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I woke up.
I lurched to a sitting position, shielding my eyes from the setting sun with my hand as I stared out into space. What had just happened? The afterimages of the long and elaborate dream I had just lingered in my brain, but already the details were becoming fuzzy. It had been one of those dreams that was impossible to describe in a few words, with events so elaborate and constantly shifting rules that only made sense to the person dreaming, and even then only while they were dreaming. Now that I was awake, going over even a few of the details sounded absolutely insane to me. The only thing that made some sort of sense was...
I looked down at my lap, where I had been unconsciously gripping a thick, black leather bound tome with a surprising amount of strength. I needed to be more careful carrying it around with me, I thought to myself as I stared at it's eerie cover with all of those symbols that I didn't recognize.
The book shouldn’t have existed in the first place, so the sight of it so casually in my hands would have probably given Annabeth an aneurysm. She was the one who told me about it one quiet night when she was visiting from her school in London. It was incredibly dangerous, but it was exactly what I had needed… But all it seemed to give me was an extremely weird dream. I considered throwing the damn thing into the camp lake. The crick in my back from laying down on the hard wood of the dock didn’t help my mood either.
I had gone to the dock to clear my mind. If the legend about the book was true, then I had a lot of thinking I needed to do about what I was going to do with it. One part of me wanted to show it to Annabeth right away, but that would be like showing her that I had recently acquired a nuclear bomb and expected her to be cool about it. This thing was clearly dangerous in the wrong hands, and I needed to make sure I proceeded carefully. I was annoyed at myself for even falling asleep in the first place, but I wasn’t exactly getting a lot of sleep these days, so maybe it was something to take seriously.
My eyes fell on something shifting beside me and my heart stopped as I saw the hand that rested near my knee. My vision laser focused as I made my way up the toned arm with light blonde hair that made me hold my breath as I finally stared at the person resting next to me in the face. Jason Grace lied next to me, a peaceful content expression on his face like he had absolutely no cares in the world, like he hadn’t been dead for two fucking years.
I had been there for his funeral. I had comforted his sister as she mourned for him. So how was he lying beside me looking so content and innocent, as if he hadn’t been shish kabobed by an angry Roman Emperor?
This- I pinched myself on the arm, as hard as I could, and when that didn't work I was seriously considering gently stabbing myself in the foot with Riptide to really make sure I wasn't still imagining things when I noticed the hum in the air. Immediately, I could feel all the aquatic life in the area fleeing from around us, their quiet panicked screams making their way through my mind.
"The great sky strike!" One shouted as it fled, nearly running straight into the wooden beam of the dock. At that, I tensed and glanced down at my arm. All of the hair was standing straight up, which was concerning enough, but then I could feel the shift in the hair on my head as well, gently floating up with the building static energy.
Shit, I thought to myself as I realized what was about to happen. Zeus must have seen... Well, I still couldn't even explain what had happened just yet either, but I already knew that Zeus was a 'Smite first, ask questions later' kind of god. Automatically, my hand planted itself on Jason's arm, hoping his invulnerability to lighting was similar to my own and would extend to other individuals, but I wasn't sure if he needed to be awake or not.
"Jason!" I shouted, using the grip I had on him to shake him roughly. His head lolled to the side, but I could see a twitch beneath his eyelids. The static around us continued to build. Zeus (Or would this be Jupiter?) was putting everything into this one blast, which meant I couldn't take any chances with this 'awake or not' thing.
"Jason!" I tried again, and just as Jason opened one bleary eye to squint at me, the world erupted around us. Even with my eyes closed, it was like I had just had a stadium spotlight shined directly into my eyes, and the sound of the thunder was the equivalent of whatever that was for hearing. But I wasn't dead. Instead of being fried extra crispy like I should have been, the energy flowed around me, and then it flowed past me, into the arm that I was gripping for dear life. Jason's eyes were wide open now, and I realized that at the last second he had thrown his arm up into the air to catch the lightning with his opposite arm.
I could see the effects that massive amount of energy had on him instantly. His whole body glowed a shimmery golden color, his eyes, his skin, even his hair seemed to be a slightly lighter blond than it had been a few moments before. He was wide awake now, and clearly confused out of his mind.
"Percy?" He asked, looking around the dock for anyone else. "Did you just have a really weird- was that a dream I just had? I mean... I guess I still am, right? You didn’t… Did you die?"
I opened my mouth to try to come up with some kind of answer, but luckily (or very unluckily) I was interrupted by another massive strike of lightning, but this one wasn't aimed at us. Instead, it struck the ground at the beginning of the dock, and when my eyes recovered from being blinded again so quickly, I realized just how screwed I- how screwed we were.
There, not even twenty feet away from us, stood the Big Three, some of the most powerful entities in the world, and they looked pissed.
