn't even know how to calculate just how much this was going to cost me.
It was weird.
We were going to steal from Mom's baby daddy and I didn't feel much of anything. The thought that Khione was going to prove herself to be so very Greek in the end made the tips of fingers go numb.
At first I thought it was just the breeze pulling at my hair, but then the tug on my scalp sharpened to something almost painful that caused me to look up. Khione was kneeling in front of me, a lock of my hair around her finger as she searched my face. I bit the inside of my cheek until I tasted blood to pull my attention away from her eyes.
"I will hold you to this," she said quietly, warning me. I didn't see malice or greed in her gaze, just the discordant, haunting melody.
I risked a smile as a hopeful warmth welled up in my chest. "Of course you will."
Her expression didn't warm so much as it got less cold. She scoffed as she let my hair go. "Heroes."
"That isn't an insult," Luke said dryly.
"Oh, yes it is."
"No, it isn't."
"You will also owe me for this, Luke."
"What?" He yelped under her sharp look, daring him to disagree with her. He dared. "I don't remember agreeing to that."
I knew I was grinning stupidly. I couldn't help it.
I…think I really like Khione.
She patted me on the shoulder as she stood up, absently sweeping sand off her pants. "I have been told the Dreamlands are filled with horrors that could kill gods, similar to what lies beyond the Edge in the lands beyond us. Is that true?"
"Nope," I said, straightening, still smiling. "It's worse."
She rolled her pretty eyes. "Lovely." She looked between me and Luke's judgy frown, his arms crossed. "How is this done then?"
The answer to that was by taking a nap.
There was a ferry that was used to take tourists to the island of Spinalonga, but our way in was a long collapsed tunnel called 'Dante's Gate.' It had been built out of the same pale crumbling beige brick common to old Greek architecture, a flat top triangle tunnel leading from a small hill on the beach down into darkness. The island itself was some kind of fortress city or town. It had been occupied by a bunch of people throughout history, but now it was a ghost town, completely abandoned and empty.
"It used to be a leper colony," Artemis said absently as we hunkered down just inside the tunnel entrance. Rhea's torch was put in the middle as we circled around it. "The sick would walk beneath the stone and the waves in darkness, unaware of what lay on the other side, but still hoping."
"Naturally," Khione said neutrally. "Anything would be better than squatting in caves at the edges of civilization."
"...some cures are worse than the disease," the rabbit whispered.
The ice goddess frowned, but didn't reply to that.
"Last chance," Artemis said. Her silver eyes shone in the dark.
No one backed out.
We had all just slept. Normally that would be a problem, but Khione had waved it off as an easily inflicted symptom of hypothermia. True enough, I had just barely set my head down on a patch of grass before suddenly feeling exhausted, like my muscles should be burning from running a hundred miles.
I closed my eyes.
I opened them in a field of pale flowers, a sky dotted with strange stars and dominated by a massive, full moon. Diana looked down at us as her giant form loomed, the bloody teeth of her flayed chest cavity fluttering open and then closed. Her exposed spine of pitted and warped vertebrae bent as she leaned closer. The mask of her left side turned towards the moon. There was another creature far down the beach. Long spindly gnarled legs planted in the ground like stilts, but it was holding a bulbous, sickly gray body with long mandibles and gossamer thin feelers drifting beneath it. The twisting eyestalks swiveled in my direction. Its presence washed over me.
Familiar.
Corey had gotten its attention once.
I inclined my head. "Tsukuyomi."
The attention slipped away.
Khione was luminescent, as if she was lit from within. Physically flawless save for a bored hole that went straight through the middle of her sternum, exposing a gnarled, wooden knot that thumped like a heart and creeping vines burrowing under her skin. Luke stared up at the moon, eyes shining.
The human half of Diana silently raised her arm, pointing out over the water.
A hazy city of tall gothic spires and steeples shone on the lone island both too close and infinitely far away.
The statuesque figures of more warped creatures, moon deities, rose up from the waters and disappeared into the hazy clouds, surrounding the island like guards watching a prison. The tunnel of Dante's Gate was pristine and smoothly carved as if it had been built just yesterday, leading into darkness towards the city. And waiting beside it, curled up on a patch of grass was an orange tabby cat with a crook in his tail. I couldn't breathe. I felt like if I did, I would break into a million pieces. That couldn't be my pet cat. He couldn't be here.
"Sam?" I whispered.
The cat's ears twitched.
Hypnos said he would help me. He knew about the key we were looking for.
Sam would laugh at following me into Tartarós.
He followed me to the moon.
The small auburn bunny rabbit hopped forward, out from under Diana's shadow. Her sigh then sounded like terror, it sounded like despair and it sounded, bizarrely, like relief. Like coming back home after a storm and finding everything just like you left it.
"Some nightmares never end," Artemis murmured.
Distant bells rang.
Well here's a snippet of Percy's messed up childhood. I get the feeling events like this weren't uncommon given that Percy has gotten used to the "What did we learn?" phrase, which is so messed up. Also Percy was surprised he got a week off of training after something as traumatic as that so, so even the standard training is rough.
Welp yeah Hypnos is a good dad who's concerned for his kid.
Percy starting to understand maybe his childhood wasn't okay, but he's still in massive denial. Fate is pretty okay with Percy being exposed to danger even for an Eldritch entity parent who loves him.
Looks like Percy's diet has changed his Dream form and made him bigger, which has implications galore.
Welp shit there's no going back for Luke now is there? I mean there already wasn't but now his eyes are open and he can See. Also looks like the classic phrase is here.
Percy is very scary and now has free access to his hunger. Everyone with even a drop of sense should be very afraid.
It takes a real big sister to be the best dad.
Percy just made Herakles's day with this.
Smart man knowing when something is above what he's "paid" to do. Also dude deserves a laugh.
Herakles is such a bro.
He sees that Percy and Fate look at pantheons as suggestions then.
Greek and Roman versions are pretty similar and in tune with each other. Probably since the Roman Name is all natural instead of grafted.
Welp looks like even the expert on heroes has no clue WTF Percy's deal is, which is par for the corse.
I'm so happy he tried to make amends with Zoe. Sure it crashed and burned but he tired.
Welp shit.
Yeah Elder Gods don't go down easy and even if they're "dead" they're never truly gone.
Percy's senses are weird, previously it's mentioned that foreign magic stuff felt cold but to Percy it was warm. I think this is a similar case.
Yeah Percy gets how insane what he's doing is and still decides to do it anyway.
Hercules is a pretty clever fellow, and damn good at rules lawyering. Makes sense since he kinda had to when he was a relatively squishy demigod.
What a great dude, he doesn't want to be involved with this mess but he wants kids involved even less and he would help but he isn't free.
I'm happy Percy gave Luke this bit of peace of mind, dude really needs it.
Dreamlands is very scary and Percy is very scary in there.
The best cat has arrived to save the day, everything is a little less horrible.
Ace Dreamer
Verified Reality User
- Location
- Between The Unknown & The Known
Welp. I could say a lot about this, how well it's crafted, the amazing characterisation, but...
I'll stick to, "It's got even more terrifying, hasn't it?".
I'll stick to, "It's got even more terrifying, hasn't it?".
- Location
- Texas
Another wonderful chapter in a wonderful story.
I can't remember if it's been addressed in the story. Are Chronus and Kronos separate entities, different Names for the same being, or wholly one and the same?
I can't remember if it's been addressed in the story. Are Chronus and Kronos separate entities, different Names for the same being, or wholly one and the same?
Kronos is the Titian King and is in Percy's fridge. Cronos Is an Elder God who is Fates baby daddy. The relationship between the two is that Kronos got his Name when he was a metal called Zagreus, he ran into Cronos and was "gifted" the Name Kronos.
- Location
- Brazil
*It's Kronos/Cronos and Khronos/Chronos. The difference is in the 'h'. It's actually a different sound, it's just that in english the sounds tends to be rendered as 'kh'.
Sam
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
AN: Um. Hi. Hope this is good. Tell me if it isn't. Recommend re-reading the story.
Sam is a perfectly ordinary orange tabby cat of Here.
