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He’s sinking to the bottom. He’s sinking. At least that’s what it feels like. You know when you lean on your arm for too long and it goes dead? When it detaches itself from your body, a
hanging
thing,
limp and forlorn and devoid of feeling? Percy Jackson is sinking to the ocean floor like a dead limb.
The boat casting shadows of darkness above him is burning. It’s alight. It’s a star in this blue blackness. It’s the burning signal that should show him the way home. He’s sinking further than its reach.
He cannot get back to the boat. He is sinking to the ocean floor and no matter how hard he tries he can’t stop it. Not this time. This time, Percy Jackson is dead.
*An hour earlier*
“FUCK” Leo Valdez screams, spinning the wheel of the hulking mass that they call home. “On your right Jase!” A split second later the lashing of a monstrous arm whistles past his ear and slams Jason Grace into the deck.
Percy slices the offending limb and turns to see how Annabeth and Piper are faring. They’re fine. Caught up in long squidgy legs but with enough ire gleaming in their eyes that he knows they’ll get out.
Frank is flashing between animals and beasts so fast it’s hard to keep track. One minute a sword fish and the next he’s a whale. Then one of Poseidon’s grievous creatures, then into an overly large crab. Gods, kids would love the magic show. If they get out of here alive. If if if.
Hazel is lifting Jason up. Her eyes are busy though, moving back and forth as though she’s willing things to move with her mind. He wouldn’t put it past her. She gets stronger every day. More intense. They’re all a little…..
darker
. More powerful. Even him. Especially him.
“LEO!” He yells across the deck, “I’m going under! Try to stop this thing from the source.”
“Be careful. It’s ugly,” The grimace from his friend says enough. Leo who’s always trying to see the bright side, words of encouragement pulled from so deep Percy sometimes thinks he’s built from fridge magnets.
He nods, checks on his friends again. They’re holding their own but this won’t last long. Whatever it is they’re fighting… it’s been fighting for centuries. They have little chance. No chance.
Percy stands on the railing of the ship. The ocean looks wild today. He can feel it. In the way his eyes keep shifting. His fingers thrumming thrumming drumming against him. His legs won’t stop shaking. His heart is beating too fast. Fast enough to power a car, a lighthouse, a way back. A way forward. He jumps.
Everything becomes… easier. Breathing, moving, existing . He can feel the glide of the water on his skin, the way his lungs take in and let out. He can feel the way the current pulls him. As if to say, I know which way to go, just follow me. His vision clears, adjusts to the lightless land. He can see in greens and electric blues, red where heat engulfs.
The monster is… monstrous. Large and bulging. Oozing and vicious. Razor sharp fins sticking out from it’s body. And what he had thought were limbs are actually tentacles. Being used as whip and weapon. Something to annihilate. It’s like if a jellyfish met a killer whale, or empousai met Medusa’s head and then chucked it into the ocean to rot. Whatever it was he wasn’t impressed, and thanked the gods his sense of smell didnt vastly improve. He’s sure this thing smells like carcass, festering and foaming.
With a half hearted kick he propels himself forward one moment oceans away from the beast and the next in its line of vision. It’s beady eyes lock on him, glassed over as if high on the awaiting feast.
“Who sent you?” He asks
“Why ask questions you already know the answer to Percy Jackson?” It gurgles at him, voice stuck between a choke and chuckle.
“Gaia wants us alive. Who sent you?” He doesn’t have time for these games. He doesn’t want to do this. He never fucking wants to do this.
“Gaia?” It blinks at him. He blinks back. “Gaia does not control these waters boy. She is merely a pawn in this endless game of chess.”
“How do you know about chess?”
The creature somehow looked both affronted and bashful. “The boss enjoys a game or two.”
“Who’s the boss?” He’s back on track. Here to find out who’s trying to kill them.
“We’ll it’s—“ The shriek it lets out causes shockwaves through the water. “DEMIGODS!”