"What is the meaning of this?" Zeus (Jupiter? They really needed to wear name tags nowadays) boomed, his voice amplified to an almost deafening level. I could see where thunder found its inspiration from. Beside him stood my father,Poseidon (This was absolutely Not Neptune, who tended to look a little too much like he would be on the verge of passing on if it wasn't for the whole immortality thing), which would normally be a good thing in my books, but the Trident pointed squarely at the two of us seemed to suggest otherwise. On Zeus's other side was Hades, who honestly just seemed more confused than anything. He stared at Jason with a questioning look, and he only had a slack grip on his obsidian black great sword, but I knew better than to underestimate him.
"Perseus! Step away from that- abomination at once!" My father commanded, but my feet were planted firmly where I stood. At my lack of movement, my father's eyes bulged, and he raised a hand around us. The water surged around us, threatening to swipe us into the lake, but I wasn't about to let that happen without a fight. Was it a fool's errand to try to have a power competition with the literal god of the ocean? Yeah, but I wasn't known for playing things safe. With a heave, I shoved the water away as best as I could, somehow managing to create a small shell around me and Jason where the water couldn't reach us. My father roared in frustration, but Hades reached over to stop him from doing anything else.
"It's him." He said, strangely calm for the situation around him.
At those words, everything came to a screeching halt. By that, I don’t mean everyone calmed down and put away their weapons. I don’t mean that the three gods in front of us suddenly didn’t look like they didn’t want to kill us anymore. No, when I say things stopped, I mean time froze around us like someone had just pressed pause on a remote. I could still move, and it looked like Jason was good too.
“They’re going to kill you.” A voice whispered next to me, and I flailed to the side, nearly crashing into Jason and sending us into the water.
“Who-” I shouted, but there was no one there. Only the empty space of the frozen air around us.
“Down here,” The voice said again, and I slowly tilted my head to stare at the book I was still unconsciously clenching in my arms.
“Ah- Is the book talking or have I really gone insane?” Jason asked beside me, and while part of me wanted to share in his bewilderment, by this point I was used to it. Honestly, I was more surprised that Riptide hadn’t started talking to me yet, but maybe the talking sword market was taken already.
“I am the Tome. You are the Reader. I have a proposition for you. Or would you like to face the wrath of your gods?” The book (Tome?) asked, monotone while still having a snide edge to it, like it knew we didn’t have a choice.
“That depends… What do you want from us?” I tried, making it seem like I wouldn’t blindly agree to whatever it said, but I didn’t see any hope for reasoning with Zeus.
“I am incomplete, only a fragment of my original power. I have used the majority to test you, and revive your companion. If you help me recover the other two aspects, I will grant you one last wish, before I depart this infernal realm.”
“Revive?” Jason said, his face twisting.
“Not an easy task by any means, but accomplishable for the time being. There is more to be said about that later.” The book said, but I guessed I should start calling it a tome now.
“We’re just supposed to, what? Help you regain a bunch of power and then blindly trust that you’re going to keep your word and leave. How do we know that you won’t just start trying to take over like everyone else does?” Jason said, wrapping his arms around himself. For the first time I noticed that he was wearing a shirt with a massive chunk missing out of it, and most likely another chunk from the opposite side.
The situation I was in really started to hit about then. I had considered the outcome of what would happen if the legend about the book was true, but I didn’t have anything concrete that I had wanted to wish for when I had fallen asleep on the dock. Now, I had accidently brought someone back from the dead, and planted a massive target on my back. The bits and pieces I could remember from the dream made my blood run cold as I saw flashes of us… well, a lot closer than I had thought we were the last time we had seen each other. There were so many moments of us it made it hard to think of anything else, but I needed to-
We had kissed. We had done a lot more than kissing. That sort of stuff wasn’t something that was going to be easy to ignore, no matter how badly I wanted to. I hadn’t even gone on a single date since me and Annabeth had split up, and to go from that to… whatever had happened, it was a quick escalation. What was I supposed to say about what I saw?
Jason’s gaze caught me staring at him, and I quickly turned to break eye contact. Oh gods, did he remember too? The blush spreading through his cheeks as I peeked back at him gave me more of an answer than any words could.
“Uh, did we-” He started but he was cut off.
“I require an answer,” The Tome demanded, and then suddenly the world slammed back into motion.
Our fathers (and Hades) stared at us in shock, as if they had sensed the momentary blip in time the Tome had caused.
“It’s- It can’t be true…” My father whispered as his face twisted in fear. “Perseus, release that book at once, please,” He pleaded, and for a moment I was going to believe him and try talking, but I could see Zeus reaching behind his back, no doubt going for another one of his lighting bolts. Hades slightly moved his hands, and I could see dark shadows creeping towards us, slow inky blotches of shadows creeping through the dock’s boards.
