HEARTS OF CELESTIAL BRONZE ― ( 𝐏𝐉𝐎 )¹

𝟷.𝟸 𝚃𝙻𝚃 ― 𝙋𝙚𝙧𝙘𝙮 𝙅𝙖𝙘𝙠𝙨𝙤𝙣

∴ ════════ ∴

PERCY P.O.V.

The bull-man screamed and flung me through the air. I landed flat on my back in the grass. My head smacked against a rock. When I sat up, my vision was blurry, but I had a horn in my hands, a ragged bone weapon the size of a knife. The monster charged. Without thinking, I rolled to one side and came up kneeling. As the monster barreled past, I drove the broken horn straight into his side, right up under his furry rib cage. 

 The bull-man roared in agony. He flailed, clawing at his chest, then began to disintegrate—not like my mother, in a flash of golden light, but like crumbling sand, blown away in chunks by the wind, the same way Mrs. Dodds had burst apart. 

 The monster was gone. The rain had stopped. 

The storm still rumbled, but only in the distance. I smelled like livestock and my knees were shaking. My head felt like it was splitting open. I was weak and scared and trembling with grief. I'd just seen my mother vanish. I wanted to lie down and cry, but there was Grover, needing my help, so I managed to haul him up and stagger down into the valley, toward the lights of the farmhouse. I was crying, calling for my mother, but I held on to Grover—I wasn't going to let him go. 

The last thing I remember is collapsing on a wooden porch, looking up at a ceiling fan circling above me, moths flying around a yellow light, and the stern faces of a familiar-looking bearded man and two pretty girls, one had blonde hair curled like a princess's. The other had dark hair pulled back from her face. All three looked down at me, then the dark haired girl got down closer, her bright gold eyes coming into focus. They darted across my face curiously as the blonde girl said, "He's the one. He must be." 

"Silence, Annabeth," the man said. "He's still conscious. Now, help Tessa bring him inside." 

∴ ═══ ∴

I had weird dreams full of barnyard animals. Most of them wanted to kill me. The rest wanted food. 

 I must've woken up several times, but what I heard and saw made no sense, so I just passed out again. I remember lying in a soft bed, being spoon-fed something that tasted like buttered popcorn, only it was pudding. The pretty girl with dark hair hovered over me, smiling softly as she wiped pudding off my chin with a napkin. The other girl with curly blonde hair hovered behind her, a guarded look on her face, like she thought I might spring up at any moment and attack them. When she saw my eyes open, she pushed her dark haired friend gently to the side and leaned close to my face, asking, "What will happen at the summer solstice?"

I managed to croak, "What?"

 She looked around, as if afraid someone would overhear. "What's going on? What was stolen? We've only got a few weeks!" 

 "I'm sorry," I mumbled, "I don't..."

"Annabeth," it must've been the dark-haired girl who spoke, though my eyes weren't focusing well enough to see her face now that she wasn't in front of me anymore. "You shouldn't be asking him questions like that. He's not even fully awake yet, it can wait."