Child of Time

Chapter Seventeen: Say Hello to the Stars

PERCY

"I wish for you to join my hunt."

I'm not exactly sure what happened next but the next thing I know is that I'm on the floor as a weird feeling flows through me and some weird images pop up in my mind, gold shimmering around in my vision.

There's a girl whose holding a small figurine. She's smiling and has silver clothes on, like the hunters and her hair is braided. She has a slight glow around her but then, everyone looks sad and depressed, and the girl in silver is gone. There's a automaton that they are looking at in sadness. The scene showed, what I'm guessing is a few moments before because the girl is running towards the automaton before being crushed. The next thing I know is a dark haired boy is yelling and then he's gone. The images show different scenes very quickly until I see nothing.

When the images fade and I'm back to the real world as sweat rolls down my face. I open my eyes to see everyone staring at me, Luke is right next to me with worry shining in his eyes. When did he even get here?

I look around me to see worried looks as I sit up. "What the hell?" I put a hand to my head as I start thinking about what I saw. Who was the girl? It had to be a hunter. I look at the hunters and when I couldn't find the girl I looked around aimlessly until I found her.

"Oh, Hades no." I whisper and jump up to Bianca, stumbling a bit. "Did you give her an answer?"

She shook her head. "I didn't have time to before you collapsed. Are you okay? What happened."

"I'm not sure but please, whatever you do, don't join them." I plead and she looks at me, shocked.

"But why?"

Nico looks between us. "Don't leave Nico. Please. If you do this then you won't see him anymore. He'll be devastated. I know that you want to do stuff on your own without taking care of him but you can still have other friends here. You don't have to watch over him because he'll make friends and I'll be with him but please, don't leave him."

She stares at me and she looks at Nico who has a confused look on his face.

"But I have to. I want to explore the world, Perseus. I want to know what it's like to be a kid."

"Please don't." I say quietly. "Please."

"This is not your decision to make, boy." My eyes glowed brighter as I turned around to see one of the hunters glaring at me.

"It is after what I just saw. I don't care what I have to do but I am not doing that to Nico. Especially after I know what happens after she accepts." I glare back at the hunter.

"What are you talking about?"

I look at Artemis and her eyes widen when she sees my glowing eyes.

"Bianca dies after joining your little group and she leaves Nico to search for her soul and resorts to trying to do whatever it takes to bringing her back. He leaves camp and practically becomes a different person because you stole his older sister away."

Everyone stares at me and I walk to Nico who is looking at the ground. Bianca looked shocked.

"Is that true?" She asks quietly and I slowly nod.

"I wasn't going to say that. Especially not in front of Nico but it just came out. I'm sorry."

She nods.

"You're not going to leave? Are you Bianca? I promise I won't bug you a lot and you can make friends. I promise. I don't want you to go." Bianca wraps her arms around Nico.

"I won't. I won't leave you." I sigh in relief as I fall to the ground.

"Why should we believe you? It could just been an act to keep your little crush here."