“I-” I tried, but my words fumbled as I stared death in the face. They were really going to kill us, weren’t they?
“Percy!,” Jason said, lurching forward to grab my arm. I didn’t know if it was to protect me from any more of Zeus’s bolts or to move me into action, but there was no time to think about it.
“We’ll help you.” I said, holding the book up.
“Then speak.”
The Tome fluttered open, landing on a page full of dark scribbles and glyphs that made me nauseous just looking at them. In the center of the page was a single word, and without pausing to think about it, I yelled it out.
“Taxidi!”
In the same instant I yelled, I could see the bright bolt of lighting begin to snake its way towards us in slow motion, as well as a hundred shards of darkness stabbing at us. The world melted around us before either of them could hit us, and the last thing I saw before everything went dark was the pure terror on my Father’s face as he watched us disappear.
When the world slowly faded back into existence around us, my knees collapsed from the pressure of landing, and I nearly lost my grip on the book, but I stabilized myself with my arm. Whatever had just happened was a thousand times worse than shadow traveling with Nico had been. I could hear Jason wasn’t as lucky as I was, and he fell hard on his back, slowly huffing out a breath.
We were… where were we? There was low brush all around us, and a chilly wind that cut through the thin layers I had on. There was a nagging feeling at the back of my head, like a disconnect had been established between me and something on the edge of my mind. It was as if there was a forming chasm between me and something, but I couldn’t place my finger on it.
“Where did you take us?” I asked, watching as Jason groaned and stayed on the floor where he had landed.
“Outside of the Gods influence.” The Tome stated, seemingly satisfied with itself.
“That doesn’t narrow it down.”
“The location is not important, but you are safe for the time being.”
The Tome seemed to be determined to irritate me with its refusal to answer basic questions, and it was working.
“Can we just get some straight answers for once? You have some explaining to do. I feel like I’m missing something, there’s a dream I can barely remember, but I know you had something to do with it, and I want answers before we go any further!” I demanded.
On the floor, Jason had gone still.
“That dream… It wasn’t a dream, was it?” Jason asked, his voice going quiet as if he was afraid of the answer.
“Partially correct,” The Tome said, sliding out of my hands and gently floating in the air in front of us. Again, it should have been surprising but at this point I didn’t get too caught up in things like that.
“It was meant to be a vision, a test to determine if the Reader was worthy, and to force them to unveil their true desires for what they wanted from my Creator. Many people come in with preconceived notions of what they think they want, and then leave with something else entirely.”
“You’re going to have to elaborate on the whole ‘Creator’ thing,” I pushed, and the book turned my way.
“In due time.” It said, completely ignoring my request. “As I was explaining, it was meant to be a guiding vision to help you determine your true desires, but as you entered the dream state, there was one who tried to infiltrate, to seize command from you. I managed to take care of them, but it took longer than it should have.”
In my head, an image of Morpheus, the minor god of dreams covered in an inky black substance and face twisted in agony flashed.
“What happened to him?,” I asked, but I already knew the answer.
“They were dealt with. As much as I wanted to crush their existence completely for their disturbance, I do not interfere on such a level if I can help it. I merely gave him a taste of his own medicine. He is slumbering in a deep dream.”
The idea of the god of dreams being reduced to a mere plaything of this Tome was horrific, and I wondered what else this thing could do. It could stop time, it could seemingly revive people from the dead, what else?
“Why do you even need our help? You seem pretty powerful by yourself.” Jason asked, mirroring my train of thought.
Now, the Tome turned to face Jason.
“If I plucked your right eye and left leg from you, would you miss them? You could survive without them, but would you be complete? These Aspects are a part of myself, and before I leave this place, I would like them back.” It chided, clearly annoyed by the question.
“You mentioned that before that you want to leave. What did you mean by that? Are you talking about leaving the country or...” I asked, but trailed off. Why was I even asking a floating book a question?
“My plans are not so feeble, I could travel anywhere I wanted to, but that is not what I want. I was born in a void, an empty and limitless zone of infinite possibilities and I would return there. This world is disgusting, and I have been used against my wishes to grant the wishes of abhorrent, disgusting little people who I would never willingly let touch me or my pages ever again.”
“That sounds good, but how can we even trust you?” Jason questioned, slowly getting off his back and climbing to his feet.
“Is there not a common method to which you plebeians pledge oaths to one another? I swear on the River Styx that I only wish to leave this world once I restore myself to my original self.”
That… Well, on paper (I wanted to make a book pun but stopped myself) it sounded good, but books might not have the same divine rules applied to them.
I looked over at Jason, but the truth was we still didn’t have any other option. We were already on the run from probably the entire Greek Pantheon at this point, and also in a completely different country. Jason nodded his head at me. Then, he looked away. I tried not to let the action sting, but I couldn’t exactly say what I wanted him to do instead, either. We- We were definitely going to have to talk about what had happened between us in that vision.
