Never Change

Book II: Chapter 50

Percy looked at himself in the mirror. He looked at his hands. He looked back into the mirror.

Some nights, he couldn't sleep. On other nights, he slept until noon. On and off, and on and off.

When he couldn't sleep, it was because of the feeling in his veins, like he had just drank twenty pure pounds of caffeine.

This was one of those nights.

Recently, his semblance wasn't working either. Ah, that was right. Erebus had told him it was a side effect of being close to godhood or something like that.

That was a shame. All those sea-green wards were gone. He couldn't even make a simple dagger anymore.

It had been a few days since Blake and Sun had been attacked. Tomorrow was his coronation.

Suddenly feeling an ache in his head, Percy staggered and winced.

Well, he certainly looked fine. No... on closer inspection, and maybe he was being weird, but there were a few wrinkles here and there, and noticeable dark spots under his eyes right now that he was sure weren't there before.

Gods required more calories and nutrition, and he had been eating a ton, but even now, he felt hungry. Since ambrosia didn't exist to jump that gap, Percy had to resort to other means.

He grabbed his bottle. It was filled to the brim with the liquid stuff that Nao and his assistants fed him whenever he didn't hit his calorie minimum.

Everything was blurry when he drank. A side effect of his metabolism.

He looked in the mirror. He looked at the bottle. It was almost empty.

"I drank it all." He winced, feeling sick and pained and winded all at once. He could hardly form a coherent thought.

Percy almost lost his balance. He made himself stand. He stared at the bottle.

"Fuck, I drank it all." Percy staggered, nauseous. He cursed and clutched his stomach. He could feel himself falling away from the mirror, now. Falling away from the world, falling and running.

He stopped, lost, confused and violently sick. Then he bent over and dropped the bottle and it shattered and he seemed to hit the ground slowly, taking forever to feel it rush up to smack him in the face.

"Fuck," he groaned. He was acting like a drunk, and drinking all of that liquid in the bottle certainly felt like it.

Just a few dozen seconds later, he felt like his entire body was burning up.

No, no, not before a big event. Not before the big coronation that he needed to be the centerpiece of.

With a will that he didn't know he still had, Percy dragged himself up using his grip on the counter. He looked into the mirror.

Everything looked like shit. No matter how much he ate, slept, and drank, he seemed to look like this. Of course, in the morning, everything was fine, somehow. But that was impossible.

Were his eyes playing tricks on him?

Yes, right now, he could see all the blood vessels and veins and even the golden ichor mixed with the crimson blood beneath his bronzed skin, which seemed to almost be translucent. He was gaunt, sickly—he looked like a monster straight out of Frankenstein.

But in the morning it would all be fine. He'd wake up looking like normal.

It didn't make any sense. Annoyed, he slammed his fist against the counter. The counter caved in.