𝐭𝐡𝐞 𝐧𝐢𝐠𝐡𝐭 𝐰𝐞 𝐦𝐞𝐭 - percy jackson

Gods, I Hate the Fates

Percy's POV:

The train stopped so violently, I was practically thrown out of my seat, and that's how I woke up to find out we'd made it to Denver. Fun, I know.
I groan, "Ugh, what's up with that?" I ask Illeana, as she's still perched upon the bench. By some crazy miracle, she managed to not be flung across the room. She covers her face with her hand, trying not to show off the fact that she's laughing. She walks over to me and helps me up, and as she leans down to extend her hand, I notice her necklace starting to gleam with golden light. I watch as her face grows with discomfort as the necklace gets brighter.

"Hey what's up with the necklace? Are you feeling alright?" I ask, studying her pained expression, which brings forth my face of worry.
"It's getting hotter, the last two times it's done that..." her expression turns to one of pure distress.

"Percy, somethings not right. We need to go...like right now." She quickly grabs my hand and flings the door of our train car open, pulling me out and into the hall with her. The train had halted to a stop, but it still felt as if it were unsteady. As we dashed down the hallway to find Annabeth and Grover, we were stopped by the conductor whom we'd met earlier. his navy blue suit was as it was earlier, and that look he had...it was strange, and almost untrustworthy.
    "You know, I was really looking forward to seeing all four of you together. But, I guess the two of you will do. As long as we have barnacle boy over here." the conductor says, pointing directly towards me. I studied his face, but it kept flickering and changing. I focus, really trying to hone down on his features. His toothy grin amongst his clean-shaven face I could pinpoint, but his eyes...something was off.

"What are you?" I ask, holding out my arm in front of Ileana.
The man sighs, "I really do wish the daughter of Athena was here, she'd probably be smart enough to have figured it out by now. Instead, I get the daughter of Apollo and the worthless son of Posiedon."
I can feel my resentment for the conductor growing, and I instinctively reach for my ballpoint pen. "Percy." Illeana says, pulling me close as she whispers into my ear. "He's a Cyclops, try and see through the mist. Focus." I take in her words, sharpening my senses as I focus once again on his features. His two blue eyes slowly start to merge into one, as if telling my instincts "Run! Go crazy! Whatever you do, get out of here!" But I knew I couldn't. I had to be there for Grover, Ileana, and Annabeth, and I knew what I needed to do to save my mom. I'm not going to let some Cyclops come and ruin that.

I meet Illeanas eyes, and we nod. A mutual understanding of what it was that we had to do. She pulled out her bow, the Epirus bow, and loaded the quiver, as I had just uncapped my pen, watching as it turned into a 3 foot long celestial bronze blade that balanced perfectly in my hands. Now I'll be honest, I didn't get that much sword-training back at camp since I was only there for like three days when the fates suddenly went, "Hey! Pretty cool that you finally found a place where you feel like you belong, we're going to kick you out now so you can go on a pretty much deadly quest! Fun right?" But it is what is I guess.

I saw a flash of fear in the Cyclops eye as we both unleashed our weapons. "Wait, stop!" he yelled hoarsely, panic laced throughout his voice.
"I wasn't sent to kill you, simply... to take you to meet someone. My boss, he is someone special... someone that the daughter of Apollo once knew very dearly." He says, a mischievous look on his face, as he looks straight towards Ileana.

"Still not getting it? Gods, you two are dense." He says, retorting Ileana's confused expression.
"Fine, I'll give you a clue. He's someone you thought was dead... except he's not! Fun, right? Alright now clue numero dos. He's the first person you've ever truly loved, Ileana Lebedev." His mischievous expression deadpans as he finishes.

Her face goes stark pale, and her hands begin to tremble, but she grips her bow tighter than she had before. "What did you do to him?" she says, tears forming in her blue eyes. "WHERE IS HE?" she demands from Conductor Cyclops, who is now an inch away from her quiver. The bow is loaded, one quick act of letting go would send the monster down into Tartarus in a matter of milliseconds.

"Silly girl." he says, smiling slyly. "He is my master. But of course, he's just a pawn in the grand scheme of our plans." he pauses.
"His whereabouts however... If you were to give up waterboy and follow me, I would gladly tell you." I watch her, and I can sense the hesitation in her voice when she replies,
    "I..." She takes in a deep breath, "No. I can't, but-" she's cut off when suddenly a dagger is thrown across the room at insane speed, piercing right through the Cyclops's eye.

Right before the creature is taken to Tartarus, he mutters one more thing, "He will rise again." and with that, the monster had disappeared in a fit of dust and left the dagger to fall onto the ground with a thump. Thankfully, the cyclops was now in the pits of the underworld, where he rightfully belonged. Me and Ileana turned back around to see who had thrown the dagger and successfully saved us, and as I turned I saw the petrified face of the one and only Annabeth Chase, right next to Grover who was fiddling with his fingers - like he always does when he's scared.
    "Annabeth..." Ileana says, still in shock from the whole situation. "That was, well... amazing." Annabeth blushed at her words, but her face was still stark pale.
    "Are you alright?" I ask Annabeth, watching her concerned expression.

"Yeah, it's nothing. Just... I haven't had great experiences with cyclops." she says, taking in a shaky breath.
    "Well we should probably get off the train now..." I say to everyone.
"Yeah." Ileana says, laughing lightly. But her laugh was off, ever since that stupid question I asked her, forcing her to remember the people of her past... This time, she didn't take my hand when we walked out of the train, I felt my mouth start to curl down into a frown, gaining the attention of Annabeth.

"What's on your mind, Seaweed-brain." She asks, watching as Grover and Ileana walk together ahead of us. I looked down at my feet, did I really want to talk to this girl? "I don't know... I asked Ileana a stupid question, and she's been acting a little bit distant ever since." I say with an exasperated sigh. She looks at me, her one eyebrow arched, as she gestures for me to go on.
"Okay... and what was that question?" I roll my eyes, not wanting to ponder the situation any longer.

"Okay don't laugh but... I asked her if she'd ever liked anyone before..." and with this, the sides of Annabeth's mouth curled up into a smirk.

"Okay first off, way too soon buddy. And secondly... what did she say?" Annabeth asks.

"She said she did, I think the guy's name was Noah? I don't know, apparently he went missing a few years ago and she never saw him again." Annabeth stops suddenly, frozen in place.

"Annabeth? You alright?" That snaps her out of her trance, as she blinks and continues forwards. "Huh? Oh yeah, sorry about that. But... Do you know the exact year he went missing?" I think back to Ileanas story, trying to pinpoint the exact year he'd left.

"Oh yeah!" I say, proud of myself for actually remembering something. "She said he disappeared two years ago, and they had a two year age gap meaning he was 15 at the time." I say to Annabeth, pleased with my response. She winces as I finish, "Hey, everything okay? Earth to Annabeth." I tell her, as she ignores my question.

"Noah... was his last name by any chance.... Erebus?"

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A/N
hey guys! sorry for taking so long on uploading this chapter 😭
ALSO REMEMBER TO VOTE 💗
i've been think about slowing the romance down a bit, since personally i really like slowburns, what do y'all think of that?