A proud tail. Four paws with pink moisturized toe beans. Well maintained claws and whiskers. Sleek white and striped orange fur, alert ears and a healthy five kilograms in weight. Lady cats loved him! Adventurous, curious with a taste for whiskey and salmon. He preferred his litter clean, mice and birds absent, toilet paper shredded and only knocked things off the counter when there was literally nothing else to do.
A good sort of bloke. A truly upstanding citizen of Here.
Here where, you ask?
Well, sometimes it's There, other times it's Nowhere and rarely it's When but every cat who does cat things and follows the cat ways knows that 'falling asleep' is a misnomer. Your world can be likened to an onion, with just as many layers to existence. Close your eyes.
Wake in another reality.
The transition most humans aren't aware of. Blessed ignorance. A vested interest in keeping it that way. Do not panic. Hypnos means well.
Most of the time.
For cats, it was a fact of life.
You may have heard the Here, There, Nowhere and When called the 'Dreamlands.' A paradise of imagination that fulfills your every whim. A place of surreal wonders. A land of dreams.
Another affectation.
Everything in it is as real as you are. It knows of you too.
It just doesn't play by the same rules.
Remember that.
Play along if you want to survive.
One day, some time ago somewhen (and that's as detailed as it's going to get)
(cat)
Sam dodged a falling toddler.
No shame.
There he had been. Minding his own fucking business snooping around one of the visiting ziggurat temples before every strand of fur stood on end. It wasn't like he knew the shrieking bundle was a kid before he jumped out of the way - you know what kind of things fall from the sky Here?
Imagine his surprise when instead of some twisted abomination taking an ill advised all expenses paid flight, a human baby hit the crumbling rock where he had been standing diaper first, bounced, and then flailing short arms, wide sea-green eyes and all, tumbled over the edge down the stone staircase.
Sam blinked.
Sat down.
Slowly blinked again. His tail flicked back and forth in agitated swishes.
He peered over the edge of the ziggurat and yup, that certainly looked like a human baby. Which was, uh, very strange. Unusual, even.
He should probably do something about that.
With a put upon sigh, Sam leaned over the edge of the ziggurat again. Kid didn't dash his head open on the rocks, so that was lucky, he supposed. The cat bounded down the crumbling structure as cats do, zigzagging from stair to stone wall and off the hanging tree, stair again, over the gap and -
Came to a yowling halt when a hundred, burning green eyes blinked open in the shadows pooling between the cracks in the stone, seeping from under the brush of the nearby jungle, crawling underneath the roots of trees, leaking from behind its small form to look at him.
Not a baby.
Not a fucking baby!
"Mu - mummy?" The thing sniffled as it raised itself up on scratched chubby palms.
It was barely larger than the cat himself with two arms and two legs, an ocean blue shirt that rode up its plump belly. And a diaper. Windswept downy black hair crowned its head and tears gathered in the corners of its two face-eyes that sparkled with stars amidst a shifting blue-green aurora borealis. The little brow scrunched, closing the eye that had briefly opened on its forehead.
"Mummy!" It cried out. The bottom lip trembled threateningly, but it didn't cry. "Mummy…I won' scare." The little chin jutted out stubbornly. "I won'. I pwomise."
'That's right, you tell 'em,' Sam said because playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Between the folks that didn't know they were Dreaming, the folks that did know they were Dreaming, the natives and the Others…
To put it this way.
You'd think someone would appreciate being told that they clearly weren't listening to anything the rock was saying, they had a shit personality and maybe they should stop humping it before they broke their dick.
But no.
Grew a second head and went apeshit.
The thing sniffled as those burning green eyes looked in every which way from the shadows around it. "Kitty," it mumbled with a lisp and spit bubble. "Sam."
Every strand of fur stood on end. 'How the fook you know that!?'
The thing grinned. The mouth stretched further than it should on a human looking face, filled to the brim with multiple rows of sharp teeth.
Fuck.
One of them cockwombles.
"S'ok if I have you Name," the thing murmured as the air crackled with potential, a heavy weight as the Dreamlands considered the creature and almost gently crushed the darkness trying to escape the seams of its pink flesh back into the shape of a small toddler.
Sam's ears flattened back against his head.
The Dreamlands was rarely gentle. What the fuck was this?
"Ihmm Ṕ̴̡̰̌ę̴̬̌̚ř̶͉̱͊̿ş̷̦͘ê̸̦u̵̯̚͝s̷̥̘̥̃͑̃." The thing blinked sleepily. "I won' betway. E̶͇͔̘͠v̶̨̒ͅę̵́ŕ̸̪̼̺."
'Uh,' the cat muttered. 'I ain't usin' your fookin' Name.'
The thing's head tilted. "Percy 'kay.'
'...what?'
"Percy is me!" The thing cheered.
'Kay?'
The cat did not even think of running. He was no coward.
And it wouldn't help anyway.
Space and distance in the Dreamlands was subjective. He could take five steps and remain where he was.
"I like kitties and you pwetty."
He'll fucking take it.
'Thanks.'
"Wewcome!"
The cat tilted his head a little curiously. 'Awfully polite for a muppet.'
Some people called them 'gods.'
If it made them feel better to put words like that on their fears, to convince themselves that they could appeal to greater beings, clawing for infinitesimal amounts of control over the utterly uncontrollable, deluding themselves into thinking they proudly earned what they begged for at the feet of merciless apathy…
Yeah, well, some people were fucking stupid. What can you do?
The mini-muppet shoved its thumb in its mouth.
It was both fucking pathetic and incredibly unsettling in its mimicry. Playing along was a survival tactic, but it was those that made you forget for a second - edged close to making you wonder that were the truly dangerous ones.
Fuck if he knows why one was pretending to be a baby though.
Guess all that infinite bitchery didn't come with a sense of dignity.
Sam lifted a paw and volunteered, 'You smell like shit.'
"Ew!" 'Perseus' agreed with a nod.
'...you gonna do something about it?'
"Sowwy," It muttered, looking a bit ashamed as it shuffled in its smelly used diaper. "Dunno how."
'Um.'
It shrugged its small shoulders helplessly.
'...think really hard about being clean?'
The thing blinked. It struggled to its feet, scrunched up its face and then its clothes vanished.
Sam sighed as it posed proudly buck naked.
Not like he was one to talk about letting it all hang.
'Close enough.'
It was like a demented, fucked up kitten. As mobile as a drunk coming off a weekend bender with the brain cells to match.
The cat's ear swiveled as it honed in on the sounds of the jungle around. Unlike the humid forests one could find There, this one was dripping with wriggling vines, gasping mushrooms and trees bleeding from their pores as their canopies bent towards them filled with hungry, gaping mouths masquerading as birds.
This was probably stupid.
If the small muppet wandered off and got itself eaten from the inside out by larvae, it would probably be doing everyone a favor.
But it looked pathetic and was polite so fuck it.
Sam's tail flicked.
'You.' Cat green eyes narrowed at one of the trees as he pointed with the tip of his tail.
For a long moment, there was no response.
The cat's tail stiffened, bristling. The tree sagged and then melted into something distinctly less hardwood and more caterpillar, if it had a head made of a dozen chattering skulls, bone spines dripping with paralytic venom and a body more of a suggestion of dark flesh then a reality.
'Fook off mate.'
Caught, the skull caterpillar slunk away through the slimy underbrush.
'Creepy fook,' Sam muttered under his breath.
"Tank 'ou." The thing lisped as it stared up at him with two shimmering eyes as his tail stood straight up in the air.
Since when did muppets thank folks?
Or apologizing for anything?
It stretched a pudgy hand up towards him with a hesitant, wobbling step. "Can I pet?"
'No.'
"Oh."
Thing and cat stared at each other in silence for a long moment. 'Where tha fook did ya come from?'
The thing sucked its thumb for a moment. "I feww."
'You fell,' the cat repeated flatly.
"Yeah!"
'From…the moon?' Both of them glanced up. The sky was a sparkling purple color, a shower of inverted stars trailing across the rippling canvas. A golden moon loomed large and full directly overhead, but it was the thing that flinched away from looking first.
"No," it mumbled. "I go sweep, then I feww."
It went to sleep?
