ᴾʰᵒᵇᵒᵖʰᵒᵇⁱᵃ [ᴶᵃˢᵒⁿ ᴳʳᵃᶜᵉ]

vi.

Aza's breath caught in her throat the instant she saw Percy and Annabeth, and though she knew she was in a dream her lungs could only attempt short, shuddering breaths as her heart began to hammer a nail in her chest. Her best friends were ghastly - they were walking corpses, like all life had been drained from them; and yet, they were still able to move around with their papery-thin skin, stretched tightly over their bones. They were ghostly pale, like all their blood had stopped pumping through their veins - Aza's was pumping too quickly. Their eye sockets were dark and sunken; Annabeth's curls were dried and limp - Percy's eyes were no longer unnaturally green and bright; her best friends reminded her of the withered nymphs in the nymphaeum.

Annabeth sobbed, bringing her skeletal hands to her face, "Oh, gods. Percy, the way you look..."

Percy looked down and studied himself, doing his best to keep his face neutral - but Aza had always been able to read his microexpressions, and her heart broke as he shrugged and tried not to upset his girlfriend any further, "I've looked better. I can't move very well, but I'm alright."

A third figure that Aza hadn't seen clucked, "Oh, you're definitely not alright."

The daughter of Phobos whirled around and nearly leapt out of her skin; the woman, too, looked nauseatingly corpse-like - her limbs were twigs, with swollen knees barely covered by her tattered rags. Aza thought she could have been beautiful, if her features weren't twisted into such misery: her dark eyes were sunken, and tears steadily rolled down her gaunt cheeks, which were raked and bleeding as though she had clawed at them with her broken fingernails. Whereas Aza's eyes projected scenes of people's greatest fears, like a television screen, the women's eyes suffocated her in misery as she relived her worst moments, when she had hated herself more than anything.

Percy's eyebrows sewed together, and as Aza wondered why he didn't just uncap his pen and slash the woman right then and there, he cautiously asked, "But we'll pass unseen now? We can get to the Doors of Death?"

The woman tilted her head from side-to-side, a canine, almost starving, grin came across her face, "Well perhaps you could, if you lived that long. Which you won't."

Aza's hands itched towards her sword, but she knew it would be useless - she wasn't really there, which was why she hated demigods' dreams so much. She felt useless standing on the side, watching them as if it were merely a television show. She wanted to help, not watch and whimper as terrible things happened to the people she loved.

The woman spread her gnarled fingers, and plants bloomed alongside the edge of a pit Aza hadn't noticed. She cooed, "The Death Mist is not simply a disguise, you see. It is a state of being. I could not bring you this gift unless death followed - true death."

Aza's blood ran cold, and she froze. She blinked heavily - no, that couldn't be true. Her best friends' couldn't die - they couldn't. Aza would rather die herself before they did, but as she stood uselessly on the side she realized she couldn't protect them - she couldn't sacrifice herself for them. Annabeth weakly said, "It's a trap."

The woman cackled, "Didn't you expect me to betray you?"

"Yes," Aza's friends said in unison.

The woman clapped her hands together, her smile widening just a fraction, "Well, then - it's hardly a trap! More of an inevitability. Misery is inevitable. Pain is–"

"Yeah, yeah," Percy growled, "Let's just get to the fighting."

Percy drew his sword, and Annabeth mimicked him not a moment later; the daughter of Phobos hadn't noticed her bronze cuff on Annabeth's thin, withered wrist until the curly-haired blonde fidgeted with her forearm and a sword appeared in her hands that Aza could recognize anywhere. For a moment, her best friend looked momentarily healthier - a slight blush had returned to her cheeks and her curls seemed more bouncy, but it faded just as quickly as it had come, though her eyes swirled with a ferocious storm cloud.