Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Like all newly turned seventeen-year-olds, Tommy didn't want to go to university or continue into higher education of any sort. He didn’t particularly vibe with being in student debt and paying six pounds to do his laundry or having to shop at a shit Aldi twenty minutes down the road just to eat pasta every day of the week.

Still though, his sixth form forced him to fill out a UCAS application. He didn’t understand why they were pushing it upon him so soon, since he wasn’t in year thirteen yet, or even aged eighteen. Tommy had bigger problems to fry, like convincing his current foster placement to buy him a new Switch. It was a weird request, but one that came from the heart. Unlike his classmates, who worried over whether their friendships would survive into their final year of compulsory education, Tommy didn’t need to bother with that. He wasn’t one for friends, especially here, especially after him.

Ever since Tommy disappeared for a while, from a vague age of eleven or twelve to his rescue at sixteen—a period he remembered nothing about—he lost contact with his childhood best friend. Sure, it was inevitable, particularly with how it was over the internet and naïve in trust and belief that it would last. His old best friend with the username of ‘BeeBoy_03’ was the sole reason Tommy could never make another friend after him. There was an aspect he couldn’t replace or fulfil, he looked at every person in his class and hated the reminders of his friend’s carefree nature, enthusiasm and personality that just left you smiling.

It was impossible to win against—something Tommy was well-versed with.

Right now could be a good example of that. He had been sitting in the same seat for the past hour with his guidance counsellor rattling him on things they could add to his personal statement. It wouldn’t have been so bad if the chair was comfortable, but its hard backing made it unbearable to sit on. Especially for his shoulders’ sake. They were always tense, his nerves tight and strained as if on constant overdrive, riddled in paranoia and threat. And this didn’t help.

His pain originated from his disappearance as well. He knew for certain that no pain crippled his shoulders or back when he was younger. But as soon as he exhaled fresh air and saw the light of day for the first time in years, the hurt began.

Mrs Ker cleared her throat, probably to gain his attention or because she had a mad addiction to e-vaping.

“I’m guessing you don’t like that idea then?” she said, her voice as devilish as ever. Mrs Ker always spoke as if she were mid monologue, the centre of attention with theatre lights propelling off her self-entitlement and exposing the poorly concealed wrinkles.

Tommy didn’t hear her idea, but knowing her, it was shit so he nodded.

She sighed and her red lips thinned. Her acrylic nails tapped against the table as she crossed out a bullet point on her notebook.

“Well, do you have any childhood inspirations for wanting to do film studies?” she suggested. “Were there any series you watched that you liked?”

He frowned. Surely she had to know. It was on his file, the whole school practically knew and never let him forget about it. What he did to that orphanage was the main inside joke among the students (in his defence, that building was just asking to be blown up). His classmates weren’t malicious with it though, not actual dickheads that made fun of orphans or foster kids. No, the slight bullying was more of a, ‘Aha, remember that time you barbequed that orphanage and released asbestos into the air, making the entire town go into a lockdown? Good times, good times’. Yet, he thought a teacher would know not to ask about his childhood.

Tommy tilted his head. “You know that film ‘Taken’?” he said with a smirk. “Yeah, that’s my inspiration.”

Maybe referring to a film with kidnapping and torture wasn’t the correct way to start off a four-thousand character essay. But it was a good start. Mrs Ker didn’t seem to share the same sentiment.

It was all useless if you asked him. He had done shit on his GCSEs, partly because he was somewhere else for most it, probably locked in a shed or basement instead of listening to his English teachers renditions of ‘A Christmas Carol’ in the middle of the spring. So the chances of him, out of everyone else, being chosen for this university course were slim.

Mrs Ker sighed again as she pinched the bridge of her nose. “It’s almost lunchtime, so we can continue this in period five.”

Without another word, he sprung out of his seat and rushed out of the classroom. Even though lunch was a lonely hour for him, he managed to convince the lunch ladies to cut him a piece of pizza in the shape of a triangle rather than the shit-fest they usually did with squares, so that made up for it. But he brought this loneliness on himself, rejected anyone who attempted to be friendly and welcoming with false disinterest. He wasn’t a prick to them, but he didn’t exactly have a nice reputation in this school—especially with the freak accidents that had followed him since he was born.

Random items people had lost or misplaced sometimes ended up in his bag or coat pockets, which he didn’t steal; there was that time a bat infestation occurred in his school because of him (don’t ask, it was confusing enough to process); and of course, the time he almost blinded someone.

Boisterous laughter came from the popular table in the sixth form common room. It was the soon to be graduating year thirteens, a table full of girls—and a couple of boys—crowding around none other than George Astray. Although, he was nicknamed ‘George Not Found’ due to how he always disappeared during the summer and never responded to any text messages you sent him.

George was the only person Tommy talked to in this school, though not by choice. The fucker started the weirdest conversations, which ended with him jokingly insulting Tommy half the time and injuring him in some way (George had given him a blackeye with a plastic duck once).

He watched as George excused himself from the table and sat directly opposite him.

“Tomathy,” George greeted in an overly British accent, grinning as Tommy glared.

“Gogs,” he said back, mimicking his mocking tone.

And just like that, the mood softened and the two dug into their lunch. It was a strange ritual they had, but necessary.

“Has Mrs Ker quit already or is the session still going?” George asked as he stuffed salad into his mouth. The green lettuce looked suspiciously like grass but Tommy shrugged it off; it probably had something to do with George’s colour-blindness.

“Nah, give it another hour at least,” he replied and George accepted his answer, satisfied.

For some reason, George hated Mrs Ker and he never disclosed why. Though, Tommy supposed it was because of Mrs Ker’s shit haircut; George always prided himself for having the best hair out of the year (he even had an award for it, granted to him the last term). It was a dark-brown mess on his head, but a styled mess, with enough volume to cover his ears and made his head look bigger than it actually was. So Mrs Ker’s entire existence offended him.

“Are you still fine with meeting me and Principal Puffy next Friday?” George had been pestering Tommy all week about supposedly needing him for one of the projects he had to complete. Something about nature or global warming bullshit.

“What do I get in return?” he asked, grinning as George kicked his leg under the table.

“Less abuse from me,” George replied and kicked him harder.

Tommy winced and scooted his chair further away from him. Even though George wasn’t the most athletic, he had a lot of leg power. “Fine, dickhead I’ll join your stupid meeting.”

“Good,” George said, sounding more relieved than he should.

The bell rang and Tommy groaned. He went to put his plastic bottle into the bin but George stopped him.

“I’ll deal with that,” he said as he stared down at the plastic. Tommy could’ve sworn that George’s belly rumbled.

His eyebrows furrowed, leaving him stumped as George snatched the bottle out of his hands and hurried away. How was this the man his school adored?

Ignoring whatever the fuck that just happened, Tommy walked back into his classroom. Mrs Ker gestured for him to sit back down in the most uncomfortable chair of all time. Her face looked different, more pale and dead than usual, and her mouth seemed wider.

He reached over to grab the laptop yet Mrs Ker placed her hand in the way. She smiled at him, her teeth resting on her red lips. “We need to talk about something before we carry on with your personal statement,” she said, more ominous than usual.

Tommy squirmed in his seat, his arm retreating back to his side. He didn’t like this.

“What do you want to talk about?” he asked.

“Now, Tommy, we may have a lot more in common than you think.”

He scowled at her, a woman in her late thirties with a dead-end job, dog-shite haircut and questionable fashion sense. “No, I don’t think so.”

She chuckled darkly. “Oh, but we do,” she persisted, her toothful smile stretching into something more sinister. The edges of her mouth sunk deeper into her skin, paling the creases. “We’re both monsters at heart, aren’t we?” The pain in Tommy’s shoulders spiked. “You might not remember but my kind cannot forget a place tormented by such violent death.”

The hairs on his arms itched.

Fear overcame him as her brown eyes loured to a lurid red. At the sight of the ruby-red shade, Tommy felt like he should be comforted by it; the colour brought a degree of familiarity and homeness. But it was different on her. Terrifying and deadly, not coated in a loving and protective gaze or narrowed affectionately. Shredded wings, potent and torn, ripped from her spine, breaking her skin that withered to a stark grey. Her nails grew into talons, sharpened with black tips—claws easy to carve into flesh and dig straight for the feast of the heart.

He jumped out of his seat and raced to the door, only to find it locked. His neck pricked with cold sweat as he looked back. Mrs Ker’s mouth carved into a meaty grin, housing gnashing teeth. The red on her lips, which he assumed prior to be lipstick, dripped down onto her chin.

Blood. It was blood.

She wasn’t human, she was a—

Shadows swallowed the air around her. Screeches shattered the windows and more winged creatures swarmed the room.

“What the fuck?” Tommy gasped, his back solid against the locked door. A whimper lodged in his throat and the aching in his shoulders screamed.

As the disfigured Mrs Ker wretched forward, her claws just inches away from him, Tommy didn’t know what to do.

But his body did. And blood drenched the floor.

✻ ✻ ✻

George didn’t think his assignment to Tommy was that bad. As much as the kid annoyed him and kept causing problems that he had to deal with by manipulating the Mist so Cathy in year nine wouldn’t contact the police for theft, the guy was funny. But even though George loved messing with a mortal’s conception of reality, it was exhausting after the fourteenth time in a single term. No amount of laughter during lunch with him could make up for that.

Regardless, as a satyr, he had a job to do. Sure, it meant he had to wear these stupid prosthetic legs and grow out his hair to hide his goat-like features and horns. But he also helped unclaimed demigods and guided them to safety. A dreadful but fulfilling task. 

His current purpose was pretty simple: keep Tommy alive and bring him back to camp when ready.

But the high-pitched scream coming from the study area—one that definitely could belong to Tommy—proposed an obstacle for his assignment.

Fuck, he shouldn’t have left him alone with Mrs Ker.

Stumbling over his fake legs, George ran upstairs with his heart hammering. More screams continued with each step he took; thumps and crashes reached his ears, inflaming his anxiety and tight chest.

He expected to see a bloodied figure of Tommy, scratched to pieces, bitten and crying out in pain at the mercy of a monster.

And that he did. Partly.

Tommy was a bloodied figure—but not for those reasons.

Blood splattered across Tommy’s face, its stains enriching the old scars along his cheek and chin. The sword clasped in his hands, embellished in darkness, plunged through Mrs Ker’s stomach. Guts spouted out, clots stuck to her torn wings, and Tommy smiled.

George froze, stuck in place, helpless as he watched.

With every slice of his blade and punch of his fist, Tommy’s shoulders stood more at ease. As if they were built for this, conditioned to this response of wrathful violence. Relaxed to the point of submission to the force he reaped from his body.

Limbs of monsters littered the floor, painting the wood red. Dust of the deceased swept into the cracks of the floorboards.

Bile crept up George’s throat as he kicked the door open. The scent of sweat and death seeped towards him.

They were Keres, female death-spirits drawn to bloody deaths on battlefields and violence. Though they did not possess the power to kill. Then why did they attack him?

George peered back to Tommy, recoiling at the sight.

Severed wings dropped to the floor and Mrs Ker shrieked in anguish. Only a second had passed before Tommy moved on to the next monster. Cuts pierced into the beast’s withered skin and the boy never flinched once.

There wasn’t a scratch on Tommy’s body. Either, the Keres didn’t hurt him or couldn’t land a single hit.

He didn't know which answer scared him more.

It wasn’t until every Keres merged into the pile of golden dust and hacked limbs that Tommy finally noticed George.

Grey eyes, far darker than its normal bright blue, stared at him. Yet no recognition flashed in the depletion. Tommy’s lip twitched.

The edge of a blade pressed at the brink of George’s throat. Something wet trickled down his neck.

Everything light had been sucked out of the room. It hurt to breathe.

“Tommy please—” George bit out, shaking too much to form a coherent sentence. He was going to die, he was going to join the bodies cluttered beside him. By Tommy’s hands.

This was supposed to be a simple assignment. Tommy shouldn’t know how to fight, how to weld a blade or kill so savagely. He should be frightened by the newfound existence of monsters and mythology, not defeating hordes of them.

The fog drowning inside his eyes disappeared and the sword fell to the floor.

A hitched and broken breath echoed the room. The boy, who moments ago slashed into grey flesh, welcoming the shower of blood, collapsed into George’s arms.

Just as Tommy’s eyes shut, the sword shattered into the shadows.

George sagged against the wall, his chest heaving and throat restrained. His brain slowed as he tried to process whatever the fuck that was.

Of course it had to be him to deal with this shit.

✻ ✻ ✻

For years, Tommy yearned to remember anything from when he was missing yet to no avail. He had no answers. No closure for why scar tissue made up most of his back, why he had nightmares of blackness and yet the dark did not scare him, why he came back to society as fucked up as he was.

But now, he regretted this desperate pleads to remember. He wanted it to stop.

The flashes of cages, metal bars that stung at the touch. Men, taller than any mortal should be, standing at the entrances of colosseums. Wire fencing encasing him inside. Snarls and stab wounds. Weapons heavier than the bodies he had slain. Cuts and bruises branding every single patch of his skin. Blood, so much fucking blood. Someone slapping him and forcing liquid down his throat.

A friend.

Amongst it all, he remembered a friend.

“Welcome home, Theseus!”

But then the begging deafened that one sweet moment of peace. It was a small boy screaming. For someone, anyone, to take him back, to let him go home, that he wouldn’t cause trouble anymore, please he would be good, it hurt, stop, it hurt please he didn’t—

It was Tommy’s voice.

That little boy, so small and fragile, too young to be broken, was him.

His waking consciousness snapped and a sob wracked his throat. How could he have forgotten all of that? How deep must have they been buried to never see the surface? It scared him, that there were more still too far for retrieval, memories worse than that just waiting to be recalled. Details of his life had been hidden from him for years only to be remembered now. 

“Tommy!” a voice proclaimed.

Water showered down on him. But this water didn’t burn and scathe his skin like in the cages. It was cold and painless. Tiled walls rested his head as he blinked himself awake.

He sat in the boy’s showering rooms. A man knelt beside him, a face soaked in concern and discomfort.

“George?” he croaked out, his voice breaking.

The man—George—nodded and turned the shower off. The floor wasn’t white. The tiles were supposed to be white. But they were a murky red. It was blood.

His breathing haltered. Blood. Mrs Ker. The monsters. The Keres.

“Hey! Hey, it’s okay,” George consoled, his tone warm and timid. Soft almost. His hand hovered over Tommy’s arm as if he was scared to touch him.

He scrambled away. He had put a sword to George’s neck, he had almost killed him in that episode of unclarity and instinct. He would have killed him, decapitated him right there if he found any motion that George wasn’t mortal.

Fuck. George was mortal. Not burdened by the status of demigodhood. How could he even explain this?

“Don’t call the police! Please I don’t know what happened,” he declared, an inkling of a lie on his tongue. “She attacked me and—”

“Tommy, I know,” George interrupted. “But how do you?”

He frowned, not understanding what he meant.

“How do you know mythology?” George rephrased, confused. “I’m supposed to be the one to introduce you to this world but…” he trailed off, staring down at his legs. Before Tommy could interject, George pulled down his trousers.

“You can’t just—” Tommy stopped. Goat legs. There were goat legs attached to George. “What the fuck?”

“I’m the satyr assigned to you,” George explained, tucking his legs to his chest, almost insecure over Tommy’s exclaimed disgust.

