This is what I dreamed.
My mom and I were walking down our street in Manhattan, not far from the apartment where we lived. My stepdad Paul wasn't with us. It was a nice day, warm despite thick clouds covering the sky. I hoped a thunderstorm wasn't coming. Those made me nervous.
At first I was content to keep walking. We never seemed to get anywhere, but with my mom at my side it felt calm. This was the peace I always wished for in my life.
Only we kept walking, and walking, without stopping. I glanced at my mom and saw her eyes fixed forward, a smile on her face. I almost turned away and went back to walking, but something told me not to. My mom wasn't just staring forward, she was refusing to look anywhere else. That wasn't right. Even if we were just strolling to the corner store, she always snuck glances my way. That was just how she was.
"It's your fault you know."
I jolted. "What?"
"Your fault." My mom shook her head. "Alllllll your fault."
I stopped walking.
"I'm asking what was my fault? You're not making any sense."
She looked at me now, and I immediately wished she hadn't. There was no warmth in those eyes. No love, no laughter, no life. She stared at me with the same inhuman fixation she'd been aiming at the horizon.
Something fell behind her at a million miles an hour, striking the ground with a meaty thwack!
I jumped. My hand went to my pocket for Riptide, but it was empty. The sword that refused to leave my side had gone missing. I leaned to the side, trying to see around my mom to get a look at what had fallen.
"You may approach it," said my mom.
Glancing up warily, I slowly edged around her to get closer. She didn't move once to get out of my way. Her eyes tracked me each step I took. I finally approached the unmoving object.
The second I got close, my heart tore in two.
All the pumping blood in my chest must've been rupturing free from its veins. That was the only explanation for the awful heat running rampant in my chest. I stared at the most horrible sight I'd ever seen— no, the most horrible sight I could imagine.
Annabeth's body, crushed by a fall from high in the sky.
"Your fault," my mom repeated simply, and this time it felt as if the words had slammed iron bars down around me.
I did the only thing I felt I could. I turned and ran. My mom watched me go, standing by the flattened body of my best friend and first love.
THWAP!
THWAP!
THWAP!
The sound of impacts thudded all around me. The clouds had opened, bathing the ground in bodies instead of rain. At first they were all Annabeth, but soon Grover was falling too. The noises beat maddeningly into my head. I tried not to look, but it was impossible when the carnage was in every direction. I was crying.
Just when I couldn't take it anymore, I ran into something.
It felt like hitting a wall. I bounced back and fell on my butt. When I looked up, my breath stopped entirely.
"All your fault," said my mom, staring down at me with dispassionate eyes. There was no accusation in her voice, which only made it worse. It made it a fact.
Because this time, her skin was pale. Her lips had lost their luster. Old blood ran down one side of her face from a head wound out of sight somewhere in her hair. I didn't need any more signs to understand.
She was a corpse standing.
I curled up on the ground, pressing my hands to my ears. I didn't want to hear any more. I didn't want to see any more. I didn't want to think any more. I didn't want to be anything anymore, I—
Heard singing.
It was so faint to start with, quieter than a whisper, but I latched onto it with the desperation of a shipwrecked sailor spotting help, a feeling I never expected to understand. I forced myself to listen to the notes. I grasped at the traces of the voice I could catch and tried to use them, desperate to pull myself out of the dream. The more I scrabbled, the stronger the singing became. The flow of it pulled me along, and before I knew it—
I woke up.
A deep, deafening gasp shook my chest as I bolted upright. My hands gripped my shirt, slick with sweat and pale from exertion. Slowly, normal breathing returned. I felt like my heart should be hammering, but the feeling of its beats inside my chest were entirely absent for some odd reason.
I realized the singing was still there. In fact, it was louder than ever. The voice sounded familiar.
