Chapter Text
"Are we there yet?" Nico whined, mud staining the white soles of his Converse, annoyed from being taken from his room in the underworld and dragged on this stupid quest. He coulda been sleeping right now.
"Show me the map, fish-for-brains! You're getting us lost!" Thalia grabbed the rain-soaked parchment from Percy's hands, scowling as she tried to read the smudged ink surrounded by green like they were with foliage. She was resting in her tent before being forced on this idiotic mission.
"Can everyone just shut up for two seconds?! Or at least brood silently?!" Percy shouted, earning loud opinions from his lovely cousins. Not like he was enjoying their suffering, he was stolen from his mother’s apartment early for the summer.
The teenaged three continued to argue on their hike like children—even though Percy was almost an adult and Thalia was technically twenty-one mentally but immortal because she never ages—it was adorable, the Fates thought.
These little three had done all their world could give them, they had preserved through everything thrown at them, every challenge, every foe, they simply outgrew this world. Their universe didn't want these young adults, another needed children, that's why they were leading them on a quest to a secluded area to unthread their strings without any complications.
You see, another one of their tapestries was unraveling, one where a curse on the Kronides and their kin ravaged the heroes that would have completed their era and brought forth the next, keeping them stuck in the past. They would just weave these heroes' strings of electric-blue, deathly-black, and sea-green into that tapestry and they would weasel their way into making the world go round.
A bushy barrier was dropped down on the entrance of the garden they entered, trapping the teens in the small empty circle of grass with hedges taller than most buildings surrounding them at all sides like a cage.
"No!" Nico tried to reach a hand put, as if that would stop them from being confined in the pristine garden in the middle of an overgrown woodland. "We're trapped! How did it just appear?!"
"This forest has traps, who coulda guessed? Oh wait, I did!" Percy slid down the wall of fauna, hands on his head while trying to fight the brain-numbing ringing in his ears from all the arguing.
"Gods, just everyone shut up! I'll think of a plan to get us out of here-"
"Oh because you're the leader? Just because you were the first prophecy kid doesn't mean you're the leader-"
"I never said I was the leader-"
"Well you act like it-"
"CAN YOU ALL JUST SHUT UP?!"
"UGH! WHY ARE WE EVEN HERE?! WHAT IS THIS STUPID QUEST EVEN FOR?!"
"WELL PERCY WAS THE ONE WHO GOT IT FIRST!"
"DON'T PUT THE BLAME ON ME-"
As the three already annoyed and irritated teens began shifting their attention to blaming and yelling at one another, the Fates got to work.
They hid the small garden from the rest of the world, plucked the ends of their strings from the loom and brought the broken, unfinished one to their station, while the world around them changed—from America to Greece, from the modern age to the Hellenic, from buildings to earth—the three's bodies also changed.
They were too scarred, too battle ready, too desolated and razed by the traumas they were unready for. They would have the peace and recognition they deserved in this universe, the gods here wouldn't be so ungrateful as the last tapestry's pantheon, they would adore the little gifts they gave them.
The hedges around the three faded one by one as their strings stabilized around the threads on the tapestry. The old, dead, forgotten forest around them had returned to it's heyday, wildlife skittering about, fauna and flora bright and animated, but there was something more... alive about it, as if the earth had returned to it's prime, breathing the air and moving with the winds.
The prophecy child froze as their prison dissipated until nothing was left, the uniform, pristine, artificial-like grass under their feet was suddenly more natural, uncut and free, the world pulsed around them, the winds curled around them like how a mother holds their child close, they didn't know what happened but... something did.
The wind flowed through Thalia's hair like it was patting her on the head, her face... was so different all of a sudden, Nico too. Their scars were gone, the dark circles under their eyes vanished, all they were left with was their thirteen and ten year old selves.
Was... did I look like that too? They were staring at me as well, we had all gone quiet from our arguing. This... was just weird, time-warping hotels? That's fine, it was in the underworld, makes sense. Thalia-turned-tree that slow down aging? Completely understandable, trees age slower than humans. But the world around us changing in the blink of an eye... too much magic stuff, even for me.
"What just happened?" Nico's voice wasn't his, he hadn't sounded that high-pitched and squeaky since I got him out of the Lotus Hotel. He was much smaller, even for an underweight, short, fifteen year old. He couldn't be more than ten, his aviator jacket looked like it was swallowing him whole with the size difference of his little body.
"I think we all know who coulda caused this, the three who causes everything minus us and our dads..." Thalia didn't finish her sentence, we knew who brought us here...
Oh aren't you the preceptive one~
The air turned freezing, Thalia was as still as a dead fish, Nico looked like he was seeing a ghost(ironic, I know), and I was the only one stupid brave enough to turn around.
There was nothing visible or physical but we all knew who was there.
We have brought you here, be not afraid of this world. Okay, that just solved everything, how not vague of them, totally understand. "What about our quest?" Thalia dared to ask, I didn't notice she turned around too, her hunter circlet was lopsided and loose, unlike her usual clean and tidy, but it looked funny how tiny she was in comparison to her big clothes.
This is your quest, child. Huh, that made... sense? Ish? Brought out to a random place in the woods, that thing with the sudden change in the surroundings. It was divine meddling, shoulda have guessed honestly.
"What are we supposed to do?" Nico asked, his voice was so cracky and small, this entire day was like a weird going-to-school-with-no-pants-on dream where all your teeth fall out and then you wake up, except this (unfortunately) wasn't a dream and (fortunately) we all still had our pants on.
You will find out. And then the presence was gone, before we could ask anything, like what the Hades happened with the hedges and why we were so dam young.
"So..." I turned back to the other prophecy kids, their bewildered, de-aged faces singed into my brain. "What now?"