Young Writers Society

Annabeth leaned against the wall, catching her breath. The tremors were less shaky, so they were safe there.

For a while, at least.

She twirled her hair nervously, glancing around. The cave was small, but it was big enough for them all to move around freely. The Russian was still standing at the entrance, watching rocks fall off the cliff. Maggie smoothed her hair down and sat next to Elias, checking on him.

Something tumbled onto her head. Annabeth jumped a little and felt her hair. She brushed away dirt and pebbles.

Please let this be over before the cave collapses, she thought. She clutched her jacket.

"Hey man," Elias said suddenly. "Let's just all relax, huh?"

Annabeth followed his gaze to Lykos, who was standing at the center. He was staring intensely at the ceiling.

She tilted her head. What was he doing? She felt something funny in her chest. She placed her hand on her heart and looked up, trying to find what he was focusing on. The rocks looked like they were about to break off, but something was holding them.

Was it just her, or was the ceiling looking a little darker?

"You're doing that, aren't you?" she muttered, but the words bounced around the cave. "Who are you?"

Another pebble fell from the ceiling.

It wasn't a surprise that someone had noticed. He should have expected someone would notice even sooner, despite just putting up the magic. But knowing that it wasn't a surprise didn't make it any easier to focus, and Lykos had to fight the urge to let the darkness give up as his attention shifted.

He looked away from the ceiling and over at Annabeth.

"I am," he confirmed, tightening his magic's grip. "I'm a magic user. Specifically, a darkness magic user."

He could do a couple of other things, too, but getting into them would just be too confusing. Besides, darkness magic users generally could just control darkness - they couldn't do much else.

...It was looking like he would have to tell the truth at some point soon.

He just hoped he could wait until he wasn't pulling an Atlas.

Kazimir couldn't think clearly. His eyes were stuck on the incoming mist, which seemed to be moving faster now. That, or a whole lot more time had passed in all of the running than he'd thought. He wasn't sure which would get them first - the mist, or getting crushed by rocks? Which one would kill them? Probably both. In horror movies it was always both.

Everyone else's chatter didn't register as the throbbing of his leg resulted in a heartbeat in his head. He knew it would be smart to lie down, but he wasn't smart, and he was also in the middle of a natural disaster. He could save smart for later.

With a stifled grunt he turned around and slowly lowered himself to the ground, a little ways from Elias and big-hair chick.

He leaned his head back on the rocky cave wall and felt the vibrations of everything crumbling around them, yet somehow, keeping afloat.

Maybe a cave wasn't a good idea, but he didn't want to go running around on the earth that was cracking and crumbling around them either. If he had to jump one more time, he was going to lose it. And by it, he meant his composure.

"Kazimir," he finally said, cutting through whatever conversation was happening to answer the question from earlier. "My name's Kazimir Petrov."

Elias rubbed his head, glancing over at the girl with the big hair who sat next to him. "If you always have a headache," he said slowly, pausing to scrunch up his nose in deep thought, "...then is another headache still a headache?"

He was going to ramble on about a headache in a headache and what that could mean, but his thoughts were interrupted by the conversation between Annabeth and Lykos. Elias didn't completely follow it, but he did hear Lykos say he was a darkness magic user.

...

Magic?

Is that...

Elias's face lit up. No way! He can do card tricks?! And pull a bunny out of a hat, maybe? Or pull up a coin behind his ear? He's only ever read about magicians in old books, but he didn't think people actually do that anymore. Maybe he can put up a show and—

His thoughts were further interrupted when the big man sat down as slowly as possible and introduced himself as Kazimir. Already forgetting about the magical world of magic, Elias shifted his attention back towards big-haired girl and leaned in to whisper very loudly near her ear, "That man has a funny accent."

It was almost as if the world around him wasn't falling apart.

Kazimir turned and narrowed his eyes at the concussed boy.

"You have a funny accent," he retorted. "Tы дурак."

Maggie held up a hand, "Hey, that's not necessary," she said smoothly, soothingly. "Elias is hurt," she reminded them, and turned her attention back to him.

