Heroes of Olympus Series. Annabeth Chase X Male Reader Story

Pole Vaulting Into Your Problems

(Y/N)'s POV

He took a deep breath, muttering to himself. "Oh, I am so gonna get eaten." And wondering if Arcus hated him enough to send him on a mission straight to his death. The door opened with unsettling ease.

It was like the building itself was saying, "Hey, come on in and let me eat you" Once the doors were open, he had to cough at the amount of dust he had disturbed, and decided in that moment, that he was definitely meant to be here.

He doesn't know why he even found this place, but (Y/N) knew he was doing something right, no place had any right to be as creepy as this and not be somewhat tied to demigod life. It was a rule or something that every place even remotely dangerous, was meant to attract demigods.

Every abandoned building was a monster's den, every sketchy tattoo parlor was a front for cannibals and every guy who tries to sell you armchairs, probably wanted to kill you, that was just a fact of demigod life.

So as (Y/N) opened the doors to the gnome emporium and saw ten creepy statues staring at him in the fading light of the day, he wasn't shocked per se, more anxious about what awaited him inside. He slowly crept through the building.

Shuffling through the building, nervously twiddling his rings with his thumbs, (Y/N) couldn't help but take notice of the overturned hot dog cart, the graffiti that littered the walls, and most suspicious of all, the fact that there were drag marks along the floor.

It was as if someone had moved several of the statues in order to make a path, but never fully bothered to push them out of the way, he took note of the fact that every drag mark on the floor was centered towards the exact same spot.

Most of the statues were broken in some way, arms missing, heads missing, even some were collapsed into pieces ranging from torsos cracked in half, to piles of utter rubble. Any features on the statues were in too low light to make out.

He trod through the gardens, which were caked with layers of shattered stone and decrepit old statues that gave him the creeps. He felt like he was missing something, like he had his eyes or ears closed, he was missing a sense.

It was a sensation he missed, but vaguely remembered having, as weird as it sounded, he felt like his senses were dulled, he scoured through the darkness with his eyes, and it was like his body knew something was wrong with it, but not what the issue was.

He tried not to make eye contact with any of the statues, because every time he passed one, had the feeling he was being watched. Even if they didn't move, and their expressions didn't change, he felt like the statues were staring at him.

Every single one of these statues, no matter how destroyed they were, how decrepit or vandalized they had become over the years, every one of them gave him chills. He tried not to focus on the feeling of sadness that sat in his stomach.

Whenever he was unfortunate enough to make out the features of a statue and make direct eye contact with one, he just reminded himself not to blink, he had remembered hearing something like that on TV once.

Pushing forward, to the maze of statues and stones ahead of him, he noticed braziers that had burnt out, holes in the ground that shouldn't have been there, beds and hammocks littering the garden.

This whole place made his head ache, he glanced towards a shattered stone bench, and the root of a tree that had been pulled from the earth, and had the same sense of nostalgia that he got from he scar on his chest.

The sad, happy, painful sort of nostalgia, that told him, perhaps a lifetime ago, that he had been here, it made him long for simpler times, and even though he couldn't remember them, most of all he longed for the people he was with.