Chapter Text
To say that Perci was unfamiliar with dreams would be a lie. In truth, he dreamed far more than the average god, according to Triton anyways, and with one of his domains being prophetic dreams it was even somewhat expected.
That being said, Perci hasn’t had a dream this vague for a long while. He was standing on a long familiar beach, the sea, normally calm and untouched by his patírs more irritable moods in the blessed place where his mom and patír had first met, churned and frothed. The surf crashed with a fury against the sand, the sky was so grey it almost looked black and torrents of icy rain were pouring down so thickly he could barely see, the cold water soaking into his nonexistent bones and clouding his eyes as if they were filled with tears.
The wind whipped harshly across the beach and Perci spread his stance in the slick sand in an effort to not be blown over. The hurricane currently brewing out over the ocean was unlike anything Perci had ever heard about, let alone experienced. It was massive, the storms raged across his family’s domain, violent and unrelenting. There was so much rage poured into the hurricane Perci felt like his knees were buckling under the emotions twisting within the storm.
He could feel them blending together fear, panic, agony, grief, anxiety and above all rage. He couldn’t tell who’s emotions were which but he felt sick when he realized that it wasn’t just his father making this storm, it was his entire family. If the sheer size of it didn’t make it obvious the vortex of emotions that couldn’t possibly come from one being made it clear just all of who was causing the hurricane.
Perci tried to make it to the water, tried to force his Sight to shift and show what had caused his entire family to be united in such rage and agony that they would create a storm of this magnitude. But the harsh wind pushed him back and the wet sand slid beneath his feet and every time he tried to force his Sight to shift the way Apollo had taught him to invisible strings tugged him back, keeping him grounded to the beach.
Perci struggled more as the phantom feeling of thread wrapped around his limbs and torso and tightened. The threads tugged him back sharply, undeterred by Perci's feet digging into the wet sand or the way he desperately pulled the icy water from above towards him, trying to weigh himself down so that his Sight would not be dragged away from where he could gain answers about his family’s wrath. It did nothing to slow down the threads pulling him away, they gave one last sharp tug and the beach faded away into a shadowed hallway covered in mosaic art.
There was no icy water dripping from his hair and clothes, no sand coating his feet. It was as though he had never had the vision of the storm.
Perci looked to the wall where a frieze depicted the Olympian Council at the height of their power, in Ancient Greece. He reached out to run his fingers over the art, the painted carving looking like it had been lifted straight from a temple of the glory days at their peak.
He traced his fingertips over his father’s likeness, continuing over to Apollo, Artemis, Hermes and Aphrodite. He pulled his hand away as the hallway filled with the presence of something ancient and powerful. It beckoned to him, the feeling of strings once more winding around his limbs, gently pulling him forward.
The intricately painted tiles were ice cold beneath his bare feet as he moved further down the seemingly endless hallway, the only thing that even showed that he was making any kind of progress was the artwork on the wall.
The Grecian frieze turned to Roman paintings, the faces of the council turning sterner, more militaristic and clean shaven. The inherent wildness that the gods encompassed in accordance to their domains diminished to the point it wasn’t noticeable unless you knew what to look for.
It was always something that unsettled him whenever he met his family within their Roman forms. For all that the forms were necessary, that Neptune was his father just as much as Poseidon, it felt wrong to see the sea so suppressed in the god that encompassed it totally to the point where he felt more like a gentle river than the roaring hurricane Perci knew he could be. For Hermes to be more tied down and grounded to a single place rather than the constant movement and shifting of being he should encompass. For all that Perci loved them, no matter what form they took, it was wrong to see them more in tune with the mortal idea of civilization rather than the wild things that made up their essence.
The old presence pulsed once again, the invisible strings gently curling further up his arms and legs like snakes and Perci shook himself from his thoughts. He made his way further down the hallway at a more brisk pace, making note of the artwork but not stopping to study it as he had with the Roman depiction of his family.
The paintings changed once more, now blackened and streaked with ash as they had been with Rome's fall and burning, as they had stayed with the rise of the Holy Roman Empire underneath a different god.
The art beside him became Germanic in style, then French, then Spanish, then English. No matter how the style of art changed the depiction of the gods always remained true to the forms they took in the time period of the art, aligning with the snatches of the past Perci has seen in his Sight induced dreams.
Then came the American artwork. Perci watched as the gods in the art morphed throughout the ages of America. How they were affected by the horrors and triumphs of the mortals of the country the West resided in.
And after what seemed like an eternity and barely any time at all he finally came to his family as they were now. It really was strange, to see them so modern and humanized yet so wild and ancient at the same time, for the art to depict it so completely. The paradox was comforting to Perci, something he was so used to seeing in his family’s eyes that the painting almost made him forget where he was.
Perci tore his eyes away from the painting and faced the door at the end of the hallway. He could feel the ancient presence beyond the open stone doorway, the threads feeling more solid than they had a few moments before.
Stealing his nerves Perci stepped over the threshold and into the chamber. The doorway opened into a large, dark and seemingly infinite room.
