thalassus
She’s about to be torn in half.
She looks up at him. His face is gaunt, bloody and scraped. His grip on her arm is so tight it’s bruising. Her leg is heavy. It feels like it’s about tear free from her body and fall into the endless pit below at any moment.
She sees his mouth move. He’s saying something -- something important -- but his words are lost. The sound of her heart thudding in her ears block all else out, make it sound like it’s coming at her through the neck of a bottle at the bottom of the ocean.
They fall.
She whispers to him, right by his ear, the words she wants to be her last, and closes her eyes.
When she opens her eyes again Percy’s dead.
Acidic panic rises up in her throat. She screams as his corpse uses what strength it has in it to suffocate the goddess Akhlys with her own blood. He chokes her and chokes her and he doesn’t stop. She scrambles to him and grabs hold of his arms, holding onto what feels like nothing at all.
She yells at him, but her words either don’t come, or he doesn’t care to listen -- she doesn’t know which is worse. His eyes, dark and sunken in so deep they’re hard to look at, show the high he feels from this, show his lustful desire for more power.
A booming laughter sounds and presses down on them from all sides. She lets go of Percy to cover her ears but it does nothing to block out the sound. It’s inside he head, freezing her to her core. Beneath her feet the rocky, uneven ground, starts to turn purple. It becomes soft with some give, and it becomes hot. It starts to pulsate.
Percy starts to change. She reaches for him but it’s too late. His body morphs and it’s impossible to look away.
She watches as his feet become as large as coffins, and his hands become as big as claw scoops. She watches as he dons armour with the faces of the dammed, all with black holes where eyes once were and with mouths open far too wide to be possible in scream, pushing like they want to be free or pull her inside to join them. She watches as the grey wisps of hair grow hard and jagged aiming for no particular shape as they become the helmet. And she watches his face morph into another.
“PERCY!!” Annabeth screams, loud and piercing, not quite awake. There’s a sob caught in her throat, and her skin is damp with cold sweat.
She tries to throw her arms out, to attack or protect she doesn’t know, but she’s unable to move them. When she kicks, her legs are caught like they’re tied together. She struggles fruitlessly against whatever it is trying to hold her down until tears roll down her cheeks.
She calls for Percy again, but this time it comes out as more of a desperate whimper. “Percy...”