His mouth gaped open. Yeah, according to the shit-fest he had just seen and remembered, he knew of the myths, the reality of it all, but only cruel monsters, the beasts that heroes of the past had slain, the darkest beings known to the Gods. Not satyrs though. With their fuzzy goat legs and little horns. Honestly, he preferred it.

“If the girls in my year saw your hooves, no offence, but they’d archive their thirst TikTok edits of you,” he said, mouth still agape.

George scowled at him, more disturbed than annoyed. “What is wrong with you?”

“Personally, I think it all began when a man and a woman love each other very much and—”

“I get it! I get it.”

A silence fixed between the two. Water droplets from the shower faucet and the humming from the air heater occupied them.

The weight of today had settled inside Tommy. He should be distressed, frantic over the blood embedded under his fingernails and frightened of himself, over his own actions. But he wasn’t. Instead of unsteady breaths and tremors in his hands, for once, he felt at peace. His shoulders no longer howled in agony. The part of him that ever since his rescue had left him hollow, was filling. Not complete, but not empty.

The only that troubled him was what he saw; his own voice, far younger than now, sobbing for it all to stop.

He gulped and relaxed his fists. He needed to deal with that somewhere else, somewhere secluded and dark, where he could let it all out and hope to not feel it again.

“You coming?” George asked, snapping him out of his daze. He wearily got up from the shower flooring with the help of George’s hand.

“Coming where?”

“Our meeting with Puffy has been rescheduled,” he answered, tugging Tommy to where they needed to go.

Principal Puffy, if you were to ask Tommy, was a wonderful woman. Was this all because of how she had run over someone once with her wheelchair for taking the piss out of him? Yes, but that wasn’t the point. Either way, Puffy was one of the few people in this school that seemed to care. And being the Principal too meant she got away with anything. Which explained how she usually wore pirate attire to her job—a red robe with golden threads and a brown waistcoat over a linen shirt. Not exactly the most suitable of clothing for school, but it was Puffy.

But, said Puffy, someone wheelchair-bound by the way, was standing. Now Tommy was not one for Christianity but he swore that this was one of Jesus’ miracles.

“Puffy, I don’t mean to alarm you, but you are currently using your legs,” he gawked. Out of everything he had seen today, this took the cake. The confusing glimpses of his repressed memories were nothing compared to this.

“That I am,” she replied, beaming. Puffy stood behind her desk and walked closer to him. And forget the fucking cake, she took a buffet—her bottom half was a horse. What the fuck was up with people not having human legs today?

“You are also a horse,” he added, mouth open and wide. He blinked and curled horns appeared on her head, peaking out over her white hair. Those weren’t there before. “You’re a pony.”

“A centaur,” she corrected. “An immortal one at that.”

“Same thing,” he shrugged off. Yet, he was still surprised over the entire situation. Puffy, his Principal, was a centaur, probably hiding her legs in that wheelchair for the years she’d been looking after this school. But why was she, an immortal mythological creature, working in a school? Shouldn’t she be assisting in Godly battles or roaming in a forest somewhere?

She opened her mouth but since she was already well accustomed to Tommy, the argument died on her tongue.

“Am I dreaming?” he muttered to himself, hoping for it to be true. If he was, then he’d wake up in his shitty single bed with his feet dangling over the edge, then have to make himself and foster siblings breakfast again and relive this entire day minus the whole ‘Oh yeah, Greek mythology exists and you’re a murderer’ part.

“No,” she said softly, moving closer. “This is real,” Puffy confirmed, looking down at him with such sincerity and kindness that the blood underneath his fingernails was almost forgotten. Almost.

“What about what I did?” he whispered. The monster dust, gushes of red, limbs diced into small enough pieces that they didn’t disintegrate as the souls of the Keres travelled back to Tartarus, the deepest and darkest region of the Underworld, home of all monsters.

“It’s been dealt with,” Puffy assured, her face sombre. “How did you do that without knowing of our world? Or did you already know?”

He stilled, unsure if he should tell her. Although lying was as natural to Tommy as breathing, he hesitated when it was to Puffy.

“I didn’t know before today,” he lied, his jaw clenched.

She frowned. “Then how—?”

“He likes boxing,” George supplied, covering for him.

“And cardio,” he added. “It helps with self-defence.”

“A cardio guy who just so happens to know how to take down a horde of Keres?” Puffy questioned, head tilted with a mix of confusion and scepticism. It wasn’t the best lie Tommy had told but it was something at least.

Tommy grinned with false confidence. “It’s all in the calves.”

Thankfully, she dropped the subject.

“I guess this is where I explain mythology to you and everything,” she said, rolling her eyes to herself. “I used to have a speech memorised but over the years, it’s been watered down.” She cleared her throat and focused solely on him. “Every myth you’ve heard, every deity, monster, and power they’ve unleashed is real. And you’re one of their children. A demigod. We have a camp to protect your kind from the monsters. If you haven’t realised but they’re attracted to your scent.”

He bit on his lip, contemplating if he should use some of the exercises his drama classes had taught him. An exaggerated gasp won’t do, or fainting. So instead he gaped at her again, mouth more open than before. He wasn’t the best actor but it seemed to work.

“How did I not notice the… y’know…” he gestured to the horns on her head.

“The Mist covers it up,” Puffy explained.

“Like deodorant or?”

“No,” she chuckled. “Mist is basically this glamour that twists a mortal’s sight from seeing all things mythological. It can affect demigods as well if it's strong enough.”

“So you’re gaslighting them,” Tommy deduced.

“Well, I wouldn’t describe it as gaslighting—”

“That itself is gaslighting.”

“No, it’s not,” she said and Tommy rose his eyebrows as if her answer proved his point (which it did). She sighed and accepted defeat.

George stifled his laughter from beside them and his face flushed a deep red as Puffy glared at him.

“Where is this camp anyway?” Tommy asked. He guessed this was what the meeting next Friday would’ve been about; the two of them revealing his demigodhood before the school broke up for the summer. Just to ship him off to some camp.

“Brighton.”

He paused. “Huh?”

“Well, it’s on the outskirts of Brighton. Stanmer Park.”

He recognised that place from somewhere. “Hold up, that’s right next to Sussex university.”

“Exactly. Whenever a nymph leaves our borders, who is the government to believe than a bunch of freshers at uni?” Puffy said.

“True.” He couldn’t deny the logic of that. “I’m assuming that you’re going to take me there, then?”

Puffy nodded. “Only if you want to though,” she clarified. “It’s a safe space, somewhere protected. Our borders mean no monsters can enter.”

Tommy hadn’t known safety in years.

It should be a hard decision, to drop everything and relocate himself with people he hadn’t even met. But it wasn’t. Despite having a roof over his head, Tommy had never had a home or a family. There was nothing to lose.

“Then let’s go then.”

As the car jerked at every speedbump—George did not understand the speed restrictions—Tommy couldn’t stop thinking back to what he saw. The flares of memories, bursts of pain and wounds his body must’ve endured, and a splintered narrative. It was something he needed to keep to himself; the other people in the cages, demigods and humanoid monsters pitted against him in that fucking colosseum.

He could handle this, just like he always did: alone.

Chapter Text

It was raining. Just like that night.   

With every drop that rattled against the car window and hit the roof, Tommy resigned deeper into his head. Ever since those Keres, the harbingers of violent death, his eyes reflected nothing but that. Those years he didn’t remember during his capture, the period of repression and insanity, wasn’t so empty anymore.   

He knew it had to do with the myths of this world. The  place,  with its cages and colosseum,  was  full of it—of unclaimed demigods, minor Gods waiting to fade away, lost nymphs, inbred  hybrids and  monsters as ancient as the violence staining the floor. But how could he just forget that? How could he not remember the battles that  led to the scars tainting  his body and plaguing his mind? The deaths that tarnished his dying innocence, the faces of allies and victims meshed into one pile of golden dust and limbs… he had forgotten it all.

But with simple rain, parts came rushing back. It was raining that night the hooded man rescued him. He never saw his entire face, only his eyes. A piercing green that reminded him of the surface—grass, leaves, plants, life—things he hadn’t seen in years. The man saved him from perdition and all the misery it entailed. The fights, the tallying innocents on his subconscious, the quench for more.   

“Tommy,” a voice  plucked  him out his head yet the rain prevailed.   

He blinked and straightened his back against the car seat.   

“Puffy needs to stretch her legs out so we’re stopping for a bit,” George continued, looking at him from the rearview mirror.   

“First world problems for a Centaur,” Tommy mused.   

George hummed in agreement, lost in thought. He undid his seatbelt and fully faced Tommy. “I need to talk to you.”  

He narrowed his eyes. “About what?”   

“‘The Great British Bake Off’,” George remarked  and Tommy frowned.  “No, you idiot! What do you  think I need to talk to you about? Maybe it’s to do you with somehow already knowing you’re a demigod!”   

“No need to get sarcastic on me, dickhead,” Tommy quipped back.   

“Why did you lie to Puffy?” George reiterated,  serious all of a sudden. “How did you already know?”  

Tommy sighed and glanced at the raindrops dripping down the window. “I remembered something,” he muttered. “You know how I went missing for a while?” George nodded, concerned. “It’s to do with your- our world. I found out I was a demigod there.”   

“There?”   

His jaw clenched. An owl screeched from the distance, its shrill resembling the cries of his younger self in those cages.  

“Have I answered your question or not?” he snapped. The pressure against his chest tightened with every breath.

“Not really but I’d prefer not to be on the receiving end of a sword again,” George grumbled, facing the front of the car again.   

Guilt flushed over him. He didn’t even know where that sword came from or where it went.   

“Sorry,” he  said quietly, ashamed to raise his voice further.  He liked George, even if the fucker was quirky and vegetarian; the fact that he could have killed him at that moment, driven that sword through his throat and painted the room in another species’ remains,  scared  him.

George  gazed at him through the rearview mirror again, brown hair tussled and a face  unstably composed. It was almost as if George shared his uncertainty.   

“It’s fine, Tommy,” George said, giving him a timid smile. “You weren’t being yourself.”  

He squirmed at the given excuse, the justification of his behaviour, because it wasn’t  true. None of it was.  

At that moment, with a sword wielded in his hand, the shadows of the Keres dying left and right, and blood splattered on his face, Tommy had never felt freer. He was himself.

The rain poured heavier.   

“Do you know who your Godly parent is?” George asked, changing the subject. “Whether it’s your mum or dad?”  

He didn’t remember if his unclaimed status had changed in that  place, but he did remember that all the other demigods yearned for answers to their parentage. Tommy didn’t share the same sentiment.  

Whilst they questioned every part of themselves, from the powers infused in their battles and inherited weaknesses in those cages, he did not. The tapestry separating him from breathable air and the midnight stars wove itself in apathy rather than the desperation for answers.  

Before the place, he always wanted to know who his parents were, what drove them to abandon him the second he opened his eyes for the first time. But now he couldn’t give a shit. The people who deserted him, left him to die in that colosseum, were Gods. Ancient and potent deities.   

His parents, regardless of what God or Goddess they were, left him there. They ignored his screams for help or cries of forgiveness. As his body endured torture, mutilation and abuse, there was no interference.

Weren’t they supposed to be omniscient? All the Olympians, besides Demeter in her grief, knew Tantalus had served them human flesh, his dead son, as a meal. But then again, Hephaestus remained oblivious to his wife Aphrodite’s affair with Ares, and Hera stood bested by Heracles during many of his Labours.   

Yet even deities as incompetent as them should know of pits  full of their unclaimed children at the mercy of monsters. They let it continue.

“No,” Tommy finally answered, uncaring of the sharpness in his tone. “I don’t know who they are.”

His Godly parent didn’t care about him so he kept this indifference mutual.   

The car door opened and Puffy shuffled back inside. George cleared his throat, clearly uncomfortable, and turned on the car’s ignition.   

Tommy gently rested his head against the window. Despite how he could never sleep during the day, the sun blocking him in more ways than one, resting his eyes bettered the exhausting small talk between Puffy and George in the front. He’d rather  not  hear about the best trimming methods for hooves for the next hour.

Eventually, they arrived in the northeast outskirts of Brighton, in Stanmer Park, and Tommy wasn’t impressed. When Puffy spoke of an ancient, mythological camp with borders to protect his own kind from the dangers of the world, he expected something  more  than just a gated forest. If he walked up the road for long enough, he’d be on the main campus of Sussex University. There was nothing special or allegorical about it.  

“What’s this shit-hole got to do with Greek mythology?” Tommy muttered under his breath as George picked up another piece of litter on the ground. His face screwed up with disgust when George shoved the Quavers packet into his bag. Satyr’s had a weird preference for lunch.  

Puffy, almost sensing his disappointment, smiled brightly. “It’s hidden from you, Tommy,” she said. “You haven’t set foot in its borders and exemplified the Mist yet, so of course it’s just a forest.”   

His cheeks flushed. “I knew that.”  He did not.   

She laughed again  and pushed  open the Stanmer Park gates.  

There weren’t many mortals around, despite it being five o’clock in the afternoon. He followed Puffy and George until they reached the hiking route.

Puffy slipped out of the wheelchair and promptly threw it into the bushed forest.

“Now that is just another level of littering,” Tommy said. Yet, as soon as he finished speaking, a leafy hand from the nearby oak tree snatched the bars of the wheelchair, dragging it inside the gap of the tree. “What the—”

“Thank you, Alyssa!” Puffy called as she stretched her legs and walked along the path.

Tommy stopped to process whatever the fuck just happened. That was a nymph, or a dryad, or another one of those leafy creatures—spirits of nature.

“If Alyssa is the one that spooked you the most, just wait until you see the harpies at night,” George said, grinning.

He glared at George as the other tugged him forward. He wasn’t spooked by the nymph, or even scared. It was more because the last time he encountered a nymph, it was an anthousai, a spirit of flowers. He didn’t see her in a field of roses or garden of poppies but in the pits. The colosseum in his fractured memories.

They were beautiful creatures. Said to have blossomed from fertile lands as it absorbed the blood of Uranus—the primordial God of the sky—in the ocean water. The flower nymphs had leaf dresses, hyacinth flowers as hair, eyes of every colour and lips as plump as a rosebud. Peaceful guardians to their natural environment.

She had strangled a boy in the pits. Flowers and seeds burst from his throat. Branches choked him from deep in his chest. Each thorn pierced his lungs and petals filled his heart until his face twisted to a chilling blue. Pollen trickled down from his bloodshot eyes and a demigod, one year older than Tommy at the time, crumbled to the floor. Dead.

A hand touched Tommy’s shoulder. He flinched and grasped it with a bruising grip. He was back behind the fences, watching that poor boy sink into the floor with green stems growing out of his wounds. Someone had pulled him back, someone had comforted him at that moment, held him close, but still forced him to watch.

He was shaking. Why was he shaking?

“Tommy,” a warning tone wavered his daze. Dim torchlights and the foul scent of decaying bodies no longer engulfed his senses. He was back in the forest, outside the borders of the camp. But the green of the forest was so similar to—

“Let go of him,” another voice of varied concern, though this one held more urgency.

The creature who consoled him behind those fences didn’t sound like that; they were warm—slimy even—and kind. So, so kind. The creature gave Tommy their name, but he couldn’t remember it. Why couldn’t he remember?

“Tommy, let go.” The humid complexion of the creature departed, replaced by a perturbed George. The satyr’s face was furrowed with pain.

He dropped George’s arm. Tommy staggered backwards, hoping for the bloodied petals and calming embrace of a damp creature to leave his head.

Indents in the form of a handprint ingrained itself on George’s skin. An impression of irritated reds pierced his friend’s arm because of him. He did that.