He seemed to have recovered. Clearly, he was lucid. It was difficult to tell if his wandering mind was the fault of the blow he'd taken to the head or if that was normal for him. Regardless, they didn't even know if his head was bleeding. Often it was hard to tell through all of the hair.

Her gaze flicked over him, scanning, calculating. He seemed otherwise unhurt, now. Recovered from how he'd looked just minutes before. That shouldn't be possible, for a human.

"May I check your head for cuts?" she asked him.

Elias looked at Kazimir with a blank face. He didn't know what he said, but it sounded like he called him a rock. Or maybe he was talking about the little rocks that fell from the ceiling. Maybe a pebble hit him on the head or something.

Also, did he just say he was the one with a funny accent? Elias's eyes shifted toward the girl next to him who started talking some more... Ohhhh. Okay, yeah, makes sense. She also has a funny accent, but wasn't as funny as Kazimir's, and it was quite rude to insult her like that when she hasn't even made a proper introduction.

Her words seemed to register in his brain with lag. Hurt... Was he hurt, though? He normally would still have scars with the given amount of time that had passed, but combined with that "hydra's blood" thing, it was like he never made that jump preparing to fly. He did have a headache, but it seemed to gradually get weaker by the second, and it was now mild enough that he was able to numb the pain away. Still, he did feel a bit weird. Like... sluggish? And brain fog? But with a buzzing mind? It was like he had been awake for a week straight but only drank coffee for sustenance. Oh! Maybe that vial Annabeth fed him was like reverse coffee.

It was then that Elias realized he had been staring at her the entire time, but to be fair, she also looked at him, trying to read him as if he was a book.

"May I check your head for cuts?" she asked.

He was about to say: no, it's okay, I'm fine, no need.

But then he realized... he still really wants that massage.

"Sure!" he said a little too eagerly, turning so she can reach. "You might have to move my hair out of the way, and, uh... if you push down on a certain area, I can let you know if it hurts."

Please just give me a massage, he thought.

"Darkness magic," Annabeth repeated. "How interesting." She felt another tremor, and more pebbles fell on her head. "Keep doing the best you can, Lykos."

The Russian -Kazimir- lowered himself to the ground, wearing a pained neutral expression. She glanced at him in concern, but if the man didn't want to draw attention to himself, she wasn't going to either.

'You have a funny accent," Elias said.

"You have a funny accent," Kazimir retorted. He said something in Russian.

Annabeth stifled a laugh. Poor Elias. That concussion must have been awful.

"That's not necessary," Maggie said soothingly. "Elias is hurt."

Annabeth nodded sympathetically. And she made her way over to Kazimir. She placed her hand on his shoulder. When he looked up, she smiled at him, but her eyes asked him if he was okay.

"So, you're Russian," she said. "I've heard it's a beautiful place."

Another tremor shook the cave, and she grimaced. She sat down next to Kazimir.

Kazimir squinted up in confusion as the healing-blood girl walked up to him and put her hand on his shoulder.

It wasn't like he was averse to random displays of mild affection, but he had no idea what he did to provoke it. Maybe just existing was enough to win blood-girl's approval.

When she sat beside him, he looked over at her, wondering if she had any other freaky blood potions on her. If she had something that could stop an earthquake, he assumed she would've used it by now, so she was probably just as helpless and clueless as the rest of them.

It didn't take a genius to guess he was Russian, but he nodded when she said it anyways.

"It is," he said. "Depends where you go, but yeah. I don't live there anymore though. I moved to the U.S. with my parents when I was a kid."

He paused, thinking back for a moment. Learning English had been hard. He was about ten years old when they made the move. Then he thought about his son, Bo, when he was ten. Bo had been a lot smarter than Kazimir ever was.

He hoped Bo was okay. He didn't know how long he'd been away from home at this point, but he really, really hoped it wasn't that long. Bo was a teenager now, but he knew Bo would worry. And Kazimir still worried.

He stared out into the cave with an unfocused gaze as he reminisced. A few blinks brought him back to the present, along with the pain of his leg resurfacing with a fresh wave of stinging and throbbing.

