Chapter Text
It all started when I got the dream. The dream showed me and 3 other kids; one boy, two girls standing together.
One of the girls I recognized; it was my best friend Auggie, I could spot her long dark blue-purple hair from a thousand miles away. The other girl had long dark brown curls flowing over her shoulders and down her back like a waterfall and the boy had a short mane of platinum blonde highlighted like a halo around his head.
The girl and the boy were holding hands tightly on my left. Auggie stood beside me on my right. I had a sword in my hand and it faintly glowed, contrasting the darkness around us. We were facing a large cave opening. It had sharp stones jutting out from the top and the bottom like teeth, the whole thing looked like the maw of a wild beast opening wide to swallow us whole. It was dark and dreary, with an uncomfortable aura, (you know typical cave stuff). Even just staring into it gave me the jitters. The night was cloudy with a heavy downpour of rain; soaking the back of my purple Camp Jupiter hoodie and freezing me to the bone. An uncomfortable shiver ran down my back. My heart pounded against my ribcage like a heavy drum. There was a roll of thunder then a flash of lightning, waking me up. The scenery faded as I sat bolt up-right in my bed.
“Khase it's time to get up,” My dads soothing voice broke me from my nightmare and brought me back to the present. I feverishly grabbed my phone from the nightstand to text Auggie and tell her about my nightmare, hoping that she’d know what it meant and could help decipher the meaning, as augurs do. Before I could hit send, my dad yelled again. “Khase Caius Jackson, if you don’t get up right now.” He sounded angry. “I’m up, I'm up,” I called, “you can come in.” He opened the door and leaned against the doorway, still agitated, “I’ve been trying to wake you up for almost an hour. Auggie's been waiting downstairs for you, says it's important.”
I jumped up from out of bed, clad in one of my dad’s old shirts and black shorts. “How long has she been here?!?'' I asked desperately while throwing on a hoodie off the floor, leaving my phone abandoned on my bed. “About a half hour. She's been playing games with Jace while you were asleep,” dad answered with a devilish smile. I cursed and ran past him and into the hallway. If Auggie's been with Jace for 30 minutes alone I knew I had to get downstairs quickly.
Jason Lukas Jackson Jr., or Jace for short, is my annoying older brother. He had this effect on girls. If a girl was left alone with him for a long period of time he made her all giddy and made her forget her name. It was dumb. He wasn’t anything special either. He looked just like me, but a year or two older, more freckles, worse taste in fashion, and his eyes were more blue than green. He was a spitting image of our father, his name sake, Jason Grace; if he didn’t live in New York people would probably mix them up.
“AUGUSTA HYLLA RARMERZ, YOU GET THE HADES AWAY FROM MY BROTHER!” I screeched, tackling Auggie. “Wha-oof!” she gasped as my full weight landed on top of her. She looked distracted but not by Jace just… distracted. “I wasn’t, we weren’t!” She spluttered. Her face heated up as she turned bright red, like a nasty sunburn. "Bro, chill, we were just playing a round of Uno" Jason chuckled, "also, Auggie is way too young for me". I glared at Jason and took a deep breath, “I need to talk to you, Augs,” I gasped, out of breath from my sprint to the living room. “what's up?” she asked, her focus turning to me. I pulled her out of the living room and into the kitchen, far away from Jace's prying ears. I told her about my dream in as much detail as I could.
“We have to go talk to Hazel and Frank.” she said, her face hardening like steel, “get your shoes on. Now.” I ran back to my room and scrambled to put on a pair of socks and my favorite well-worn Nikes. I picked my phone up from my bed before sprinting to my dads room.
I started to explain everything to him. He got a sour look on his face, like he had swallowed a shot of lemon juice. I knew he had plenty of bad experiences with dreams, especially after he came back from Tartarus. “You know what it means when demigods get dreams” he grumbled. “I know dad” I huffed. He shook his head and sighed, “you promise to stay safe?” I could feel fear and agitation radiating off of him.“Khase hurry!” Auggie called from downstairs. “I gotta go, love you,” I said, turning around. “Khase you have to promise me you’ll stay safe. Promise me” dad practically begged, his voice desperate and strained. “I promise.” I said. “And Khase.” I turned back around, facing him once again.
“Yeah?”
“If this is what I think it is, then you are going to go through the most dangerous trip of your life. I trust you but I am terrified. Just… just take this”
He pulled a blue ballpoint pen from his pocket and handed it to me. I looked at him in shock. “Dad, this is a pen.” He just chuckled. “How is this supposed to help me?” I asked. I was afraid he was going senile. “Khase!” Auggie called again. “You better go,” he smiled. “Dad?” I asked again, panicked and confused. Instead of dignifying me with a response, he slammed his bedroom door in my face.
I walked downstairs to where Auggie was waiting, still confused. “What’s that?” she asked, pointing to the pen I was twirling between my fingers. “I don’t really know,” I shrugged, “my dad gave it to me. He said it was supposed to help me, I don’t know how though.”
“Maybe it writes gold or something. Oh or maybe whatever you draw comes to life. Ooh or maybe it's some kind of invisible ink.”
“Maybe you should stop watching crappy television shows.”
