#hilarious that the gif i chose is also from black sails

[itsmoonpeaches]

Title: Long Live the King

Written for @flashfictionfridayofficial

Fandom: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Heroes of Olympus

Rating: T

Word count: 1,012

Summary: Annabeth does not expect the god that appears after her prayers to Poseidon.

Also available on ao3.

Flames cracked against the walls of the tin can creating a miniature campfire. Orange embers broke through the darkness and illuminated the damp sands below. The sea thrashed against the shore, churning, yet forcing restraint. The waters had continued this dance for months.

Annabeth could hear the growling of the monsters stored in the forest and beyond that the sounds of her fellow campers trotting around Camp Half-Blood preparing for bed.

Her hearing had always been good, and her instincts were always hypersensitive. But, as her head pounded, as she glanced up at the near starless sky, as she clutched at the s’more in her hand, she wished that she could turn it all off. Perhaps, pause her racing thoughts and the way she twitched for her knife.

She did not have that power.

Annabeth let out a breath, and she watched the puff rise from her mouth upon the coattails of this summer night’s cool humidity.

She dropped the s’more into the can. The fire hesitated under its weight. Then it smoked, wisps spiraling into the air around a treat she would miss.

When she spoke next, she did not pray to her mother.

“Lord Poseidon,” she whispered. The graham crackers snapped in half. “The Argo II is ready. Tomorrow is the day. We finally know where Percy is.” Her now empty hand reached for the red coral that hung around her neck along with the clay beads that shared the leather string. She was a veteran. She knew what was at stake. “I will find him.”

Annabeth lay on the beach. Her bare feet dug into the sand and grains filled the spaces between her toes.

She drifted to sleep listening to the rhythmic beats of the waves along Long Island Sound.

-

A voice that belonged to someone unrecognizable rang in Annabeth’s ears with a terrifying quality. Like thunder roiling beneath the surface of a dank cave and echoing from a hundred fissures at once.

“Open your eyes.”

Instead, she squeezed her eyes shut.

“Do it, insolent girl!”

Suddenly, she was drenched. Saltwater entered her nostrils, choked her breath, grappled with her limbs, and dragged.

It was only then that she decided to obey. But in that horrid moment, she found herself being yanked into the black ocean. The shore was long gone, and the hope of moonlight drained away as did the color of her skin.

Bubbles released from her throat. Her eyes burned, and then the strands of her hair came loose till it was a liability to whatever vision she had left.

She struggled to swim against the riptide that pushed her down to no avail.

She was trapped, left wanting for oxygen.

And then.

“Breathe now if you know what is good for you,” the voice commanded.

She did not dare delay. Against her better judgment, she opened her mouth and breathed. And against logic, what met her was not water drowning her but fresh air.

In a moment of clarity, her feet alighted on the bottom of the ocean, and the darkness abated just enough. She should have been crushed by tons of water, but for some reason, she remained unharmed.

Creatures scuttled along the sand, many of which she could not identify within the shadowy depths. Broken shells and broken glass bottles pocked the floor. An eel whipped past her.

A figure appeared. It was a creature with the upper half of a man and the bottom half of a dual-tailed fish. However, he radiated more power than she guessed a mere subject of the seas would. His green skin shared the hue of seaweed, and he held a conch in his hand.

“I should warn you,” stated the being. His words were melodic, like a cresting wave. He sounded different from the voice. “There are not many things my father wants that he cannot obtain himself,” he explained. “Yet now he is being denied. That is a dangerous thing.”

“Lord Triton,” said Annabeth.

“Indeed,” Triton agreed. The iridescent scales on his tails flicked with the water’s ebbing light. “Unlike my esteemed father and mother, I do not have the pleasure of retaining a Roman form. That fool Apollo and I share that fortune.”

“You didn’t call me here.”

“An astute observation,” he scoffed. “I am the Herald of the Sea after all. And the sea will not be tempted to follow all the land’s rules.” He lifted his conch to his lips and sounded the horn.

The waters rumbled. Ripples resounded from their area outward, and the floor swirled.

Triton smirked. With a final wave, he vanished in a cloud of bubbles and seafoam.

From the sands rose a magnificent figure the size of a building. Molded from the seabed and dark stone trenches came the great form of a man.

What Annabeth saw before her was no ethereal being, but a beast. A god.

Eyes made of hurricanes observed her, and she could see in them the ocean warring with itself. With every blink, she heard sailors begging for their lives before storms took them, and with every shudder from his trident, a ship slammed into jagged rocks and shattered.

He was crowned with bleached coral. His body was water, and his beard a great squid’s tentacles entwined with lost treasures.

“Well, Annabeth Chase,” said the god from his throne melded together from the wreckage of Spanish galleons and shards of imploded submarines. “You offered me a promise.”

She looked at him with trembling hands. Behind him, the hull of a cargo ship sank. Bodies trailed along her, and the screams of dying men ceased in the madness of the sea.

Annabeth had not met this god before.

When he grinned, his teeth were sharper than a shark’s, and barnacles sprouted between them. The red blood of the sacrifices that the Romans had made in fear of him whirled through his insides. The ruins of an old pirate ship splattered in his stomach along with the bones of its captain.

Neptune clenched the arms of his throne. “Return my son to me.”