Chapter 36
Piper
After getting stabbed in the stomach, getting the Curse of Gaea, and nearly dying on a daily basis, Piper was done with danger. She was about ready to go to her room, dive into the blankets, and stay there for a thousand years. But of course, she would probably die in the war, she had a battle to fight, and she couldn’t just abandon all her friends.
Even though she was being like a psychopath, her friends accepted her. She had mood swings, visions, and nightmares, yet her friends were always there. The question was why? She wasn’t sure.
Exhaustion was weighing down on her. Most of the night she would be awake from waking up from nightmares and she wouldn’t be able to fall back asleep. So she was in her room, her back on her bed while her legs were leaning against the wall, while her head was nearly hanging off her bed upside down. It was a comfortable position.
She stared into her knife. Katoptris sent her helpful visions sometimes, but the knife revealed nothing except her own reflection. That wasn’t helpful. She could see all the changes that had happened to her when she was kidnapped. Her face was paler with bags under her eyes. And she was thin, way thinner than she should be. It was depressing.
Once again her eyes fell on the picture of her dad. She was guilty for not telling him what was going on with her life. She nearly died a few days ago from the spear. Again, she pulled her shirt to reveal the scar. It was a painful memory that she couldn’t get out of her mind. She could remember being inches from death, nearly being pulled into the abyss.
Okay. Maybe she was crazy.
Whatever the reason, she kept having a new and repeating dream. It was that she was falling. There was nothing around her except for darkness. She was tumbling through the air, silver light enveloping around her, and that’s when she usually woke up.
She was crazy.
She was nodding off in her comfortable position. Sleep was finally pulling her down and she was grateful.
Her dreams didn’t spare her.
She was standing in front of the Doors of Death. She froze up, her throat closing around her vocal cords. She couldn’t scream or run. She was like a statue.
The cliffs were jagged, about two hundred feet above the giant double doors. There were ledges all around the cliffs. The ledges were big enough to hold a giant.
And then she wasn’t there anymore.
Now she was in the meadow. She knew this dream. The dream was her friends would die right before her eyes.
There was Frank, shooting arrows, when suddenly an Earthborn came behind him, grabbed his neck, and snapped Frank’s spine.
Hazel was lifting jewels from her curse, when the gems suddenly hit her, crushing her to death.
Leo was shooting fire from his hands when ice froze him and melted. His body wasn’t there anymore.
Percy was holding Riptide tightly, when the sword was ripped from his hands and stabbed him in the throat.
Annabeth was glowing silver from the Mark of Athena when she erupted into light.
And Jason’s death was the worse. Piper could no longer control her body as she brought her knife down on his neck.
You see, Piper McLean? Gaea asked sleepily. This is how you will come to an end.
And like every nightmare Piper had, she woke up with a big jerk, causing her to fall backwards off her bed and sprawling on her stomach on the floor. Her knife clattered out of her hand. She sighed, knowing that she would have to get up, but not wanting to stand.
Someone opened her door. It was Annabeth. She raised an eyebrow. “Why are you on the floor?”
“I f-fell,” Piper admitted.
“Is that all?” Annabeth asked with a sour expression.
“Um, nightmare…” Piper trailed off when she saw Annabeth’s worried look.
“Piper, why do you keep having nightmares and visions?” Annabeth asked anxiously. “You keep pulling away.”
“I…” Piper clamped her mouth shut. And her dream spilled out. She was babbling and needed to stop, but she ended her little speech with, “If I tell you guys, I think Gaea will make my dream happen!”
Annabeth’s eyes were huge. “Why… didn’t you tell us?”
“The same reason I told you: Gaea could make the dream real, Annabeth. I don’t want my best friends to die.” Piper lifted herself from the floor and sat on her bed. “I’m tired of this, Annabeth! I can’t keep letting Gaea attack me like this!” She opened her door and went to a place nobody knew existed on the ship.
Down by the engine room, there was a supply closet. You would have to go through the engine room, where it was searing hot. Piper, needing to get away from people lately, went down there. Between the bottom shelf and the ground, there was a gap where a person could easily fit if they curled up into a ball.
Piper curled up, one side of her body touching the ground, the other side touching the shelf. She managed to reach up and swing the door so it was barely open.
Everything was perfectly quiet. The snow had melted when she had the Curse of Gaea, so the whole ship hummed from the air conditioning. The supply closet was cool. Piper rested her head on the ground.
