"Send me! Send an army! Send a thousand ships! I don't care, just bring her home. I hate being without her."
[ PERCY JACKSON x FEMALE OC ]
[ PERCY JACKSON SERIES ]
cover by @humaneity !
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0004. | THE OCEAN DOES NOT LIKE TO BE RESTRAINED
Octavia was a little bit nervous.
She wouldn't say scared because heroes didn't get scared and she most definitely was a hero, but the word was almost accurate. Thorn had dragged her up the hillside for miles. Her feet were blistering and her knees shredded through her jeans, so grazed and bloody they couldn't have a chance to heal. He had her swords and he was dragging her by her right hand wrist covering the Celestial Bronze bracelet she wore so that she couldn't summon her bow even if she tried. She had tried. A lot.
The top of the hill was chilling. Her blood ran colder with every step and the hairs on the back of her neck stood on end. Her heart was hammering, her blood racing. Adrenaline was everywhere, preparing her for something, but even with her omnipotent eyesight gifted by Zeus himself, she could see nothing through the cloud bank nor the thick fog that rolled in dark, blackened waves and flooded her lungs like smoke intent on asphyxiating her. Despite her adrenaline, something about the place made her feel weak, like fighting was futile as was flight, her best, most instinctive effort would be to freeze up and never move, to succumb to whatever it was at the peak of the mountain.
She would not submit.
She tried to remember to be brave, but the act of even forcing herself to remember was already a bad sign. Without her swords nor access to her bow, she couldn't fight her way out like she would have done, so she did the next best thing: she did what she thought Annabeth would do. She was biding for time.
She hadn't been struggling against Thorn that much. Even if she freed herself, she would never be able to navigate her way back down the mountain on her own. It was much too dark. Sunlight didn't come here. It was like the Underworld in that way, but it was heavier. That sounded odd, but it was the only way she could recognise it to something tangible and real. The air was heavy, there was weight to it and it was choking her.
The only thing in her experience she could relate to this moment, this trembling fear scratching at the back of her neck, crawling and climbing up her spine like a Sisyphus of fear, was when she held the sun.
She remembered how heavy and bright the air had felt that day. Of course, it was bright, the sun had fallen. That obviously was not the case here atop the mountain. It was dark. A darker place than she had ever seen, even in the depths of the Underworld. Even the Fields of Punishment had been alight in fire. Here, the only light came from the occasional piercing of starlight through the rolling black fog. Like death and stars combined, Octavia was left nervous and without bravery.
Thorn shoved her forward and finally let her go.
She was thrown a few meters at least and when she landed, she bit her tongue, drawing blood. Her chin had smacked against the hard ground and chewed straight through. She cried out.
