In the Dark

The beginning

A/N: The first chapter is a retelling of a chapter from the House of Hades, everything in bold is what I've added to it, but after that my actual story begins.  

My dream began like this:

"WHAT IS THIS?" THE huge form of darkness HISSED.

Why have you come, my disgraced son? He said

The giant glanced at the girl , a clear message in his eyes: Go. Now.

He turned towards the darkness.

'Father, you wished for a more worthy opponent?'  he asked calmly. 'I am one of the giants you are so proud of. You wished me to be more war-like? Perhaps I will start by destroying you!'

He leveled his lance and charged.

Bob stumbled away from the battle, his cat at his side. The boy gave them as much cover as he could – causing blood vessels in the ground to burst one after the other.Bob limped to the Doors. Golden blood (Ichor probably) flowed from the wounds on his arms and chest. His janitor's outfit hung in tatters. His posture was twisted and hunched. Despite all that, he was grinning, his silver eyes bright with satisfaction.

'Go,' he ordered. 'I will hold the button.'

I wanted to scream. It wasn't fair, I wanted to help, save him. For the first time since my dreams have started, i wished i could be there.  But I knew this wasn't real, it was just dream, this never really happened. Yet i still saw what happened next.

The boy gawked at him. 'Bob, you're in no condition –'

 The girl's voice threatened to break 'We have to.'

'We can't just leave them!'

'You must, friend.' Bob clapped him on the arm, nearly knocking him over. 'I can still press a button. And I have a good cat to guard me.'

'Besides,' Bob said, 'it is your destiny to return to the world. Put an end to this madness of Gaia.'

The fight was still raging between the giant and the huge form of darkness, but i didn't pay a lot of attention to it.

'Bob, don't! He'll destroy you permanently. No coming back. No regeneration.'

Bob shrugged. 'Who knows what will be? You must go now. We cannot defeat him. We can only buy you time.'

The Doors tried to close on the girl's foot.

'Twelve minutes, i can give you that.'

Bob ruffled her hair. Smile lines crinkled around his eyes. 'my friends, tell the sun and the stars hello for me. And be strong. This may not be the last sacrifice you must make to stop Gaia.'

He pushed her away gently. 'No more time. Go.'

The panels slid shut.

And with that I woke up, tears were streaming down my face, I could still hear bob's voice in my head. It was maybe around 5 am, I knew I couldn't fall back asleep, not after what I had seen. So I decided to do what I always do after having nightmares. I took my diary, and  started to put down my dream on paper. I tried to be as precise as possible, somehow I felt, no, I knew that it was important and deep down I also knew that it was real. i just wasn't ready to believe it.

It was around 7 am when I finally finished writing, as I closed my diary I thought again about these dreams, it's been almost six years since I started having them. At first I thought they were just nightmares, maybe it was my brain's way of dealing with all the books that i read,  and TV shows that I watched, I mean I could have a pretty wild imagination. But those dreams were different, they felt real, and I felt like an intruder. But I didn't know what those dreams meant, much less who the people were and why I couldn't stop dreaming about them. 

 In my very first dream, I saw a boy, he had dark ruffled hair, sea green eyes, just like mine. He was maybe twelve, he was in a museum with his school, Yancy academy, the details have become fuzzy with time but I remember one scene vividly. One of his teachers, I think he called her Miss Dods, took him to a separate hall in the Museum and literally started hissing at him saying "where is it ?", he had a terrified look on his face, and I don't blame him. She didn't even look human anymore, she grew talons and leathery fangs and attacked him.Surprisingly the other teacher, who was in a wheelchair, appeared  and threw a ballpoint pen to the boy. 

I wanted to yell "did you seriously just throw him a pen to fend of that inhuman, flying monster?!" I think the same thought crossed the boy's mind considering his perplexed expression. But his expression changed when he uncapped the pen and it transformed into a long bronze sword, almost instinctively the boy swung the sword and cut the monster in half, I expected to see blood and organs flying around, but to my surprise as soon as the blade connected with the creature it turned into yellow dust. I was stunned, I wanted to know what would happen next, but I woke up.

From that moment onward I had more and more dreams of the boy, his name was Percy Jackson.