“Sorry,” he uttered, yet his genuine sincerity died on his lips. He had apologised to George too many times for one day.

Before those Keres, before that sword waged hell inside of his mind and surfaced memories he didn’t know he had, it was all fine. Tommy was an irrelevant student with nothing to his name, denying soon-to-be adult responsibilities and impeding further education. He never felt the need to apologise or convey any sort of authenticity to George. He was just… George. The guy in the year above who bothered him during lunch breaks and occasionally stole his empty plastic bottles.

Yet now, as each splinter of a fractured memory hurled itself at Tommy, he was an unclaimed demigod with an assigned satyr.

“You alright, Tommy?” the same voice as before asked, the urgent one. It was Puffy.

She stood closer to him than before. Her face pinched with worry.

“Oh so you ask him but not me—” a simple glare thrown his way interrupted George’s whining.

Puffy hovered a hand over Tommy’s shoulder and he stepped away. “I’m fine, I’m good,” he insisted, trying to believe his own words. “Let’s just get this over with. Where’s the border?”

“Look around,” Puffy said, suddenly amused. “You’ve already crossed the border.”

Tommy frowned. But then it made sense.

The forest floor had flourished under his feet, reinstating the dry brown with lush green. A path made of oak wood planks had formed on the ground. The trees were healthier, an aura of something gave them life; it was an actual forest where no buildings disrupted the immersion between branches. In fact, none of the infostructures of Stanmer Park remained. The occasional bench or rubbish bin had disappeared.

Lakes that weren’t there before had emerged in the distance, figures—creatures—rested inside, swimming from a murky lagoon to crystal clear waters. Mushroom houses carved inside high hills, the outline of new buildings, stone watchtowers, a bricked compound and some sort of mini-village. How did he not notice it appearing?

A marble archway, engraved with Greek symbols of gold which he could actually read, towered in front of him.

“Welcome to Camp Essempe,” Puffy cheered, beaming down at him.

The Mist had covered all of that. This entire civilisation hid by something he had compared to gaslighting not hours before. He wasn’t used to this side of the mythological world, to the part that left your mouth wide open because of astonishment and not out of fear. He preferred this.

Puffy chuckled lightly and trotted along the path. Tommy swiftly followed. With each twist of the path, new parts of the camp revealed itself. Obstacle courses were built into certain areas of the forest, signs reading ‘You <3 Little Penis’ was posted on thick trees (Puffy’s exasperation grew with every post they passed), and a pavilion was mounted on another hill. It looked like an eating area.

Tommy’s pace faltered as he heard voices. The massive brick house rendered closer and people were in the distance. Demigods, he assumed.

He was expecting some little kids summer camp, maybe with a couple of run-down wood cabins, a shit campfire with lice-eaten stools and a climbing frame at best. But not all of this.

“You know, when you described this in the car, I thought it would be some Bible camp,” Tommy said to George.

George huffed out a laugh. “When you get to the statues, worship sanctuaries and the temple, it’ll make sense.”

“Bit overboard, innit?”

“Say that any louder and you’ll offend a God, Tommy,” George warned. “There is one God that I would encourage you to offend though, he’s annoying.”

“George, I’ll tell him you were bitching about him behind his back again,” Puffy teased.

“What’s he going to do? Build a fake statue of Aletheia again?”

The conversation topic confused Tommy but the eyes glued to him as they entered the main section of the camp distracted him enough. His face reddened under the attention, the shaking in his hands quickly returned until he pocketed them.

“Just ignore everyone,” George whispered, noticing his discomfort. “It’s because you’re new. It’ll wear off in a few days.”

“That didn’t work for you in our sixth form though,” Tommy whispered back and George smirked. “Get that smug look off your face, pretty privilege fucker.”

Puffy cleared her throat and Tommy faced forward. The path led them to a fountain, where more oak pathways proceeded in different directions.

It wasn’t a man that stood by the fountain. He wasn’t human or even a beast. He was taller than Tommy, shoulders broader and figure more muscled. Two golden rings circled above the being’s head, too tilted to be halos yet bright enough to hold the same value. Greek symbols engraved the rings, crusted with age and branded with power. The being’s face was covered by a mask, two dots and a chilling smile. A green cape rested on his back.

“This is Dream,” Puffy introduced, gesturing to the being. “Well, his real name is Dolos, but he prefers Dream.” Something about how she said his real name didn’t stick right with Tommy. Dream adjusted his mask, a slither of a grin laid exposed for a silent moment.

He froze. There was something off about him, about Dolos. From the way he carried his posture and gripped his mask so tightly. Something familiar, sickening and unnerving all trapped in the same body.

“You want to know, don’t you?” Dream said. Even with his mouth covered, Tommy could tell by the tone of Dream’s voice that the grin was still there. “Nice to meet you Tommy Innes, unclaimed demigod, I am Dolos, God of trickery, deception and guile.”

Tommy didn’t realise he had taken a step back until George steadied him.

“The mask is a nice touch,” he snarked. Deception devised itself in many forms but covering up your face, the pinnacle of your emotions and expression, lacked subtlety.

“You’re not a fan,” Dream replied with as much force but toned differently. This was teasing as if speaking to an old friend or someone you respected. A mocking hint yet with no ill intent.

“Dream, you gotta admit, the mask is a little creepy,” George said.

“It’s a fashion statement.”

“What is a God doing here, anyway?” Tommy asked, hoping the change of subject would relieve the pain in his shoulders.

“I was punished by the Olympians,” Dream explained. “It seems pranking Poseidon with putting food colouring in the Indian Ocean didn’t sit well with him.”

George scoffed, “I told you that you should’ve gone with the Artic instead.”

“But the polar bears,” Dream rebutted, the softness in his voice betrayed the agitation he evoked from Tommy. The man—the deity—was a walking contradiction.

Puffy rose her eyebrows at the two. Dream huffed as if he had been scolded by a teacher. “And I may have pissed off Hades.” Puffy kicked him in the shin. “My punishment shouldn’t have extended, it wasn’t even that bad—” she kicked him again. “Okay, fine! I humiliated Hades in front of the Olympians during a Summer Solstice. But it was George’s fault.”  

“It was Sapnap’s idea, not mine! It’s not my fault you ended up listening to me,” George quipped back.

It didn’t take a genius to figure out that Dream was the God George found annoying, with how the two continued their petty argument. Puffy sighed and pinched the bridge of her nose.

“What did you do to Hades?” Tommy asked.

George’s face brightened. “Well, Tomathy, Hades is the God of the dead and technically he can control bones. So Dream asked Hades if he could control boners—”

“That’s enough!” Puffy shouted, gaining attention from other campers. “Enough!”

George burst out laughing and Dream hit him across the head.  

Tommy wouldn’t be surprised if it was either George, Dream or this Sapnap guy’s doing with the ‘You <3 Little Penis’ signs attached to every tree in sight.

“You two are children, literal children,” Puffy scorned under her breath. The tension Tommy felt over being near Dream almost ceased. But then the God laughed harder and his shoulders stiffened. “Anyway, Tommy, I would normally be the one to give you the run-down and tour of the camp but I have to rescue a Pegasus from the pier. Because someone,” she gave Dream and George a pointed look, “thought it was a good idea to give the barn animals stimulants.”

“First of all, that was Quackity and Sapnap,” George defended, “and second of all, it was funny.”

“They started- they…” Dream’s laugh turned into a kettle wheeze. “One of them did a handstand and shat all over—”

“Dream!” Puffy yelled. He immediately stopped laughing. “You four are the ones cleaning it up later and I swear to you if it’s not as spotless as Augeas’ stables, I will—”

“You’ll get the harpies to chase us around the forest and use us to dull their claws,” both Dream and George recited as if they’d heard this for the hundredth time. Puffy nodded, satisfied.

Tommy gaped at the three of them.

George nudged him. “It’s a metaphorical threat, don’t worry.”

“How the fuck is that a metaphor?”

“As I was saying,” Puffy interjected loudly, “Sapnap and George will give you the tour of the camp. Dream, Ranboo needs you in the Community House.”

Dream bid Tommy goodbye with a small nod. The smile carved into the white mask looked sinister at such an angle, but the moment his head raised, it was a normal smile.

He gulped and turned to George. “Are all Gods like that?” Tommy asked quietly.

George’s lips thinned. “No. As much as he annoys me, he’s probably the most tolerable one. Outside of Hestia and Pan,” he said. “Dream’s the most human,” George added softly. “You’ll understand soon enough that the Gods function differently to us, the ichor that runs through their veins is enough evidence of that. They’re…” he trailed off and peered up at the sky, “they’re separate for a reason.”

Tommy tilted his head. He knew George wanted to say more but with a simple look to the sky, he understood. Badmouthing literal Gods didn’t seem like a wise decision if you wanted to live.

“I’ll take you to the Ares cabin first so we can pick up Sapnap,” George said, moving on to the tour.

George walked—well, trotted with the goat hooves—and Tommy ran to catch up with him along another wooden pathway.

“Ares?”

“Olympian God of war, the spirit of battle.”

Tommy bristled. “I know but I didn’t expect a guy called Snapchat to be the son of that.”

George rolled his eyes at the nickname and shrugged. “I mean, did you expect me to be a satyr?” Tommy’s eyes dipped to George’s goat legs. “Stop staring at my legs!”

“You legit prompted me to!”

“You’re objectifying me.”

“I preferred it when we only spoke during lunch,” Tommy deadpanned, causing George to push him forward.

The path ended in the middle of a small village. There were multiple cabins, all built with different materials, colour schemes and aesthetics. For fuck’s sake, one of them even had a telescope poking out of the roof and another had literal bones in the windows like it was Halloween.

“These are where the demigods live. Each cabin represents a God or Goddess. Just hope that you’re the son of an Olympian because you’ll have a double bed. Don’t ask why children of minor Gods have single beds, it’s a political thing,” George explained then pointed to a certain cabin. “The Ares cabin is pretty self-explanatory.”

Well, with how one of the cabins was a bright red and gold with a boar-like sculpture above the door and a hatchet in the door, it was obvious.

George knocked on the door, avoiding the hatchet. A man probably in his late teens opened the door; he had dark hair and a white bandana wrapped around his forehead. Despite how he was shorter than the two of them, the fiery glint in his eyes and the scar across his cheek compensated for his lack of height. From the way he greeted George, Tommy assumed this was Sapnap.

“Another newbie?” Sapnap asked and Tommy narrowed his eyes. “Claimed or not?”

“Unclaimed,” George replied. “This is Tommy, uh, seventeen I think.”

Sapnap hummed and stared at Tommy for far too long for his own comfortability. “Well, he’s not a child of Ares.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?” Tommy bit out.

“Okay, maybe he is,” Sapnap corrected with a slight chuckle. “Why are you here?”

“Puffy put us on tour duty as she deals with the Pegasus you and Q harassed,” George said.

Sapnap groaned, obviously not expecting any consequences from his own actions. He heaved the hatchet out of the front door and threw it back in the cabin before closing the door shut, pointedly ignoring the scream from inside. “Let’s get touring then.”

Unsurprisingly, Sapnap and George were bad at tours. With how each segment they took him to was filled with inside jokes and random jabs Tommy didn’t understand. Apparently, George needed to stay away from the Hypnos cabin at all times—the cabin based on the God of sleep—and Sapnap had a restraining order against the animal stables for his past crimes.

“What did you do to get banned from the stable?” Tommy asked.

“Sapnap has a pattern of killing pets,” George said in a casual tone.

“It’s not my fault they’re fragile—”

Tommy increased his pace, horrified.

“You’re going the wrong way! We need to show you where you’ll sleep,” Sapnap called, bemused.

They stopped in front of the largest cabin. It was wooden, painted to suit the aesthetic of brown monochrome, with a golden caduceus symbol overhanging on the front—the staff carried by Hermes, the herald of the Gods; God of trade, thieves and travel.

Sapnap pushed open the cabin door. It was crowded inside with most of the space taken up with double beds and a single row of bunk beds. Sapnap returned with a boy, who had brown skin and beady eyes which reminded Tommy of a cow.

“This is Henry, he’s the oldest of the Hermes so you’re his responsibility.”

“How’do?” Tommy greeted and Henry sighed into his hands. “I thought I was unclaimed though.”

“Hermes takes in unclaimed demigods until they’re claimed since he’s the protector of travellers,” Henry explained. His voice matched his appearance, with how it was deep yet soft, but also exhausted. “The other Gods prefer their own children only living in their cabins.”

“So sleepovers are a no then?” his question was met with silence, excluding how Henry sighed again. “Alright, got it.”

“I’d rather you kill me than give me another unclaimed,” Henry muttered to Sapnap.

Sapnap rested his arm around Henry’s shoulder. “I could kill you if you wanted.”

Henry paused, as if he was contemplating Sapnap’s words, then shook his head. “Nah, the Asphodel Meadows isn’t really a vibe I want to get into right now.”

“It’s a type of Greek Underworld,” George whispered too close to Tommy’s ear for his liking. He could smell the tin from George’s breath.

“Give me your bag and I’ll set you up with a bed whilst they continue the tour,” Henry said, still sounding dead inside.

He threw his duffle bag at Henry but kept his rucksack with him. Henry departed from them and Tommy immediately lost him to the crowd of other Hermes demigods, who stared with varying degrees of disdain or masked disinterest. It seemed that unclaimed demigods weren’t as liked by the Hermes lads.

George pushed Tommy out of the cabin and unfortunately, the tour continued.

When they reached the worship sanctuaries, their jokes died down (probably out of fear that one of the Gods would take it personally and smite them down). But it was a pretty area if you disregarded the graffiti written on Zeus’ statue and the Master Oogway shrine—which Tommy was sure wasn’t a part of Ancient Greek religion and rather from ‘Kung Fu Panda’. There was a stone temple with wooden columns, all painted white, with sacramental items inside, like some weird bowls and curved knives.

“Next is the armoury!” Sapnap said, sounding too euthanistic for his liking.

“The more this tour goes on, the more this place is more like a military base than Bible studies,” Tommy grumbled.

The armoury was just a building on the outskirts of the forest, next to the archery range. It was a more shaded area in the camp, probably due to the number of trees or because it was early evening now.

Before they could enter inside, a random demigod approached them and promptly tackled Sapnap to the floor. It was a short boy with half of his face scarred—though it was more the glowing around his hands which Tommy focused on.

“Sapnap, if you kill one of my bees again, I will curse you to shit!” the boy yelled.

“How are you gonna curse me to shit?” Sapnap mocked, easily pushing the boy off him.

“Constipation!”

The white glow around the boy’s hand twisted to a bright purple. Sapnap scrambled up from the floor and ran away—with his dignity, of course. A staff appeared in the boy’s grip and he chased after him.

“I’ll be right back,” George said. “I don’t want Sapnap to be turned into a panda again. Bamboo is hard to find.”

And with that, Tommy was alone.

This place was weird. It didn’t feel like a home Tommy but it was better than the orphanage. There, he had to look over his shoulder at every shadow, certain that at night it crept closer to him as if the dark was trying to hug him. Whilst here, there would be a reason he should look over his shoulder with the number of mythological creatures and enhanced mortals clustered in the area.

He could at least finish the stupid tour by himself.

Yet, as soon as he hovered his hand over the armoury entrance door, something emerged from the shadows. He twisted around and grabbed the figure, flipping them to the floor. It wasn’t a something, but a someone.

