Ichor Shroud (PJO/Dresden Files)

[Pridakarbiter]

Twelve minutes. Twelve minutes for the elevator from Tartarus. Too long. Too short. Twelve minutes in the Pit.

It was the smell of the weave that did it, that brought some semblance of clarity into her addled mind. Fresh yarn upon a loom, lanolin really, Annabeth thought. From sheep's wool. Her eyes felt crusty, stuck close, and she hesitated a little, just pausing to inhale the smell of the yarn. Why yarn? Her thoughts spun outward, ideas flitting through her mind faster than she could think.

When was the last time she smelled yarn? She felt like she could frown but her face seemed stuck in place, chiseled from stone, like a marble statue. The visage of her mother appeared in her mind's eye, not the flesh and blood mother, but the stone face of the Parthenos. Maybe, she'd been elevated to statuette? It would be a respite.

No, she'd last smelled it… when she'd woven the ladder. It felt like so long ago, a lifetime when she could feel the wind and the sun upon her skin, could breath fresh air. Annabeth shuddered and found that she could move. She breathed in and found that she could breath, that the air was cold and clear, tasting of yarn and blood. She could feel a rough stone, slightly damp beneath her fingers, against her right cheek. The cold was oddly soothing against the heat in her chest. Like someone had placed an everlasting ember in her gullet, that only now could be dulled.

The warm trickle of blood down the side of her head explained why her thoughts seemed so hazy, floating in and out. Silently, without moving, she cataloged her other pains. The piercing ache in her ankle where it had snapped was still omnipresent, and the acidic burn against the back of her throat which couldn't quite be quenched, heart-burn multiplied by ten, radiating outward from her stomach in lines that seemed to travel along her veins and arteries She felt stretched, drawn thin. And so very tired.

You are no child of mine.

The thought percolated, and she bit back a sob, letting the memory slip across her mind. Who am I? A sense of self coalesced, scattered thoughts and dreams pulling together, forgotten dreams and aspirations.

You're Annabeth. Pallas Athena's not-daughter.

Where was Percy? Annabeth wanted to think but found she could not, for all the vaunted wisdom of Athena's progeny, she found that she could not quite find it in her mind to even utter the lie, not even within her own mind. After all, she knew what she did. You do not want to confront the truth.

She heard the scrape of claws on stone and felt herself stiffen. A voice, guttural and hissing spoke in another language, not Greek, not English, not even Latin. Of course, this wasn't really that much of a surprise, monsters did not need to speak any language in particular. Annabeth, slowly started to shift her hand, acutely aware of the way she did not feel her dagger against her body.

But then again, why would she have a dagger? …She had a drakon-bone sword, didn't she? She idly remembered one, could remember its weight in her hands. The feel of the polished ivory under her fingers. She pressed a palm against the floor and felt herself frown inadvertently. This wasn't Tartarus. After all, Tartarus didn't have concrete floors, she could feel the grooves made by a poorly set floor.

The voice spoke again and another laughed, mocking, and finally through the haze of pain, Annabeth realized that they weren't speaking some primordial tongue of the Pit, but instead were just speaking Spanish. She could have rolled her eyes at herself at that moment if the pain wouldn't have made her blackout.

"A runaway?" Another voice, this time a woman's said, in a tone that could almost be called an attempt at sultry. Annabeth had heard the tone often enough from Aphrodite campers, that she could immediately tell when it was used. But the topic? They weren't speaking about her, were they? She hadn't been a runaway in years, not since she was seven. After that, she was gainfully enrolled in school, thank you very much. Of course, that also did not consider the various times she had to take extended leaves of absence with the fate of the world at stake. But that was ancillary.

"Not for you, this one is mine," a second voice, a male responded, "Find your own, wench. The Baron says we move tonight."

The room shifted, and Annabeth realized someone was holding her up by the shoulder, strong human digits wrapping around her arm. Her eyes shot open, and she tried to twist away. The world seemed to be moving slowly, far too slowly. Her fingers grasped and slid away, not even causing the figure grabbing her to twitch.

In the next instant, she could do nothing else but freeze. Standing around her were three monstrous bats. Their fur was a dark brown, bordering on black, and enormous ears, that twitched with each exhale adorned misshapen and inhuman faces. Their lower lips were notched to allow pearly white fangs to slide into grooves in their skin and huge black eyes stared at her, reflecting her own bright grey eye. Or well just her own singular eye, since the other seemed crusted shut. One of the monstrous bats had paused with a tannish tarp in its hands. A tarp which Annabeth realized with a mounting horror was not a tarp at all, but instead a human skin, complete with hair and a face stretched grotesquely across it.

It stared straight into her eyes and flinched for a second, the reaction so minute that Annabeth almost missed it. She almost felt like it would quail before her gaze before it seemed to lick its lips, tongue catching on its own fangs for a moment before it eased forward, long forelimbs finding the ground as it crept toward her before it opened its mouth to speak.

"What pretty eyes! Such defiance, you've not kissed the little thing? Not even a taste?"

The one holding her hissed in turn, "No."

Another chortled, the sound utterly grotesque, the air smelling of blood and offal, before it murmured an almost hushed question, "Spoil the sport?"

Annabeth heart pounded in her chest so hard it felt like it would careen out and dance across the floor. The room they were in was large, almost cavernous and it took Annabeth exactly a quarter of a second, really more an instant to realize what kind of building she was in. A textile mill, white and colored yarn bobbins on a beaming creel. It should have elated her but despite the similarity with her mother's domain, she could feel nothing but dread and loss. How could she turn to her Mother, now?

The lights flickered, old wire bulbs, revealing huddled men and women, naked as the day they were born. Most breathing shallowly, vacant eyes staring into nothingness. Most were bound by thick rope, others by shredded garments, ad hoc binds. A myriad of humanity displayed, old and young, most looked weathered, maybe homeless but there were odd ones out. Better dressed and oh, so very still where they lay. Annabeth didn't like the implications, not a single bit.

