WORLDS BEYOND ( pjo )

𝐯: a cross to bear

It had taken a great deal of effort to get Percy to calm down long enough for Annabeth to shove him back into his cabin. Before that, he had insisted hotly on staying with Kia in the Big House and wait until she was back to normal. If Kia knew Percy at all, she knew that Percy's little promises about 'actually getting sleep' were full of shit. She wasn't about to have Percy losing sleep because of her.

Annabeth had made sure she was tucked in assuringly and took the towel off her forehead, running it under the water and wringing it, placing back on her forehead. After that, Grover, Percy, Tyson and her left.

She was back in her room in the Big House, staring at her ceiling wondering why she had suddenly gotten so sick. Revisiting her short time in the Labyrinth, she felt the chilly after-effects of what she felt down there.

It felt as if the walls of the corridor were whispering to her, telling her to go right while another said left—even though there was no path in either direction. The smell of it was old and ancient, like the ruins of a prehistoric battleground. The Greek blood in her veins felt as if they were lit aflame, the chants of her ancestors and her godly heritage ringing loudly in her head. The old stories of the Labyrinth were drenched to the waist in violence and deception, as all stories were, and the Labyrinth had a talent of embracing it and soaking it into its walls, exuding just the slightest bit consistently, driving one to the point of madness.

Chris, the boy Clarisse had found down there on her expedition, had been driven to the height of insanity. To Kia, it was more terrifying to have escaped this way than to have died in the Labyrinth. Percy didn't have such fears; all he knew was that people were unsafe and he could do something about it. Kia wondered what it must be like, to be so free of human-like restraints like paralysing fear. Percy always looked so fearless, so brave, that Kia couldn't help but think that maybe he didn't feel fear at all. It was stupid, of course, to even think that. He was human after all; no amount of godly blood would swallow the things that made him human.

Still, Kia sometimes wondered if she would ever be as great as Percy. He was a year younger than her, and had already done things many could not dream to. He was already more of a hero than she could ever be.

Kia shook her head, trying to get rid of these dark thoughts. Percy was her friend, an ally, one that she was grateful to have made so quickly and formed a bond with so intensely. She shouldn't be thinking such things.

The tiredness hit her rather suddenly. The weight of things like insecurity, fear and dread on her mind was more depleting than it had ever been before. It hit her full force, physically forcing her down onto her bed. Her mind was struggling to stay conscious, but her eyes refused to close. Kia could feel her eyes growing drier and drier, the entire world turning white in front of her eyes. The careful inversion of the colours around her were a sign of just how long her eyes had stayed open, unblinking. No matter how much she told herself to close her eyes, blink, narrow—anything, they just wouldn't. Her eyes remained peeled open, fixated creepily on the brown ceiling that had turned ghostly white.

She must've stayed like that for hours, because that was what it felt like. Kia didn't know when she had finally fallen asleep. She almost forgot how terrible her dreams were.

In her father's realm, she saw Luke. He wore a Greek tunic, skin red like it had been scrubbed by purifying rocks. His eyes looked fractured, like they were covered by a sheet of broken glass—the most frightening shade of gold. His eyes looked ancient, evil and powerful. The gaze was concentrated, burning with the heat of an ire he hadn't looked at even Kia with.

He was holding the point of his dual-coloured sword, Backstabber, Kia had come to learn the name of, at a boy's throat. The boy had shaggy raven hair an impossible hue of black, with vibrant, almost artificial-looking sea-green eyes. His tanned skin was littered with jagged white scars and his palms were bloody with the pressure applied on the rocks beneath them. His clothes were in tatters, like he had gone through a tornado with blades.