His breath hitched as the shadowed person tugged on Tommy’s arms. His bones stung, it felt like they were able to break despite the soft grip. The figure didn’t even push him forward yet his bones bent into the direction, willing themselves under layers of skin and blood to crash into the ground.

Tommy let go of them, flinching backwards. The shadows around the figure dissipated, revealing a man. “What the fuck?”

“Oh you’ll be interesting,” the man chuckled, grinning with his teeth.

The man had a white streak in his brown tousled hair and dark eyes. He was tall, too tall for Tommy’s self-confidence, and he wore a vintage sweater that looked straight from some gentrified charity shop or eBay.

“Where did you come from?” Tommy demanded. The fucker had descended from shadows, literal shadows. There was a coldness around him, everything about him lacked warmth and life, despite the bright amusement on his face. The ambience he emitted was unsettling, yet homely. The man had bent his bones, controlled him. It was terrifying but no part of Tommy shook.

“If we’re talking specifics, Hades was busy during February with a certain woman during her cemetery night shift,” the man said.

Tommy’s face furrowed with disgust. “I didn’t want to know when your parents fucked, prick.” The man didn’t respond. He stood still, gazing down at Tommy, almost waiting for something, a reaction of sorts. With a quirk of the man’s eyebrow, his words finally registered. “Wait, Hades?”

The man’s amusement dulled. “Nevermind, you’re boring.”

“What? Am I supposed to run away with piss dripping down my leg at the mere presence of a Hades’ demigod?” Tommy spat. “Should I discriminate against you for your parents? Because I can if you want, though it would be a bit fucked—”

“No,” the man said shortly. His head slanted slightly. “I just expected something different.”

Tommy’s eyes twitched. He didn’t like that word, different. Yet, in this context, it seemed the two shared a belief with that. From the way the man acted, it was like he had grown used to being treated… not the same as everyone else. Almost like he had made a game, with how fast would it take to turn someone away.

If there were politics in this world amongst the Gods, then there had to be some type of fuckery with the demigods and their heritage.

“I’m Wilbur,” he introduced as he pulled the last of the shadows away from his body. “And you’re Tommy, the new unclaimed.”

“How’d you know who I am?”

“The shadows speak to me,” Wilbur replied, eerily. Tommy shivered, curling his hands by his side. Wilbur barked out a laugh and ruffled his own hair. “I’m kidding, Puffy told me earlier that you might be coming this week. I didn’t expect to see you this soon though.”

“Why is everyone in this camp so fucking weird?” Tommy mumbled, irritated by the performance Wilbur was putting on. As if the fucker was part of a Shakespearian play. But with the way he was a Hades’ borne, that might be true. He didn’t understand the logistics of demigods and their abilities yet.

“Oh like you can talk,” Wilbur teased, only furthering Tommy’s irritation. “You’re not as subtle with your mannerisms.”

“Don’t psychoanalyse me when you’re dressed like that, dickhead,” Tommy said, smothering his laughter as Wilbur’s face contorted to one of offence.

“What is that supposed to mean?” Tommy didn’t answer. Wilbur rolled his eyes and brushed down the creases of his sweater. “Y’know the last time Sapnap and George gave a tour, our newly claimed demigod of Hephaestus died.”

Tommy recoiled, not knowing what to do with this information.

“Oh, don’t worry, it was completely unrelated to their tour. I just wanted to bring it up,” he smirked and dodged Tommy’s shove. “The Forges are a dangerous place.”

Tommy smacked him again, landing a hit on his arm.

Wilbur moved on his feet and circled around Tommy, analysing him. “What monster did you encounter before getting to the camp?” Tommy frowned. “You have monster dust in your hair. Obviously, the shower you took before this didn’t do its job properly.”

He glanced down at his hands, no longer bloodied like hours prior. “No, it did its job,” he defended. He knew how to take showers, he wasn’t an idiot. “The dust could’ve been glitter.”

Wilbur huffed. “What monster?”

“Keres.”

Wilbur’s eyes widened. “Death and the Ker avoiding, we escape,” he said.

He had heard that before, though he didn’t remember where. Why was this dude quoting Homer?

“Please don’t tell me you’re an English literature nerd.”

“No, no that’s my brother,” Wilbur said.

“You have a brother?”

“Of sorts,” Wilbur answered vaguely. “It’s a one-sided thing. He’s not here anyway.”

A silence fell upon them.

“How are you not freaking out right now?” Wilbur asked, tone light yet he knew there was wariness woven inside. He stepped closer to Tommy. “You just found out you’re a demigod, survived a Keres attack, who normally come in packs or hordes, and you’ve met the son of the villainous Hades. And yet you’re completely fine.”

Tommy stilled. He didn’t like the weight of Wilbur’s eyes on him.

“I’m slightly above average than everyone else,” he blurted out.

Wilbur chuckled dryly. “You’d need to be above average to survive a Keres attack without a single wound.” Tommy stayed quiet. He didn’t trust this guy or anyone so far, so he’d keep his memories to himself. No one needed to know he had already gotten an introduction to the mythos, whether it was through murder pits or cult camps in Stanmer Park.

“Well, your lack of answer speaks volumes,” Wilbur continued and the air around the two froze. Tommy bit his cheek and tugged on his jacket. The cold around them heated. “Anyway, I bet you’re an Apollo kid.”

Personally, it wasn’t a bad guess, since Apollo was the God of music, the sun, poetry, healing, truth and other irrelevant things. As much as he hated Homer, he did like music and poetry (not the shit poems from his Power and Conflict GCSEs though—‘War Photographer’ and ‘Tissues’ could honestly choke). But Wilbur said this as he stared at the Apollo demigods at the archery stands.

Tommy scowled at those in the archery range. “Is it because I’m blonde?”

“No, it’s obvious you’re a fake blonde but it’s more the energy you give off.”

“I don’t dye my hair!”

Wilbur laughed and moved towards the empty archery stand. “Try it then.”

The two easily attracted people’s attention. Something Tommy did not want right now, especially when challenged to archery, a sport he had never tried before.

“And you’re got an audience for it,” Wilbur taunted. “Make a nice first impression.”

“Eat shit and die,” Tommy muttered as he retrieved the bow from the stand.

Now, if the world went the way Tommy wanted—which it never did—the next moments wouldn’t have occurred. The arrow splintered the second Tommy notched it to the bow’s string and when he eventually cocked it, the arrow hit the tree far behind the target stand.

It was safe to say Tommy had not yet mastered archery.

Embarrassment flushed his face red and Wilbur giggling beside him did not help his situation. Tommy had only met the man five minutes ago and he was already the reason for his public humiliation.

As the other demigods watching moved on, disappointed that the new demigod wasn’t interesting, the tips of Tommy’s fingers tingled. A dagger appeared in his hand and his arm reacted before he did. The spotless target now had a black dagger lodged in its bullseye.

His breathing halted. How in the fuck did a dagger get there? It was too much like in the room with the Keres, how that sword had come from nowhere and dissolved the second it wasn’t needed anymore.

Wilbur made a noise of surprise. “Maybe there is a little bit of sunshine in you after all.”

“Shut the fuck up.”

“Do you not like being associated with Apollo?” Wilbur asked yet didn’t give him any time to answer. “Yeah, me neither, quite a prick if you ask me. He really did take after his father, Zeus. With how he harassed Daphne, cursed Cassandra just because she rejected him, flayed Marsyas alive and he tricked his sister Artemis into killing the only man she’d ever loved. Oh and—”

Thunder rolled in the distance and Wilbur smirked. If anything he seemed excited, thrilled over possibly offending a God. There was no fear in his eyes, yet adrenaline pulsed in the dark shade. It should’ve made Tommy more scared of him, of Wilbur’s wrecking and careless nature, but he wasn’t.

“Are you going to bother another eons-old God or can I carry on with my tour?” Tommy asked, mockingly. Wilbur huffed out a laugh and gestured for him to follow.

As they exited the armoury section of the camp, the two bumped into Sapnap and George again. Though, Sapnap had a bamboo stick in his hand and took a chunk out of it.

George rubbed his face, exasperated. “Ignore him, Tubbo cursed him. Thankfully, this time it’s just panda instincts instead of him being a fully-fledged panda. He tried to roll down a hill last time and almost died.”

Time stopped. Tommy didn’t care about the curse put upon Sapnap or the annoyance George felt, not after that name was said.

“Tubbo?” he repeated, shaking. It couldn’t be a coincidence about the names, not when he had given that name to someone, to his online childhood friend who he had lost contact with. It had to be him.

“Yeah, he’s just over there. Don’t insult his bee familiars or he’ll make your life a living hell,” George grumbled as Sapnap chewed on another piece of bamboo.

“Just wait until Dream sees Sapnap like this—” Tommy ran off before he heard Wilbur finish his sentence. He needed confirmation, he needed this to be true. He needed Tubbo, for his best friend to be alive and here.

It was the same boy from earlier. The short one with his face scarred. That was Tubbo, it had to be. He was sitting on a bench next to another boy, someone taller—even taller than Wilbur—who had two-tone black and white hair.

“Toby?” Tommy said, breathlessly. His heart pounded against his chest. Everything so far had gone to shit for him—the orphanage, the pits, the lack of direction and stability in his life, and now this camp—he needed this. He needed the stability Tubbo once brought and flourished into him.

The boy turned in his seat, a face full of shock. He didn’t move.

“Tommy?” the boy gasped. Tubbo sprung forward, encasing his arms around him. His quickened breath warmed Tommy’s neck. “By Zeus, I thought you died. I thought you were dead!” he sounded close to tears and Tommy closed his eyes, content at this moment.

He was back, his best friend was back. From the long conversations they had over the library computers, to the voice calls lasting hours just because the other yearned to hear their voice, he was here. In his arms rather than miles away.

“Well, I’m not dead,” Tommy said, grinning as he rested his chin on Tubbo’s shoulder. “I was just kidnapped.”

Tubbo’s grip loosened for a second as he said, “We’ll discuss that at a later date,” and the two laughed, a carefree laugh they once shared when the other died in a stupid pixelated video game years ago. Their hug tightened, neither wanting to let the other go. “I missed you,” Tubbo whispered, his tone adorned in disbelief.

“You’re still as clingy as ever," he remarked and Tubbo roughly headbutted his chest. “Fine, fine, I missed you too.”

“I can’t believe you’re here,” Tubbo muttered, sniffing.

Tommy smiled, and for the first time in years, it was real. No false upturned creases, no slitted eyes as his lips conveyed a fake expression. The thudding in his heart, pacing to a cooing rhythm that burst warmth from his chest. It was real. Tubbo was real. “Me neither,” he said back.

“Wait.” Tubbo stepped back to see Tommy’s face. “You’re a demigod too?”

Tommy’s smile brightened and he nodded. “It seems like it, I’m unclaimed though.”

“Please be Hecate, please, then we can actually be brothers—” Tubbo cut himself off with another gasp. “We could be brothers.”

Leave it to Tubbo to be the son of Hecate. The Goddess of witchcraft and the guardian of crossroads, depicted as triple-formed with a pair of torches and a pack of barking dogs. There was always something exciting about Tubbo, explosive even, so him being the child of literal magic may explain it.

“I don’t need a Goddess to have birthed me to be a brother to you, Tubs,” Tommy said, earnestly. “But cursing people does sound cool.”

“It really is!” Tubbo agreed. Tommy tugged him closer again, not ready for this to be over. He studied the other’s face. His eyes were what Tommy always expected Tubbo to look like—even the colour was expressive; a mixture of blue, brown and green, with a hint of light, similar to a torch. His face pasted like a canvas, a milky white with a healed burn-mark scarring the left side of it, clusters of freckles subtly dotted around his cheeks. Even his hair, a brown mess upon his head, screamed Tubbo.

“You’re here,” Tommy repeated, cementing this in his head so the buzzing underneath his skin would stop. “You’re actually here.”

Someone beside them cleared their throat. Both separated from the hug. Tommy still kept his arm around Tubbo’s shoulder. It was the taller boy on the bench. He sat awkwardly, staring at the two of them with timid hesitation.

“Oh, this is Ranboo!” Tubbo exclaimed, beaming at them both. “Ranboo, this is Tommy. We were best friends when we were younger.”

“Nice to meet you,” Ranboo said, sounding as awkward as he looked. Tommy frowned but nonetheless greeted him with a tight nod.

Before Tommy could go back to his conversation with Tubbo, Wilbur walked over to them. He rolled his eyes and faced the man. He just wanted to talk to Tubbo—not that he was clingy or anything—but he really did miss him. But instead, this lanky Underworld offspring decided to ruin it.

“Come on, it’s time for Tommy’s banquet,” Wilbur announced and the excitement in Tubbo returned.

“Oh yeah, I forgot about that,” Tubbo said.

“I have a banquet?” Tommy asked as he followed them along the oak wood path. They were heading towards a pavilion on the highest hill.

“Yeah, we always have one when a new demigod is brought here,” Tubbo explained.

The tables in the pavilion were pushed together, which didn’t look natural, since each tablecloth was of a different pattern and colour. Empty bronze plates sat in front of each seat, a golden goblet beside the cutlery, and different foods were in the middle of the table. Ranging from meats, vegetables, sides to desserts. Torches were lit in the corners of the pavilion as the sun had begun to set.

“Sit down,” Tubbo ordered, pointing at the chair in between himself and Wilbur. He sat down and noted the people around him. Dream and Puffy sat at the head of the table, with George closest to Dream, and Sapnap sat opposite them with another person—a boy of the same age whose right eye was a bleary white with a long scar across it.

But the food was more interesting than the people.

Puffy stood up from her kneeling position and gathered the attention of the campers. “So, as you might know by now, we have another demigod under our protection. Tommy Innes, unclaimed for now. Treat him as you’d treat each other,” she said. Puffy went on more about the etiquette of the camp, things that frankly Tommy didn’t give a shit about, and finally, they were allowed to eat.

Tommy reached for the goblet and Wilbur interjected, “It’s enchanted,” he said. “Just think of the drink you want and it’ll appear in your cup. No alcohol though, you’ll just get un-watered down squash instead and it’s even the good brand.”

He bit his lip and thought of the only drink you’d ever catch him drinking and took a sip. Only to spit it out seconds after. “What the fuck? This is Raspberry Pepsi, I wanted Coke.”

Laughter came from the head of the table. “Dream, let the boy live in peace,” Puffy chided. Dream huffed and flicked his hand in the direction of Tommy’s drink.

Tommy paled as his drink changed. Dream could have poisoned it before, he could have poisoned it now. After all, he was the God of deception, trickery and all that shit. It didn’t help that the God was familiar either, someone that Tommy recognised but couldn’t place where. And familiar was dangerous with the limited memories Tommy had.

“It’s safe to drink, Dream wouldn’t try to kill you,” Wilbur said. “Not on day one.”

Tommy flipped him off and drank it. Thankfully it was Coke this time. He peered over at Tubbo and Ranboo on his side. “What did you ask for?”

Ranboo put his cup down. “Sparkling water.”

“That is such a Tory drink,” he scoffed and Tubbo choked on his orange juice. “So is this dinner just a welcoming thing then?”

Wilbur shuffled closer to him. “It’s called a symposium. It used to celebrate the introduction of young men into aristocratic society back when mortals used to give a shit about the Gods, but now it’s more of an excuse to feast. Still an introduction to this higher way of life though.”

“There’s nothing noble or high-born about me,” Tommy uttered as he scraped chicken and rice onto his plate.

“You have Godly blood running through your veins, shut up before Zeus strikes us down,” Wilbur said, teasingly.