The wall that held the door he just stepped out from was stretched far beyond what his eyes could see, periodically another doorframe, the same clean thick cut, would break the stone. It was what he imagined what looking into the ocean's depths was like for mortals. Their eyes only reaching so far before the water was too much and they could only see the abyss beyond the sun that was Perci’s home.
Perci shook off the thoughts and forged foreword, trying his best to follow the feeling of invisible threads coiled around his limbs. Eventually the darkness parted around him like a curtain opening and revealed the most beautiful tapestry he had ever seen.
The fabric seemed to move despite the unnatural stillness of the chamber, flashes of different scenarios rippling across the weaving. Battles and lovers, ships sailing across the waves and the beauty of the gods beyond the mortal veils they so often donned. It reminded him of his visions that plagued his dreams, scattered fragments of past and future.
It was beautiful in the way Aphrodite was, the incomprehensible kind where if you looked too long you would lose your mind. The eternal kind of beauty that stole away your sanity as it captured your attention eternally.
The tapestry of fate was the most beautiful and indescribable thing Perci knew he would ever bear witness too.
Perci pulled his eye away from the fabric to turn to face its weavers sitting calmly by their loom, looking at him with knowing gazes despite the bandages wrapped securely over all of their eyes.
Perci looked at the Moirai with wide eyes, to his knowledge no god that has held the domain has met the great weavers of fate, yet here he was. Pulled to the very place where they created their tapestry.
“My ladies,” Perci said, doing his godsdamned best not to stutter. “Might I know why I have been summoned here?”
“Your fate has been tampered with, child.” Perci started, if his fate has been tampered with so much that the Moirai felt the need to interfere then something must be seriously wrong.
“Your mother,” Perci’s Ichor froze in his veins, “made a decision we did not anticipate, one you must now pay the price for.”
“What was the decision?” Perci felt like he was a mortal in the depths of the ocean, crumpling under the pressure of the truth. “And what is the price?”
“When your mother was offered a place within the court of Atlantis, we expected her to decline. To turn away and raise you within the mortal world, but she did not.” The Moirai looked at him, pitying behind their covered eyes. “For all that you were meant for godhood, beloved prince of Atlantis, you were never meant to be born as one.”
Perci felt like his head was spinning, like the world had been ripped out from under his feet and a new, far less stable,one had taken its place.
“You were meant to bear the weight of the great prophecy and this you still shall do,” Perci looked at the three sisters with frantic eyes. He knows that prophecy, every god does, it had been one of the first things Apollo had taught him when he had begun to mentor Perci after it became clear one of his domains had something to do with prophecy.
“You shall become like a mortal demigod, donning the name your mother once considered to protect you, Perseus Rhea Jackson, and fulfill the prophecy as you were always meant to, with everything that it entails.” Perci was frozen, coils of darkness wrapping around him like threads, lacing thickly around his throat, his jaw locked and refusing to open. Whatever the Moirai wished to tell him next they did not want to be interrupted
“Your eyes and senses shall be unveiled and open, your challenges more harsh than they might have been.” The darkness was rushing forward again like a curtain call, ending his audience with Fate as suddenly as it had begun.
“We are sorry child, your fate here will be crueler than it could have been,” was the last thing Perci heard before the darkness shrouded his vision completely.
____________________
Perci woke up with his face buried into scratchy carpet that smelled distinctly of bleach, feeling like his body had been coated entirely in lead. For a moment he couldn’t recall what had gotten him lying on the floor on top of the most awful carpet he had ever felt before his dream, along with a wave of pain, all came rushing back to him.
The divinity that Perci had felt all his life was packed too tightly into his veins, burning and aching in a way that it never had before. Gods was this what demigods had to live with constantly on top of all the monster attacks?
Perci’s Sight, something that normally felt like an endless extension of the ocean that rolled into him the second he laid to rest was dammed, the pressure behind his eyes far different and much sharper.
Perci heaved himself off the floor with heavy, aching limbs and pulled himself over to the full length mirror. The amount of relief that flooded Perci when he saw his own face staring back at him in the mirror made his knees weak. He was obviously younger, probably twelve-ish, and was tiny and scrawny with baby fat still clinging to his cheeks but it was still undeniably him.
Before Perci had the chance to process any more of his appearance the door behind him opened and Perci whipped around to face it. The boy who came in was a few inches taller than Perci, with chestnut curls and wisps of a beard growing on his chin. He was scrawny, his shoulders and hands too big for the rest of his body, and was wearing baggy jeans and an even baggier t-shirt that had a faded recycling logo on it. He was leaning on battered crutches that had stickers plastered all over them.
He felt like fresh earth being pulled around a sapling to Perci but that wasn’t what gave him away as a satyr to him. What gave away the boy’s identity was the way his warm brown eyes had rectangular pupils like a goat's.
“Um, hey?” The satyr's voice was high and reedy. “Perseus, right?”
“Perci,” he corrected on instinct.
“Right, uh, Percy,” the satyr pulled one hand out of his crutches and offered it out to shake. “I’m Grover Underwood, your new roommate.”