She was perfectly alone. Her thoughts roamed around freely. She wondered what happened to her. Was it because she was kidnapped? Whatever the reason, she wanted to stay in the supply closet for life.
The door opened. She sucked in a breath. It was just Leo. He reached down and accidently grabbed her leg. He yelled, she screamed and flinched.
The shelf above her shook, for when she flinched, her whole body slammed into the shelf. Suddenly the shelf gave way.
The shelf came down and hit her on the head. Before she could crawl away, screws, bolts, and rolls of paper towels came raining down on her head.
She blacked out. The last thing she remembered was Leo yelling for help.
~*~*~*~*~*~*~
So Piper wanted time to be alone, and she got it. Blacking out was the best thing that had happened to her all day. She could think freely. She wasn’t interrupted with horrible dreams… nightmares, which is what she meant. The only thing bugging her was the pain in her head.
When she began to wake, she kept her eyes closed. Being a daughter of Aphrodite, she could surprisingly keep her face perfectly smooth like an actress.
She heard voices. At first it was only a slight buzzing, like a bumblebee, but then she could identify the voices and each word like a TV being turned on.
“So, she was hiding in the supply closet?”
“Like I told you, I went to get some paper towels because I spilled some coffee, I accidently pinched her leg, she screamed, and then boom. The shelf hit her on the head and she passed out.”
“Why…”
“I have no clue, Annabeth.”
There was silence.
“Hey, we’re going to eat something. Are you coming, Jason?”
“I’ll pass.”
The other person hesitated. “Okay.” There were footsteps. A door clicked shut.
“You could have gone to eat, you know.” Piper sat up and opened her eyes. She was sitting in her room.
Jason jumped next to her. “Piper, how long have you been awake?”
“Long enough,” she replied. She scooted next to him and rested her head on his shoulder.
“Why were you hiding in the closet?” he asked.
“It’s the only place to get some peace. It’s not my fault Leo found me.”
His lips twitched into a smile. “Have you been going into that closet a lot lately?”
“Yes,” she confessed. “It’s not my fault the shelf knocked me out.”
He looked at her. “Piper, you could have told us. Annabeth told you what you told her. I’m sorry it’s been torturing you.”
She glanced away. “Yeah, I coped with it.” She tugged on a braid.
“Anyways, I’m going to go train.” Jason grinned. “Do you want to come?”
“Sure.” She stood up and threw off her jacket. She knew for a fact that training usually ended up with her drenched in sweat. She picked her knife up from the ground and looked into it.
This time, there was a vision. It showed the cliffs by the Doors of Death. There were seven small figures and two giant figures. They appeared to be fighting.
She squinted and looked closely.
It showed a red giant, Ephialtes. She and Annabeth were climbing him, when the giant opened its mouth. His whole body trembled. And Piper and Annabeth were thrown off the giant and over the cliff.
Piper dropped her knife. She said, “Vision in the knife. It was bad.”
“What was it?” Jason asked.
She shook her head. “I-I’ll tell you later.” She picked up her knife and wouldn’t meet his eyes. “I-I’m sure it’s n-nothing.” She promised to herself that nobody could find out about the vision. It was too awful. She couldn’t risk Gaea hurting anyone because she couldn’t keep her mouth shut because of a vision.
The vision probably was never going to happen.
Dread flew over her body as she walked out the hall and into the training room. She didn’t start with slashing up the dummies like she usually did. Instead, she brought out her knife and spent a long time just cleaning it.
The vision was never going to happen, Piper thought. Get over it! Gaea’s probably trying to scare you.
But she couldn’t forget about the vision. She had been clearly thrown off the cliff with Annabeth with her. Did she get saved somehow? She never wanted that vision to happen. Falling off a cliff was not on her agenda. If that did happen, she had to add it to her schedule planner… Ah, you must be crazy, she thought angrily to herself. Stop the negative thoughts and enjoy that you’re alive after getting turned into a shish-kabob!
“Are you going to train?”
Piper jumped. She spun around and felt the heat rush to her cheeks. Jason raised an eyebrow.
“Um, yeah, I was… polishing my knife.” She helplessly raised her knife, which was practically so bright that her eyes could suffer permanent damage. Jason could tell she was hiding something. He made a weird face but apparently shook it off. She stood up from her seat and went over to a dummy.
Before she could stab the floppy dummy, Annabeth and Percy walked in. More like Annabeth was storming with an angry expression while Percy ran after her.
