The Winds Of Heaven (Annabeth Chase x Male Reader)

18. The Mother Of All Bad Guys

Y/N dreamed he stood at the top of the world.

In fact, he was standing on top of an icy cliff—which was almost the same thing. He'd been here many times before. This dream was so routine that he didn't always realize he was having it anymore. Presently, however, he did realize.

Three hundred feet below, the waves crashed against the cliff, then receded, and the sea stretched to the horizon, bits of ice floating here and there on the surface. Out of the corner of his eye, Y/N could see ruins—the ruins of a very ancient village, its houses centuries old. Well, perhaps they truly were, perhaps not. All was calm—the calm before the storm.

The next instant seemed to last much longer than a mere instant should. A crunching sound came from behind Y/N, like snow crunching under a heavy weight. His senses expanded; the wind became an extension of his limbs. He got two other clues warning him of upcoming danger: his sword surging from his ring, and the hissing sound of a snake.

He turned around, and found himself facing a monster he'd not really seen in years, though it was always in the dream: the Amphisbaena.

Short mythological reminder: the Amphisbaena is a gigantic serpent with two heads, each at one end of its body. Its scales are green, its mouths as large as to stuff two golden retrievers inside each at the same time, and its fangs produce a corrosive poison so powerful that you never truly heal from it—Y/N still had scars on his hands from his first and only fight with the creature, more than three years earlier.

Presently, the snake was cornering Y/N, making a U-shape with its body, its two heads preventing him from fleeing either way lest he wanted to get an arm or a leg swallowed. Since he couldn't go straight ahead, left, or right, Y/N chose the only remaining option: stepping back.

Only behind him lay a hundred-yard drop. He lost his balance; the Amphisbaena pounced toward him. Together, they tumbled downward at the ocean's surface, which would surely be as hard as concrete on impact.

But the impact never came. Instead, Y/N was back on his feet. Bad news: all around him, the floor was crumbling. He started to run forward, or at least tried to. From the first step, he didn't know why, walking was the very best he could manage. He tried to speed up, but to no avail. Something held him back, made him weak. Meanwhile, it seemed the world was falling apart.

He didn't want to fall. He couldn't afford to. He had the nagging feeling that if he fell into that pit behind his back, he'd never climb back up. Vaguely, he felt how fear gripped him, how terrified he was. Getting his legs to move was a never-ending battle. But he had to get to safety, wherever that was.

But this dream had a ready-made scenario from which there was no escape. The chunk of floor Y/N was standing on gave way. Drawing from the last bit of energy he still had—why was he so exhausted?—Y/N jumped forward. For a moment, suspended in the air, he thought he could escape his fate. Yet he fell, and there was no end to his fall.

The dream shifted to its final part. The most horrible.

Darkness surrounded him; he couldn't see the tip of his nose. Every muscle of his body ached, trapped as he was with his head between his knees. He couldn't move an inch, not even the tip of his finger, and he wouldn't have been able to breathe if there hadn't been a tiny space between his chest and his legs.

His skin burned, scraping against whatever it was that held him captive. Every time his chest rose, his back pressed against it, and he felt like he was being dragged by a chariot against gravel. He was so hot his sweat rolled down his back, sharpening the pain.

Not an ounce of wind could come to him, and there was barely enough air to keep breathing. When he was awake, he'd asked himself many times why. He wanted to know where this dream was, how he'd gotten there. But his dreams never gave him an answer, and their predictions were bound to happen.