"The Baron won't like that you've taken a child," another monstrous bat said, its voice dripping, almost oily, stepping closer, reaching toward her face with a clawed hand, strips of skin hanging at its elbows as it reached out to caress her cheek, "But they are so sweet."

Gods. Annabeth realized. These were vampire bats, weren't they? And she thought Empousa were bad? At least they weren't freakish furry bats. Nobody had ever written anything about vampire bats being, well, real and demigod-sized, and not little rodents. She would've thought Chiron, at least, would've told them, would have told her, at some point. The Athena cabin library was a thing of legends, but even it was not complete, with countless volumes missing from one-of-a-kind collections.

Saliva splattered on the ground, one of the bats wiping at its face with a hairy forelimb, smearing its fur with its own drool. Annabeth's eyes unwittingly snapped down to follow the splatter and she almost blinked.

Her New York Yankees hat lay on the ground in front of her, crumpled and stained by blood, but still blessedly whole. Annabeth's fingers twitched, trying to inch toward it. She knew it was a futile gesture, her mother had removed her blessing when she'd been given the mark. Or she'd removed it when she'd been disowned, Annabeth unfortunately really wasn't sure. She also really wasn't sure if she wanted to know. The grip on her shoulder was as tight as an industrial vice and Annabeth was sure that she could almost feel the blood vessels popping in her arm.

"Mine," it growled again, and she tried to twist her neck and glance upward against the screaming pain and lethargy. A man stood over her, and Annabeth spared a moment to wonder whether he was a demigod for just a moment before the man glanced down at her face. The man's eyes were black as pitch, mirror images of the monsters around her, and Annabeth felt her mind go blank. No, this wasn't just being caught in the grip of an enemy, it was the grip of a monster.

Her tongue felt too big, her mind bouncing from idea to idea in quick sequence. Yet, nothing sprang to mind, no desperate ploy, no last-moment clever-minded save. She was already in their clutches, and they wanted her. They were going to eat her and drink her blood.

She could speak, she knew, try to turn them on each other. They already looked on edge, but she could feel the social dynamic wasn't so precarious. The presence of a Baron implied structure and subservience. These weren't just random monsters, these were organized monsters. She could see in the way that they stood that they'd had training from somewhere. Did vampire bats have a camp like Camp Halfblood? Maybe it would be called something like Camp Vamp? Or Vamp Camp?

She had no weapons. Her hat likely wouldn't even work, even if she could grab it. She could struggle, could try to scream? Maybe if someone were listening, they'd come running.

Mother. Athena. Annabeth thought, prayed, and pleaded. I did it, Mother. I found the Parthenos, the rift can be mended. Please help me, Mother. She sounded like a child again, a little lost seven-year-old eating out of dumpsters and sulking in dark alleyways, fearful of the spiders.

Left unsaid was that, yes, she'd found the Parthenos, but she had not retrieved it, she didn't even know if it hadn't fallen into Tartarus with her and Percy. Also left unsaid, she was just assuming that the rift could and would be mended by finding her Mother's relic.

There was still silence, and Annabeth could feel herself deflate. No, her Mother had disowned her, and who wouldn't? She hadn't even fully beat the trap on her own, no she'd still been pulled down into Tartarus, and to make matters worse she'd dragged Percy down with her into the abyss. Down, down, down. Into the dark. Where the nightmare started, a nightmare that never ended. Ever. Never for Annabeth.

And there she'd… no, her Mother wouldn't want her as a daughter. Annabeth couldn't ask for help.

The grip on her arm tightened and she felt herself be lifted into the air slightly, even as warm air tickled her neck. Her heart jumped and clamored and she could only feel herself stiffen.

"Oh, I'm going to enjoy this," The vampire over her shoulder chuckled, the sound sending chills down her back. Annabeth lurched, trying to pull herself free, but the monster held fast, black talons erupting from its fingertips to dig into her flesh. Annabeth bit back a scream, twisting in place. Her hands seemed to be moving too slowly, haze slipping over her mind. She was a demigod, she was stronger than a mortal, more like a peak Olympian athlete, pun not intended, yet the monster held her fast.

Something wet dragged across her cheek and Annabeth froze. It's tongue? It's tongue? She could feel the bile in her stomach as it brushed against her skin, slowly, almost languidly, tasting her. Pleasure burst from the spot, raw enough that her jaw clenched and her body arced, spine contorting. She could feel her cheeks turn red, flushing before the fight seeped away and her limbs turned leaden.

Simultaneously, she felt almost floaty, drifting away from her body in slow motion as if she were in a dream, floating with a weighted blanket holding her down. Why shouldn't she? Why should she fight? These creatures were so beautiful. Their black eyes were like obsidian orbs, their fur so soft and inviting, that she just wanted to snuggle against them. Just wanted to feel their touch, so burning. They loved her and she loved them. Stars burst in her eyes.

Didn't she love them?

They were so beautiful, weren't they?

The pain seemed so distant and fleeting, floating free. Why shouldn't she feel this way?

Charm-speak, no, not charm-speak, something worse, her mind noted, through all the pleasure and haze. She could feel her heart, which had been beating so fast, slow its tempo, slowing, slowing.

There was a pressure against her neck, a flash of pain that went by so fast that Annabeth wasn't even sure it was there. The world was spinning. A loom and yarn in her mind's eye.

She'd been drugged. She was sure of it, could feel the euphoria. She could feel the way it dulled her mind. For a daughter of Athena, it was particularly acute, she could feel her mind slow, so very slowly realize that what it was feeling was wrong. Could think how it could be different, should be different, but she was powerless to do anything.

So this is how I die, Annabeth thought, after everything.

No.

The vampire jerked free from the junction between her neck and shoulder in a spastic movement, like it had been burned. Hot blood splattered the side of Annabeth's head and body, she could feel it seeping into her shirt. The iron grip on her shoulder released her. The vampire made a low sound, it was maybe a gasp, maybe an exhale.

She could hear more than see as the other vampires twitched, shifting where they stood. They seemed surprised. Annabeth, through the drugged haze, tried to will her body to move, to grasp at her hat, which was below her, just a finger's touch away.