The room around me was half-classroom and half-bedroom. There was an old whiteboard with doodles of different monsters and weapons scribbled on it. In one corner, a bunch of desks had been shoved tightly together. Then there was the bed I'd been sleeping on and another directly next to it, slightly smaller with immaculately-made silver sheets. One wall was mostly glass as a giant window looked out of a field lined with white paths. The view was pretty, but a few things were wrong with it— the field's grass was completely overgrown, and someone had badly rigged curtains to the window, leaving them sitting at an awkward angle just barely good enough to be functional.
I could still hear the singing, filtering in through the open door. The voice was familiar. I recognized it now, remembering the glimpse of an island I got just before I passed out. Things were starting to come together. The only part that didn't make any sense was where I was now.
There was only one way of changing that. I pulled the covers off my legs — noticing in the process that I'd been neatly tucked in — and stepped out of bed.
My body felt funny in a way I couldn't put my finger on. The cold from the stone floor against my bare feet was muted, and every time I moved it felt like I was struggling upwind. I chalked it up to my injuries and kept walking.
I stepped out into the hallway. We were clearly in some kind of school, dozens of doors branching off into different classrooms like the one I woke up in. As I walked the singing grew louder. It was coming from one of the doors, two down from the room where I woke up.
For a moment, just one, I stopped. I stood frozen, just outside of sight behind the door frame. The song's soft notes tugged at my ears as if trying to lead me somewhere. Maybe it was more than trying. The song was what had called to me through my dream, what brought me here, one step away from facing someone I hadn't thought I'd ever see again.
In other circumstances, I would've been thrilled to have a reunion. But that nightmare cut me to my core, and I still remembered what happened before I passed out. I had a horrible feeling deep inside that things were very wrong.
And yet, I was alive. I was awake. I felt awful, but I didn't feel helpless. So what if things were messed up? There was only one way to start fixing that, and it didn't involve hiding in a school hallway because of nerves.
I stepped through the open door.
There she was, just like I imagined. Her gold hair glittered without needing the help of sunlight. Her arms were still lithe and permanently pale. She was even gardening. A half-dozen plants were scattered across a classroom that was a mirror of the one I woke up in. Some were as simple as poppies or daisies, but even in makeshift pots each looked as healthy as a plant could get. The only thing I didn't expect about the scene were her clothes. Instead of a traditional Greek dress, she was in grimy jeans and a simple cotton shirt.
"Calypso," I said. "I'm back."
The singing cut. She froze, accidentally snapping off a bud from the plant she was working on. I thought she would spin around and greet me, but she didn't.
"If I look behind me now, will you actually be standing there?"
"Unless something drastic happens in the next few seconds… then yeah," I said.
She turned so fast that her hair fanned out behind her. Tears were forming in her eyes. She ran a few steps toward me, before stopping just as fast.
"Finally," she sniffled.
And I didn't really know what to do with that, so I just tried to smile.
/\ 0 /\
"Where are we?" I asked.
This classroom was slightly nicer than the one I woke up in. It had Calypso's plants to breathe some life into the place, and even a maroon couch that had seen better days but still felt like ambrosia to my tired body. That was where we were sitting now, Calypso on the left and me on the right.
"Washington," Calypso answered.
"DC?"
"State," she said, idly running a hand across the furniture's upholstery. "Cheney specifically. It is a small town, close to Spokane."
I found myself frowning. "How did we end up all the way here? I thought I crash landed on Ogygia."
Calypso sighed. "You did. It is a very long story."
I wasn't sure how it was possible for that much to happen in just the time I was asleep, but another question occurred to me before I could ask.
"Thalia!" I said. "Where is she? Is she alright?"
She was the only one that escaped with me. If after everything, something had happened to her too, I wasn't sure what I'd do. Thankfully, Calypso nodded.
"She is fine. Physically, at least. She is not here at the moment, away dealing with a task, but she isn't hurt."
"Both her legs were crushed," I said. "She can't even walk. How is she handling a task?"
"I healed her," Calypso said. "Of all people, you should know how skilled a nurse I can be. Her legs were mended a long time ago."