Muppets don't need to sleep. They didn't need to breathe either, fuck, he wasn't sure they even bleed. What does it mean 'I went to sleep!?'
Never mind.
He decided he doesn't want to know. It was too early for this.
It would always be too early for bullshit.
'I give up. What the fook are ya?"
'Perseus' blinked up at the cat. "Demigo'."
Sam nodded agreeably, making the appropriate 'ah ha' noises before saying, 'What's that.'
"Haff go'."
The cat squinted. 'What's the other half?"
"Mortaw."
'Huh,' Sam said as he digested this new information. 'Mortal.' So maybe part human. No real guarantee of that being the other half, but he looked similar enough. Sam could not claim to truly be surprised. Humans got their rocks off on all sorts of weird shit and them muppets weren't any better.
It also explained the lack of cunty behavior.
'How old are you?'
The boy (?) held up two fingers of his free hand.
Fuck.
'If you came from There, you can't just trip and fall to get Here. There's guards, like whatshisface - H something. Hippie, Hypoc, Hip - '
"Hypnos!" The stars in the boy's eyes lit up as he cheered. "He nice! Want as friend."
A muppet was nice.
Positively friend-shaped.
'That.' Sam shrugged and firmly decided to not think too hard about anything the kid told him. 'You tellin' me you tripped past him?'
The boy stared blankly, chewing on his thumb. "Uh?"
Brain cells to match.
Right.
'Never mind.'
Sam hopped down from the pole. His ears were alert, tail hanging low as it circled the small half-muppet once, then twice before he tossed his head and batted at the boy with a paw.
'...tag. You're it.'
'Perseus' blinked wide eyes that lit up in a strange kind of joy.
"Okay!"
Maybe the kid didn't just fall asleep.
Maybe he's dead.
That wouldn't be a surprise either.
'Yeoooow!'
"Sowwy!"
'Watch the fooking tail!'
"I sai' sowwy!" The kid looked apologetic for a second before smirking as he leapt off the cliff. "You it!"
The cat rushed to the edge expecting to see nothing.
What he got was Perseus clumsily flipping him a two gun salute at the bottom.
'You lil' fucker!'
The Dreamlands had its own convoluted sense of time.
A toddler and a cat roamed.
The cat's tail healed into a visible slight crook. The boy grew a little taller, more steady on his feet. His speech matured as if it wasn't his age that had been the problem, but practice at hearing English.
It could have been months.
It could have been decades.
"Ack! It burns!"
'Why the fook would you put that in your mouth.'
"It look okay!"
'It had tendrils coming out of its fooking arse - no, I am not doing this.'
"Sam! Help! Water!"
'Maybe next time we don't eat the ugly thing.'
"...that is a child."
'No shit, Willie.'
"Whoooa." 'Perseus' stared up at the dreamer with wide eyes and his mouth in a little 'o' shape. He managed to conjure back some diapers and scrounged up a pair of short pants from memory. The diaper he had on, but the pants, the pants the kid apparently felt were of more use on his head than his bum.
"Sam." He whispered too loudly. "Sam! He's old!"
'Damn ancient, mate.'
The old man sighed, mutton chops wobbling. "Sam. Must you?"
'Wut?'
'I told you to use the litter before we left!' Sam hissed under his breath from underneath the quivering bush.
"I thought I could hold it…" Perseus peeked over the large rock he was hiding behind, knees pressed together as the multi-headed snake slithered closer. "Distract it?"
'So you could take a fooking piss?'
The boy made his eyes huge and sparkling. "You want me to leave a piss trail while running?"
Not particularly.
'Fuck me.'
It wasn't all sunshine and roses. The kid was still half-muppet. Among the innocent wonder, infectious joy and curiosity was a certain kind of cruelty that made the cat's ears stand forward, straight and alert. The boy never turned it on him though, only others and, well, Sam was a cat.
He knew enough to know humans weren't supposed to revel in the suffering of others. No pulling the wings off the butterfly.
But sometimes that shit was hilarious.
Being half-muppet also meant the kid was half bullshit that sometimes just made no sense at all.
The cat stared at the dark tower rising on the horizon incredulously. It wasn't just the structure. He'd seen dreamer homes before. It was the amethyst grass of the Dreamlands giving way to a beach of black razor sand, as if it was made out of grains of obsidian. It was the iron clouds gathering around the spire, complete with a skeletal dragon bat thing flying around it.
Like it wasn't a home, stolen and smuggled from the Dreamlands.
'So that's bullshit.'
Perseus' gaze stared off into the distance with the two eyes on his face and it was then, belatedly, that Sam wondered when he had last seen those eyes in his shadow. A while, he supposed and pondered where they had trotted off to.
"He's gone."
'Huh?'
"Someone I know?" The boy shook himself and the stars in his eyes lit back up. "Wanna see inside!?"
Sam woke up first from the cat nap.
Percy murmured sleepily as he turned on the rock, curled into himself. The first time the boy jumped off something, Sam expected him to poof like that one fellow who came looking for the muppet city over the mountains a while back.
Human thing.
They were yellow bellied lily livered cowards so scared of a tiny drop, their soul shrivels back into their body.
But that didn't happen. The boy had been Here so long, he could sleep in it without leaving and eventually, Sam stopped expecting him to. Even if he found a way, once the Dreamlands had you, you never really leave.
Not a visitor. A mortal soul in the Dreamlands.
Like the old Prussian Willie. Or Carl and Magdalene and other Dreamers.
Nothing to return to.
The tower on the black beach was as much a home as a ball and chain.
The cat's ears flicked back and forth as he searched the flat plateau they had been sunbathing on for what had woken him up. Their 'bed' was a tall twenty foot structure overlooking the Salt Plains of red stone baking in the blue sun. The glittering salt crystals stretched to the horizon interspersed with small oases of larger cloudy crystals, sparse fauna and clear, deadly water.
There was nothing.
And then there was.
Someone.
Every strand of fur stood up, his hackles rose, back arching and tail puffing under the disinterested black diamond gaze.
The muppet looked like a black haired, pale skinned human with freckles dusting the bridge of its nose and the top of its cheekbones. It could have been a woman off the street back There in black slacks, white blouse with a jean jacket on top of it. Even the microexpressions of momentary amusement, mild exasperation and something almost satisfied were accurate.
That was the scary part.
Remember, the ones that could pretend were dangerous.
Space casually broke.
The cat found himself standing in the same location ten feet away as the muppet scooped the boy up from the ground that was suddenly by its feet, having just rearranged the entire plateau to its whims in the blink of an eye as the Dreamlands quivered.
"Mummy," Perseus whispered sleepily as he flung his small arms around its neck. "I wasn't scared."
"Now, now." The visible softening of its expression was eerie as it pressed a kiss into the kid's hair and murmured, "You know better than to lie to me."
The kid shrunk back, eyes squeezing shut. "I'm sorry! I won't do it again, please don't change me it hurt -"
"I won't," it shushed him, wincing and the cat couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be from the child's sudden fear or something else. "That was - that will not happen again. I will not need to ever again." It frowned. "I will do better with you."
Muppets.
Not even once.
Percy cracked an eye open, pouting piteously. "Promise?"
"I promise."
"...love me?"
"You are perfect just the way you are," it said gently and Sam's fur rippled with unease. It sounded genuine to his sensitive ears. Creepy. "How could I not?"
The boy settled. "Can I have a cat?"
Sam stiffened.
"You already have a cat," it said, voice thick with amusement as those black diamond eyes slowly traveled back to the orange tabby tom. "And it did very well, didn't it?"
"He's the best cat ever!" Percy declared solemnly.
Sam appreciated the sentiment, but kid, bloody not right now!
"That settles it then. For the best cat ever," it said, matching the toddler's seriousness. "He may receive one favor from me."
Like fuck Sam was going to take it up on that.
"Go back to sleep, Perseus," the muppet intoned and the boy's eyelids obligingly began to droop. Percy tensed for a moment, grasping tightly as if remembering some nightmare, before drifting off to sleep. The muppet whispered fondly, "Time to go home."
As it turned away, Sam found the courage to speak.
'He didn't fall.'
He was pushed.
The muppet's face turned to look at the cat from over its shoulder. Holding the dozing boy in one arm, it silently raised its free hand to hold a finger in front of its lips.
