ALL NOVEL Annabeth I
I woke up in an unknown room, one that I didn’t recognise. The room looked like one of an expensive hotel. The sheets I had been lying on felt so divinely soft that it made me want to never leave.
As if electrocuted, I jumped away from the bed. I didn’t where I was and as a demigod having lived and survived in the streets, ignorance and surprise meant death.
I began to analyse everything around me. I was alone in what seemed like an expensive hotel bedroom. The ground was made of marble stone that looked composed of black onyx, diamonds, and pearls. The bed I had been lying on was a bed so big that five of my siblings and I could have slept together on it and don’t feel uncomfortable. people from Luke’s cabin would have killed for one like that.
I turned around checking the room where I found myself. There was also a big TV that looked almost flat like a pc screen turned on but with the sound muted.
The walls around me were painted with depictions of pirates looting, killing, and destroying. The painting almost felt alive. It was as if it was watching me. I turned my attention to something else.
Before me was a big window leading to an outdoor terrace. I opened it and was met with the sight of a city under my view. I was more than 100 feet in the air.
Under me, humans lived their lives carefree, laughing, with intensity as if they mattered, comfortable in their ignorance. They didn’t know like me the monsters hiding in the night. They didn’t know the dread to live in a world with the divine. They didn’t know lost like other demigods and I were afflicted with.
I began thinking. I didn’t remember a lot except flashes of a fight, of dark red blur clashing against another one of a blue colour, of an explosion that had turned my world dark and made me think that I had gone straight to the underworld.
I was the daughter of Athena, the goddess of wisdom and I did the furthest thing from wise. I was a demigod. Even if I had trained since my childhood, since I was seven years old, I was still a mortal even helped going against an immortal being older than civilisation. I wonder if Thalia and Luke would be proud of me.
“So you finally woke up” a voice rich and velvety, with an exotic Middle Eastern accent said behind me. I turned immediately facing it, my hand going for my dagger. My hand found nothing and I remembered that I had thrown it in one of the eyes of Alecto. Way to go Annabeth I said to myself.
The owner of the voice that had spoken was I had to admit even if shouldn’t be thinking like that in this situation Hot and pretty, so much more than Luke a traitorous part of me admitted.
The voice didn’t match the appearance of its owner. The owner of the voice was tall and lithe. From his head sprouted to his back waves so dark they almost seemed purple and they moved in the air as if they were underwater. He had an aquiline nose and He also had a sarcastic, troublemaker smile. He had soft and delicate features that Annabeth had seen in statues of angels in museums. He looked as if Percy was a god, older and looked like a pretty girl.
He wore what looked to be baggy Gothic pants with chains and straps that just being close to them made my skin crawl instinctively as if I was before something dangerous. On his upper body, he wore a long sleeve t-shirt with a cross intertwined in thorns drawn on it. Around his neck was a golden chain with a sword of the same colour dangling from it.
It meant that the stranger before her was most likely a child of Poseidon and she was a child of Athena alone without a weapon, in a place she didn’t know.
“Easy little half-blood,” the stranger said. “If I wanted to harm you”, he continued, “I could have done so by not saving your life, or when you were sleeping or even when you had your back turned”.
I still didn’t let my guard down. The stranger didn’t seem to be angered by my reaction. He looked amused as if he was watching a poodle trying to look menacing.
“If you want, I could leave” the stranger proposed.” It’s just that you would have to find by yourself the exit of this place and your companions and to be honest, there were mortals that literally died here because they couldn’t find the exit, so you do you I guess” The stranger shrugged and turning his back to leave.
I didn’t want to depend on a stranger even if they said that they had my best interest at heart. It’s how demigods died and I was a Demigoddess of Athena which meant that I should be able to find my way alone but don’t forget that Pride is the first step away from wisdom towards failure my brain reminded me.
“Stop! Wait for me!” I screamed to the stranger that was already at the door of the room.
He turned his eyes towards me” Such a shame. It would have been cool for me if you had said no but anyway, orders are orders. “Follow me,” he said and left the room.
I ran after him. He had told me that mortals could die by never finding the exit of this place and he most likely wouldn’t shed a tear if anything happened to me because of who were our parents.
I walked behind him. I tried to memorise everything around me but it was as if this place was alive. We would take a turn on the right and end on the left or walk a distance of less than five feet in 3 minutes. I shivered. If I had tried to leave by myself, the impossible geography of this place would have made me either go mad or die because I would have been lost in this place without subsistence.
