We Aren't From Here

Worlds Collide

The Crows gathered on the third floor of the Crow Club. It was early in the morning and Kaz had called them all together.

"Tell then what you told me," he said.

"I found something," the slave hunter said. " Near Second Harbor there's this thing."

"Well that's descriptive," Jesper remarked.

"Shut up, Jesper, before I toss you down the stairs,"

"Yes boss."

Inej rolled her eyes before continuing, "It was like a void of darkness crawling it's way into the city. Or pulling the city into it, more like."

Nina raised an eyebrow, "Inej, what the fuck?"

The Wraith shook her head. "I don't know how else to explain it, Saints help me. You have to see it yourself."

"Your joking, right?" Wylan asked.

"No," she shook her head again.

They walked through the small, abandoned section of city near one of the harbors. No one was quite sure what to expect from this "void of darkness."

Their anxiety was magnified as they drew nearer to it, though. Matthias cursed in Fjerdan and sent a prayer up to Djel.

When they felt themselves being tugged forward by an invisible force is when the fear really set in.

They turned the corner to the alley to find the dark abyss Inej had told them about. The sun was barely rising, making it a little more difficult to notice, but there it was.

Inej was horrified to find it slightly bigger than the night before. Jesper put his hands on his guns, which rested in their holsters.

Wylan drew nearer to his boyfriend and a inhaled sharply. "What is that?"

"I don't know," Nina replied shakily. "But I don't think I like it."

All of a sudden, the pulling sensation stopped. Replaced by something akin to wind. The force came from the dark rift in front of them.

A girl who looked around fourteen or fifteen was thrown from the darkness onto the broken, cobbled street.

Several of the group took a step back just as another person fell from the void. This one was a boy. More soon followed.

In a flash, Jesper had drawn his guns and Inej had knives in her hands. Kaz had brought is cane into a grip that made it easier to swing. Nina had her new bone darts prepared and Wylan's smoke bomb was in his hand. Matthias didn't have a weapon with him currently, not that he usually needed one.

In just a few seconds, all of the teenagers were on their feet. The oldest around seventeen or eighteen. The youngest around fourteen or fifteen. They had drawn weapons as well.

Some had bows or swords, others with daggers, or for some reason, a hammer. Their weapons were mostly made from strange metal. Most looked almost bronze, but not all of them.

"Who are you?" Kaz and one of the boys in the group asked.

A girl stepped forward, her hair brown and braided, her eyes a kaleidoscope of colors. "Stand down, we don't want to hurt you."

Slowly, the crows lowered their weapons, only to realize what they'd done a second later.

Nina flexed her darts in her gloves, "How did you do that?" She demanded. The girl didn't look like a grisha on parem, and her strange compulsion didn't seem permanent.

The teenagers wore a collection of unfamiliar clothes. Most orange and purple, but one was black. The girl spoke Kerch, but her accent was strange.

One of the other girls stepped forward, "My name is Annabeth Chase. My companions and I don't want to hurt you," the blonde said. "Could you tell us where we are?"

"You're in Ketterdamn" Nina said, as if unimportant. She kept her attention largely on the girl who spoke first, "How did you do that?"

"Don't answer that, Piper," a girl with spiky black hair commanded.

Her name was Piper, and Inej wished she'd never do that thing with her voice again.

They felt the Rift change without warning. It had started pulling again, but now there was a pitched, painful ringing to go along with it.

The doorway to the abyss had taken on a glassy appearance and began to recede at an alarming rate.

Percy whipped around to the Cut. It had started to shrink down faster than he could move. He was too small to to fit through at that point already. Hazel had run up with her sword and stabbed it into the darkness. It receded around her cavalry sword and stopped at the edge. She had sprinted over and was panting.

The praetor tried to pry the portal open but it wouldn't budge. Annabeth called for a piece of paper and a pen. Her boyfriend handed her Riptide and Leo grabbed a sheet of paper from his tool belt. After a moment of frantic writing she folded the piece of paper and slipped it against the side of the sword. It fell through the void, presumably back to that hiking trail.

"You can take your sword out now, Hazel," Annabeth said.

"What?" Hazel asked incredulously. "What if it closes?"

"Rachel said we'd be trapped. We'll find a way back, but you need your sword and we can't just stay here."

Hazel considered and nodded reluctantly. Slowly, she drew her sword from the Rift.

It quickly receded, almost completely disappearing. There was only the tiniest, thinnest line of black left in its place.

"We'll find a way back," Reyna repeated, like she was trying to convince herself.

"Did your sword just shrink?" The guy holding two pistols asked incredulously. "And what was that thing with the darkness?"

He spoke English, like the girl who'd spoke to Piper before, but they both had strange accents.

"Look, we don't want any trouble," Will reasoned. "We just want to go home."

"Yes, and where exactly is your home?" The one who was obviously their leader asked. His voice was gravelly and rough, "Where did you come from?"

"We're from New York..." Annabeth trailed off, not entirely sure how to play this. The people in front of them wore strange clothes and spoke with accents she'd never heard.

"Never heard of it," the boy in the black suit said.

"Well I've never heard of your city either," Leo spoke up. "What kind of name is Ketterdam anyway?"

"Leo," Jason hissed, "shut up!"

He mimed zipping up his lips and then put his hand behind his back, throwing a wink to the strangers in front of them.

"Where exactly is Ketterdam?" Annabeth asked, the name sounding strange on her tongue.

"Ketterdam is the capital of Kerch."

Several of the demigods swerved their attention to the girl they had forgotten was there. It even looked like some of her companions forgot as well.

Meanwhile, Annabeth's mind was whirring. As far as she knew, and she knew that she knew, there was no country called Kerch, nor did the name seem familiar at all.

The dark haired boy with the gravelly voice spoke up once more, "I think you should come with us."

"Why would we want to do that?" Frank asked.

"None of you seem to have ever heard of Kerch, which is strange because it's an international powerhouse, and you speak Kerch," he responded. "And you did just fall through a dark hole into my city. Besides, you'd be safer with us than on your own in an unfamiliar place."

He made a good point.

Nico however, was stuck up on something else he said, "What do you mean 'we speak Kerch?'" He asked. "You're speaking English."

The boy raised an eyebrow. "I most certainly am not."

Just where the fuck were they?