It smiled.
Then they were both gone.
The next time Sam saw Perseus, crowing about being allowed back since his 'accident' and promising to figure out how to bring treats next time, the cat got his own tongue. He'd been tempted to say something a few times as the kid grew up a little. The worst one was when his Mum left him There and Percy started hoping, begging that he could find her Here.
On the moon.
Sam knew what - who was up there.
Every cat who does cat things and knows the cat ways of Ulthar was aware of the dreaded master behind the moon beasts, the Stalker in the Dark, their ancient enemy.
But this was Percy.
He was just a kitten. A bit too fucked in the head to not come with a discount, but still good when he wasn't what his mum wanted him to be.
Sam could help him, right? That was what Ulthar cats did. Help. And…he owed him that much. He could make sure the kid came back alive.
Because he couldn't bring himself to say a word.
Percy called in that favor on his behalf, crying over Sam's pulped eye, blood leaking from his ears, the other eye filled with burst blood vessels and even now a little blurry looking through it. A little ringing in one ear still. A little rattle in his chest where the bones didn't quite heal right. A cold ache in his joints and paws he didn't let on he had.
It was the most powerless he'd felt since he was a hungry kitten huddled in a cold, wet alleyway, hiding from older cats and loud cars belching black smoke and sirens sounding overhead. It had been a long, long night.
He had nothing to return to either.
Sam was just a cat.
Playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Hey, you came back! I was wondering where you went. You…still don't mind listening to me, right? It's been a long time no see!
That's where we stopped, remember?
With Time…
Hey, you remember that story about me falling into the Dreamlands when I was two, right?
It wasn't some kind of weird flex, if you were wondering.
Really more of an accident.
I always knew almost falling on top of an orange tabby cat was a bit of a lucky break. I just don't think I actually knew how much of one it was until I found myself in Selene's little corner of the Dreamlands.
Unwelcome.
The air felt heavy.
It was that thick, choking weight of something like we were being slowly smothered and just didn't realize it yet. The kind of feeling you expected from a dense fog after a bad storm, but the only mist was wafting up in ghostly wisps from the sea. The field of pale flowers we woke up in was a large, perfectly unnatural circle around us before the dismal gray shore that met the black water.
The bells from the far off city rang a final toll. The chime carried on over the dead air for a long time.
Silence fell.
Artemis' auburn and patchy gray fur bristled in the same shiver that ran up my spine.
I forced my words out, "Everyone okay?"
Khione glanced at me, grimacing and my breath caught.
Her eyes were ice flowers instead of snowflakes, crashing, shattering, warping, turning inside out and splitting into eleven dimensions before finally annihilating inside a crystal clear snow globe made out of folded space.
So maybe this was not the best time to get distracted, but God dayum!
"So that's what your eyes really look like!" I burst out in awe. This was what I was catching glimpses of whenever that melody showed up in her eyes!
"Wha - " The snow goddess looked down at herself and then swore in Mycenaean Greek. She turned away from me as her hand came up to the hole in her chest where the wooden heart thumped. "Of course it shows here. Idiot," she spat at herself. "Can't do anything right!"
I don't understand.
Why would anyone try to hide something so beautiful?
"It's fine!" I said quickly, trying to be reassuring. "Your eyes are pretty girl - I mean, pretty great!" Holy shit. "I mean, you don't have to hide them. I mean, you can if you don't like them? But I think they're…" I swallowed hard and tried not to dig myself in deeper. "...okay?"
"Okay?" Khione echoed dully.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle.
Someone kill me.
Put me out of my misery.
Please.
"Can we please forget I said anything?" I pleaded.
"Done," Khione said instantly. "But, thank you." She tried to smile at me, but there was something almost broken about it before she turned away again. "I will need - a few minutes before we set forth. Please."
"Yeah, sure," I said quickly. "Don't worry about it."
That's weird.
I really expected Luke to give me shit there.
When I looked, he was still staring up at the large moon dominating the sky above us like it was made out of solid gold.
"Who is changing you?" Artemis spoke up quietly. "It - it cannot be too late to…" The rabbit lost steam as Khione tilted her head down, shielding her face with her black hair. "To reverse…"
"I am here because Percy offered," the Boreide said softly and bitterly cold. "We are not friends, Artemis Apanchomenê."
The bunny flinched and then nodded miserably.
The Strangled.
That wasn't a Name I knew the history of, but at this point, I don't think I even want to know.
"And I am fine," Khione finished harshly, like a gust of storm winds before turning away from us again.
I bit my lip and decided to leave her be. "Luke?"
He didn't move.
I don't think he heard me?
"Hey," I said as I reached out to shake him a little. "Are you - "
Humans are not owls.
Luke's head wasn't meant to twist a full 180 degrees on his neck!
I stumbled backwards as he snarled at me. His teeth was bared in a bestial grin, his breath frosting in the air with wide, manic bloodshot eyes that shone in the moonlight. "Luke - !?"
Then he convulsed, like he was having a seizure. His head snapped back around with a wet crack as his entire body shook. Diana leaned in closer, blocking out the moon until looking up just got you an eyeful of her flayed chest cavity. Khione's cold hand fell on my shoulder, pulling me back as Artemis cried out,
"Luke! Fight it!"
The shaking got worse as if he was about to vibrate out of his own skin -
Then just like that, he went still.
None of us moved.
"...Luke?" I called out softly.
"I - " He groaned, shuddering. "I'm here." I could have sworn his teeth looked bigger in his mouth and it looked like he gained a dozen wrinkles on his forehead. "I'm here," he muttered. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I - can't you hear that?"
"Not a thing," I said.
He's hearing things. That's always a good sign!
Not.
"It sounds like - "
"Do not listen to her!" Artemis snapped at him as "You cannot listen to her, or you will go rabid, do you understand?"
Luke startled like a surprised deer. He swallowed thickly as he looked at us with tears in his eyes. The broken one was a kaleidoscope of cloudy blue irises. "Selene?"
Artemis hesitated.
"No more secrets," I reminded our rabbit grimly. "We're already here."
And there was no going back.
"Selene died," Khione murmured.
"What happened?" Luke asked shakily as he ran a hand down his face. He looked down at his sneakers. "Did someone forget to tell her that?"
Diana ponderously watched us. The human half of her face was frowning as the rabbit's mouth worked silently.
"'Temis." I growled.
"Not her," the bunny muttered.
Ipse. Diana said. Memet.
"Me," she admitted.
"You?" Luke said what we were all thinking.
"I tried to fix it," Artemis whispered instead. A sinking feeling was pulling at the bottom of my stomach. She said she left 'a fragment' of herself behind back in that airport. If my suspicion was right, it was a fragment that was talking to Luke, a descendant of Selene through the Moon. "I tried to fix everything."
"And failed," Khione said harshly. "Like you always do."
The rabbit didn't respond.
I didn't know what to say or do, standing there like a bump on a log. I don't know if you were also getting the feeling that some of the things Artemis was hiding wasn't because she was being a Greek jerk, but because something had gone so wrong somewhere that she made herself forget she was hiding it. That kind of thing was hard to bring out into the open.
I know that from experience.
Luke blew out an explosive breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We need a plan."
"Ice him if he goes weird?" I volunteered.
"With pleasure." Khione inclined her head as Luke winced, squeezing his knees together.
"I don't like this plan!" He squeaked. "I take it back. We don't need a plan! I'll be fine!"
"You looked like you wanted to bite my head off," I pointed out. I raised my eyebrows at him, incredulous. "A little cold is not going to kill you."
Luke winced again.
Jeez.
What a crybaby.
"But before we do anything else," I said with a finger up in the thick air. "I'm going to get what I think is my cat."
In the distance, the bells began to ring again.
Another shiver went up my spine.
I headed down the gray beach towards Dante's Gate and the small patch of grass beside it where an orange and white tabby cat was curled up in a ball.
There was a crook in his tail.
"Sam," I breathed, disbelieving as I bent down by my cat as he sat up. He looked exactly like he should have. Uneven whiskers. White booties. One eye was green while the other one, the replacement, burned orange. Even the dark orange swirls on his side looked right. "Are you really here?"
