He Shall Return, The One That Lost It All, A Close Friend Of His Will Fall

Chapter Four (Percy's Point Of View)

I was having a nightmare.

Joy!

(That was sarcasm, by the way.)

So it was nightmare, but it wasn't.

Got that?

I was in Tartarus, and he was torturing me. Awesome, right?

Anything he does in the dream effects me in real life too.

By that night, he was showing me visions of how Annabeth had betrayed me.

Then he got to the physical pain.

So after the emotional pain from the visions, he went right to giving me big cuts and gashes.

But I barely felt them. After a few thousand (or million) years of torture, I couldn't really feel any pain besides emotional pain, betrayal kind of pain.

Suddenly, Gaea was there. She had her index and middle finger on my forehead, but she took them away when she realized that I had more wounds than usual.

She turned around. She knocked Tartarus (who had been charging at Gaea to try and stop her from teleporting me away) away from us and touched my arm. Then we were surrounded in a bright flash, and we teleported to the real world.

I sat up to see all of the huntresses, Artemis, and Athena staring at us. They stared at me, and I stared right back at them with a blank expression.

Then I looked at Gaea and smiled. "Thanks, Gaea," I said, "you would not believe how bored I was."

The huntresses, Artemis, and Athena stared at me, but Gaea chuckled.

I hopped out of bed. I looked down and furrowed my brows. I was practically covered in blood from cuts and stuff. I could feel that almost every bone in my body was broken.

Then I looked up and shrugged.

I snapped my fingers and the blood was gone. The broken bones and cuts was still there, though. I just shrugged them off and jogged off without another word.

* * *

The others found me in the same position as the day before by the campfire.

They all sat down silently and started making breakfast.

I was eating silently when Artemis said something that almost made me choke on my food.

"Can you become guardian of the hunt?" she asked. She had asked it quietly, but everyone's had heard it. They all turned to me.

I didn't speak for a while, my expression impassive.

"You do know that I was just betrayed by my girlfriend right?" I asked her. "I don't really think I wan to be surrounded by girls right now."

Artemis looked kind of sad.

"What about Gaea?" one of the hunters pointed out. "She's a girl."

"She's also my immortal great grandmother," I said, "and the closest thing to a mother I have at the moment."

The hunter nodded.

I turned back to Artemis.

"Ask me again in a few years," I said, putting my hand on her shoulder, "I might agree then."

Artemis nodded.

Then I stood up and waved to the hunters and Athena, then jogged away into the dark trees of the woods.