WORLDS BEYOND ( pjo )

𝐢𝐢: kindred spirit

Another night, another nightmare.

Kia's recent nightmares had been more potently disturbing than the ones she'd seen a few weeks earlier for some reason, and she assumed that couldn't mean anything good. They ranged from all things like never-ending mazes and the spark of insanity lighting a match in someone's mind to rotten and browned blood staining white tiles with an urgency similar to the eerie feeling one gets in an empty hospital at night to faces stretching through the walls of her old home, reaching toward her with their faces twisted as if they were about to scream. Lately, the nightmares were terrifyingly paralysing.

Tonight, she dreamt of a completely white room, feeling like a psychopath in a straitjacket against the repulsively clean and disinfected walls; the nauseating feeling of being unclean in a place that was assuredly spotless crept into the pores of Kia's skin, and the utter silence of the room was trying to drive her to the point of madness. She couldn't move.

Kia thought her eyesight must have been fooling her when the room started turning red, thinking of the way the colours would invert of you stared at something for too long. At first, it was just a dot of red, right in between the middle of her knees. Then it expanded, like a network of roots being defiled with red liquid, branching out and reaching all around her. The white she was wearing was also stained. Uncomfortable liquid started dampening her skin, and she didn't like that she knew what it was. Copper and iron was all she could smell, and it was numbing her nostrils to the point of screaming, the smell so pungent it distracted Kia from the figure in front of her.

"Blood has already been shed, Kia."

Her eyes, already widened in fear and unbridled panic, turned to face the front, where Luke Castellan stood, bathing in the blood coming up to his arms like one would embrace a friend they hadn't met in eons. His hair was untouched and pure, a sandy-blond, and his eyes were blue, just as they were before. He didn't look as sick anymore, much more like a king—a king that could destroy the entire thin thread that controlled the events of this reality with a snap of his fingers. Kia knew he wouldn't like to hear it, but Luke looked like... a god.

"What will you do, Kia?" Luke asked serenely. He looked so at peace with the crimson rising to his chin. "Many have already lost their lives, and this is only a portion of the blood they've shed. I take it with honour, not allowing their deaths to be erased by the crooked hand of history, as the gods who would have it shunned, the truth hidden from the future so that demigods will continue to serve them would have it." His face seemed to float closer. "Tell me, Kia. What will you tell the lost demigods when you see them? If everyone knew the truth, how would they treat you?"

Somehow, Kia didn't think that it was the truth about the gods he was speaking about.

Luke smiled, and for what felt like the first time since she'd ever met him, it didn't feel like he loathed her to the point of darkness consuming his heart. "We'll see each other soon," he said. Kia couldn't decide whether he meant it as a threat or as a promise. Maybe it was a deadline.

The scarlet of the sea of red flooded over her eyes, and the next thing she knew, she was up, keeling over the side of her bed and emptying last night's dinner into a bucket she'd taken to keeping beside her. It had become a common occurrence for her to wake up like this.

Chiron had insisted on bringing her back into the Big House to stay, telling her it was so that he could monitor her health closely. Kia had a feeling he was being dishonest, or that there was at least more to than just what he said.

She wiped at the corner of her lips, grimacing when an dirtied hem of her sweater had come back up. Heading to the washroom to freshen up, seeing as how it was daybreak anyway, her head pounded with an oncoming headache. A fantastic start to the day already.