And with renewed anger, anger that burns an inferno through it, it flashes its eyes and hurtles more tentacles at the ship.
“I will kill all of you!”
With an eye roll, Percy slams the tentacle spearing towards him, and dives lower, underneath the beast.
“I’d advise you to stop hurting my friends.”
Another tentacle. He slices it with his sword. Funny how it moves so easily underwater. As if the water itself is a sword, encasing the metal of Anaklusmos.
Another shriek. So fucking annoying. With a grin, Percy severs the monster’s throat. It won’t kill it but gods does it shut it up.
“Maybe next time you’ll try to be less irritating while you’re trying to kill us.” He spits.
It gurgles, but no words bubble out. Just black blood like a scared squid. He almost wants to laugh. But then a tentacle is wrapping around his ankle.
With a curse he’s swinging riptide down, but another tentacle is reaching for his wrist.
The worst thing about fighting sea monsters is that the sea doesn’t hurt them. What land monsters are forced to succumb to under his command, sea monsters simply laugh at.
Now, in this deep ocean, on this once unassuming night, Percy Jackson only has himself and his sword. Anaklusmos. Riptide.
“How do you keep producing these things?” He slices another one grabbing at his thigh, his sword catches the tentacle and the fabric of his jeans. In one motion there’s a rip pretty enough for Nico’s fashion running down his leg. Gods he hopes he can make the distressed look work, jeans aren’t easy to come by.
When it doesn’t respond he looks up to see it is slowly wrapping itself around the ship, tentacles spewing out of it like fucking April tulips in Holland.
“Oh right,” He grunts as a more persistent tentacle throttles his arm, right over his tattoo, “I forgot you can’t talk.”
“Didn’t I tell you to stop hurting my friends?”
He doesn’t need a reply.
With a scream of his own, Percy swings Riptide around, making use of the name, and slams his sword straight into the monster’s head. Holding on like Annabeth’s life depends on it, he slices
do
wn
And cleaves the monster in two. Clean. Neat and pretty. You have this half. I’ll have this half.
The tentacles wrapped around the ship are burning, limp and dead weight, burning before they can bring the whole ship under. Burning under Leo’s hands.
But Percy Jackson is sinking. He looks down. A tentacle, one he didn’t see, didn’t catch in time. It’s sticking out of his chest, right there… right there… where his heart is supposed to be.
Percy Jackson is sinking to the ocean floor. With no heart. Limp. Dead.
***
He knew what to expect when he died. Thanatos with a grim face, maybe a nod, and then to Hades’ realm where he stands trial. Then Asphodel, Elysium if the gods can keep their promises. He’s glad he said goodbye to his mom. He’s sorry he couldn’t say goodbye to Annabeth. Any of his friends. But they’ll understand. They know what it’s like. One minute you’re drowning pancakes in syrup and the next you’re drowning, and either way there’s no time to take it all back.
How do you pick up syrup
blood
that’s already soaking in? In vain.
“So this is the powerful demigod. The prince of the sea.” The voice surrounds him. He’s sure it’s coming from somewhere outside but why does it feel like his very bones are speaking?
He can’t sit up. He can’t open his eyes. He’s dead but he can hear the world? Why can he feel the ocean still cradling his skin?
“Yes sir.” A pause. A breath drawn in. Not released. Is it his? “A product of your Greek half and a mortal woman. Sally Jackson.”
“Yes I’ve heard of her. She did some numbers in the literary community with her outstanding descriptions of beasts and monsters in mythology. Almost as if she’d seen them all.”
“Must have been an exciting date.”
“The only time I ever truly wished to swop with Poseidon.” Another pause. He can feel the currents against his fingertips. Is this death? “I’m not impressed with the boy though. He holds himself back.”
“They say he’s too powerful sir.”
“Nonsense! He is restrained. Do they not know that is not the nature of the oceans? Who dare hold back such force?”