I reached out and poked my cat friend's cheek.
He bit me.
"Ow!"
'They say there's a blithering fucking idiot born every minute,' Sam said flatly as I cradled my hand against my stomach.
Uh oh.
'When you were born, we must have been good for the next hour.'
His ears went flat against his head, so I knew he was just getting started. "Sam, wait - "
'Your muppet bitch arse friend told everyone about this latest bout of fucking stupidity and I was not surprised your fucking suicidal random-shit-in-your-mouth arse is at it again being a dumbfuck fucking allergic to good ideas!'
I said Sam would laugh at following me into Tartarós.
That's still true.
Just so you know, swearing my ears off for being stupid was always going to come first.
Behind me, I heard Khione choke on a small laugh.
Great.
A small, furry animal whose tail I pulled is ruining my impression on a girl for the second time.
I can't win.
"Hi Sam," I said dully, feeling one inch tall. I turned back to my adventuring party as they warily approached the dark yawning mouth of Dante's Gate. "Everyone, this is my pet cat, Sam." I gave a limp wave. "Sam, everyone."
"You have a supernatural cat," Luke said flatly. Which was sort of fair and sort of…so telling him about cats, all of them, was going to be awkward.
"Master Sam," Khione nodded her head politely. "Khione, of ice and snow."
Sam squinted. 'Oh, another muppet.'
Oh my fuck.
I forgot Sam's an asshole.
Khione stiffened. "I beg your pardon?"
I palmed my face, hissing under my breath, "Sam, don't! She's Greek!"
So maybe that sounded like an insult?
It was the truth. And an insult. Kind of. Greek gods were many things and one of those things was having no chill.
And I swear to God, if you make a dumb joke about Khione being an ice goddess, I will disown you.
My cat sniffed like he'd been waiting to insult somebody new for years. 'A muppet. Fucking dead from the neck up scrubbers with a worship kink.'
Khione gasped, pretty eyes going wide. "Rude!"
Luke just nodded sagely. "I like him!"
"Don't encourage him," I groaned. If you're wondering what exactly Sam said in the strange, unique dialect of far off lands known as British, there were eleven words to say what could be said in four: 'stupid whores demanding worship.'
I was almost impressed.
I don't think salvaging this train wreck was even possible.
Sam lashed his crooked tail back and forth. 'I am not wrong.'
That's fair.
There was a tense silence as the Boreide glared down at my pet asshole. I prepared to jump in between an angry goddess and a cat. This was probably going to hurt. Lots.
"You're not wrong, no," Khione admitted, backing down.
"Still rude," Artemis muttered.
Alright.
Now I really was impressed. And a bit jealous. The last time I insulted a goddess to her face with the truth, she turned into a mountain lion and tried to murder me. How come he gets away with it?
I stole a quick head rub and ear ruffle, snatching my hand back as he swiped at me with a disgruntled meow.
"Sam," I said quietly with a smile. "You're the best cat ever."
His crooked tail lashed back and forth again as he looked away, sniffing contemptuously.
'...don't you forget it.'
An Undertow of Sand
A PJO Fanfiction
A PJO Fanfiction
Sam is a perfectly ordinary orange tabby cat of Here.
A proud tail. Four paws with pink moisturized toe beans. Well maintained claws and whiskers. Sleek white and striped orange fur, alert ears and a healthy five kilograms in weight. Lady cats loved him! Adventurous, curious with a taste for whiskey and salmon. He preferred his litter clean, mice and birds absent, toilet paper shredded and only knocked things off the counter when there was literally nothing else to do.
A good sort of bloke. A truly upstanding citizen of Here.
Here where, you ask?
Well, sometimes it's There, other times it's Nowhere and rarely it's When but every cat who does cat things and follows the cat ways knows that 'falling asleep' is a misnomer. Your world can be likened to an onion, with just as many layers to existence. Close your eyes.
Wake in another reality.
The transition most humans aren't aware of. Blessed ignorance. A vested interest in keeping it that way. Do not panic. Hypnos means well.
Most of the time.
For cats, it was a fact of life.
You may have heard the Here, There, Nowhere and When called the 'Dreamlands.' A paradise of imagination that fulfills your every whim. A place of surreal wonders. A land of dreams.
Another affectation.
Everything in it is as real as you are. It knows of you too.
It just doesn't play by the same rules.
Remember that.
Play along if you want to survive.
One day, some time ago somewhen (and that's as detailed as it's going to get)
(cat)
Sam dodged a falling toddler.
No shame.
There he had been. Minding his own fucking business snooping around one of the visiting ziggurat temples before every strand of fur stood on end. It wasn't like he knew the shrieking bundle was a kid before he jumped out of the way - you know what kind of things fall from the sky Here?
Imagine his surprise when instead of some twisted abomination taking an ill advised all expenses paid flight, a human baby hit the crumbling rock where he had been standing diaper first, bounced, and then flailing short arms, wide sea-green eyes and all, tumbled over the edge down the stone staircase.
Sam blinked.
Sat down.
Slowly blinked again. His tail flicked back and forth in agitated swishes.
He peered over the edge of the ziggurat and yup, that certainly looked like a human baby. Which was, uh, very strange. Unusual, even.
He should probably do something about that.
With a put upon sigh, Sam leaned over the edge of the ziggurat again. Kid didn't dash his head open on the rocks, so that was lucky, he supposed. The cat bounded down the crumbling structure as cats do, zigzagging from stair to stone wall and off the hanging tree, stair again, over the gap and -
Came to a yowling halt when a hundred, burning green eyes blinked open in the shadows pooling between the cracks in the stone, seeping from under the brush of the nearby jungle, crawling underneath the roots of trees, leaking from behind its small form to look at him.
Not a baby.
Not a fucking baby!
"Mu - mummy?" The thing sniffled as it raised itself up on scratched chubby palms.
It was barely larger than the cat himself with two arms and two legs, an ocean blue shirt that rode up its plump belly. And a diaper. Windswept downy black hair crowned its head and tears gathered in the corners of its two face-eyes that sparkled with stars amidst a shifting blue-green aurora borealis. The little brow scrunched, closing the eye that had briefly opened on its forehead.
"Mummy!" It cried out. The bottom lip trembled threateningly, but it didn't cry. "Mummy…I won' scare." The little chin jutted out stubbornly. "I won'. I pwomise."
'That's right, you tell 'em,' Sam said because playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Between the folks that didn't know they were Dreaming, the folks that did know they were Dreaming, the natives and the Others…
To put it this way.
You'd think someone would appreciate being told that they clearly weren't listening to anything the rock was saying, they had a shit personality and maybe they should stop humping it before they broke their dick.
But no.
Grew a second head and went apeshit.
The thing sniffled as those burning green eyes looked in every which way from the shadows around it. "Kitty," it mumbled with a lisp and spit bubble. "Sam."
Every strand of fur stood on end. 'How the fook you know that!?'
The thing grinned. The mouth stretched further than it should on a human looking face, filled to the brim with multiple rows of sharp teeth.
Fuck.
One of them cockwombles.
"S'ok if I have you Name," the thing murmured as the air crackled with potential, a heavy weight as the Dreamlands considered the creature and almost gently crushed the darkness trying to escape the seams of its pink flesh back into the shape of a small toddler.
Sam's ears flattened back against his head.
The Dreamlands was rarely gentle. What the fuck was this?
"Ihmm Ṕ̴̡̰̌ę̴̬̌̚ř̶͉̱͊̿ş̷̦͘ê̸̦u̵̯̚͝s̷̥̘̥̃͑̃." The thing blinked sleepily. "I won' betway. E̶͇͔̘͠v̶̨̒ͅę̵́ŕ̸̪̼̺."
'Uh,' the cat muttered. 'I ain't usin' your fookin' Name.'
The thing's head tilted. "Percy 'kay.'
'...what?'
"Percy is me!" The thing cheered.
'Kay?'
The cat did not even think of running. He was no coward.
And it wouldn't help anyway.
Space and distance in the Dreamlands was subjective. He could take five steps and remain where he was.
"I like kitties and you pwetty."
He'll fucking take it.
'Thanks.'
"Wewcome!"