“Wouldn’t be the first time, now would it Wilbur?” the boy sat next to Sapnap called over the table, a daring smirk on his lips. He had a navy blue beanie on his head.

Wilbur grinned back, though it was more malicious and taunting. “Well, there’s a second time for everything,” he sat up straighter. “Does anyone have a pickaxe lying about because we can test that, can’t we Quackity?” Wilbur gestured to Quackity’s face.

“Good one,” Quackity bit back.

“How is Karl these days?” Wilbur continued, disregarding the tension along the table.

Sapnap leaned forward warningly. “Wilbur—”

“I don’t know, ask your father for me,” Quackity interrupted, voice harsh and rough. But then he sat back, his grin distorted into something more sinister and his tone became more condescending. “Oh wait, I forgot, your dad’s too disgusted by the sight of you to even—”

“You’re being petty,” Wilbur said, lowly.

“I’m not being petty.”

“You are and I love it—”

“Guys, save the… whatever the fuck this is for the bedroom please,” Sapnap interjected, disturbed.

Wilbur barked out a laugh and raised his cup. “Ironic, coming from you.”

Sapnap’s face reddened.

“Are they always like this?” Tommy whispered to Tubbo.

“This is one of their tamer days.”

Tommy let the meaning of ‘tamer’ rattle through his head as he ate his food, trying to hide his discomfort over that shit-show. Whatever it was, he decided to ignore it ever happened.

Eventually, his hunger fulfilled itself and thankfully no more conversations involving the mentioning of lightning strikes by Zeus, injuries from pickaxes or general daddy issues occurred. Tommy could only deal with so much shit in one evening.

The food on the middle plates vanished and Dream handed out weird bowls to each table.

“What’s this?” Tommy asked.

“Libations happen after every meal we have, we pour parts of our drink into the phiale, which turns the liquid into red wine, and someone drinks it in the name of a chosen God,” Tubbo said as he poured his drink into the weird bowl. Its content turned a dark red as soon as it hit the metal.

Tommy copied him and watched as the others did so too. Wilbur took hold of the phiale and spilt its remains onto the ground.

“Wilbur, not again!” Puffy exclaimed from across the table. “You’re supposed to drink it first for the Gods before doing your chthonic ritual.”

“Oh, I know,” Wilbur replied coldly.

Tommy shuffled in his seat, bothered by the hostility in his tone.

By the end of the night, he had stopped partaking in the events around him. He felt that if he participated in any of it, he’d explode. It was too much. The nymphs circling the tables, failing to get George’s attention because he was too busy talking with Dream; the boisterous laughter from Sapnap and Quackity; whatever coldness kept sending shivers across Tommy’s body (he blamed that one on sitting next to the literal son of the dead); and the isolation that came from hearing Tubbo and Ranboo’s private conversations.

He just wanted this day to be over, to fall asleep and wake up without the memories and identity he had gained today. It would be better that way, more empty but less stressful.

“Why isn’t he claimed yet?” George asked loudly, catching Tommy’s attention. “He’s done all the rituals and he’s seventeen, it should happen now.”

“Maybe they don’t care,” Wilbur suggested as he ran his finger over the goblet top.

Tommy’s jaw clenched.

“Maybe they’re asleep or something,” Tubbo said, brushing his arm against Tommy’s shoulder. “It took ages for Hecate to claim me so it could be similar.”

“You were twelve,” George stated.

“But—”

Puffy silenced the tables and stood up. He hadn’t realised how tall she really was in her centaur form until now. “The Gods decide at their own pace when they claim their children. We are just used to the rituals instigating this claim,” she said, her eyes not leaving Tommy’s. “Tommy is no different from any of you but will stay in the Hermes cabin for now.”

He still preferred to not know who his parents were yet the judgemental and pitying looks being thrown his way deviated something inside of him. He didn’t like it.

“Goodnight then everyone. Lights out in an hour and with Eos and Hemera, another day will reign,” Puffy finished, permitting everyone to leave the pavilion and their seats at the tables.

Tommy recognised Henry in the crowd of people leaving by the oak path, but Tubbo grabbed him before he could catch up to the Hermes demigod.

“Meet me tomorrow after breakfast so we can talk more,” Tubbo said, not letting Tommy answer as he ran off afterwards with Ranboo.

Sighing, Tommy followed the oak path and made his way to the Hermes cabin. His bags were sitting on the bottom of a bunk bed and Henry sat on the edge, waiting for him.

“Sorry if I was pissy earlier, it’s just… unclaimed cases don’t really end well and I don’t like having that pressure put on me,” Henry said, surprising him.

“What do you mean?” Tommy asked, not liking his wording.

“It’s nothing bad for you. It’s more on my end,” Henry expanded, though still vaguely. His ears blushed as he continued, “I tend to get attached to people and unclaimed demigods usually leave to never speak to me again after their Godly parents decide to finally take notice of them.”

“Oh,” Tommy exhaled. He didn’t really know what to say to that.

Henry avoided eye contact and cleared his throat. “So yeah…”

He awkwardly patted Henry’s shoulder. “It’s cool, I’ll just make your life a living hell so it’s impossible to get attached to me.”

“Ma Hera, please don’t do that, I’d rather go through heartbreak than that,” Henry pleaded and Tommy stifled his laughter. “Just get some sleep, Tommy. I’ll wake you up before we leave for breakfast tomorrow.”

He nodded and settled down in his new bed. It felt uncomfortable, but he didn’t expect much from a cabin bunk bed. He bet Tubbo’s cabin was better than this, with how their mother was the literal Goddess of magic. She could bewitch some shit and give them those mattresses that you sink into and never want to leave. But here, it was a hardened surface and shitty pillow that made your hair go static.

After unpacking the essentials in his bag and readying himself in the bathroom—which was even more disgusting than the bunkbed but he didn’t want to go into detail about what he saw in the shower drains—he slid under the covers.

Unlike other people he had encountered in the foster system or orphanage, who struggled to sleep at night, Tommy found it pretty easy. The night felt homely so resting his eyes and turning to the side was all it took for his consciousness to slip.

✻ ✻ ✻

Another scream echoed the colosseum, fuelling the hysteria of the cages and creatures awaiting their trials. Beneath the urging mantras, stifled sobs and clanging of blades, a young boy flinched behind the fences.  

The stench of death and rotting flesh ploughed the air as the guards dragged the Ipotane’s severed body out from the Pit. It was a mess. The human part of the creature hadn’t fused with the mass of golden dust, blood and acid littered on the ground.

Red torchlights beamed and the metal fence wavered from the limbs bashing against it.

The new opponent staggered into the Pit. A demigod versus the victor flower nymph. The anthousai with pink hyacinth hair and a leaf dress. Chlorophyll patterns of swirls decorated her killing hands.

A young boy behind those fences had his knees tucked to his chest and hands gripped in his blonde hair. He didn’t want to see this. He didn’t want to witness another person choke on vines and spit out petals as their insides corrupted. He wanted to go home. He wanted to sleep in a bed instead of chained to the cold floor, to have clothes that weren’t drenched in sweat from his nightmares and endless shaking.

Tommy just wanted to live. To live without the fear that the next person to go into the Pit would be him. No eleven-year-old should have to watch this. People killing each other for survival, only to be bested by the next opponent forced into the colosseum. There was no rest. There was no light, there was nothing good down here.

Normally, the darkness calmed him. But not now. The dim red light and shadows overwhelmed him, causing his shoulders to tremble and his muscles to tense.

He tore his eyes away as stems grew out of the puncture in the demigod’s neck. He resided deeper into himself, denying this reality. He clamped his hands over his ears as cries of anguish deafened them.

Something soft and slippery brushed along Tommy’s shoulders. He whimpered and screwed his eyes shut. If he opened them, it would be the guard, it would be him or the man with horns. He’d be taken down by the shackles, pushed into the gates and stare into the beautiful eyes of his killer. A dull blade wouldn’t save himself against her. The anthousai would hate herself even more than she already did as her roots festered in his lungs.

Rusted metal panelling beneath Tommy’s body rattled from how much he shook.

The pressure on his shoulder continued and his bottom lip trembled.

“Hey, there’s no need for that,” a voice close to him whispered. It sounded tender, wetly sympathetic. Kind. “Open your eyes, I’m not here to take you down into the Pit.”

Tommy shut his eyes tighter, his ears rang. He didn’t trust it, he didn’t trust them. He couldn’t trust anyone. But they sounded so nice. So loving and gentle. No person with such a calming pitch and welcoming aura would hurt him. The free-spirited tone, breathy wisps to their speech, and mushy grip on his shoulder… he wanted to trust it.

Slowly, he blinked open his eyes and mossy beads stared back. The person—the monster—shuffled next to him, a humid and wet substance grazed against his arm. It was the monster’s skin. Their flesh was a pale green, close to slime or algae, and growing buds of weeds formed their body. A wreath adorned their neck and yellow teeth smiled at him.

They too had a shackle weighing down their ankle.

The monster opened their mouth to speak, strings of goo parted from their lips, but another agonizing scream cut them off. Fear hounded after Tommy, crippling his frozen body and hastening his heartbeat. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t think. All he knew was that he could be next. He could be the one down there and—

Damp arms curled around Tommy’s upper torso. His body fell limp against their hold. He let his head be tucked into the monster’s chest. He didn’t want to see it, he didn’t want to hear the blood drip on the floor as the demigod in the Pit suffocated on shrubs.

The naïve part of him thought for just a moment that he was safe. The monster held him delicately, rubbed his back with every heaving breath and hummed a soothing tune that almost drowned out the death surrounding him. But then the monster’s hand caressing his chin moved. The slimy grip forced Tommy to look forward, to see through the metal fences and down into the Pit.

“I don’t want to see, please don’t make me see, please—” Tommy cried out. He tried to close his eyes but the monster wouldn’t let him. Iron tasted dry on his tongue. “Please, please, don’t.”

“You have to,” the monster protested, their voice sombre yet light in the darkness of the pits. “I’ve watched for a long time. You have to see, you have to learn what it’s like down there.”

He shook his head and went to bury his face in the monster’s shoulder. But the monster wouldn’t let him. “But I can’t—”

The monster hushed him and brushed out the goo in his hair. “It’s okay,” they consoled. “It’s okay. All you have to do is look.”

A wrecked sob crept up Tommy’s throat. Tears wet the mud and grime on his face. His eyelashes clumped together and he pried open his eyes. He needed this to be over.

Tommy peaked over the monster’s arms. A dazed blue met the evil below. “See that?” the monster said. The flower nymph slid her back down the colosseum wall as the guards hauled the dead demigod out of the Pit. Parts of the body he never wanted to see trod stains on the bloodied floor and the green stems cultivating in his stomach withered. “That will happen to you if you don’t accept this.”

He bit down on his lip to stop the distress from leaving his mouth. Tears blurred his vision yet it did nothing to hide the horror happening in front of him.

The bruises around his ankles and wrists hissed as the next opponent entered the Pit.

Red eyes glowed in the dim light. Gold and emerald jewellery hung on the opponent’s frame sparked his arrival. He was big, feared. An axe twisted in his hand and a shield adorned the other.

It only meant one thing if he was put in the Pit. With the Blood God, the walls wouldn’t stay the same colour they were before.

“Hey, hey don’t cry. If you cry on me, I’ll dissolve,” the monster mumbled. Tommy wiped his tears on his shirt though he could hardly grab at it with his shaking hands. “Well, maybe not dissolve but I’ll melt a bit!” the monster’s voice changed—it turned more high-pitched and carefree. Innocent, almost. “What’s your name?”

“Tommy,” he whispered, still struggling to breathe.

“Tommy from where?”

Shouting from the others behind the fences surged. It was too loud to think.

“I don’t know,” he answered, pressing himself closer to the monster.

“Tommy from nowhere, a nice name!” they exclaimed. “I’m Charlie.”

He frowned and forgot for a second that he wasn’t here. “How do you have such a human name?”

A fond look washed over Charlie. Their beady eyes weltered. “A friend gave it to me.”

Charlie’s hand returned under Tommy’s chin, pushing him to face forward. He needed to get used to this, to not flinch at the face of death or panic as a weapon came his way.

The Blood God hacked his axe into the flower nymph, easily flicking away the vines creeping up his arms. His axe raised and reigned terror on her body. He did not show mercy as she screamed, he didn’t hesitate when she begged for it to end. He did not stop until she crumbled to the floor, dead.

More tears drenched his cheeks and Charlie wiped them off. Their hand steamed but they continued, smiling sadly down at him.

“Don’t worry, they won’t pit you against the Blood God yet,” Charlie reassured.

“How’d you know?”

An uncomfortable grimace appeared on their face. “Because I’m next.”

A lodge formed in his throat. “No, no, no—” he diminished into short breaths and panicked squirms. Charlie couldn’t be next, they couldn’t be. They were the only one to show him kindness in this place. He doesn’t want to be alone here. They can’t leave him—

“Shh, shh, I’m going to be fine. I’m strong, really strong,” Charlie promised, pulling Tommy into their side. “You don’t know what I am, do you?” Charlie tried to give him a comforting smile but the fear in their eyes betrayed it all. “My mother is Antheia, the Goddess of swamps and flowery wreaths. She’s one of the Charites, who bring charm, beauty, creativity and goodwill to everyone around them. My mother personally stands for trust, friendship and love,” they said. “Do you trust me, Tommy from nowhere?”

He nodded, leaning into their cradling grip.

“Then believe me when I say I’ll come back, defeat that pig in a crown and give you the goopiest hug there is.”

Tommy giggled. It was broken yet child-like, a sound he hadn’t heard nor produced in years. It muffled under the guard’s bashing on the gates, letting the others know the round was over.

Charlie shoved something into Tommy’s hands. A pendant of some shape he couldn’t make out in the dark. “They’ll help you, she’ll help you if you ever need it.” The sincerity broke their heartful voice. “You have to continue watching. Promise me you’ll watch.”

Tommy nodded, clutching the pendant to his heart. “I will.”

The guard’s dragged Charlie from their chains, pushing Tommy aside. He cried out, clawing the dark for Charlie’s arms to be back around him. The gates in the Pit opened and his green friend stumbled inside.

The Blood God twirled his axe.

They didn’t even last a minute.

Blood splattered over Tommy’s exposed skin as Charlie’s head sliced from their neck. As his skin burned, the wet acid in their blood scarring him, Charlie’s shrieks echoed the Pit. Their body hit the floor. And they didn’t get back up.

Two red eyes peered at Tommy as his friend’s remains formed a puddle.

As he fought to keep watching, the Pit began to chant:

“Blood for the Blood God.”

He woke up to hands on him, though they weren’t slimy, but still soft and comforting. Beaded eyes shone in the dark and for a brief moment of peace, Tommy let himself believe it was Charlie. That he hadn’t just dreamt, remembered the only person to show him unconditional love dying in front of him.

His eyes squinted in the dark and the scars on his hands made sense. It was because of Charlie’s blood, it was Charlie. They had died, they were mutilated and murdered and for what? His fingernails clawed at the scars, digging deeper into the bloodied marks already littering his arms.

“No, stop, Tommy, stop,” a voice called quietly. The one with beaded eyes and comforting hands. It was Henry, not Charlie. He was in the Hermes cabin, in one of their bunk beds. He wasn’t eleven-years-old enduring torture in the Pit, he wasn’t near those glowing red eyes. He was out.

Henry pried his hands off him. Tears dropped off Tommy’s chin.

Why did he remember that? Why did he need to see that?