We arrived at what seemed to be a classy restaurant. There were other people except us. There were what seemed to be the staff serving clients. My face examined one of them and I almost took a step back in shock and horror. It was a monster. It had a face like a dog, with a black snout, brown eyes, and pointy ears. It wore a suit but even wearing one, I could see that his body was sleek and black like a seal. He had stubby legs that looked half flipper and half foot and the monster was wearing British shoes that looked made especially for it and human-like hands with sharp claws that didn’t stop the monster from serving the clients flawlessly.
I began watching everything around me. He wasn’t the only monster I realised, all of the servers here were humans. Some I recognised as cyclops considering their unique eyes and their ugly faces, others looked like mixes of sea creatures with humans. I grabbed a kitchen knife and pressed it into the back of the unknown child of Poseidon.
“Show me for real this time the exit or I’ll stab you” I threatened. It seems that it didn’t work because he began laughing.
“Are you threatening me daughter of Athena? Are you challenging me?” He had turned towards me even with the menace of a knife on his back.
I tried my best, tried to de-escalate the situation. I plunged my knife towards where I knew was the heart of the Percy look-alike with all the strength I could muster.
I had expected to hear the sound of flesh being ruptured apart by steel but the sound that grated my ear was a metallic one, more precisely, the one of my knife of fortune breaking.
“You’re lucky child that my father ordered me to make sure that your companions and you would be safe or I would have killed you. Do something like that again and I’ll disregard completely the orders of my father. After all, he only really cares about my brother, so” he lowered himself to the level of my ear” Don’t test my patience and mercy again child. Do you understand? He asked me his voice full of unsaid threat and hatred.
“Yes,” I replied with a weak voice.
He clapped his hand” Great, it’s something that is settled. Don’t worry about anyone else here. As long as you are with a child of Poseidon, nothing will happen to you here”.
Everyone was looking at us I noticed. They all looked as if they were ready to intervene at any moment. They were all sea creatures and nothing could happen to a child of Poseidon here which meant that the older son of Poseidon wouldn’t have to do anything if attacked him. Everybody else here would be the ones I would have to worry about.
They continued to walk until a divinely furnished table. I could see from far away that there were already two people seated. One was being pampered unwillingly it seemed by the staff.
“No, I don’t need to use you as my footstool” the voice complained. I knew this voice. It was the voice of percy Jackson, king of the bathroom himself. I could also hear Grover laughing.
“Guys!” I screamed and they turned towards me. Their face lit up as Christmas trees. I ran toward them and did something that I would have never done except with Luke and Thalia, I hugged them. They were alright, they were alive, we were alive.
I gave a weak punch to percy shoulder” Next time, don’t go fighting alone against an immortal without a plan idiot”
“That hurt,” he said while rubbing his shoulder.
I rolled my eyes” Stop being a crybaby. See it as Another reason for you next time to not go fighting against immortals alone because if you die, I’ll summon your soul to hit you again”.
“Noted wise girl” he answered.
We decided to sit. Without us even asking anything, plates full of foods of different kinds were brought before us. There were green olives, dishes filled with traditional Greek cuisines like moussaka, tzatziki and baklava. There were also fried eggs that seemed to be seasoned with gold and that looked divinely made.
Our stomachs growled in unison. We hadn’t eaten anything since we had left camp and with Alecto's attack, we lost all of the provisions that we had packed(mostly me) for the quest.
Percy was the one to dive first into the food. I waited for 30 seconds to see if he would have an adverse reaction to the food. He didn’t. Like a signal, Grover and I dived into the food like starving ogres. The food touched my taste buds and my brain shut down. I had to suppress a moan. I had never eaten something so delicious. I would even dare to say that it was better than Ambrosia itself.
While we were eating, the other child of Poseidon had taken a seat on the opposing boot of us and was watching us. I didn’t let him distract him from the godly food I was eating.
glasses of water were placed before us.” Never-ending Water blessed by the nymph Thetis” one of the servers said.
I drank it like a thirsty man in the desert until there was no liquid left in it. It didn’t taste like water because water could never taste this good. It was as if all the aches that I knew I had or that I didn’t know were gone. Maybe it was my mind fooling itself but I felt stronger, I felt more when I put my glass back on the table, it was full again.
It was as if I was in paradise. The only things left for me to make it truly perfect were Luke and Thalia.
A dark part of my mind whispered to me that such a place existed where supernatural beings would be served things that mortals could never replicate and when we were, Thalia, Luke and I children of Olympians, homeless, none of our parents brought us to a place like this or even tried to help. I still remember how even if they tried to hide it, Thalia and Luke gave me everything they were able to find for me to eat leaving them with empty stomachs for most nights. Why did Percy's dad care and not our parents?
Was being loved and happy too much to ask for? If I was in their place, nothing would be like that, I’d change everything, I know that I’ll be better, be worthy of ruling this world.