The cat tilted his head a little curiously. 'Awfully polite for a muppet.'
Some people called them 'gods.'
If it made them feel better to put words like that on their fears, to convince themselves that they could appeal to greater beings, clawing for infinitesimal amounts of control over the utterly uncontrollable, deluding themselves into thinking they proudly earned what they begged for at the feet of merciless apathy…
Yeah, well, some people were fucking stupid. What can you do?
The mini-muppet shoved its thumb in its mouth.
It was both fucking pathetic and incredibly unsettling in its mimicry. Playing along was a survival tactic, but it was those that made you forget for a second - edged close to making you wonder that were the truly dangerous ones.
Fuck if he knows why one was pretending to be a baby though.
Guess all that infinite bitchery didn't come with a sense of dignity.
Sam lifted a paw and volunteered, 'You smell like shit.'
"Ew!" 'Perseus' agreed with a nod.
'...you gonna do something about it?'
"Sowwy," It muttered, looking a bit ashamed as it shuffled in its smelly used diaper. "Dunno how."
'Um.'
It shrugged its small shoulders helplessly.
'...think really hard about being clean?'
The thing blinked. It struggled to its feet, scrunched up its face and then its clothes vanished.
Sam sighed as it posed proudly buck naked.
Not like he was one to talk about letting it all hang.
'Close enough.'
It was like a demented, fucked up kitten. As mobile as a drunk coming off a weekend bender with the brain cells to match.
The cat's ear swiveled as it honed in on the sounds of the jungle around. Unlike the humid forests one could find There, this one was dripping with wriggling vines, gasping mushrooms and trees bleeding from their pores as their canopies bent towards them filled with hungry, gaping mouths masquerading as birds.
This was probably stupid.
If the small muppet wandered off and got itself eaten from the inside out by larvae, it would probably be doing everyone a favor.
But it looked pathetic and was polite so fuck it.
Sam's tail flicked.
'You.' Cat green eyes narrowed at one of the trees as he pointed with the tip of his tail.
For a long moment, there was no response.
The cat's tail stiffened, bristling. The tree sagged and then melted into something distinctly less hardwood and more caterpillar, if it had a head made of a dozen chattering skulls, bone spines dripping with paralytic venom and a body more of a suggestion of dark flesh then a reality.
'Fook off mate.'
Caught, the skull caterpillar slunk away through the slimy underbrush.
'Creepy fook,' Sam muttered under his breath.
"Tank 'ou." The thing lisped as it stared up at him with two shimmering eyes as his tail stood straight up in the air.
Since when did muppets thank folks?
Or apologizing for anything?
It stretched a pudgy hand up towards him with a hesitant, wobbling step. "Can I pet?"
'No.'
"Oh."
Thing and cat stared at each other in silence for a long moment. 'Where tha fook did ya come from?'
The thing sucked its thumb for a moment. "I feww."
'You fell,' the cat repeated flatly.
"Yeah!"
'From…the moon?' Both of them glanced up. The sky was a sparkling purple color, a shower of inverted stars trailing across the rippling canvas. A golden moon loomed large and full directly overhead, but it was the thing that flinched away from looking first.
"No," it mumbled. "I go sweep, then I feww."
It went to sleep?
Muppets don't need to sleep. They didn't need to breathe either, fuck, he wasn't sure they even bleed. What does it mean 'I went to sleep!?'
Never mind.
He decided he doesn't want to know. It was too early for this.
It would always be too early for bullshit.
'I give up. What the fook are ya?"
'Perseus' blinked up at the cat. "Demigo'."
Sam nodded agreeably, making the appropriate 'ah ha' noises before saying, 'What's that.'
"Haff go'."
The cat squinted. 'What's the other half?"
"Mortaw."
'Huh,' Sam said as he digested this new information. 'Mortal.' So maybe part human. No real guarantee of that being the other half, but he looked similar enough. Sam could not claim to truly be surprised. Humans got their rocks off on all sorts of weird shit and them muppets weren't any better.
It also explained the lack of cunty behavior.
'How old are you?'
The boy (?) held up two fingers of his free hand.
Fuck.
'If you came from There, you can't just trip and fall to get Here. There's guards, like whatshisface - H something. Hippie, Hypoc, Hip - '
"Hypnos!" The stars in the boy's eyes lit up as he cheered. "He nice! Want as friend."
A muppet was nice.
Positively friend-shaped.
'That.' Sam shrugged and firmly decided to not think too hard about anything the kid told him. 'You tellin' me you tripped past him?'
The boy stared blankly, chewing on his thumb. "Uh?"
Brain cells to match.
Right.
'Never mind.'
Sam hopped down from the pole. His ears were alert, tail hanging low as it circled the small half-muppet once, then twice before he tossed his head and batted at the boy with a paw.
'...tag. You're it.'
'Perseus' blinked wide eyes that lit up in a strange kind of joy.
"Okay!"
Maybe the kid didn't just fall asleep.
Maybe he's dead.
That wouldn't be a surprise either.
'Yeoooow!'
"Sowwy!"
'Watch the fooking tail!'
"I sai' sowwy!" The kid looked apologetic for a second before smirking as he leapt off the cliff. "You it!"
The cat rushed to the edge expecting to see nothing.
What he got was Perseus clumsily flipping him a two gun salute at the bottom.
'You lil' fucker!'
The Dreamlands had its own convoluted sense of time.
A toddler and a cat roamed.
The cat's tail healed into a visible slight crook. The boy grew a little taller, more steady on his feet. His speech matured as if it wasn't his age that had been the problem, but practice at hearing English.
It could have been months.
It could have been decades.
"Ack! It burns!"
'Why the fook would you put that in your mouth.'
"It look okay!"
'It had tendrils coming out of its fooking arse - no, I am not doing this.'
"Sam! Help! Water!"
'Maybe next time we don't eat the ugly thing.'
"...that is a child."
'No shit, Willie.'
"Whoooa." 'Perseus' stared up at the dreamer with wide eyes and his mouth in a little 'o' shape. He managed to conjure back some diapers and scrounged up a pair of short pants from memory. The diaper he had on, but the pants, the pants the kid apparently felt were of more use on his head than his bum.
"Sam." He whispered too loudly. "Sam! He's old!"
'Damn ancient, mate.'
The old man sighed, mutton chops wobbling. "Sam. Must you?"
'Wut?'
'I told you to use the litter before we left!' Sam hissed under his breath from underneath the quivering bush.
"I thought I could hold it…" Perseus peeked over the large rock he was hiding behind, knees pressed together as the multi-headed snake slithered closer. "Distract it?"
'So you could take a fooking piss?'
The boy made his eyes huge and sparkling. "You want me to leave a piss trail while running?"
Not particularly.
'Fuck me.'
It wasn't all sunshine and roses. The kid was still half-muppet. Among the innocent wonder, infectious joy and curiosity was a certain kind of cruelty that made the cat's ears stand forward, straight and alert. The boy never turned it on him though, only others and, well, Sam was a cat.
He knew enough to know humans weren't supposed to revel in the suffering of others. No pulling the wings off the butterfly.
But sometimes that shit was hilarious.
Being half-muppet also meant the kid was half bullshit that sometimes just made no sense at all.
The cat stared at the dark tower rising on the horizon incredulously. It wasn't just the structure. He'd seen dreamer homes before. It was the amethyst grass of the Dreamlands giving way to a beach of black razor sand, as if it was made out of grains of obsidian. It was the iron clouds gathering around the spire, complete with a skeletal dragon bat thing flying around it.
Like it wasn't a home, stolen and smuggled from the Dreamlands.
'So that's bullshit.'
Perseus' gaze stared off into the distance with the two eyes on his face and it was then, belatedly, that Sam wondered when he had last seen those eyes in his shadow. A while, he supposed and pondered where they had trotted off to.
"He's gone."
'Huh?'
"Someone I know?" The boy shook himself and the stars in his eyes lit back up. "Wanna see inside!?"
Sam woke up first from the cat nap.
Percy murmured sleepily as he turned on the rock, curled into himself. The first time the boy jumped off something, Sam expected him to poof like that one fellow who came looking for the muppet city over the mountains a while back.