“Come with me,” Henry muttered, pulling Tommy out of his bed. The sheets stuck to his sweaty skin.

Henry tugged him into a separate room and made him climb a ladder up to the roof. The wind pinched his skin, iced the shaking and cooled his forming headache. Henry’s shoulders skimmed against his as the two gazed into the night. The star constellations, isolated moon and forest tops.

It brought solace to him.

“Nightmare?” Henry asked softly.

Tommy gritted his teeth and hugged his arms around himself, only to wince. He looked down and blood stained his inner forearms. Fingernail indents clustered his skin.

“You did that in your sleep,” Henry explained as he wrapped his jacket around Tommy’s shoulders. “And when you woke up.”

“Did I scream?” Tommy asked, his voice hoarse.

Henry shook his head. He retrieved an item from his pocket and placed it in Tommy’s hand. It was a small jar with gold flakes inside. “It’s ambrosia. The food eaten by Gods for pleasure and eaten by demigods so we aren’t in pain.”

Tommy grasped at the jar’s lid but the tremors in his hands stopped him from opening it. Henry did it for him and laid a single flake in Tommy’s palm.

“Will it hurt me?” he asked. He didn’t think he could handle any more pain after the memory he had just had.

“Not with this amount, no,” Henry said. “It’s only if you eat too much that it’ll make you feel feverish. An Apollo kid would say it’ll turn your blood to fire and bones to sand, but personally, it just gives you a migraine.”

Tommy let out a dry huff, an attempt at laughter. He brought the ambrosia flake to his mouth and it dissolved on his tongue.

He flinched, another unshed tear rolled down his cheek. His breathing picked up from just the taste.

“Are you okay?” Henry asked, tightening the jacket around Tommy. “What does it taste like for you? Don’t be embarrassed either because mine tastes like grass or hay. It thinks I’m a barnyard animal, apparently. Still tastes nice though.”

The bile in his throat crept closer to his tongue. “It’s supposed to taste good?”

“Yeah, it’s your favourite food or just a taste with a happy memory attached.”

All Tommy saw as the ambrosia melted inside his mouth were those same red eyes from the Pit. It tasted like a slap to the face and forced swig of vodka, followed by a sting.

He didn’t understand.

“Well, what’s it like?” Henry prompted.

It wasn’t a mother’s baked cookies or a father’s brewed cup of hot chocolate. It was pain, pain soaked in alcohol and reminiscent of the same monster who killed Charlie. The Blood God. Those red eyes that pricked tears in his own evoked comfort with the flake of ambrosia.

“It tastes like home,” is what he said instead. And surprisingly, it wasn’t a lie.

Henry hummed at his answer and put the lid back onto the jar. “That should heal the marks on your arm.”

Tommy flexed his hands as his inner forearm tickled. It was already beginning to heal.

“I’ll let you be alone for a while,” Henry said, lightly and he left. His voice was so similar to Charlie’s, his eyes were too rounded to not remind him of that slimy and endearing creature.

He sniffed and wiped the blood off his arm.

As the black sky eased the tension in his body, the red bothered him now.

Chapter Text

Tommy didn’t intend to fall asleep on the cabin’s roof, but apparently he did. There was just something so comforting about falling asleep up there. The dark sky and stars encompassing the twilight were far better than a springy mattress and cobweb ridden ceilings. Plus, it didn’t smell like Lynx Africa or three-in-one hair products.

Thankfully, as the head of Hermes cabin, Henry woke up earlier than everyone else and had retrieved Tommy from the roof. Though, he did demand that Tommy gave back his jacket from last night which was annoying. It was fluffy fleece, one he very much missed as soon as it was ripped from him.

“Stop sulking, I need to take you to breakfast,” Henry said as he pushed Tommy inside the bathroom.

The bathroom, to put it in its simplest form, was a fucking mess. But all he needed was a toothbrush and mirror to be sorted for the day. Using the mirror, he redid the small braid he always had framing the left side of his face. It hung just in front of his ear. He was unsure where the braid came from. But it was the only nice change in appearance he liked after seeing himself for the first time after being rescued from the Pit.

A tiny braid, as meniscal and irrelevant as it seemed, meant everything to him. Tucked neatly in his blonde curls.

It brought solace from the same gaze in the mirror that projected changed eyes, layered scars and a matured face. No longer did that naïve eleven-year-old know his reflection. That child, who stayed up late talking to his online best friend and climbed any tree that dared tower over him, died the moment those bright, blue eyes faded to an iced grey.

With his hair finished, Tommy pulled open the bathroom door and scowled at Henry.

“First, you take away my jacket—”

“That isn’t even yours—”

“—and now you dare force me to eat food as soon as I wake up,” Tommy finished, ignoring Henry’s interjection. It was early morning and the thought of eating food at this hour made him feel sick. “This violates the Geneva Convention.”

Henry blinked wearily at him as if he regretted accepting Tommy from Sapnap and George—which was true. “It’s Saturday so there are waffles.”

“Fine,” Tommy exhaled sharply. “I guess you get away with violating international humanitarian law then.”

With a painful sigh, Henry dragged him out of the Hermes cabin. The courtyard looked livelier than yesterday afternoon. More windows in the cabins had their curtains pulled apart and simple details were visible to the eye. Like the vines decorating the ceiling of the inner Demeter cabin or the unnecessary amount of bean bags in the Hypnos demigod’s domain. Everything just looked better than the housing for the Hermes demigods. Though, it didn’t take much to do so.

Henry tugged on Tommy’s arm and the two walked along the oak wood path to the pavilion. Unlike the banquet last night, the tables were separated into smaller ones and each had a different themed tablecloth.

It was more isolated, perhaps even conceded. There weren’t jokes passed between unrelated demigods or homoerotic-coded threats thrown over tables (blame Wilbur and Quackity). Instead, people sat dictated by their Godly parentage; the Aphrodite kids next to each other and the sole Hades-borne all alone.

Wilbur tore the edges of the black tablecloth as other demigods, ones with siblings, ate with a smile.

It looked lonely. But the pile of waffles stacked on Wilbur’s plate sure weren’t. At least he had that going for him.

“I have a question,” Tommy said as he stared at the Ares table where Dream, George and Sapnap sat. “If we sit on our parent’s tables, then why are they…?” he trailed off and gestured to the trio.

Henry frowned and peered over at them. Something in him twisted. A sour emotion, perhaps jealousy, envy or irritation with how his lips thinned. But it quickly vanished.

“George, being a satyr, has free reign of where to sit. Dream is a God and should be sitting next to Puffy but it seems bothering Sapnap is more of a priority than upholding our camp’s structures,” Henry explained. Bitterness hid beneath his tone, but poorly. Tommy only recognised it because it was almost a second-skin to him.

The two sat down.

“Isn’t it weird to be friends with a God?” he asked as Dream wheezed at something George said, followed by Sapnap throwing a piece of waffle at them both.

“I wouldn’t know,” Henry stated, voice clipped. “Dream only befriends you if you’re interesting.”

Tommy gaped and fought off the urge to shove some sense into him. “Don’t say that about yourself, Henry, you are the finest of the Hermes demigods.”

Henry scoffed but left it there. “Anyway, Dream is a minor God so it’s different. In some myths, he’s a spirit of trickery, so even less powerful compared to the Olympians. It’s easier to humanise someone like that.”

As Tommy turned away from the trio, he felt eyes on him coming from that direction. Potent ones, a force that reminded him of pelting rain and cracks of chains. He looked back and it was Dream. The God raised his cup. A friendly smile flashed at him as his mask lifted slightly so Dream could drink.

Tommy glared at him. “He looks like a piss baby.”

Henry choked on his drink and shoved at Tommy’s shoulders. “Who told you he wet the bed once?”

“No one.”

An awkward silence settled between them.

“Well.”

Tommy snorted out laughter and Henry choked on his drink again.

After Henry regained his breath, Tommy picked at the waffle placed on his plate. His lack of hunger was different to an average morning. The previous night caused the awaiting sickness in his stomach. New memories of the Pit, the red-eyed Blood God, Charlie’s remains decimated all over the floor, their essence seeping into the cracks of the concrete, and the gift he received from Charlie—a beaded pendent that he didn’t remember or have possession of anymore. It curled nausea inside of him. Opened another empty passage within in.

As Henry commenced the libation of the breakfast, the sacrifice to the Gods, it grew worse. He didn’t know why but it did.

“I have another question,” he suddenly asked, tired of poking at the food on his plate. He had many questions, to be honest. Like why this camp structured itself entirely by who your Godly parent was instead of who you were, why the ambrosia tasted of the Pit instead of what others would deem a conventional home, or even why worshipping these Gods caused his jaw to unconsciously clench. As if they were the wrong ones, not the ones he chose. But one question laid superior for now.

Henry put down his enchanted goblet. “Dear Gods, save me—”

“It’s a good question, Henry!” he exclaimed defensively. And it was. Henry narrowed his eyes at him. “Are nightmares of things you didn’t previously remember common for demigods?”

Brown narrowed eyes softened. “Is this about last night?”

Tommy bristled, uncomfortable. He readjusted where he sat. The gaze of brown eyes and furrowed brows felt invasive. The contradiction he projected hurt. He was scared of familiarity, of remembering things his head made sure he forgot, yet hated this newness. The new people, new responses and world he had somehow always been apart of. Attachments that scratched his closed off inclination.

“It was a memory,” he admitted, biting his lip. He didn’t know how to word it, how to bring it up. The cages, shackles, bruises around his wrists and ankles and trust that broke with a single swing of an axe. Honesty depleted from his tongue, riddled with struggle. “A memory of a place my head kept hidden from me,” he settled on.

“Dreams are different for demigods,” Henry began. “They’re usually projections of sorts, they have a meaning. Sometimes they’re messages from someone else,” he paused, unsure for a moment. “Our dreams are real, like things currently happening, monsters talking about you, enemies conspiring against you. Threats, warnings and all that.”

Tommy paled. He didn’t know what that meant for him. For the Pit.

Noticing his expression, Henry sat up straighter. His hand lifted from the grip he had on the table, almost as if he wanted to touch him, a light pat on the shoulder or comforting side-hug, but Henry’s hesitancy won. With how Tommy’s skin itched, reliving the curdling sting Charlie’s blood left, he honestly preferred it this way.

“Puffy needs you before breakfast ends to see the Oracle,” Henry announced. “You can ask her about that then.”

An oracle. He vaguely knew about them, specifically Delphi; people who the Gods chose to speak through, with their divine intervention, prophecies, double-edged advice and twisted fates.

Before he could even ask why he’d need to speak to an oracle, a certain immortal centaur appeared at the head of the Hermes table. Puffy stood with her red robe thrown over the horse-like part of her back. Her hooves had been painted golden, probably with nail polish or actual gold. He would never get used to that. It was bad enough with George ending up being a goat, but Puffy was a whole-ass pony.

“Care to follow me to the Community House, Tommy?” Puffy requested, though he had no choice but to go with her. After all, she was still his Principal in a way. He got up and followed her. “How’d you like the camp so far?”

Tommy bit his lip to the real answer he had, which was that he’d rather prefer one of the hotels by Brighton seafront, but he didn’t expect demigods to have food service and a TV licence.

“It’s okay, I guess,” he decided on.

“Well, if you have any problems with anything or anyone, my ears are always open,” Puffy said, smiling down at him. He nodded, thankful.

The trip to the Community House was short. It was the brick building he had seen on his first day, the focal point to all oak wood pathways. Flowers hung from the second-floor windows and carved stones of different designs you’d see on those Ancient Greek vases in museums accompanied the redbrick foundations.

As Puffy guided him up to the second floor of the Community House, they stopped at staircase that trailed up to a gated door of an attic.

“Why do I have to see your Oracle?” Tommy asked.

“Every new demigod within our borders has to visit him to make sure there’s no divine destiny in store for you,” Puffy said, voice strained. “Just… just,” she paused and grabbed Tommy’s arm. Her face creased with concern. “Please don’t get a prophecy. I don’t think my sanity could handle any quests.”

Puffy squeezed him comfortingly before releasing her hold. “I’ll leave you to it. Hopefully, your presence doesn’t trigger anything in our Oracle. If anything happens, I’ll be in my office on the first floor. It’s the room next to Dream’s desk.”

Her echoing footsteps rattled the metal framing of the staircase.

He knew of prophecies, of their ambiguous wordings and predestinations. The cyclical downfalls of Uranus and Kronos, Oedipus’ self-fulfilling prophecy, Achilles’ death at Troy and King Croesus’ defeat with his attack on the Persian Empire.

Tommy didn’t want that. Betrayals, misery, death and war… it didn’t sound that appealing to receive.

Ignoring the quivers in his body, the tremors in each step he took, he reached the top of the staircase. His hand shook at the thought of twisting the doorknob. But before he could walk back down those stairs and refuse whatever oracle lived inside that attic, the door creaked open.

He flinched, heart rapidly proceeding its usual rhythm.

But there was no need.

Ranboo stood inside the room with a book and pen in his hands. The guy Tubbo shortly introduced him to just before the banquet last night. He was the Oracle. The one whose descendants doomed ignorant Empires, spoke of murders in the midst of battles, and voiced blasphemy to kings. It was a scrawny mortal boy, awkward at first impressions and Tubbo’s friend.

“Oh, hey Tommy,” Ranboo said. He closed the book and placed it on the coffee table in the room. The attic was his bedroom, it seemed, and also a storage room for misplaced artefacts. Ranging from globes to ancient artworks.

Since the only words the two had exchanged so far was Tommy calling Ranboo a Tory at the banquet, the conversation started as well as expected. Meaning: Tommy stumbled over himself and Ranboo just continued standing there, tight lipped and anxious.

“You’re the Oracle?” Tommy blurted out. It sounded more malicious than he intended, as if Ranboo didn’t deserve this status of prestige or chosen responsibility. But it just surprised him.

“I’m the current vessel of Delphi, yes,” Ranboo said with his arms crossed.

Of Delphi. The Oracle who knew the number of grains of sand and the extent of the sea.

“So how does this work?” Tommy eventually asked, swallowing the waver in his voice.

There wasn’t much room for small talk when there was a chance Ranboo could bust out some prophecy of Tommy’s ultimate demise. Just like Delphi had with Psyche or Heracles or- or just about anyone in Greek mythology who had a shit period in their life.

He didn’t want a prophecy, he didn’t want a quest or anything to do with his fate leaving Ranboo’s lips. No green smoke, no eyes rolling back into their sockets and gasping into the divine. None of that.

“Well, I don’t really know,” Ranboo muttered as he rubbed the back of his neck. “Historically, sacrificing goats was the way to go if you wanted to get a prophecy but I don’t think anyone wants that,” he rambled until he noticed Tommy’s wide-eyes. “It normally works with me focusing whilst maintaining physical contact.”

Tommy wasn’t really in the mood to hold hands with a guy who could potentially ruin his life.

“I can just touch your shoulder or something! Not much is needed,” Ranboo added quickly. “And nothing happens most of the time. I haven’t gotten a prophecy or anything in years.” He frowned. “Not since Wilbur.”

Sighing, Tommy stepped forward, “Let’s get this over with then.” Ranboo nodded.

His hand hovered over Tommy’s arm, the tips of his fingers brushed against his skin. He squirmed at the contact but he endured it. He could do this, he could let a person he only met yesterday go inside his head and unleash whatever fate the Gods had already gifted him. It was fine. It would be fine.