The world swam and doubled. Her fingers weren't moving like they should, dragging on the concrete. There were dark red splatters on her hands. Her blood? Yes. There was something odd about seeing her own blood, she could feel her heart beating slowly. She felt like it should be hammering, spurting blood from the wound in her neck.

The vampire stumbled, claws scratching against the stone. It made a low keening sound, crashing into the loom next to it, smearing blood across the hanging yarn.

"...Bloated tick, you've drunk to bursting!" Another of the vampires tried to laugh, but the laughter seemed to die in her throat, strangled, sounding like an old hag, titters that seemed stifled. The air seemed still and quiet, as if the world, the vampires, had trouble discerning exactly what had happened.

The vampire that bit her bit back a strangled gasp, inhaled shockingly loud, and then it screamed. The sound started quiet, almost natural, like it was surprised for an instant but that became a shrieking cry. Its talons clawed at its gut, spilling its own lifeblood. Still, it screamed, shattering the silence. Its limbs twisted and contorted, the loom shattered, yarn flying and rolling across the sticky floor.

Its dark talons dug into the concrete for a long instant, as its fever pitch screaming reached a crescendo.

And then it ignited from the inside. Pure orange flame, edges visibly white burned in its eyesockets, its eyes bursting under the heat. Its long tongue twisted and charred amidst its fangs. Licks of flame burst from its gullet, feasting on its flesh.

Burn.

What? Annabeth thought, the drugged haze slipping away, her demigod vitality leeching its potency as she listened to the screams of her captor. Her fingers twitched. How? Why? The ichor in her blood? But, that didn't make sense, Empousa drank demigod blood and didn't combust, other monsters ate demigod flesh and faced no ill effects, not even indigestion, at least unless they were a Titan or a god.

No, it had to be something else. Something other. Something that made her unique. Something unique to her… and maybe one other.

Phlegethon.

The river of fire.

I drank from the river of fire, she thought, I can feel its burn still. The parched sensation of battery acid against the back of her throat, the heartburn that scalded her esophagus.

"Phlegethon," she murmured in the quiet, despite herself, her cracked lips drawing the words forth, "I drank and lived."

As one the vampire's attention snapped to her, the one that met her piercing grey eye flinched away, dropping her gaze. The others shifted uneasily, muscles tensing beneath their fur. Black lips curled back over white fangs.

"You- what did you do?" The vampire that sounded like a woman asked, one long limb stretching toward her.

Annabeth reached down, her bloody fingers closing around her Yankees cap, finally. Like a jolt of lightning down her spine from her fingertips, she could feel the difference immediately. She could feel her Mother's touch upon her cap. Could almost taste the potency.

She lifted her hand, hat in hand. The vampires watched her fingers, watched her face, her lips. None met her eyes. One in the back shifted, slowly stepping backward, over the bodies of the broken and dead.

The scent of yarn hung in the air and Annabeth realized what it was, what the smell she had inhaled was, finally. A shroud. A burial shroud.

"I did nothing," Annabeth said, and the thought in her mind said, liar.

"I am Nobody," She continued, placing the baseball cap atop her head. She could feel the divine enchantment surge, cool power washing over her like a warm caress.

And then she vanished.

 

[Mother Nyx]

Look mom, it's that new Leanansidhe! Interested in seeing how you blend these two settings.

 

[Energy]

Wonder if the fire blood effect is gonna wear off. On one hand, status effects usually wear off with time. On the other hand, the Styx water effect doesn't, so there is a precedent.

 

[Acolyte]

Lmao fucking red court bro, they couldn't kill a narratively important kitten if it was sitting there.

 

[Pridakarbiter]

II.

It was profoundly comforting to be invisible again, Annabeth thought. All the while her thoughts remained uncharacteristically slow. She could feel the slow beat of her heart, unnaturally relaxed, and she could not help but note it was better than the rapid staccato tempo of panic.

The enchantment covering her body, forged by her Mother's blessing was like a warm balm to her soul. Annabeth dared to think, dared to question that it meant her Mother no longer stared upon her with disdain, but that would be too good to be true. More likely, her mother thought her dead, after the fall into Tartarus, or as good as dead, and rescinded her suppression of the enchantment.

Or, Annabeth thought, I'm not invisible at all, and I've been cursed to think I'm invisible when I'm not and the vampires are going to jump on me at any moment.

With a slow, deliberate step, Annabeth moved forward with nary a single sound. No sound to mar the sudden silence, to break the oppressive stillness. She knew, even in her newly befuddled state that a single misstep would break the spell. It wouldn't break the actual invisibility, if she was in fact, invisible, which long practice assured her she was, but it would break the illusion that she had not just disappeared, but vanished.

There was an art behind invisibility. To creep about unseen, unheard, and unnoticed. The first step, which was where the simple-minded got stuck, such as if an Ares camper got an item like hers, was to use it to merely mask blows. After all, to attack from a place of invisibility was an immense boon. But when monsters relied on more esoteric senses, such a boon could sometimes rapidly become a liability. After all, once a monster knew that the demigod remained in the area it could shift to sheer collateral attacks or even widespread area damage. Both, of which invisibility would not obscure.

No, the far more powerful effect of invisibility was misleading. It was doubt. It was an illusion. That gnawing question, did she simply vanish, ready to slip a dagger into an unexpecting back? Had she used the Mist? Had she actually vanished, become incorporeal? Was she what the monster had seen, was she ever there at all? No, doubt was the strongest defense.

As long as she sold the illusion that she had fully and completely vanished, body and flesh, then she would be in the clear. The first part of that, of course, was to not be the first place anyone would check, and to not be in the second either, and so on. The second part was not to reveal, through an errant footstep or a ragged breath, that she remained where she had disappeared from.

