A Prophecy of Two Boys

Chapter 31

Chapter 31

Percy's Point of View

We were standing in a clearing, breathing in the soft morning air as we watched the forest surrounding us. An emerald cloak swathed the forest in green, as bright sunlight filtered through the leaves to bath the woodland in a pretty green tinged light. We smiled as faeries flittered past us, several tugging a few lock of hair free from our head to add to their nests. A herd of unicorns grazed peacefully a few meters away, several pegasi mixed in among them. Wood nymphs watched us from the shade of their trees, and we waved happily at them.

A rabbit ran into the clearing, and froze when it spotted us, leg muscles tensed, ready to run. Its little nose twitched. Once. Twice. The rabbit then relaxed, deciding we weren't a threat, and hopped into the sunlight, nibbling on some of the grass.

A sudden wave of dizziness overcame us, and the happy scene shifted. A shadow passed over the sun. The unicorns bolted, and the pegasi fled to the sky. The wood nymphs disappeared into the thick of the forest. The faeries let out high squeaks as they too fled the scene. The rabbit froze once more. It sniffed the air again, then thumped one of its back legs hard against the ground, flashing its white tail as it sprinted to its burrow under the roots of a tree at the edge of the glade.

We looked up to the sky and saw dark clouds swirling ominously above, threatening to break and fall. A dark heavy presence hung over the place, and an evil laugh split the air like thunder. We flinched, our eyes flitting around frantically as we too ran, looking for somewhere, anywhere, we could hide. A glance up at the sky however had us freeze much like the rabbit.

There, in the swirling black sky, was a sickly green glow. A sign hung in the sky. A sign we had hoped never to see for a long as we may live. A skull, its jaw dropped open and a snake slithering out. The Dark Mark. His Mark…

Then we were falling, down, down, down into a soft warm darkness that seemed to embrace us fully, far away from the cold, suffocating dark presence and chilling laugh and eerie, glowing mark…

Our last thought before the darkness claimed us was a quote. A quote from a book we hadn't read in years; Watership Down: "All the world will be your enemy, Prince with a Thousand Enemies, and whenever they catch you, they will kill you. But first they must catch you, digger, listener, runner, prince with the swift warning. Be cunning and full of tricks and your people shall never be destroyed."

After a while the darkness faded away, and our dreams lost all meaning. We were back in the forest at Camp Half-blood, but Draco and Blaise and Theo were there. It was raining, but our friends were perfectly dry, and we were on fire. Our face was soaked with rain, but our body felt like it was burning to a crisp. We pulled at our clothes, trying to free ourselves from the horrible heat, but they were too tight, to restricting, and we couldn't get them off.

Then Leo appeared, grinning his troublemaker grin as he set himself on fire too. Our vision kept blurring as flames seems to flare up over our face, and we heard frantic voices in the background. We vaguely recognised Annabeth and Luna's voice, as well as Chiron's and a son of Apollo whose name we couldn't quite place. The sweet taste of homemade blue cookies washed over our tongue and we signed.

"They can't take much more nectar. They've already had far more than I've ever given anyone! Much more and they'll start burning up." The Apollo cabin member was saying. His voice brought a recent memory to mind, and we smiled as it replayed in our dreams.

We were standing in the archery range, clutching a bow in our right hand as we pulled back the string with our left, closing our right eye to peer down the range. Chiron was standing behind us, correcting our position; slightly bend our right elbow, our back tilted slightly toward the target, the string pulled back to the corner of our mouth… Finally happy with our position, Chiron decided we were ready to shoot.