An uneasy feeling was starting in my chest. Something wasn't quite right with this situation, and I didn't mean the world falling to the Titans. Too many details weren't adding up.
There was something I needed to hear first, though.
"What happened to the world?" I asked.
Calypso looked at me. Her dark eyes really were pretty, even tinged with red from crying. They bored into me, serious and concerned. Moments like these reminded me that she was a Titan herself, as old and ageless as even my father.
"Kronos won," she said. "The gods fell. Some are still in hiding, shells of their former selves. Others were captured. I heard that most were confined to Tartarus, while others faced different fates. I am sure of this, though: the ones that were spared the pit found no more mercy than their counterparts."
Is it bad that this news didn't even make me flinch? I don't think so. It wasn't that I didn't pity them. I just expected it.
"What about the mortals?" I pressed her. "The ordinary people? Families? Or even… kids?"
Calypso looked away. This time, my heart really did ache, as if someone had taken to hammering with a chisel.
Tears began to collect in the corners of Calypso's eyes again.
"It isn't as if all of them are gone," she said. "Titans are arrogant, at least as much as the gods. They all desire subjects. Whether that is better than death… I'm not sure. But even with all their arrogance, the Titans saw most mortals as surplus. So they simply… got rid of them."
I shot to my feet. "No! But… But they can't do that! The ancient laws would stop them!"
Calypso wouldn't look at me.
"Those were rules the gods put in place," she said gently. "So long as they were in power, even Titans were bound by the decree. But the Titans predate mortals, let alone laws about them. When they ascended again, the Mist fell apart. There wasn't a single thing left to protect them."
I opened my mouth, but no objections came out. As much as I wanted to cry how that couldn't be true, I knew it was.
All of us fighting in Manhattan knew the stakes. The entire world was on our shoulders. We lost. Of course this was what happened after.
"I'm sorry."
Calypso said it quietly, her head turned down.
"I've done what I can," she said. "I saved as many as I could. They've been nothing but grateful, but it never felt like enough. For every one I save, how many die? A hundred? A thousand? It's as if I'm playing with pebbles, while boulders crush everything behind me."
"It's not your fault," I said. "It was the Titans."
"Percy, I am a Titan." She laughed bitterly. "Do you know how I am free now, after centuries of imprisonment? They freed me. Ogygia's barrier dissolved, and a messenger appeared to invite me back. And I was grateful."
She shook her head. Maybe I was imagining things, but I could've sworn plants were wilting around the room to match her mood.
"Across my entire imprisonment, one thing kept me content," she said. "It wasn't the men that would wash ashore. Despite my hopes, they would leave. I knew that."
I tried not to look guilty, but I'm not sure I succeeded.
"What always captured my heart was hearing of the world. Every hundred years, when a new man appeared, he would tell stories of his home and the lands he'd seen. And every time, without fail, it was different to the world that the one before him described. Cities grew. Technology developed. Soon mortals had taken to the sky like pegasi, and placed their boots on Selene's surface using nothing but their wits. I rooted for them. I wished for the chance to see their accomplishments with my own eyes. Then I got that chance. Once free, I arrived here full of hope. And I watched everything I craved and admired collapse in just three years."
My heart ached for her. My brain screamed at me to tell her it wasn't her fault, to deny her apology and cheer her up. But the rest of me had fixated on one specific part of her story.
"Three years?"
Calypso looked up. My question surprised her so much it staved off her sadness.
"Three years, yes," she said. "That is how long it took the world to fall to this point."
"I didn't sleep for three years," I said. "I couldn't have. That's— it's impossible. I just couldn't have."
Her gaze softened. "Normally, I would agree. But Percy, you were a wreck. I wasn't sure you would wake up again. The change took so much out of you."
"What change?" I asked slowly.
Now she really looked shocked. "You haven't noticed?"
"You're scaring me now," I said. "Don't tell me I've got a terminal illness or something after all this."
"That would be impossible, considering that you can no longer die," Calypso said carefully. "Percy, you're a god."