Ranboo clasped his palm around Tommy’s upper arm. His hand was warm, clammy with nerves. Not unbearable though. Tommy expected an electric shock or something to hurt, to be doubling over in pain but nothing came.

The dribbling from the tap in the sink echoed in the attic. Squeaking from the radiators. Ranboo stayed still, gripping onto his arm and awaiting for… nothing. Tommy’s eyes flickered up at him and Ranboo’s face flushed. The whole situation was awkward. Underwhelming, even.

Just as Ranboo went to let go, fingers dug into his skin. Fingernails stabbed into Tommy’s flesh. Flashes of everything, from an explosion of atoms to ice melting into its poisoned home, pinched at his eyes. He screwed them shut, wincing.

Then it was quiet.

No water dripped onto the sink, no pressure bruised his arm and fingernails no longer cut into him. There was no Ranboo at all.

Instead of dust scratching at his nose, grass and saltwater sought after his senses. Tommy stood in the middle of a field. A plains biome, one with an oak forest to the east and a broad body of water to his west.

It was… peaceful. Not a dark cloud in sight, no awaiting thunderstorm or lightning. Just a cool summer afternoon with the sun beaming down on him.

Something flew over his head, from the left of his shoulder. Wings soared across the same azure sky. It was a bird, a vulture. Yet with every feather that crossed a cloud, the night followed in its flight. Blood dripped from the bird’s beak and talons.

Chariots of darkness flooded his grassy fields and abyss of blue. And the flashes returned.

Two notebooks, one with a single smile scratched into the worn leather and the other with a phrase ‘Do Not Read’ written across it. A shield with Medusa’s face and something red. Something round, oval-like, pulsing. Lairs of red, vines of blood. It was alive, it was hungry, it wanted more and more and—

A cliff. An edge into somewhere Tommy never wanted to be near. The feeling of falling, of losing. Vacant white eyes, devoid of pupils, devoid of life. Tears steaming into the red.

Fire. Then a fire. Mushroom patches in flames, ruby eyes, a golden crown, purple flowers and crying. Sobbing into dirt and begging at the empty sky above.

He was back in the plains biome. But not on his feet. Futile sunlight failed to pierce through the darkness above. It almost looked like a cloak across the sky or ruffles of a dress, long raven hair.

The dark swallowed the sun.

Flickers of white strained Tommy’s eyes, snowflakes and stability, an Empire. Black wings and red robes.

And pain. A glowing axe plunging deep into his gut over and over again. His body ripped into pieces and stuck together with a piece of him missing each time. It hurt, it stung and shattered everything he had left.

Locked doors. Lava housing someone deep inside.

Then it stopped. No more throbbing eyes under tightly closed eyelids, no more heat from the lava. The dripping water from Ranboo’s attic sink echoed once more.

Ranboo crouched over him, his face panicked and pale.

“Holy,” Ranboo exhaled sharply as hands brushed past the parts of Tommy that moments prior were numb and cold.

He didn’t understand. He didn’t fucking understand anything. It wasn’t a prophecy, it wasn’t a quest or anything with words or structure. Just flashing lights and things—sights, smells, objects, red-eyes, red vines, the dark, it was so fucking dark—that he never wanted to see again.

It made no sense, none of it did. The shouts of his name over a dying cliff, the ghostly eyes, the death that wrecked him through again and again.

Ranboo’s hands caressed his face and they were wet. No- no, he was crying. His face was wet. Those were his tears, his sobs breaking his throat and hitched intakes of air that stabbed at his chest.

“Tommy, listen it’s okay, it’s okay, we’re back, we’re—”

He didn’t care. He didn’t care because what the fuck did he see? His fate? His predestined life? Full of darkness and destruction, failed upheaval and blood. He just wanted to go back to when the biggest struggle of his life was a university application. Not this.

Even when the touch rubbing circles into his back eased his pounding head, the feeling didn’t leave. The daunting panic that he wasn’t supposed to see that. That this visit was supposed to either give him a voiced prophecy, one with rhyme and vague implications, or nothing at all. But not a vision.

“What happened?” Ranboo asked quietly. “What happened, Tommy?”

He didn’t even know.

The lodge in his throat swelled. “I- I don’t—” he choked on his words. “Nothing,” he bit out. It stung to say, to lie, as if the same force that evoked the vision knew.

Ranboo frowned and the touch on his back slowed. “Nothing?”

“It just scared me. I was projected somewhere else, a field or something and…” he trailed off, eyes fixated on his shaking hands, “…and nothing.”

If he kept the Pit to himself, the memories of that colosseum full of unmissed demigods and imprisoned monsters, then this needed to be hidden too.

“No one reacts to just nothing like that,” Ranboo said, uncertain.

The pounding surged.

“Well I did!” Tommy shouted, voice hoarse. He shuffled away from Ranboo, startling him. His heart battered against the unstable seems holding him together. “I saw nothing,” he spat. “Did you fucking hear me? I saw nothing, you saw nothing and that was it.”

A fog cascaded over his sight, something too familiar.

Fear flashed across Ranboo but that was fuck-all compared to the terror looming in Tommy. He was scared, he was so scared. Even more so when he woke up in the school showers with a monster’s blood trickling down into the drains.

“Wouldn’t you remember the prophecy if I had one anyway?” Tommy demanded, forceful. He needed this to be over, to be pushed under the rug and never mentioned again.

Ranboo gulped and fiddled with his hands. “Um, well, I kinda have these memory issues so technically I should remember a prophecy but sometimes it gets a bit too much.” His voice faltered, cracked in one place and anxiety practically propelled off him.

Tommy got up from the floor and sighed. Ranboo didn’t choose to give him his vision. He was just a mouth-piece of the Gods. A pawn. “It’s fine, Ranboo, I didn’t hear anything anyway. Just flashes of things, no prophecies or quests here.”

Still a bit perturbed, Ranboo hesitated to nod.

He rushed down the attic staircase without another word. As he made it down to the first floor, he walked past Dream’s office space. There was something on his desk. An object that looked too familiar to just ignore. Something that resurfaced the instability that desired for Tommy to fall apart.

Right next to the picture frame of George and Sapnap was a book. A notebook.

A notebook with a smile indented into the leather front. Just like the one he saw in—

No, no, please no, he can’t have this be happening. Those flashes of white and wisps of death can’t be real.

His bottom lip trembled and a gloved hand clasped over his shoulder. He let out a shriek and twisted round. Porcelain marked with the same taunting smile stared back at him. Dream.

“Tommy, you okay?” Dream asked but his voice was distant. Everything was distant, it was too much; the vision, the hand on him, the notebook on the desk.

But he had to contain himself. Especially in front of the God who owned the notebook.

“I’m fine,” he choked out, thinning his lips to hide his fear. His fists curled behind his back to stop the shaking.

Dream hummed, though it sounded more concerned than dismissive. “I’m guessing you just came from Ranboo.”

“Yep!” he exclaimed with a forced grin. “Weird guy with a weird bedroom. You know you really need to sort out the water system in his bedroom, the sink taps kept—”

“It’s stupid to try to deceive the God of deception, Tommy,” Dream remarked. The two golden rings circling his head dimmed. “Or even a God at all.”

For fuck’s sake. Now he was going to be struck down by lightning or some other Godly bullshit. Bound onto a fiery wheel that spun for eternity like Ixion or cursed with Erysichthon’s insatiable hunger until he ate his own flesh and died.

“What did you see?” Dream persisted.

He hated it. He hated it so much. The way the concern in his tone seemed so familiar. But he couldn’t place where.

Tommy eyed the notebook on the desk for a final time and huffed. “It’s confusing. There was a bird at some point,” he mumbled. Technically, if he gave out vague examples of what he saw, then it wasn’t deceit. But with how Dream tensed this seemed to be the wrong answer. “It was a vulture or something. All it did was fly over from my left and—”

Dream’s jaw clenched under the mask, though not with anger. “From your left? Fuck,” he uttered. “Listen to me carefully, okay?” he said, placing his other hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “That’s a bad omen, especially if it’s in an Oracle’s intervention.”

A bad omen. Of fucking course it was.

“Don’t tell anyone what you saw,” Dream continued, a tint of something to his voice. Something edged and fearful. “It’s not good to be known as an omen, Tommy, trust me with that.”

The hands on his shoulder became burdening. He stepped back and eyed the God of trickery. “Why should I trust you?”

Anything familiar to Tommy was dangerous; the red-eyed Blood God, the Pit.

“We both know more than we let on, don’t we?” Dream said, head tilted. “Yours is just a matter of remembering.”

And with that, Dream left.

Tommy uncurled his fists yet the urgency that marked fingernail indents in his palm remained. But, just like with the painful strain in Tommy’s back, it was something he needed to get used to.

As promised at yesterday’s banquet, Tubbo waited for Tommy to return to the Hermes table after breakfast had finished. He almost forgot that Tubbo wanted to talk to him. But if any questions left his mouth about the visit to the Oracle or why he disappeared, he’d just scream at this point. It was only the morning and yet Tommy wanted to succumb into his bedsheets and forget this day ever happened.

“You look like shit,” was what greeted him at the table.

“Thanks, Tubbo,” Tommy replied, but this was what he yearned for. Normalcy, nostalgia of how it used to be. Quick quips and light-hearted insults between two friends over Skype and online chatrooms.

Tubbo beamed at him. “It’s an objective observation.”

He rolled his eyes. “What did you need from me? I am a busy man, after all.”

“Well, I was going to make you a questionnaire to inform me on all the shit I’ve missed since we lost contact but I’ve been banned from the printer in the Athena cabin. And you look like you want to die already, so I’ll leave that to another time,” Tubbo rambled as he began to walk into a random direction, stringing Tommy along to follow him. “Instead, I’m going to be your helpful guide through demigodhood.”

Tommy frowned. As much as he appreciated that the tiredness on his face conveyed suicidal tendencies to Tubbo, the boy was blunter than he used to be. When they were younger, he was more hesitant, shy, but still straightforward at the most pivotal moments in their conversations.

“A guide?” he repeated. “George and Sapnap already gave me a tour.”

“But did they let you choose a weapon from the armoury?” Tubbo asked and Tommy shook his head. “Good! Let’s go.” Before he could interject, Tubbo yanked him by his elbow and dragged him to the armoury.

It should scare him that Tubbo was this excited to show Tommy collections of Ancient Greek weapons, but this was the same person who at age eight somehow coded nuclear weapons into his ‘Sims 3’ world. The Pancake family stood no chance at world peace.

Surprisingly, the armoury was empty, but it was right after breakfast and not even demigods were immune to indigestion. Weapons ranging from bows to spears hung from hooks on the wall, some were even in glass cases, like a double-bladed sword iron sword and a steel scythe.

“Oh, that’s Theseus’ sword,” Tubbo commented.

His back ached at the name. He shrugged off the feeling and turned to face Tubbo.

“I think Sam wants to use the Forge to re-do the metal workings because it’s old,” Tubbo continued. “I asked him to give it some upgrades but he said no. Personally, a blow-torch sword sounds cool.”

“It would be multi-functioning.”

“Exactly!” Tubbo exclaimed. “If I was a child of Hephaestus, oh boy, I’d upgrade everything.”

“And probably cause a war on technology,” Tommy added and Tubbo couldn’t help but agree.

“Does anything in here spark your interest then?” Tubbo asked, gesturing to the shelves on the opposite end of the armoury and the pile of random, discarded weapons. “There’s different metals. Like Celestial Bronze, Adamantine or Imperial Gold, which is more Roman and can actually hurt demigods as well. Oh and Stygian Iron, but only beings of the Underworld can wield that metal. That’s what my staff is made out of since Hecate is a chthonic Goddess.”

He didn’t want a sword since for some reason, he had access to one whenever the moment willed it—something he still didn’t understand—and yesterday proved he was shit at archery.

There was another cased weapon in the far corner. He walked towards it. The glass case housed a golden axe, though there was something radiating off it to make it glow purplish.

“What’s this?” he pointed to it and Tubbo made a noise in the back of his throat.

“Of course you like that one,” Tubbo grumbled. “It’s the Axe of Peace, something we- something I took from someone last year.”

Tubbo’s eyes glared down at the axe, as if he had a personal vendetta against it.

“What’s wrong with it?”

“More like what’s wrong with the person who used it,” Tubbo said, tone bitter. “It’s a good weapon though. Imperial Gold, enchanted with stuff even I can’t identify. Puffy almost locked this one away for good but since we know the damage it can do, it’s not a complete safety hazard.”

The glint of the axe was unsettling but Tommy couldn’t place why. Either way, he definitely wanted it. He uplifted the glass box and grabbed the axe from its handle. He almost dropped it from how wrong it felt, like he shouldn’t even be in close proximity with it. But the handle gripped at his palm, the axe itself attached itself to him. Like it was already his.

Tubbo grabbed a leather strap and passed it to him. Tommy felt his hands go at work before he even registered the movement. As if someone had done this for him in the past.

He fastened the buckle connecting the strap from his waist to his shoulder and slit the axe into the holster on his back. It was uncomfortable and heavy, but conventional for drawing the weapon when needed.

“Well,” Tubbo said, startling Tommy. “I expected you to be more picky so we have some time until Manhunt later today.”

“Manhunt?” he echoed. “What the fuck is Manhunt?”

“Every Saturday, instead of chores and other educational bullshit like improving our Ancient Greek or general knowledge on monsters, we have Manhunt,” Tubbo explained. “Dream created it a couple of years ago. Runners are assigned a random task that they have to complete and the other group, the Hunters, have to sabotage and make sure they don’t succeed. Last week, it was a glorified Angry Birds match and I think today it’s inspired by Capture the Flag.”

The last thing Tommy wanted today was physical exercise. Or physical anything.

“Come on, I’ll show you my bee familiars in the meantime.”

Ignorantly, Tommy agreed. Familiars sounded cool and he didn’t mind bees. But that was a mistake. The Hecate cabin had cursed items everywhere he looked and if he so happened to touch anything, he’d probably burst into flames on the spot. And the bees hated him.

Hours passed of Tubbo ranting about the intricacies of being a child of Hecate—like the orbs he could throw at people or the minimal control he had over the gaslighting Mist—until a horn sounded from the centre fountain in the courtyard. It was Manhunt time apparently.

Everyone gathered in the courtyard. Apparently, Dream wasn’t allowed to compete, something about him cheating last year, so he was in charge of sorting out teams. He asked everyone to get into pairs.

George grabbed him but as he opened his mouth to protest that he wanted to pair with Tubbo, Tubbo had Ranboo by his side, face bright and grinning. Back turned to him. He didn’t even think of going with Tommy—

The protest died on his tongue.

No, it was fine. This was fine. It would be more fun against Tubbo than with him. The one person he ever deeply cared for and had just reunited with, the only one who knew about the imaginary friends he denied to have when he was younger, his best friend. His best friend who had a new best friend now. Not even new, just new to Tommy.

He was being pathetic, jealous. It wasn’t fair, he had been gone for years, of course Tubbo would find someone else to cling onto to. It was just Tommy’s fault that he hadn’t done the same. That he couldn’t find anyone to fill in the blanks, the gaping hole Tubbo left. His fault for assuming everything would go back to how it used to be.

“Come on Tomathy,” George’s exaggerated British accent snapped him out of his pity party. “It’s better to be on the Hunters side.”

Swallowing down his irritation, Tommy let George parade him around.

“So, is this the team?” he asked as he peered at the people in his circle. Wilbur was there, picking at his fingernails, and so was the guy he had that weird tension with over the banquet. Quackity, the one with a blue beanie and eye across his eye.