“I hear they’ve been telling him since birth sir. A way to keep him from discovering his true strengths.”
Disgust drips like wax, burns into the truth of the matter. “Poseidon was always the weaker face of us. But this? Despicable.”
Percy releases his breath. Gasps in air.
“Ah so he’s awake.”
He opens his eyes. He’s met with inky blue, sweet cool water. He takes another shuddering breath. Another. He’s gulping in this feeling. Chest e x p a n d i ng. contracting. He grasps at it. No hole. No heartbeat either. So he is dead.
“What- what’s happening?”
“You were dead.” The man, no the being in front of him is large, taking up space in this ocean. How you take up space in a never ending expanse feels almost fabricated. “But then my associates found you. And now you are not dead.”
“Where’s my heart?”
“I ate it.”
Percy stops. Or maybe just dissipates. Or ceases. And then, like a tsunami it all comes rushing in at once. Slamming into him so hard he becomes a natural disaster. “You WHAT?”
“Oh relax,” The being rolls their eyes. Where Percy had thought they were all black, he sees now they have flecks of coral colours in them. As if they are made up of the ocean. As if the being can never be anything but. “You don’t need it anyway. Not if you are to become a creature of the ocean.”
“I don’t want that?”
This cannot be real. This cannot be something he is living through. Tartarus was hell but at least it made sense. This feels almost like a practical joke. If the goal was to kill him instead of scare him.
“You have limitless power in you.” The being starts. “Power that can be easily harnessed here.” Gestures around them. The entire ocean moves with its hand.
“I want to go home. To my friends. To that stupid ship. Even to the war.”
The being studies him. He stands very still. Scared that moving will change the direction of this current. Riptide is nowhere to be found.
“Who are you?”
“You do not even recognise me?” Something like disdain, something more like curiosity.
“I—“
“Neptune, Percy Jackson. The other side of the coin I share with your father.”
“Why are you not suffering like the rest of the gods? With the split?”
“The ocean is one element, whether I am Poseidon or Neptune I am still in the same domain.” They give him another once over. “You really do not want to be here?”
“No.” Anything to get back to that godsforsaken ship. He hates it. But the people he loves are there. Above these waters. Above the life he could make here. Maybe one day. Maybe in another life.
“Disappointing.” Neptune sighs. “But who am I to stop you.”
“Thank you.” He bows low. Hopes it’s enough.
“If you ever come back here Percy Jackson,” The God levels him with something worse than sternness. Expectation. “I expect you to be unrestrained. Beings of the sea are not made to be caged. There’s a reason the oceans all meet, with no barriers between them.”
He bows again.
“Thank you.”
***
Percy Jackson opens his eyes, to a blue sky, and the sound of sea gulls. Shore is near.
“PERCY!” The familiar scream of Annabeth Chase hurtles through him. “Where the fuck have you been?”
“Uh I sort of… passed out and uh got lost in the ocean.” What a neat way of saying he died. There’s some secrets he is forced to swallow down. Poison turned to stone rather than blood in his body.
“It’s been two weeks.” She heaves, folding herself over him. “We we’re just about to burn a—“
“Aw man did I crash my funeral again?”
“AGAIN?” Leo appears beside him, baffled and warm against his back. The rest of his friends crowd around.
“Are you okay?” Jason levels a look.
“Fine, fine” He waves them off. “So what did I miss?”
Annabeth clasps her hand in his, hauls him up.
“No wait tell us about you crashing your funeral!” Leo knocks into his arm, wild flames in his eyes.
“Annabeth can tell the story,” He smiles. Rubs a hand over his chest.
No heartbeat. No heart.
“He still teases me about the look on my face.” She’s tucked under his arm, looking up at him with a scrunched nose, relieved eyes.
“It was after…”
They become background noise, as Percy listens within. Silent. So silent.
But the sound of the ocean is just a little bit louder. A little too loud. Unrestrained.