the warrior of olympus [ the heroes of olympus ]

chapter seven

ˏˋ°•*⁀➷ 𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝚆𝙰𝚁𝚁𝙸𝙾𝚁 𝙾𝙵 𝙾𝙻𝚈𝙼𝙿𝚄𝚂༉‧₊˚.[𝚃𝙷𝙴 𝙷𝙴𝚁𝙾𝙴𝚂 𝙾𝙵 𝙾𝙻𝚈𝙼𝙿𝚄𝚂]

chapter seven: piper has absolutely lost her marbles ( & that's saying something coming from somone with powers over literal insanity )

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ASHANTI HAD noticed the dreams had stopped.

it sounded like a pretty odd, out of the blue kind of statement. that wasn't out of her normal behavior, though. she started almost every chapter with some sort of outlandish claim, or an idea with zero saturation to it, but this was different. her dreams, they had taken an odd, gray-ish tint to them, dulling them from the usual brightness of regular, sometimes nightmarish demigod dreams. her brethren, along with herself, were enslaved to watching the memories of others, past lives, and glimpses of the future behind the lids of their eyes once sleep did come to them. it was something briefly explained to her by a particular sun god, but otherwise not dwelled upon in the light of other priorities. all of those out-of-body experiences, the spiritual visions she'd gotten accustomed to, had stopped abruptly. to be completely, and totally fair, they often happened whenever she was in the vicinity of percy.

she almost referred to him as something entirely too sappy, like her beloved, but ashanti had begun to feel like a character in a shakespearean play, the devastation of losing her love rounding out to be just as brutal as the stories she read in the athena cabin. the feelings she tried so hard to shove down, to ignore, became harder to suppress whenever her eyes fluttered closed. it seemed as if even beyond consciousness, in her dreams, her soul still longed for the part of her that was missing, gone even. the dreams, visions, had vanished along with percy, along with the feeling of his emotions. since the war, when they'd taken a dip in the river styx ( a very heavily watered down version of their visit to the underworld before the war ), they had an unexplainable connection. a connection forged through dipping into the river together allowed her to feel what he was feeling, and vice versa. her body had become alarmingly aware of him at all times, whenever they were mildly in the same space, breathing the same air as percy, electricity danced along her skin. the feeling had been foreign, strange when they first experience, but after a severe lack of it, ashanti craved to feel it, to feel percy close to her once again.

the light of the city glowed through the lids of her eyes, and she figured another dreamless sleep she'd been tortured with had ended. softly, the voices of her quest mates became less of muffled background noises, but sharper, easier to hear as she gained consciousness. her eyes blinked open slowly, trying to take in what was around her. she could've only been out a couple hours, but it was enough for much more of her energy to be restored completely – she figured withstanding fire took much more out of her than she ever considered. leo, and piper, who were upfront, were leaning forward, focused keenly on following something, ashanti guessed. jason, who must've eaten a bit of ambrosia for his nasty head wound, appeared somewhat delighted to see her conscious, "you're awake." she sat up, she'd been resting her head on his back, using the before unconscious boy as a pillow. he didn't seem to mind, peeking at her over his shoulder in an attempt to gauge her mood. "let me fill you in."

he re-told the conversation, hesitating a bit before explaining some things, such as how leo was currently trailing a wind spirit back to the windy city, and what they'd put together about the sleeping face that appeared to her, and leo. there were many theories exchanged, but nothing quite as gruesome as what ashanti had considered. jason's blue eyes studied her in a way that was completely familiar, as if she had never discovered he was a demigod from somewhere else. she felt as if he was peeling back the layers of things she tried to keep to herself, siphoning all the things she tried not to tell anyone directly from her head with nothing more than eye contact. whatever he found, it made his expression grim. in that moment, it dawned on her that as much as she assumed she'd been carrying around the weight of what they were truly dealing with alone, it seemed the honey blonde was a mere half-step behind her, understanding truly how dangerous their mission was, and the costs if they didn't succeed. they could derail the entire western civilization.