“Come on, Annabeth!” Percy was calling.
She spun around on her heel and wagged her index finger angrily at him. “You forget every single anniversary, Seaweed Brain! I’m mad.”
“Guys, this is no time to fight.” Piper held up her shiny knife. “Whoever begins to try to go all crazy again will get skewered.”
Annabeth scowled. “What did you do to your knife? Dip it in oil for an hour?”
Blinking, Piper lowered her knife. She was annoyed with Annabeth’s attitude. “Come on, Annabeth. I’m going to talk to you.”
She walked over and wrapped an arm around Annabeth. They walked to Piper’s room. Her blankets were in a heap on the floor from falling off the bed earlier.
“My room’s a mess,” Piper said sheepishly. She went over and pulled the sheets back over the mattress. She found her journal partially sticking out of her drawer, so she tucked the old book back into the drawer. She turned around to face Annabeth. “Care to explain your bad attitude?”
“For our one-month anniversary, Percy forgot,” Annabeth admitted. She sat on the bed, the springs squeaking under her. “Thank the gods he remembered when I reminded him. We did go on a date, but I’m not going to bore you with icky and fluffy details. I hate when he forgets things. His head if full of kelp, not brains,” she muttered as she looked up.
For once, Piper couldn’t sympathize with this problem. Because she had recently started dating Jason, so she didn’t really have to worry about anniversaries. Plus, she didn’t really care about the gifts and things. She got everything she wanted when she started the relationship. But looking at Annabeth’s tired and exasperated face, Piper knew that she was dealing with a couple that did care.
“Well, maybe you should listen to Percy,” Piper suggested. She sighed. “I don’t know how to deal with this. I don’t really care about anniversaries. I’m just happy that Jason chose me over Reyna.”
Annabeth chuckled darkly. “You’re lucky. I’m probably overreacting.” She sighed slowly. “I just wish he would care a little more.”
“He does care.” Piper could feel her charmspeak coming into her words even though she tried to stop it. “The war is going on. I almost died, the Doors of Death are wide open, and you’re worrying about your anniversary.” She was ranting and needed to stop, but she managed to blurt out, “Think about what Percy is feeling!”
“I didn’t think of it that way,” Annabeth said, sounding embarrassed. “I’m an idiot, aren’t I?”
“Well, I didn’t mean to sound so harsh.” Piper sat by her friend on her bed. “This whole war is driving me crazy.”
“Oh gods, you should have been there when we battled Kronos,” Annabeth remarked with a grimace. She pulled up the sleeve to her shirt to reveal a pale scar on her upper arm and that curved around the shoulder. “This is where I took the knife for Percy.”
“Gods, Annabeth,” Piper whispered. “That must have been painful.”
“You have no idea,” Annabeth agreed. “I bet it was better than getting stabbed in the stomach with a spear.”
Piper felt all expressions being wiped from her face. “It was like… I was walking on the cliff. If I fell, I would be dead. The mist… oh gods, it was sickly sweet. I could literally see my life flash before my eyes. It hurt so much.”
“I can’t even imagine.” Annabeth shut her eyes. “I’m glad I talked to you.”
“I agree.” Piper smiled, forgetting all about the painful stab except her hand slipped under the shirt and rested on the scar on her stomach.
“I’m going to talk to Percy.” Annabeth quickly jumped off the bed and out the door.
Smiling, Piper stood and took a deep breath. She was happy that her friends were going to be fine with everything.
She could almost believe that everything was perfect.
Then she remembered she had to do the impossible and she would probably die. Her smile vanished in an instant.
She wondered when she would ever smile again.
So, nice chapter, huh? I know it was impressive. That’s how I am. *flex*
Leo: Haha, I dropped a shelf on Piper's head!
Me: Not really. She did it to herself.
Leo: Whatever... do you own me y-
*Piper knocks him out*
Piper: Hey. He was gonna ask if you owned us yet, but of course you don't. Rick Riordan does.
Me: You're a smart girl.
Leo: *waking up* Coffee?!
So. The next chapter is... *drumroll* Percy! How will Percy fix his mess with Annabeth? He forgot their eleven-month aniversary! OH NO! That Seaweed Brain...
This chapter is dedicated to flipwatch. Congrats!
Question: Who warned Annabeth that she would make an important decision later on? Hint: It was in the labyrinth.
Thanks for reading. Prepare yourself for something big that's coming very soon...