Human thing.
They were yellow bellied lily livered cowards so scared of a tiny drop, their soul shrivels back into their body.
But that didn't happen. The boy had been Here so long, he could sleep in it without leaving and eventually, Sam stopped expecting him to. Even if he found a way, once the Dreamlands had you, you never really leave.
Not a visitor. A mortal soul in the Dreamlands.
Like the old Prussian Willie. Or Carl and Magdalene and other Dreamers.
Nothing to return to.
The tower on the black beach was as much a home as a ball and chain.
The cat's ears flicked back and forth as he searched the flat plateau they had been sunbathing on for what had woken him up. Their 'bed' was a tall twenty foot structure overlooking the Salt Plains of red stone baking in the blue sun. The glittering salt crystals stretched to the horizon interspersed with small oases of larger cloudy crystals, sparse fauna and clear, deadly water.
There was nothing.
And then there was.
Someone.
Every strand of fur stood up, his hackles rose, back arching and tail puffing under the disinterested black diamond gaze.
The muppet looked like a black haired, pale skinned human with freckles dusting the bridge of its nose and the top of its cheekbones. It could have been a woman off the street back There in black slacks, white blouse with a jean jacket on top of it. Even the microexpressions of momentary amusement, mild exasperation and something almost satisfied were accurate.
That was the scary part.
Remember, the ones that could pretend were dangerous.
Space casually broke.
The cat found himself standing in the same location ten feet away as the muppet scooped the boy up from the ground that was suddenly by its feet, having just rearranged the entire plateau to its whims in the blink of an eye as the Dreamlands quivered.
"Mummy," Perseus whispered sleepily as he flung his small arms around its neck. "I wasn't scared."
"Now, now." The visible softening of its expression was eerie as it pressed a kiss into the kid's hair and murmured, "You know better than to lie to me."
The kid shrunk back, eyes squeezing shut. "I'm sorry! I won't do it again, please don't change me it hurt -"
"I won't," it shushed him, wincing and the cat couldn't figure out if it was supposed to be from the child's sudden fear or something else. "That was - that will not happen again. I will not need to ever again." It frowned. "I will do better with you."
Muppets.
Not even once.
Percy cracked an eye open, pouting piteously. "Promise?"
"I promise."
"...love me?"
"You are perfect just the way you are," it said gently and Sam's fur rippled with unease. It sounded genuine to his sensitive ears. Creepy. "How could I not?"
The boy settled. "Can I have a cat?"
Sam stiffened.
"You already have a cat," it said, voice thick with amusement as those black diamond eyes slowly traveled back to the orange tabby tom. "And it did very well, didn't it?"
"He's the best cat ever!" Percy declared solemnly.
Sam appreciated the sentiment, but kid, bloody not right now!
"That settles it then. For the best cat ever," it said, matching the toddler's seriousness. "He may receive one favor from me."
Like fuck Sam was going to take it up on that.
"Go back to sleep, Perseus," the muppet intoned and the boy's eyelids obligingly began to droop. Percy tensed for a moment, grasping tightly as if remembering some nightmare, before drifting off to sleep. The muppet whispered fondly, "Time to go home."
As it turned away, Sam found the courage to speak.
'He didn't fall.'
He was pushed.
The muppet's face turned to look at the cat from over its shoulder. Holding the dozing boy in one arm, it silently raised its free hand to hold a finger in front of its lips.
It smiled.
Then they were both gone.
The next time Sam saw Perseus, crowing about being allowed back since his 'accident' and promising to figure out how to bring treats next time, the cat got his own tongue. He'd been tempted to say something a few times as the kid grew up a little. The worst one was when his Mum left him There and Percy started hoping, begging that he could find her Here.
On the moon.
Sam knew what - who was up there.
Every cat who does cat things and knows the cat ways of Ulthar was aware of the dreaded master behind the moon beasts, the Stalker in the Dark, their ancient enemy.
But this was Percy.
He was just a kitten. A bit too fucked in the head to not come with a discount, but still good when he wasn't what his mum wanted him to be.
Sam could help him, right? That was what Ulthar cats did. Help. And…he owed him that much. He could make sure the kid came back alive.
Because he couldn't bring himself to say a word.
Percy called in that favor on his behalf, crying over Sam's pulped eye, blood leaking from his ears, the other eye filled with burst blood vessels and even now a little blurry looking through it. A little ringing in one ear still. A little rattle in his chest where the bones didn't quite heal right. A cold ache in his joints and paws he didn't let on he had.
It was the most powerless he'd felt since he was a hungry kitten huddled in a cold, wet alleyway, hiding from older cats and loud cars belching black smoke and sirens sounding overhead. It had been a long, long night.
He had nothing to return to either.
Sam was just a cat.
Playing along was a survival instinct Here.
Hey, you came back! I was wondering where you went. You…still don't mind listening to me, right? It's been a long time no see!
That's where we stopped, remember?
With Time…
Hey, you remember that story about me falling into the Dreamlands when I was two, right?
It wasn't some kind of weird flex, if you were wondering.
Really more of an accident.
I always knew almost falling on top of an orange tabby cat was a bit of a lucky break. I just don't think I actually knew how much of one it was until I found myself in Selene's little corner of the Dreamlands.
Unwelcome.
The air felt heavy.
It was that thick, choking weight of something like we were being slowly smothered and just didn't realize it yet. The kind of feeling you expected from a dense fog after a bad storm, but the only mist was wafting up in ghostly wisps from the sea. The field of pale flowers we woke up in was a large, perfectly unnatural circle around us before the dismal gray shore that met the black water.
The bells from the far off city rang a final toll. The chime carried on over the dead air for a long time.
Silence fell.
Artemis' auburn and patchy gray fur bristled in the same shiver that ran up my spine.
I forced my words out, "Everyone okay?"
Khione glanced at me, grimacing and my breath caught.
Her eyes were ice flowers instead of snowflakes, crashing, shattering, warping, turning inside out and splitting into eleven dimensions before finally annihilating inside a crystal clear snow globe made out of folded space.
So maybe this was not the best time to get distracted, but God dayum!
"So that's what your eyes really look like!" I burst out in awe. This was what I was catching glimpses of whenever that melody showed up in her eyes!
"Wha - " The snow goddess looked down at herself and then swore in Mycenaean Greek. She turned away from me as her hand came up to the hole in her chest where the wooden heart thumped. "Of course it shows here. Idiot," she spat at herself. "Can't do anything right!"
I don't understand.
Why would anyone try to hide something so beautiful?
"It's fine!" I said quickly, trying to be reassuring. "Your eyes are pretty girl - I mean, pretty great!" Holy shit. "I mean, you don't have to hide them. I mean, you can if you don't like them? But I think they're…" I swallowed hard and tried not to dig myself in deeper. "...okay?"
"Okay?" Khione echoed dully.
Jesus Christ on a bicycle.
Someone kill me.
Put me out of my misery.
Please.
"Can we please forget I said anything?" I pleaded.
"Done," Khione said instantly. "But, thank you." She tried to smile at me, but there was something almost broken about it before she turned away again. "I will need - a few minutes before we set forth. Please."
"Yeah, sure," I said quickly. "Don't worry about it."
That's weird.
I really expected Luke to give me shit there.
When I looked, he was still staring up at the large moon dominating the sky above us like it was made out of solid gold.
"Who is changing you?" Artemis spoke up quietly. "It - it cannot be too late to…" The rabbit lost steam as Khione tilted her head down, shielding her face with her black hair. "To reverse…"
"I am here because Percy offered," the Boreide said softly and bitterly cold. "We are not friends, Artemis Apanchomenê."
The bunny flinched and then nodded miserably.
The Strangled.
That wasn't a Name I knew the history of, but at this point, I don't think I even want to know.
"And I am fine," Khione finished harshly, like a gust of storm winds before turning away from us again.
I bit my lip and decided to leave her be. "Luke?"
He didn't move.
I don't think he heard me?
"Hey," I said as I reached out to shake him a little. "Are you - "
Humans are not owls.
Luke's head wasn't meant to twist a full 180 degrees on his neck!