"A veil! A little wizardling!" one of the vampire's hissed, finally reacting. Annabeth stepped again as its claws scrambled to grasp at the concrete and it bounded forward. Annabeth ducked, a slow but deliberate movement, almost perfectly timed but for the way her legs almost buckled at the movement. Her ankle sent sharp stabs of pain radiating up her leg, but she endured, not letting even a gasp slip past her teeth. The grotesque limb of the bat passed straight through where she had just been. It barreled forward, waving its arms around in an almost comical fashion. Annabeth's chapped lips almost quirked upward into a smirk, but she could not quite bring herself to smile in grim satisfaction, especially with the spams of pain her body inflicted on her. Grimly, she thought, this is mere child's play. She'd been ducking under and around enemies since she was seven.

The words seemed to break the spell of silence and the vampires exploded into sound, Spanish, English, and other more esoteric languages, some of them distinctly non-pulmonic.

The female-voiced vampire lopped forward, its long forearms twitching. It's eyes seemed to bulge as it drew in deep lungfuls of air, its almost flattish nose engorging as it sniffed, "It was bleeding, find it!"

The vampires seemed oddly hesitant still, two of the four vampires just stopping to stare at the dead vampire, but none of them dared to touch it immediately. Just watching with huge black eyes. They twitched, looking like they wanted to do something, but they refrained. She wondered what it looked like to their eyes? One of their number suddenly immolated from the inside out, such fear was something Annabeth could use.

The vampire now to her right sniffed again, swaying to stare this way and that. Annabeth froze for a long second as its eyes drifted across her form but without even a second of thought its gaze continued to drift along to scrutinize the racks and looms, the spindles of yarn all around her.

Another said something in the non-pulmonic language, something that made the rest bristle. Unfortunately, only Greek and Latin were pre-loaded applications on the Demigod operating system, Annabeth resisted the urge to snort with derision.

Instead, Annabeth stepped over a body. Still shallowly breathing, her own heart maintaining its slow beat. The lethargy in her limbs seemed to leave in surges and the dimness of her mind began to abate. Enough that she could begin to question, to stare at the bodies around her and actually think.

It was clear she had a problem. A big problem. She stepped over another body, this one half-shoved through one of the massive yarn-filled combi-creels. Annabeth glanced down just long enough to note the body wasn't moving, all the while, thinking that it wasn't right. Monsters just didn't attack mortals in these numbers. Of course, the occasional death from a monster was inevitable, but not like this. It meant something more was afoot, some greater scheme.

Annabeth's first thought was Gaea, but this didn't feel her style, not by far. Still, Annabeth couldn't discount the possibility. What she needed was a rainbow and a single drachma. The vampires, ignoring her inner commentary, screeched, the sound not agonized but more like a hunting cry.

Of course, tentatively eliminating Gaea as the source of her current troubles didn't solve Annabeth's greatest problem. After all, she was supposed to be in Tartarus, not back in the mortal world where actual vampire bat vampires were even a problem in the first place. And if she was back, had the sacrifice been for nothing? The only reason Annabeth didn't shake her head violently to dispel such a dark despair, was because she didn't want to waft her scent across the room, which shaking her head would undoubtedly do.

The vampires had seemed to still, huge ears twitching and moving independently. They moved almost spastically around the room, lopping between the looms and creels, feeling about almost like blind bats. Annabeth stilled from her slow deliberate steps as one passed by, just on the other side of the creel. It inhaled, breathing deep and Annabeth could smell blood and fur, and below all that the reek of ammonia.

Annabeth's brow furrowed. The vampire inhaled again, barking some questions to the others in Spanish. If chuffed, lashing out with a talon-covered hand to slash at the creel, upsetting the yarn. For an instant, Annabeth thought maybe it had smelled her but instead, it continued on, grumbling under its breath in Spanish.

Could they smell her, even over the burning? Annabeth wasn't quite sure, she didn't even know what she smelled like currently, and she wasn't about to sniff her own armpit to try and figure it out. It wasn't a physical scent, one that could be exacerbated by physical exertion, but it could sometimes be. No, instead, the scent was the scent of impact on the world. The more the demigod unnaturally interacted with the world, the greater the scent. The use of powers, of observing the Mist-laden world, moving in ways a child her age should not move, going places they should not. Interacting with the paradigm of the world in a distinct way that was 'other' marked demigods. It's why ignorance was such a shield early on in a demigod's life.

Of course, with noses as big as the vampires had, Annabeth really would not be that surprised if they could pick up on her physical scent as well if they were close enough. After all, she hadn't bathed since Tartarus, she was sure that she had to be absolutely ripe. In the meantime, the sheer smell of burned flesh would be enough, it was beyond foul as it wafted around the room slowly, the scent of charnel meat and offal, scorched to high heaven.

Annabeth swallowed the bile that had been slowly gathering in her mouth at the smell.

"You fools!" The female vampire screeched, and Annabeth stilled, almost balancing on one foot in the new silence, "It's long gone! If it was a child at all."

The vampire seemed to like that title for the others as if they all were not 'fools'.

"You're a fool yourself!" Another hissed, reaching the same conclusion as Annabeth, "I cannot catch a scent other than your sickening reek and the smell of these spoiled wretches."

For emphasis, it kicked the sprawled body below it. A rough-looking woman in rough coveralls with the words, Sulis Embroidering, Finest Textiles, printed onto the coveralls. She looked out of place, but based on the jangle of keys, Annabeth guessed the woman must've been a foreman for the textile mill or the night watchman, or something like that.

The vampires stilled eerily, as if listening, before another spoke, its voice almost scratchy, "'Nobody' it said it's name was, did it not? Tal vez no sea una maga? Surely, it would've tried to catch us with one of their pilfered spells by now? And if what killed Balam was the wizard's death curse, we are safe."

"No, it is gone. I fear Balam caught a fae or something else of that ilk. It's escaped back to the Nevernever by now," the scratchy-voiced vampire, newly dubbed 'Scratchy' in Annabeth's mind, barred its great fangs and shook its head, pausing to lick its lips. It stretched, its form contorting, twisting, muscles bulging, with its talons it almost seemed to pull at its skin and unblemished tanned skin followed in its wake, replacing the fur. The skin seemed to stretch grotesquely over the creature for a long moment, mirroring the bone structure beneath before it seemed to settle and a human man stood in its place, face errantly twitching.