"Anyways," he said. He took in a deep breath and looked back to blood-girl. "Where are you from?"

"I live in suburban New York," she said. "I used to live in the city, but we moved."

She drew one knee to her chest. "Before I woke up here, I was back home. That was one of the only times I got a break." She fingered the almost empty bottle.

Lykos was on the outskirts of both the group and the conversation.

He was going at being at a listener - it was one of the ways he could do his job as well as he did. They were all like that. Customer service wasn't a phrase that Lykos had ever heard before, but it was exactly what his job was like: he knew how to interact with people. When he - rarely - didn't, he knew how to listen and figure out how he was supposed to.

But the places being mentioned were all as unfamiliar as his clothes. Russia. New York. U.S. What were these places? Where were these places? Once the topic of accents came up, Lykos was shocked to realize he didn't recognize any of the accents. And while he understand what was being said, some of the words - like suburban - didn't make any sort of sense to him.

...He took a deep breath and tried to keep focusing on his magic. He could ask the council for information when he finally returned. A momentary look of disgust flickered across his face; maybe he would try another route. Talking with his brother was the last thing he ever wanted to do.

He would ask his friends first. Regions developed enough to have distinctive cultures and accents would have religions, and two of his friends were theological experts with a taste for adventure. One of them must have at least been to Russia, the U.S., or New York.

"I'm from a small village called Apollonia," Lykos said, the lie easily rolling off of his lips. It was one he had told Kore and those that knew her a hundred times - Apollonia, a town so small and with a name so generic that no one would ever be able to say he wasn't really from there. "But I was in Ithaca before waking up here."

Maggie tuned out the conversations around her as she focused on her patient. Carefully, she examined his head. There was little damage, really. He didn't even appear to be truly sore - bafflingly, he even leaned into her touch now and again.

Once she was sure he wasn't bleeding, she released him and sat back. "You seem to be alright," she said, "Do you feel alright?"

"Mmm, uhhumm... hm?" Elias's attention shifted back towards the girl's words. "Oh, umm... yeah?" He paused, realizing that she was confused since there probaby wasn't anything physically wrong with his head. "I mean, no, the, uhh, pain, ya know?" He put his fingers to his temples to rub them in pretend-agony. "Maybe I just need a massage..."

He peeped back at her with a hopeful expression. "Are you good at giving massages? Your fingers are soft..."

Unlike that Kazimir's, he thought in his head.

Hey, sometimes you gotta just say what you want sometimes, even during an earthquake.

Maggie frowned. Was he hitting on them? They'd never been flirted with so...blatently? Was that blatant? It was certainly...something. Not the kind of thing people would typically just say to her.

She chose to ignore it.

"Close your eyes," she recommended, "Rest for a while, and the headache should fade."

What happened next happened so quickly that Lykos didn't have time to prepare for it. The mist that had been lingering outside of the cave suddenly came rushing in. The others were all swept up in the mist before Lykos could even blink. When the mist reached him in his corner of the cave, it didn't feel like mist should feel. It was warm and invasive.

Strong magic, his friend had said as they strolled underneath the pomegranate trees, has a tendency to be really hot.

As if the memory has somehow influenced the magic, Lykos suddenly found himself in a place that looked both familiar and not. He recognized the rows of pomegranate trees, and the narcissus flowers growing between them all. He recognized the palace in the distance, made out of sleek, dark marble. Even farther away, he recognized the little dots on the horizon that made up a town.

But everything was wrong. It was too quiet right now. It was heavy, and silent, and had a strange depressing aura despite being made to be paradise. A pit formed in his stomach. Maybe he had been gone longer than he thought he had been. Maybe Thana had taken over.

But Thana wouldn't have made it become something like this. It would have been just as warm and vibrant as before.

Before he could question it any further, he caught a glimpse of other people. Spinning around, Lykos realized that he wasn't the only one who had suddenly ended up here: everyone else from the cave had, too.

He glanced up at the ceiling.

He just hoped they wouldn't look too closely at the sky above - if you looked too closely at the clouds or the sun, you could always catch a glimpse of the rocks behind them.