Alternatively

The Sea King's Son (i.)

In retrospect, recreational gunpowder wasn't the safest to set off on a wooden boat. Fireworks looked pretty, but were they really all that worth it?

She covered her nose and mouth, stumbling up the stairs with the cabin boy under her arm. Smoke stung her eyes and clogged her lungs, her breathing evolving into rasping coughs. Flames licked the walls around them, wood creaking in the heat. Somewhere on the ship, another explosion sent gusts of searing wind to score her skin. While the roar of the fire drowned out the thundering ocean, it was clear the storm raged on above and below. She grunted, reaffirming her grip on the unconscious boy as the floor pitched. 

The rest of the crew would be in life boats and really, she should have been with them. They made a point in pushing her on one before anyone else. However, Annabeth was not helpless, making her point by directing disoriented sailors to safety as lightning webbed overhead. She went to all the decks, assuring there was no one trapped in rooms thick with smoke. She was about to join the last life boat when the shouting came from below, deep within the galley, and she couldn't just leave him there. When she shoved into the crackling room, she found him pinned, legs stuck under a fallen beam.

The deck was smouldering, orange eating everything in sight. Ropes ignited like fuses, fire spreading to create towers of flames and sails from Hell. Torrents of rain did nothing to battle the inferno and she stumbled towards the railing. Her hair clung to her neck, plastered by the rain and sweat. Lifeboats bobbed too close to the ship, her crew shouting and waving wildly. The heat sapped away her oxygen but she called back once, turning her focus on the lolling boy. Dumping him defenseless into the battering waves would defeat the purpose of rescuing him. She shook his shoulders and slapped his cheeks, a sharp pinch eliciting an eye flutter. He blearily looked at her, dazed but awake.

"You- Your Highne-"

She kicked at the crumbling rail, cutting him off. "Swim."

"Wha-"

She pushed him down, his body hitting the water with a thick smack. Anxious, she watched for him to come back up. The kid was only fifteen, he had been employed for a few short months and he had a family. Her chest was significantly lighter when he resurfaced with a gasp, a wave thrown over his head and leaving him a sputtering but very much alive mess. He began paddling to the nearest boat. 

"Jump!" Chiron bellowed over the wind. "It's going to blow!"

A mast snapped and toppled to the water, rocking the ship and knocking her off balance. The fire was nearing the gunpowder reserve and once ignited, the Bonnabee would be blown to smithereens. Walls of heat stapled her in place and the dive was suddenly more daunting than it had been a few seconds before.

"Annabeth!"

Holding her breath, she leaped off the deck and plunged into the ocean. She was a molten sword cooling in water, bubbles fizzing in her hair and steaming off her singed skin. Lungs aching, she clawed her way to the surface, gulping in air and blinking back salt.

"Over here-"

A low boom resonated in her bones and dread numbed her limbs. The ship exploded in a fury, the blast blistering across her back and ringing in her ears. She was dead in the water, a wave dunking her under and roughly tossing her among the debris churning in the ocean. The explosions were muffled but the water was boiling with flames. Upon resurfacing, she desperately gasped for air. Something smacked the base of her skull and immediately she was thrown into pitch black nothingness.

- -

Green.

Flickering green.

Buttery light filtered through her eyelids, but she remembered the deep green. Seagulls cried and the ocean cradled her with an almost hesitant touch. A boy haloed in gold was fleeting in her mind, but she could trace his relieved smile seamlessly.