Annabeth finally made it around, almost back to where she started, and an idea occurred to her, an insane idea, but an idea. She plucked a length of yarn from a spool and pulled it free. For an instant, the item would have appeared almost to be floating. Then she plucked another free, holding a spool under each arm.

Then, slowly but surely she reached out and caught the edge of the yarn on the loom, pulling it taut, and then her fingers began to move as she started to weave without needles, her fingers somehow sufficing. First, it was a simple weave and then it branched out, forming almost as fast as her fingers could move. Ghosts of memory, seeming so long ago, flitted before her mind's eye, a remembrance of another weaver. She could almost imagine she heard the scrapes and echoes of something monstrous shadowing her, but she did not stop her weaving.

That was a nightmare, the nightmare. This was now and she could not afford to be distracted. Even without the benefits of three-dimensional imaging, she was able to hold the image of what she wanted in her mind's eye perfectly, and her fingers followed through.

"Finish here!" Scratchy commanded, " We cannot chase errant changelings! El tiempo es corto!"

Her footsteps were quiet, almost preternaturally sure, just as preternaturally sure as her fingers. The vampires seemed to mill about, uncertain for a moment before they turned to the countless bodies that dotted the floor.

"Please, please!" a girl on the ground pleaded for a moment, as one of the vampires bent to caress her. With a shiver of disgust, which didn't even affect her weaving, Annabeth realized that she wasn't pleading to live, no, she was pleading for the vampire's touch. Pleading to be eaten. Now, Annabeth did shiver, a deep, spine-tingling shiver.

That could've been me. I could've been kneeling there, being eaten alive, begging for it.

Her hands were clear for a moment as she reached the body of the vampire that tried to drink from her flesh, and she paused a moment, the barest fraction to glance, solely to assuage her own curiosity. Then she stilled, sparing a second glance back.

The flesh had peeled back from the monster's bones. It hadn't disintegrated, it was merely scorched and broken. Most notable was the marks around the eyes and mouth, where it looked like raw tongues of flame had melted the bone, fusing the fangs and orbital bone of the skull into one melted mass. Either way, this close it was enough to almost make her almost dry retch.

No, Annabeth had seen worse, much worse before, in both Tartarus, which still lingered within her mind's eye as an almost physical memory, it burned to even think about, and in monster attacks. She'd seen a demigod's face melted from a drakon's flame before, what felt like an entire lifetime ago, and this was similar.

Annabeth knelt, and with deft slowness, ignoring the sounds of the vampires as they sucked the last glimmer of like from their prey, turned the vampire on it's side. She had spied the handle of something beneath the vampire, and now she could see it was true.

The drakon-bone blade the giant Damasen gave her in Tartarus. Still a pale white, like ivory, and formed from a single seamless bone of the Maeonian Drakon. A Drakon cursed to die and be reborn for eternity in the depths of abyssal Tartarus. The sword itself she hadn't borne for very long, at all. Only to the gates of death, and what followed after. Annabeth glanced at the vampires quickly, but they were still engrossed. Her fingers, stained with red, closed around the ivory-like handle and pulled the sword free.

Step one. Arm yourself. Annabeth thought. The invisibility of her cap closed around her sword, sliding up the blade like it was placed in water in reverse. The sword felt heavy in her hand, almost too heavy after the relative lack of weight of her dagger. Yet, she could handle it all the same. Luckily, she wasn't brain-dead and actually trained with more than just her typical weapons. She could handle a bastardized sword just fine.

She stood still for a moment, holding the sword in one hand, feeling its heft, before she slid it into the notch in belt where her dagger one sat, so long ago. It left her feeling slightly unbalanced. In Tartarus, she hadn't dared even place it down for a moment, lest it would be lost to the neverending waves of monsters at the end. Nor would she have even wanted to, given that only she and Percy stood between the monsters and the world above. Two demigods alone against an infinite tide.

Annabeth reached out again, plucking another spool of yarn, and thought, step two.

The yarn parted beneath her fingers like flax on a distaff. The weave grew, the threads seeming to blend with the walls behind her. Between the looms, over the looms, along the spindles, like an enormous spider web. Annabeth's heart rate started to climb finally, her breath becoming more erratic, no longer measured and quiet, still subdued but far too loud to her ears.

She was a child of Athena. All the knowledge she ever learned she'd never quite forget. Sure, it wasn't as good as a photographic memory but just to see an idea was enough. And Annabeth had done more than just see. She'd walked into the heart of the mother of all spider's nest and seen how it was made. She had seen how every spider's cobwebs contained the very essence of a trap. She'd seen the way the Mist played along it, in hindsight, almost like the Labyrinth. She could not help but learn.

And so Annabeth spun a web of yarn. With every passing exhale, she wove her own persistent nightmare. She could feel her own fear rising with every passing second, a completely irrational fear that rose and cloyed at her throat, whispered chitinous half-words, almost hallucinations. She sunk deeper and deeper into the rote task, deeper into the cold embrace of power her mother granted a daughter. The cold logic of wisdom, the single-minded mind of a craftswoman lost in the zone. She could force it into being.

Finally, after what felt like far too long she stilled. Her fingers felt raw and bleeding, slowly aching. She gripped her sword, trying to still the pounding of her heart as she felt the first tug upon her string.

One of the vampires shook its head, and Annabeth felt like only minutes had passed, even though it felt like lifetimes. The vampire bounded forward, each of its four limbs scrabbling at the concrete toward the side of the room, where a dimly glowing red 'EXIT' sign held a lonely repose. The yarn went taut. The vampire stilled, almost seeming confused before shouldering forward. A trap sprung. Like Chinese handcuffs, the more it pushed forward, the more it was bound.

Annabeth half-snorted, and thought, there was no way that should've worked. Her body was already in motion, the slight scrape of her feet the only thing giving her away as she slid under a loom and darted through a combi-creel, narrowly missing the swaying yarn.

Her ivory sword felt eager, almost hungry in her hand.