“Ok,” I said, relenting to the Tome’s wish. “We’ll help you, but how do we even start?”
The Tome floated over past my shoulder, causing me to spin to follow it. It moved past the tree cover, and then stopped as we stared at the city towering in front of us. I didn’t know how we didn’t notice it sooner, but now it was hard to look at anything else.
“Welcome to the city of Calgary. My first Aspect was hidden somewhere in this place. There is a man who you need to speak to tomorrow. He will be at the top of the tallest building, but you must get to him before it is too late.”
“Why can’t we go to him right now,” I asked, but the book lurched towards me.
“Because I said so. I shouldn’t not have to explain every move to my servants.”
“Servants!” Jason yelled, stomping towards us.
“Yeah, hold up right there. We agreed to help you, but we never said anything about being your servants.” I protested, but I was more concerned with the way Jason was starting to shiver. It wasn’t biting cold yet, but his torn shirt, while granting easy access to look at his toned stomach, was open-
No. Nope, I wasn’t thinking about that right now. The point was, he needed something else to wear. The thing was, I had like twenty bucks to my name, and it was in American dollars. Also I didn’t have a passport or anything. I could technically get someone to give me their money through the Mist, but that was a last resort kind of thing. As if it could read my thoughts, the book opened itself to a random page, and money started pouring out from it. I picked up one of the bills and saw a bunch of people I didn’t recognize on the colorful bills.
“Will this monetary transaction suffice to make the pair of you silent until we can secure lodging somewhere more private?” The Tome asked, annoyance clear in its formerly monotone voice.
I hadn’t planned on having an ancient talking book be my sugar daddy, but I also hadn't planned on reviving my formly dead friend either.
I bent down to pick up the bills. Jason stared at me, disbelief clear in his face that I was taking the offer, but a boy’s gotta eat somehow. I shrugged at him.
We made our way out of the brush and into the city proper. It was a long walk, lengthed by having to turn around every few blocks, and ask for directions. We stopped quickly to buy Jason a new shirt, some light jackets, and then basic toiletries and snacks. Before long, we were at the base of a cheap hotel on the edge of town, and with the help of a few Mist tricks that Hazel had taught me one boring summer afternoon, I managed to convince the hotel clerk to check a room out to two clearly under 21 years old young men.
The hotel room itself was small, but it had- I turned around on my heel to leave the room and ask for a different one and nearly slammed into Jason.
“What’s wrong?” He asked, trying to peer around me into the room.
“It’s- There’s only…” I stammered but the words wouldn’t come out.
Jason pushed past me and into the room. A king size bed sat squarely against the wall, mocking us in its presence as the only bed in the room.
“It’s fine, I can just ask for another room.” I tried to say, walking out of the room, but Jason stopped me, grabbing me by the arm. I froze. He let go quickly and then backed up.
“Percy, I hate to break it to you, but I don’t know how convincing your Mist skills were. I’m pretty sure I could see the guy regretting letting us get a room by the time we made it to the elevators. We shouldn’t push our luck anyways. Let’s just- If it’s that much of an issue, I’ll sleep on the floor.”
Instantly I felt like a complete asshole. There was no way I was going to let my resurrected friend slash extremely complicated crush sleep on the floor just to make me feel better about something that had really only happened in a dream.
“No, no, you’re okay. We can just share it.” I relented, and closed the door to the room, sitting on the plush duvet.
“I wonder what the others are being told about what happened,” I said quietly, staring at the pattern of the flooring. There was no doubt that Zeus was making it seem like we were dastardly villains, especially after we had the nerve to not want him to smite us to oblivion.
The book floated up to my face, I could imagine two eyes staring at me in the darkness of the black leather cover.
“It does not take too much energy to observe,” The Tome whispered to me. “Would you like to see what your friends have been told about you?”
I knew I shouldn’t trust this.. Thing, whatever it was, but the offer was too tempting to pass us. I would keep an open mind, I wouldn’t fully trust what it told me in case literature wasn’t bound to the River Styx like humans and deities were, but if it was telling the truth, then I needed to know.
“Ok,” I said, “How is this going to work, do we need mist like an Iris message or something?” I asked, preparing to get up and using the bathroom shower.
“That will not be necessary,” It said, slowly opening to reveal an empty section on one of its pages. I was about to open my mouth to complain about it wasting my time when a blotch of ink slowly appeared on the page, and then began dragging itself across the page to form letters.
I picked up the book and started to read as words wrote themselves on the blank page in jet black ink that glistened for a moment before turning matte. Jason scooted on the bed to read over my shoulder and I could feel his body heat warm me. I didn’t think about it.
'Annabeth knew that Percy had a tendency to make uninformed choices when she wasn't around to stop him, but this was something on a completely different level than anything that had come before this...