Cursed- A Percy Jackson Fan fiction

Chapter 25 | There

Chapter 25

Disclaimer: I own nothing. Rick Riordan does.

Prophecy #1:

One shall venture alone,

Meets two more only to fall in the dome,

Encounter will, one who is lost,

But to win the war, find they must,

The one who's eyes show the storm,

Or in consequence flame be crushed,

The fire is lost as the land reforms,

Hope be left on the hopeless,

Rather than the world becomes breathless

Prophecy #2:

Silver arrows strike at no notice,

War begins with the goddess's sleep,

As the fire extinguishes in her keep

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Leo Valdez was used to fast. So many things in his life had happened fast. Fast was how his mother died, fast was how he'd escaped every foster home, fast was how he'd learnt he was a demigod, fast was how Annabeth died, fast was how he died. Honestly, he'd never really known slow. He didn't want to, really. Slow was painful. And as much as he had expressed his love for suffering in the past, he'd rather stay away.

But. As much as he'd thought that he'd seen the fastest things could go bad, he'd just faced a new record.

In just a few moments, he'd fallen into the fissure.

One second, he was above land. That second wasn't even over when he'd felt a weird, chilling feeling– and he was suddenly reminded of every bad fast, which was almost all of them. And it was like slow-motion, to emphasise that slow sucks. And for the first time in the whole being of the great McShizzle, he was scared.

Leo remembered when he'd asked people at Camp about what they preferred: fear, or terror. They always said it was the same. But, oh gods, it wasn't the same. He was perfectly fine with terror: fast, adrenaline, reactions. He'd never quite known fear, except for the time his mom died– so, naturally, the fates had decided to give him a reminder of how it felt. He didn't know what happened, why it happened, and more importantly who did it. But, like everything slow in the world, it absolutely sucked. It–like he hadn't emphasised 'slow equals bad' enough– was slow, seeping into him like water, stealing thought, practically rendering him useless. It was the kind of fear that paralysed someone, and it was the most horrible feeling he'd ever experienced.

The piece of machinery in his hands fell from his hands, not making any sound as it collided with the earth floor. It didn't exactly land, actually– it smoothly sunk down, like the ground was water. He remembered thinking he was going to sink down next, but he wasn't able to move.

If he lived, and anyone asked him about it, he'd say some sort of weird and powerful force paralysed him. He wouldn't admit that, in fact, all it did was bring him back to every bad moment in his life, changing the tempo to make it so much more worse. He would never admit that he'd felt fear tear its way into him, and because of that he just did nothing, and just stood there as the ground beneath him cracked. For gods' sake, he didn't even scream.

In his mind, burned a face belonging to someone he didn't know but recognised. He recognised it from one of the recurring nightmares he had. The son of Hephaestus only had time to inhale sharply before the ground split open in a neat crack format, engulfing him in the earth.