"Qué es esto!" The female vampire screeched, pulling at the yarn, its black talons severing strands as it flailed. Silently, Annabeth thanked the gods, at least she was blessed with stupid enemies occasionally. It would take a rational mind only several seconds with a good blade to free themselves from yarn that neither had the strength of spider-silk, nor the stickiness and elasticity. Frankly, yarn was a terrible medium for any traps.

The other vampires seemed perplexed, their visages still drenched in blood. They glanced the way of the trapped vampire, realization not quite making it to their tiny little brains. Annabeth knew that they knew something was wrong. She could see it in the way the hair on their back and legs stiffened, in the way their noses scrunched up. She would have seconds if it all went to plan. Only seconds to act.

The ivory drakon-blade almost seemed to whistle through the air. The blade that shattered the chains that held the Doors of Death in place sliced through yarn, blood, and bone alike. It cared not. It was the bone of a Drakon of the Ancient World. It yearned for destruction.

The vampire flinched, twisting toward the noise, before it became undone, splitting in twain, from navel to neck. Its face almost seemed stupefied for a moment before it slackened. Blood splattered across the yarn, across her face and chapped lips, against her closed eye. Annabeth inhaled the scent of blood and offal, mixed with fire. Pleasure and arousal spun around her in equal measure. But now she knew it was there, now she could put it into a box where Aphrodite went as, yes, this is beautiful and I love her, but I still want to kill her. Charmspeak plus. Annabeth swallowed again, focusing on the way it stilled her rampant heartbeat. Focused on the strands of foreign thought, and just as she fought against the despairing temptation of the River of Lamentation Annabeth crushed the thoughts. Could she do this before Tartarus? She wasn't sure, maybe. Annabeth already knew the real answer, Tartarus changes a person.

When she opened her eyes, the other vampires almost seemed to blink, brown eyelids sliding over black orbs. One dropped the neck of a body it was still holding.

The monster hadn't returned to Tartarus, Annabeth noted. Was it because the Drakon-blade was not an immortal weapon? It wasn't Celestial Bronze or Imperial Gold, which was what the Roman camp used, instead, it was mere bone. Bone that had existed in the depths of hell for an untold eon, but just bone all the same.

Annabeth needed more data points.

The vampires seemed tense, on edge, but none had bolted like she thought they would. None of them had moved, so she was at an impasse. Her trap required blind panic, not thoughtful defense. Immediately, her mind lept to fire, but one, she didn't have a lighter, and two, she had no idea if the humans on the ground were actually dead. She thought they were dead, but she wasn't so far gone to just burn them alive. No, that wasn't who she was.

Could she play into their guesses from before? They'd both assumed she was a veil, which might be an object, or a wizardling, which she assumed meant some kind of magic user, and they'd talked about a 'death curse.' Three terms that Annabeth had no real context to determine the meaning.

Of course, veil could refer to the Mist, was Annabeth's first thought, after all, her Mother had once told Diomedes: "I have driven the mist that veiled them from your eyes what's more, so you may know both men and gods." Earlier, in her own mind she had espoused the value in striking unseen and to shed her invisibility so easily, she felt would be a mistake… yet…

Annabeth stepped forward, holding her breath, stepping over the body in front of her and through the yarn maze. The vampires in front of her stilled and twitched, twisted and contorted. All of them blinking their great black eyes, and enormous ears swiveling. No, they needed a distraction. She plucked a spindle of white yarn from a creel, holding it just so that the vampires would never realize she grabbed it, even if they were looking. One moment it would be there, the next blink it would be gone. She knelt by the hanging corpse of the vampire she slew, and with a single hand twisted the yarn into a knot and then stepped back, again and again.

Then she plucked the string, making the still body wobble. The vampires immediately zeroed in on the motion.

"There!" One seemed to whisper. Still, they didn't do what Annabeth intended. They seemed far too cunning. One of them split off from the rest, stepped forward, and slowly made its way forward. She could see its eyes narrow as it stepped into a more clear view of the body. The way its chiropteran brow furrowed. Its ears twitched and Annabeth could feel bright as day as her own heartbeat started to climb. She jumped forward, sword outstretched and the vampire dodged. It backpedaled, a shocked whine emanating from its maw.

The remaining vampires jumped into motion, rushing forward, their claws scrabbling into the concrete. Scratch. Scratch.

Maybe it felt the motion of the swing, the displacement of air? Annabeth struck again, slower, and lower, more toward its center of gravity, just slow enough to stop the blade from whistling. She aimed for its distended stomach. She half-expected the vampire to burst into pale gold dust, but instead only hot, almost steaming, red blood splattered across her face again. She inhaled and crushed the foreign thoughts almost before they even made her cheeks tingle. Her heart seemed so slow and steady, lethargy creeping along her spine, but she didn't stop moving.

She had to keep to her strategy, nothing else mattered.

The vampire screamed, its talons clutching at its bowels. Annabeth swung her sword again, and again, twice in quick succession. The first was off center, lethargy pulling her sword down and only sliced deeply along the vampire's arm, but the second cleaved straight through the side of its face. It fell to its knees, its long arms propping it up for an instant before it fell to the ground.

The charging vampires stilled for a long instant.

One more touch.

Annabeth kicked the head, sending a white-hot stab of pain up her ankle that she just managed to stifle. It made a whump-splat sound each time the right side of the head hit the ground.

Ah, Annabeth smiled widely, there was the panic.

Step three.

 

[Acolyte]

This is quite good. And the weaving being in her domain makes sense. The magic of the greeks was always i their craft.

 

[Pridakarbiter]

AN: Yes, I am aware this is not Tower of Adamant



III.

Warm blood coated her face. It tasted of iron and ammonia. Annabeth wiped her face with her free hand, the blood smearing over her trembling fingers, making sure it didn't drip down into her eyes and distract her.

These monsters were different, and again Annabeth had to stop mentally and consider just why that was so. Every monster she ever fought disintegrated into golden dust after it was dealt a fatal wound, but these didn't. That was quite, extraordinarily, disturbing to the Daughter of Athena. Once one aspect of something departed from the norm, it called into question other details.