I stumbled backwards as he snarled at me. His teeth was bared in a bestial grin, his breath frosting in the air with wide, manic bloodshot eyes that shone in the moonlight. "Luke - !?"
Then he convulsed, like he was having a seizure. His head snapped back around with a wet crack as his entire body shook. Diana leaned in closer, blocking out the moon until looking up just got you an eyeful of her flayed chest cavity. Khione's cold hand fell on my shoulder, pulling me back as Artemis cried out,
"Luke! Fight it!"
The shaking got worse as if he was about to vibrate out of his own skin -
Then just like that, he went still.
None of us moved.
"...Luke?" I called out softly.
"I - " He groaned, shuddering. "I'm here." I could have sworn his teeth looked bigger in his mouth and it looked like he gained a dozen wrinkles on his forehead. "I'm here," he muttered. "I'm here, I'm here, I'm here, I - can't you hear that?"
"Not a thing," I said.
He's hearing things. That's always a good sign!
Not.
"It sounds like - "
"Do not listen to her!" Artemis snapped at him as "You cannot listen to her, or you will go rabid, do you understand?"
Luke startled like a surprised deer. He swallowed thickly as he looked at us with tears in his eyes. The broken one was a kaleidoscope of cloudy blue irises. "Selene?"
Artemis hesitated.
"No more secrets," I reminded our rabbit grimly. "We're already here."
And there was no going back.
"Selene died," Khione murmured.
"What happened?" Luke asked shakily as he ran a hand down his face. He looked down at his sneakers. "Did someone forget to tell her that?"
Diana ponderously watched us. The human half of her face was frowning as the rabbit's mouth worked silently.
"'Temis." I growled.
"Not her," the bunny muttered.
Ipse. Diana said. Memet.
"Me," she admitted.
"You?" Luke said what we were all thinking.
"I tried to fix it," Artemis whispered instead. A sinking feeling was pulling at the bottom of my stomach. She said she left 'a fragment' of herself behind back in that airport. If my suspicion was right, it was a fragment that was talking to Luke, a descendant of Selene through the Moon. "I tried to fix everything."
"And failed," Khione said harshly. "Like you always do."
The rabbit didn't respond.
I didn't know what to say or do, standing there like a bump on a log. I don't know if you were also getting the feeling that some of the things Artemis was hiding wasn't because she was being a Greek jerk, but because something had gone so wrong somewhere that she made herself forget she was hiding it. That kind of thing was hard to bring out into the open.
I know that from experience.
Luke blew out an explosive breath. "Okay," he said. "Okay. We need a plan."
"Ice him if he goes weird?" I volunteered.
"With pleasure." Khione inclined her head as Luke winced, squeezing his knees together.
"I don't like this plan!" He squeaked. "I take it back. We don't need a plan! I'll be fine!"
"You looked like you wanted to bite my head off," I pointed out. I raised my eyebrows at him, incredulous. "A little cold is not going to kill you."
Luke winced again.
Jeez.
What a crybaby.
"But before we do anything else," I said with a finger up in the thick air. "I'm going to get what I think is my cat."
In the distance, the bells began to ring again.
Another shiver went up my spine.
I headed down the gray beach towards Dante's Gate and the small patch of grass beside it where an orange and white tabby cat was curled up in a ball.
There was a crook in his tail.
"Sam," I breathed, disbelieving as I bent down by my cat as he sat up. He looked exactly like he should have. Uneven whiskers. White booties. One eye was green while the other one, the replacement, burned orange. Even the dark orange swirls on his side looked right. "Are you really here?"
I reached out and poked my cat friend's cheek.
He bit me.
"Ow!"
'They say there's a blithering fucking idiot born every minute,' Sam said flatly as I cradled my hand against my stomach.
Uh oh.
'When you were born, we must have been good for the next hour.'
His ears went flat against his head, so I knew he was just getting started. "Sam, wait - "
'Your muppet bitch arse friend told everyone about this latest bout of fucking stupidity and I was not surprised your fucking suicidal random-shit-in-your-mouth arse is at it again being a dumbfuck fucking allergic to good ideas!'
I said Sam would laugh at following me into Tartarós.
That's still true.
Just so you know, swearing my ears off for being stupid was always going to come first.
Behind me, I heard Khione choke on a small laugh.
Great.
A small, furry animal whose tail I pulled is ruining my impression on a girl for the second time.
I can't win.
"Hi Sam," I said dully, feeling one inch tall. I turned back to my adventuring party as they warily approached the dark yawning mouth of Dante's Gate. "Everyone, this is my pet cat, Sam." I gave a limp wave. "Sam, everyone."
"You have a supernatural cat," Luke said flatly. Which was sort of fair and sort of…so telling him about cats, all of them, was going to be awkward.
"Master Sam," Khione nodded her head politely. "Khione, of ice and snow."
Sam squinted. 'Oh, another muppet.'
Oh my fuck.
I forgot Sam's an asshole.
Khione stiffened. "I beg your pardon?"
I palmed my face, hissing under my breath, "Sam, don't! She's Greek!"
So maybe that sounded like an insult?
It was the truth. And an insult. Kind of. Greek gods were many things and one of those things was having no chill.
And I swear to God, if you make a dumb joke about Khione being an ice goddess, I will disown you.
My cat sniffed like he'd been waiting to insult somebody new for years. 'A muppet. Fucking dead from the neck up scrubbers with a worship kink.'
Khione gasped, pretty eyes going wide. "Rude!"
Luke just nodded sagely. "I like him!"
"Don't encourage him," I groaned. If you're wondering what exactly Sam said in the strange, unique dialect of far off lands known as British, there were eleven words to say what could be said in four: 'stupid whores demanding worship.'
I was almost impressed.
I don't think salvaging this train wreck was even possible.
Sam lashed his crooked tail back and forth. 'I am not wrong.'
That's fair.
There was a tense silence as the Boreide glared down at my pet asshole. I prepared to jump in between an angry goddess and a cat. This was probably going to hurt. Lots.
"You're not wrong, no," Khione admitted, backing down.
"Still rude," Artemis muttered.
Alright.
Now I really was impressed. And a bit jealous. The last time I insulted a goddess to her face with the truth, she turned into a mountain lion and tried to murder me. How come he gets away with it?
I stole a quick head rub and ear ruffle, snatching my hand back as he swiped at me with a disgruntled meow.
"Sam," I said quietly with a smile. "You're the best cat ever."
His crooked tail lashed back and forth again as he looked away, sniffing contemptuously.
'...don't you forget it.'
You do such a good job of writing a cat, all the love and affection, and also all the rest of it.
Is there a reason Percy says "I swear to God" in the narration? As opposed to swearing to Gods or a specific one or something? I'd perfectly believe it was just an adopted affectation from the fact that non-demigods do it, but also believe it was a mistake from the fact that we, non-demigods, do it.
I really like this story. Thanks for writing it!
Is there a reason Percy says "I swear to God" in the narration? As opposed to swearing to Gods or a specific one or something? I'd perfectly believe it was just an adopted affectation from the fact that non-demigods do it, but also believe it was a mistake from the fact that we, non-demigods, do it.
I really like this story. Thanks for writing it!
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
There is!
Percy's grandparents are Greek Orthodox Christians and when he was little his Nana punched out The Morrigan for the right to take him to liturgy/mass when he visited them. There's also his Dad to consider! He thought his grandmother was a goddess in her own right following a Big G for a while too. He doesn't swear by a specific one as all the usual suspects are Young Gods, which Percy treats as just Dudes and the Names of the big players are srs bizness, so it's his habit now.
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- Location
- Somewhere over there
In all seriousness, I adore Bloodborne and its setting, really curious to see where this arc goes. Those bells...
Also wondering what Khione's deal is here? I didn't backread, so I might've forgotten a few details. It it the goddess equivalent of terminal cancer or something?
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Khione was 'adopted' by the Earth Mother.
Did she find the fact that Percy finds her eyes pretty disturbing at all?
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Disturbed? Not at all. Disgruntled that he's apparently an eye guy and it took her exposing a closely held secret to find that out?
Very.
- Location
- Upstate NY, USA
- Pronouns
- Fjf
Shujin
M. NightShujinlan
- Location
- New York, New York
Pot calling the kettle black?