“Yep, pretty good team,” George said, eyeing the Runners at the other end of the courtyard. “Actually nevermind, Sapnap is on the Runners side, lemme just—” George moved to run to the opposite team. Though, Quackity pulled him back before he could even take a step. “Let me go!”

Tommy stood to the side, disturbed, as Sapnap noticed George in the distance and the two began shouting across to each other, re-enacting some BTEC Romeo and Juliet roleplay. He kept pronouncing George’s name as ‘Gorge’.

Quackity shared a look with him. “These are grown ass men,” he complained, lip curled with disgust but eyes bright with amusement. “Grown men.”

He huffed a laugh.

“I’m Quackity, by the way, we haven’t been properly introduced. Son of Nemesis,” he said, offering his hand for Tommy to shake, which he reciprocated.

“Nemesis? Like the ride in Thorpe Park?”

A scowl came across Quackity’s face. “What the fuck is Thorpe Park? And no, Nemesis is the Goddess of retribution and revenge.”

“Oh,” Tommy’s face reddened. “Why did they name a rollercoaster after your—”

“My mother is not a ride—”

“Gentlemen, as much as we’d all love to hear about how rideable Quackity’s mother is, I think we have a game to win,” Wilbur interrupted, causing Quackity’s jaw to clench. The tension was back and Tommy felt as if he were in the court stands watching his parents divorce.

“George and I will take the newbie, everyone else resume the usual defence positions we had last month,” Quackity said as he led the group inside the tent. “If you don’t remember your positions, that’s not my problem. But it’ll be yours if we lose this.” It sounded like a threat, but surely, the son of literal revenge wouldn’t get all worked up over those who cost his win in this Saturday event.

Yeah, Tommy was fucked if he somehow messed this up for everyone.

Inside the tent were copies of the same weapons; basic swords, bows and axes. Iron armour hung from stands.

“For Manhunt, we aren’t allowed to use our own weapons so put your axe to the side,” Quackity said as he chucked a sword at Tommy, who immediately dropped it on his foot. “These weapons have an enchantment on them, a curse of binding. If you’re fatally wounded with them, you don’t die. Instead, you respawn.”

“Hold the fuck up, you can be killed in this?” he objected, glaring down at the glowing sword in his hand. Even the mention of death spiked fear in his stomach. Especially after the vision where he felt it ruin him over and over—

“Fun, right?” Quackity quipped, smirking at the horror on his face. “A stab wound only feels like a scratch and it doesn’t scar. Though, your body disintegrating and then waking up in medical gives you a migraine.”

Tommy would rather not go through any of that.

After ten minutes of suiting himself up, he walked to the defence area in the forest. The forest itself didn’t seem safe to house a games event, with the lurking fog, scamper of hopefully passive mythological creatures and threat of being so close to the border’s edge.

George and Quackity kept shoving at each other and tripping over the occasional tree root. He tightened the straps of his chest plate and frowned at the outline of Wilbur up ahead. The fucker didn’t even have armour on. He didn’t know if it was a fashion statement or an active want to be targeted. Probably both.

He ran ahead and joined Wilbur’s side. “So when does this start?” he asked.

Wilbur spared a glance in his direction. “Oh, it already has. They have Sapnap so expect to be stormed any second now.” Tommy gripped his sword tighter. “You don’t look so amused at this.”

He gritted his teeth. “Forgive me for not wanting to be stabbed with a respawn sword.”

“As someone who’s died twice in these Manhunts, it is a horrible experience and gave me nightmares for the next month,” Wilbur stated with a biting smile, though it quickly fell from his face. “I’m kidding, Styx, it doesn’t hurt.”

Whilst everyone else settled into their positions, Tommy leant against a tree and watched Wilbur play with the skeleton cat he had just ascended from the ground. Casual necromancy. It’s name was Mr President and Wilbur wouldn’t stop cooing at it.

An inkling of a smile etched its way onto Tommy’s lips. It was refreshing, a son of Hades playing with literal bones that meowed. Especially when its bony canines bit Wilbur’s hand.

Something moved in the corner of his right eye.

A head of brown hair and short stature. He pushed himself up off the tree and moved to hit Wilbur on the shoulder, but his hand met the air. Wilbur was gone. And so were the Demeter demigods guarding the bush entrances to the flag. And everyone else. Gone.

It was just him.

His skin began to vibrate. Not sting, but itch. Like there was something moving underneath, swimming in his blood, sliding between the cells in his muscles. A powerful surge, the embodiment of everything that defied nature and progressed time.

It felt similar to the hexes Tubbo showed him earlier in his cabin. The small spells of sparklers and amplifying his bee’s wings. But this was different, this was—

Wrong. It felt wrong.

Outlines skated across his vision, shapes too vague to pick out. The fog peaking between trees lunged forward, swallowing everything the grey earlier left untouched.

Leaves turned to barbed wire, branches into metal beams, bushes to cages and the fog created an arena. Something circular with fences towering over its depth. A colosseum.

The Pit.

He was back there. He was here again. He couldn’t be, he got out, someone rescued him and swore that he’d never step foot in there ever again. Their deep and comforting voice, hooded attire and promising eyes. His saviour wasn’t here to protect him this time. But another set of eyes were.

Ones that bled rubies and glinted in the dark. Him. The one who slaughtered Charlie, the only person who cared about a crying child shackled to the floor.

The Blood God stepped closer.

His breathing quickened until his throat constricted. He couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t move.

A sword weighed in his trembling hands. His fingers struggled to keep the blade from scraping along the floor.

He couldn’t feel his fingertips, everything but the pounding from his chest was numb. Numb to the tears swelling in his eyes, the sweat trickling down his neck and swaying of his legs.

The red-eyed man, the crowned monster took another step. Wind rattled the cages but that didn’t make sense, there was no wind in the Pit, it was closed off, suffocating, no fresh air, no bristling breeze. Footsteps shouldn’t scrunch as if mud laid underneath.

He didn’t want to die. The sword in his hands jolted, his wrists ached. He needed to fight back, to try, to survive and endure it all so he could live to see another day.

Another step echoed and his body shot forward.

The blade disappeared deep into the Blood God’s torso. A high-pitched cry punctured his ears. A sound the Blood God would never make.

Then it all fell. The dazed outlines, the fences, the fog, the Pit. Greys and blacks dissolved into greenery.

He was still in the forest. Still right next to the tree he had been leaning on moments prior. And a body dropped to the ground with Tommy’s sword impaled in their stomach.

One with brown hair and short stature.

Tubbo.

He stumbled backwards, bile rising up his throat. He had just stabbed his best friend.

Tommy had—

“Calm down!” he couldn’t hear the voices over the sight beneath him. Eyes that shined hours prior as Tubbo laughed now widened in fear. In momentary anguish that Tommy had caused. He did that, he—

“Everyone, back up!”

Tubbo’s body fucking disappeared.

Figures around him got too close, waves of hands, attempts of consolation and assurance. But his chest wouldn’t stop heaving. Pants of gasped breaths and wet whimpers.

“Tommy, listen to me, Tommy, it’s fine, he’s just going to respawn.”

He shook his head, collapsing into the ground. Red stained his hands, his clothes, his skin. Everything. But with a single blink, it washed away.

“Dream, I know you’re trying to help but fuck off,” a rougher voice interjected. Harsh and smooth.

A whine left his lips, he was a fucking mess. He couldn’t do this, he can’t be a demigod. He couldn’t function in the mortal world, why did he even let himself think he’d survive this one?

“I’ve dealt with this before,” the same rough voice said.

And something heavy lifted. The thing that smothered him.

Even with his eyes clenched shut, he could sense the shadows dissolving from around him. The darkness replaced the fog and details of reality. A hand clutched at him and he sunk into the man’s grip, limp.

Wisps of hair brushed against his cheek. Someone placed him on the ground.

He pried open his eyes, encrusted with dried tears and irritation. Wilbur sat next to him on a flower field.

“The smell of flowers usually keeps my brother grounded,” Wilbur whispered as he tugged at the grass strands. “Too scented to hold any resemblance to what caused his head to not be here anymore.”

Rose bushes and daises scattered the patches of green that surrounded him. The sky paled with its pastel beams. 

Wilbur watched him closely. Almost as if he knew what to look for, the signs that his panic may worsen or that none of this was working. Rather than make him feel exposed, it did the opposite. Someone else knew what this choking climbing up his throat felt like, what this suffocation did to you. 

He wasn’t alone with just the flowers. He was with Wilbur. 

“I killed Tubbo,” he croaked out impulsively. Tears threatened to roll down his face again, clip under his chin and dampen his collar. “My sword, I… I didn’t mean to hurt him, it wasn’t him that was there. Please, I didn’t mean to—”

“Tubbo is in medical right now, alive, probably getting the best treatment he’d ever had in his life,” Wilbur interrupted softly. “With two pillows instead of one and the comfiest bed in that place. He is fine, Tommy.”

“But I still…” he trailed off and bit on his inner cheek. “I didn’t mean to.”

“I believe you,” Wilbur said. He said it so easily like there was nothing stopping him from trusting those wavered words. “It was an accident. Magic was involved.”

He stilled.

“Magic?”

Wilbur nodded. “Probably a Hecate demigod, they do it occasionally. We’re not supposed to use our powers during these games but everyone still does subtly.” He gazed over at Tommy, brown eyes darker than normal. “Though, not subtly in this case.”

He scoffed and buried his hands in his sleeves. Even when all danger had left, they still shook.

“Puffy said I’m safe here,” Tommy mumbled, lips bloody.

“Do you feel safe?”

Despite the anchoring sky and flower fields, safety didn’t come to his mind. 

“No,” he answered instantly. Because he didn’t.

The man beside him edged closer. His knees tucked to his chest. “You’re safe from the monsters,” Wilbur began, his eyes not leaving his own. “You’re safe from the outside world filled with cyclopes, lycanthrope and sirens. But not from yourself or others here.”

His stomach dropped. 

“How’d you deal with it?” he pressed, desperate for something. “How’d you not break?”

“Who says I already haven’t?” Wilbur tilted his head with a sad smile. “It’s only myself I have to worry about. I won’t be attacked by anyone here, that’s for sure, being a child of Hades and all.”

“That doesn’t help me.”

“It does,” he said. Wilbur shifted and everything about him softened. “They wouldn’t attack someone under Hades’ protection.”

That was all it took for the weight pressed against his chest to soothe. For his hands to still and body to sway with the breeze. Those simple words, a guarantee of protection, from someone he only met the day before.

Wilbur was like a moth drawn to a flame but the flame was cold. Deathly pale and shuddering. Yet he liked it this way. A refreshing chill, wet flannels for headaches, the crunch of ice. It was nice. Comforting.

“Do you mean that?” Tommy murmured, vulnerable all of a sudden. Hopeful that he could be that flame, that spark, something for someone to actively want and seek after.

A simple nod confirmed it all. No words or rambles securing trust and certainty. Just a single movement of his head and a gentle smile to uphold his promise.

He exhaled deeply without it hurting his chest.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

When the wind picked up, Wilbur took Tommy to medical.

His eyes stayed fixed on the ground as he strolled beside him, refusing to look up. He didn’t want to see anyone’s faces, their expressions of disgust, anger or disappointment. Like he was a fucking monster for hurting his friend, for not being able to control himself or what he imagined.

The door to medical pushed open and Tommy raised his head.

Tubbo lay in the bed furthest from the door with two pillows rested behind his back. He gulped and shuffled closer to Wilbur. Preparing himself to be shouted at, to be abandoned and alone. That same voice that shouted light-heartedly over Skype whenever Tommy failed a level in the game they played. But now curled with age and rioted in anger.

“Tommy!” Tubbo yelled across the room. He flinched into himself. “Holy shit, I’m so sorry—”

He frowned. An apology. He didn’t expect an apology to come from Tubbo. The victim in this, the one injured. He ran forward to Tubbo’s side.

“It wasn’t supposed to- Tommy please, believe me, my powers are never that strong. It’s not supposed to do that to someone. Just a little hallucination to distract you. Please if I knew it would do that to you, I wouldn’t have done it.”

The magic was Tubbo then. Whatever conjuration that hurled him into the Pit and the arms of the Blood God, it was Tubbo’s doing. His hallucination, his spell.

But he didn’t care.

“Tubbo, I gutted you with a sword. Why the fuck are you the one apologising?” he spat out, irked at even the thought of being the one to deserve an apology. He deserved the hate, the disdain, the loneliness to come from his actions.

“Because it was me that caused you to be out of it like that!” Tubbo proclaimed. He shook his head and Tubbo grabbed tightly onto his hand.

“It’s fine, we’re both sorry, it’s fine,” he muttered, wanting this headache to be over even if it wasn’t fine.

Tubbo opened his mouth to protest but Tommy wrapped him in a hug. He shut his eyes over the other’s shoulder and let the silence between them slow down his beating heart.

“It’s fine, Tubs.”

The use of the old nickname, one that Tommy created before his youth was taken from him, seemed to do the trick. Tubbo relaxed into his hold. 

“At least let me make it up to you somehow,” Tubbo said, face still riddling with guilt. 

“Pair up with me in the next Manhunt,” Tommy replied. He knew it was petty but Ranboo could survive one Saturday without teaming with Tubbo.

“Deal.”

The aching in his head didn’t cease until later that evening when he was finally allowed to sleep. He avoided everyone else for the rest of the day—the worried glances from George and Quackity, attempts of conversation from Tubbo after he was discharged, and Henry’s peering eyes from a distance.

Tommy gazed up at the wooden frame of the bunk bed above him. He turned over, uncomfortable, and instead of meeting the darkness of the Hermes cabin, it was a fuzzy image of Tubbo laying in the bed beside him.

“What the fuck?” he whisper-shouted. “Tubbo, get out of my bed.”

Tubbo’s distorted figure grinned. “I’m not in your bed.”

“You’re literally in my bed.”

“No, I’m not.”

Tommy raised his hand and smacked him. But his hand flew straight through him. He froze and Tubbo laughed.

“Told you,” his grin widened with glee. “It’s a projection. We’re not allowed to sleep over in other cabins but my body physically is in my bed. I’m just here visually.”

At least that explained the slight glowing of his presence. 

“Why?” he asked.

“I wanted to see you.”

Tommy sighed and rested fully on his side. “I told you earlier, it wasn’t your fault.”

“I know but still.”

Tubbo looked different as a projection. More youthful and blurry. He thought for a second that this was what his childhood would've been like if Tubbo was a neighbour instead of a million miles away behind a screen. Sleepovers every Friday night, sharing beds and giggling when their parents shouted for them to be quiet. Lunches together at school, passing notes during classes, scraping their knees on the playground. 

It would have been nice. 

Exhaustion flooded through him and his eyes fought to stay open. He remained still, observing Tubbo until he gave into that part of him that just wanted to be next to his best friend.

Tommy shuffled closer, resting his head against Tubbo’s shoulder with his nose tucked into his chest. He couldn’t feel Tubbo but it didn’t matter.

“You know I’m a hologram right?” Tubbo whispered, confused.

“I’m cold,” he mumbled, his words slurred. “Just let me have this.”

Despite the lack of warmth, the heat emitting from his heart left him sweltering. He was comfortable now, had found the solace needed to sleep. But he didn’t want this to be over. If he closed his eyes, then Tubbo would be gone.

There was a silence between them and Tubbo sighed. “Go to sleep, Tom.”

And for just a second, arms cradled him close, and it sent him into the night.