Such as, were these monsters at all, or were they deformed mortals? It would not be the first time, and here she did not even have the benefits of a godly metal like celestial bronze to check. Annabeth could not help the grimace and pang of loss that swept through her at the thought, the dagger she had since she was seven had been lost to the hunger of the abyss below, and with that went her ability to easily distinguish between mortal and monster. She ducked under another loom, her arm already rising in an elegant unwavering uppercut toward the creature above her.

One. A flash of gaping fangs, still stained with blood.

Annabeth had to take care when she swung her sword. Not because she wasn't familiar with the blade, even though that was certainly a reason but because these monsters could hear the blade as it cut through the air. It brought a different pace to the fight which Annabeth was steadily adapting to, even as she fought. Her own drakon-bone sword cut mortal and monster alike, or at least Annabeth had no reason to think it would discriminate, it did not mind sullying its edge with mortal blood. Annabeth had yet to see it in action against a mortal but she knew that the blade shared an appetite with the Maeonian Drakon from which it was fashioned.

Two. Her sneakers, cut and torn by the glass of Tartarus squeaked against the cement floor. Onyx black orbs turned toward her, a taloned hand already rising in a warding gesture. Her sword instead came from a different angle, plunging through a furled wing and then into a furred back, pale white ribs parting so easily she almost didn't realize she had cut.

Could this even really be called fighting when it was mostly composed of darting around and through mill supplies, and when it was mostly one-sided so far? Annabeth almost felt like she was a spider as she moved around her web, the vampires caught insects in her snare. Annabeth maybe could appreciate the artistry and the cunning she had to bring to bear, but the very idea of her as a spider brought a visceral reaction to her body. Acid burned the back of her throat, and she felt her stomach roiling and her gut twisting.

Three. Dark red blood splattered the yarn. The vampire before her let out a keening wail of pain, its talons missing her invisible form by mere inches. The world seemed to move in slow motion, or Annabeth was moving faster and faster. Her heart was beginning to speed again, rapidly beating against her ribcage. Her sword was coated in red viscera, almost dyed crimson. Her hands released the yarn she had yanked herself up on to get high enough to drive her sword into the vampire perched atop her trap.

The sound of the vampire's body hitting the ground masked the sound of her own drop as her sneakers hit the floor. She paused a moment, orienting herself. Five down, one to go. She let a smile of grim satisfaction play across her face but refrained from any other movement.

"Wait!" The last vampire called, standing in the open. The bodies of the dead lay scattered around, all in scenes of last repose. Annabeth stilled, watching the monster in the guise of a man. Its dedication was impressive, she supposed, and its manipulation of the mist was top-notch. She narrowed her eyes, trying to see through the illusion, but it remained stubbornly in place. Annabeth had always been slightly more clear-sighted, even by demigod standards, from her fellow. Perhaps it was the supposed magic talent Circe had once offered to help her cultivate, if only she allowed the immortal witch to turn Percy into a hamster, or was it a gerbil?

Annabeth considered. If she spoke, the vampire would know where she was. Then again, knowing where she was, did not necessarily correlate to knowing where she would be. Either way, Annabeth did not really want to make it a habit of speaking to monsters, at least except for when she was buying time or in furtherance of one of her plans. Which was to say that despite her overwhelming distaste she talked to monsters quite often. Annabeth scowled.

Annabeth silently moved around the room, placing a loom between her and the vampire. She had questions that needed answers, and she had a willing subject. What more could a disowned daughter of Athena ask for? The vampire's eyes darted around, looking so very human, but not frightened. Not truly frightened, at least. No, this vampire looked poised, wary and worried, but not truly frightened. It was an interesting dichotomy, that Annabeth just itched to tear into. The part of her demigod brain that just always wanted to know why.

Something was off about this one, not like the others. Annabeth's features hardened.

"Mortals do not belong to you, they are not yours," She stated, her cold voice seeming to echo in the dim interior of the textile mill. Annabeth frowned, her voice didn't really sound that intimidating in her opinion, not compared to the raspy inhuman voices of the vampires. After all, it was hard to make the voice of a teenage girl really carry the 'oomph' it needed for threats. Percy was a lot better at it, for all his threats were so dumb, at least they sounded serious, and wasn't that thought a stab to the heart? She stepped away, moving sideways, behind another massive creel filled with yarn. Her steps were as still and silent as she could make them, ignoring the gaping void that beckoned when her thoughts even drifted in the direction of Percy.

The vampire spun in place, hearing something, perhaps her shoes, it paused a moment, before abruptly it's flesh shifted, shedding the human disguise again for the monstrous brown bat. The muscles at first moved grotesquely and then like a snake shedding it peeled the skin away, tearing it off with its talons. Its ears twitched and black eyes narrowed.

"Mortals? Ah, so Caulli was right, Basam caught more than he could sup from," The vampire licked its monstrous lips, seeming amused.

Its mouth seemed to struggle to make the right sounds for speech. Its limbs jerked and twitched like it wanted to burst into explosive action but refrained, visibly holding itself back. Its ears twitched and turned. It was still off-target. Once it had her measure, then she'd be on the back foot. These vampires were fast, it was only with her demigod speed she'd stayed ahead. It reminded her of how quickly the Empousa were down in Tartarus. Maybe it was a vampire or vampire/adjacent thing.

Mortal? They didn't know she was a demigod from the start? Annabeth's brow furrowed, her thoughts swirling. The miasma that clouded her thoughts had mostly abated, and while parts of her mind still seemed overly muddled, she could think again. The vampire seemed almost delighted with the discovery, overly pleased. And Annabeth didn't know why.

"And what do you think I am?" Annabeth asked, already moving as the last words of her sentence entered the still air of the mill. Already shifting to a new location, slowly circling. The vampire turned slowly to face where she had just spoken from.

The vampire was quiet for a long moment, almost prompting Annabeth to speak again, before it finally answered her, speaking quite carefully, "One of the fair folk, perhaps? A revenant? Many things first hide in the guise of a child."