Auggie and I left my dad's apartment in New Rome and headed towards the Via Praetoria. "So why exactly do we have to talk to the praetors?" I asked. Auggie, being the Augur, she's well known for being cryptic. "Just come on," she said, ignoring my question. I rolled my eyes. I wasn't shocked considering she never answers anything with a straight answer, but it was still annoying. We had reached the Praetoria. I reached out to knock like a good person before Auggie shoved me out of the way and just opened the door. She just barged in. Like a barbarian.
"Hazel, we have a little tiny bit of an… issue" Auggie announced, sitting down at the table beside Celeste and Virtus Zhang, Hazel and Frank's kids. "Oh great. I love when you have issues," Frank remarked sarcastically, "here's your food." Frank made a bowl of cereal and passed it to Auggie, seemingly used to her just butting in on his family’s breakfasts. Auggie took the bowl from Frank and started to eat. She took one bite before she paused to talk. "So Khase here had a dream," she started to explain. The entire table groaned simultaneously, already expecting the worst. I shifted nervously, still standing off to the side and away from everyone else. "Dude not another one" Virtus complained, "Cel had one last night too". Auggie shushed him and continued on, "well I had one too.. the same one as Khase's and, I'm totally assuming here, but probably the same as Celeste's". I pouted, feeling exposed. "Oh yeah just tell them my whole life story while you're at it" I grumbled. "We know your whole life story" Hazel deadpanned.
"Aye, shut up people I'm interested," Celeste barked, "what was the dream about?" Auggie retold the dream to them in oddly specific detail. "Ok, ok, so we didn't have the same dream but I think mine might have been worse," Celeste spoke slowly, "my dream was similar with the whole cave thing, but instead of being outside looking in, I'm inside looking out at you guys. There's this.. faun? I think it was a faun on one side of me and another guy on the other side. I look forward and I see you and Auggie and the two strangers. The guy and Auggie were both crying and the girl looked really angry. Then the lightning flashed and I woke up".
"Wow.. ominous" Virtus remarked jokingly. "Shut up" Celeste threatened, "you suck". "Hey, hey, no fighting at the table" Frank scolded. Hazel leaned forward, ignoring her husband and kids, and spoke to me and Auggie. "Sounds like you guys need a prophecy." Frank, Celeste, and Virtus shut up and looked toward Auggie, shocked. She sat perfectly still, a statue of herself. "Go to Temple Hill, everything you need will be there" Hazel explained. "Do I have to?" Auggie asked.
She finished eating slowly, holding off on leaving. "I hate Temple Hill," Auggie whispered to me. She had always had this grudge against Temple Hill. She never explained it to me but I'm assuming it has something to do with her trashy father; 'the great' Octavian, he committed so many crimes I forgot what the final straw was. "I know you don't want to, but you know how important prophecies are" Hazel comforted, rubbing Auggies shoulder. I still stood off to the side awkwardly. "Ok Auggie, we should go" I nervously urged. I didn’t want to rush her but I knew it would be better to get it over with. “Yeah, let's” she sighed. She turned towards Celeste, “hey Cel you wanna come?”. Virtus stood up from the table dramatically, “hey if Celeste’s allowed to go I wanna go too!”
“Mom, tell Virtus to stop being annoying!” Celeste whined. “Celeste, honey, if you want to go you have to bring your brother” Hazel said. “Yeah!” Virtus cheered.
Together we made our way out the door and toward Jupiter Optimus Maximus. As we walked through New Rome I could feel Auggie getting more and more nervous, about halfway there she stopped talking and would jump at every little noise. I was worried about her but I knew talking about it would make her shut down completely and we would lose our only chance to figure out the creepy dreams. I could feel Auggies nerves rubbing off on me. Suddenly it was like everything was ten times bigger, or I had to be ten times smaller. The temple loomed ahead of us like Dracula's castle.
"Dude, are we actually going inside? I've never been inside before" Virtus asked excitedly. He bounded ahead of us and started climbing the hill. “Ugh he's so annoying” Celeste said, her voice full of annoyance , “He's not that bad” Auggie smiled, she didn’t have any siblings. “Yeah, you could have ‘Mr.steal your girl’ for a brother.” We all laughed at the familiar joke. We walked inside and saw all of the things for the augury: a pyre topped with mounds of stuffed animals to burn. I turned to Auggie, “are you sure you can do this?". She glared at me, “I’ll be fine.” She didn’t look fine. “Aug’” Celeste started “I. Will. Be. Fine.” she enunciated every syllable, her teeth grinding as she spoke. “Woah, this is so cool,” Virtus interrupted. “Virt come here, let Auggie do her thing” Celeste ordered.
Auggie walked over to the pyre, opened the side door, grabbed the lighter from on top and started a fire inside. She stood up and grabbed a stuffed bear in one hand and a knife in the other, she slashed open the bear’s stomach and poured the stuffing inside the fire. The room went dark. Auggie's face went slack, her eyes rolled up in her head and in an old gravely and grainy voice she spoke.
Three shall go east
And meet three more
They shall find the nephew of daedalus
And stop a great war
They shall retrieve what was twice lost
Child of Mercury shalt be no more