Wildfires, Heroes of Olympus ₂

039, persylv for president

CHAPTER THIRTY-NINE
PERSEUS           JACKSON

Forget the cereal smoke screen. Percy wanted Leo to invent an anti-dream hat.

That night he had horrible nightmares. First he dreamed he was back in Alaska on the quest for the legion's eagle. He was hiking along a mountain road, but as soon as he stepped off the shoulder he was swallowed by the bog—muskeg, Hazel had called it. He found himself unable to move or see or breathe. For the first time in his life, he understood what it was like to drown.

It's just a dream, he told himself. I'll wake up.

But that didn't make it any less terrifying.

Percy had never been scared of water. It was his father's element. But since the muskeg experience, he'd developed a fear of suffocation. He could never admit this to anyone, but it had even made him nervous about going in the water. He knew that was silly. He couldn't drown. But he also suspected that if he didn't control the fear, it might start controlling him.

He thought about his friend Thalia, who was scared of heights even though she was the daughter of the sky god. Her brother, Jason, could fly by summoning the winds. Thalia couldn't, maybe because she was too afraid to try. If Percy started to believe he could drown...

The muskeg pressed against his chest. His lungs wanted to burst.

Stop panicking, he told himself. This isn't real.

Just when he couldn't hold his breath any longer, the dream changed.

He hadn't really wanted to see the twin giants that Bacchus told him, Sylvie, Finley, and Jason about, but he really couldn't control his subconsciousness. Otis and Ephilates were planning out a trap that Percy assumed was for himself and the other eight demigods with him. By July First, or so the giants said, they would have to reach Rome—something Otis and Ephilates were confident would happen because they had "him" as bait.

Percy had been desperately curious to know who the person they were using as bait was, but when he found out, he felt sick to his stomach. He saw Nico di Angelo stuck in a suffocating jar of poisonous air. The young boy had been imprisoned for three days and was fending off of nothing but pomegranate seeds. Percy noted that he only had five left.

The sight of Nico so close to death scared Percy so much that he woke up entirely. He lay in his bed, breathing uncertainly, trying to piece together everything he saw.

Although, it was a little hard to think when all Percy could hear was constant pacing happening outside of his cabin door.

Percy groaned, taking his pillow and trying to cover his ears with it to rid of the constant noise. But still, no matter how hard he tried, the pacing was relentless. Did people not understand the concept of sleep? It was, like, the middle of the night at this point.