Fair folk? Fae? Were those real too? Annabeth considered carefully. She'd never encountered them, but at this point, there were many things she had not encountered. After all, she thought the Roman myths were just, well, myths, before Jason stumbled into Camp Half-Blood. And, of course, she had personal knowledge that the Egyptian myths also had some element of truth to them. What was Celtic and Gaelic myth compared to the others? Gods, throw the Norse in there for good measure, Annabeth thought snidely, with only the faintest amount of irritation.

Same with revenants, they were Norse as well, Annabeth rolled the idea over in her head, but at least revenants were just abnormally angry ghosts, and the Greeks and Romans had plenty of those already. Then there was the vampire itself, but she didn't think vampires were unique to any myth, besides maybe Romanian.

It was also a pleasant reversal, actually, when she allowed herself to think of it. Usually, she was the one scrambling to recall obscure tomes and depictions of monsters, usually contradictory depictions, to deduce exactly what someone or something was. So to have the reverse happen? Well, I can live with that just fine, Annabeth thought.

"Why do you bleed?" Annabeth asked again, even though she had already resolved that she likely could not trust whatever it would say. The question was also imperfect, and really not what she wanted to ask, which, of course, was far more direct, if you don't disintegrate, do you return to Tartarus? Or do you remain here?

The vampire paused again, its eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly, it opened its mouth, closed it, and then opened it again, "I'm afraid I don't understand."

So, Annabeth concluded, it didn't think it was odd that her kills lingered, soaking the clean yarn with their gore. It didn't expect to turn to golden ash, seep down through the earth to the abyss to be reborn as a pustule on Tartarus' swollen flesh. Annabeth just thinking of it, could fairly taste it, could taste the fetid boiling air on her own tongue.

"You have slain my fellows, oh fae" the vampire noted, its black tongue licking its fangs again, before gesturing with a talon, all the while he was sinking slightly deeper into a crouched stance, ready to leap at the slightest noise, "And admonished me for the offense. My master, the Baron of New York, can offer you weregild in recompense. A dozen slaves of excellent stock from the villages of Campeche. A poor substitute no doubt, but it should be sufficient, no?"

Anger surged through Annabeth, white-hot and molten in her veins. Slaves? What had she walked into?

"I think not," Annabeth hissed in the silence, "You didn't kill my mortals, it was the fact that you killed the mortals, any mortals, at all. That's what put you at odds with me!"

Even as she spoke, Annabeth realized she'd said too much for too long. The vampire darted forward, its earlier movements, so slow and languid, had lulled her into a false sense of security she thought with a flash of chagrin. She attempted to dive out of the way, into and through the nearby loom full of reddened wool, the vampire's outstretched talons clutching at empty air. The loom shattered with a crash, a spindle flying into the air.

"There you are!" The vampire snarled, twisting toward her. Its pitch-black eyes met her own bright grey and dimly she realized that she was no longer invisible. The vampire seemed to move toward her almost glacially, as she scrambled to get her feet under her, to get her sword in between her and the vampire. Her ankle screamed in agony as her foot caught on one of the overturned spindles and she let out a pained little gasp.

Her sneaker, already lacerated from the glassy obsidian skin of Tartarus finally gave up the ghost, the sole flying one way as her foot continued to move the other, sans sole. Her sword came up, the ivory blade almost gleaming in the flickering overhead electric light. Spittle flew from the vampire's mouth.

It jerked to the side, trying to slip around her blade. It was fast, almost too fast, supernaturally fast. She could see its movements, but her arm was moving too slowly, the sword still off-center. Annabeth lurched her head forward slamming it into the bottom of the vampire's mandible just as it lunged toward her. Its jaw snapped shut on its own tongue, the blackened appendage slapping wetly against her cheek as it fell, almost twisting like it wanted to strangle her. Her knees went weak as the saliva smeared against her face, lethargy burning through her body even as her knees shook. Must resist, it's like charmspeak, Annabeth rationalized staring at the perfect creature in front of her with such well-formed muscles and exquisite fur- something twisted funny in her abdomen.

The vampire reared back and at that moment, Annabeth finally slashed forward with her sword, a shallow sloppy cut, sword whistling too fast, too close for the vampire to react, opening the vampire's abdomen with a spray of blackish-red blood which painted the bottom of her orange t-shirt and legs in half-congealed chunky blood. Annabeth dry-retched a little in her mouth.

The vampire gurgled, falling to one knee, staring at her for an instant. She could see her eyes, so very grey brightly reflected in the vampire's black eyes for a long instant. Then Annabeth swung her sword, intercepting a gangly taloned limb and passing over the vampire's shoulders in a clean sweep. No resistance, nothing.

Four, she thought with satisfaction.

Groaning she fell to her knees and then to her back. Dimly she breathed in great heaving gasps of air, feeling like she couldn't quite get enough air into her lungs. Her hands and face felt sticky, the leathery grip of her ivory sword oddly slippery in her hand.

Slowly, she levered herself upright with the sword, her ankle newly screaming at her. Perfect, she thought, and with no ambrosia to patch it up. With halting steps she made her way through the flickering lights to her Yankees cap, stooping, making her ankle twinge with pain, and scooped it up. Her bloody fingers smeared blood over the white stylized 'N' and 'Y' on the front. She felt a flicker of dismay, before she forced herself past it, she could clean the cap later.

She reached the first human body, just about collapsing to her knees as she reached for her neck, feeling for a pulse.

Nothing.

An eternity later, the next. Nothing.

Another. Nothing.

Finally, she stood where it had all started, panning her slow gaze around the room. Six vampires lay dead and over a dozen mortal humans. Blood and gore dotted the inside of the textile mill. It looked like an amalgamated scene from a dozen slasher horror films placed together into one.

Still, it smelled of yarn, amidst all the iron tang of blood.

I hope my Mother does not mind, Annabeth thought exhaustedly, before sighing out loud, not caring how it disturbed the silence, "if she's even looking."

 

[Grey Rook]

I'm only loosely familiar with PJO, but this is pretty good and Pridakarbiter has a history of writing enjoyable stories. I hope to see more of this.