The Lotus Flower

Part Seven

Percy Pov

He sat on the pristine white bed, trapped in his own mind.

He did not know the people surrounding him.

The ones that claimed to be his friends. Girlfriends. Teacher.

He didn't know them.

He didn't even know his own name.

Normally, that would have been concerning. It would have been concerning how he wasn't sure how long he'd been like this. Trapped. His will belonged to someone else.

And the command-

Kill.

It had been days, months, years or seconds since the command had been raging throughout his head.

And it was so tempting to give in to it.

So, so, tempting.

Especially when it was given by her.

Circe.

The one he truly loved. Or he thought he did.

There was a fundamental wrongness in loving her. A tightness in his gut, in his heart that disappeared whenever he tried pursuing it.

Kill.

The command tore through his brain. Circe, it hurts.

There was a part of him that resisted. A whisper of who he once was, hiding in the back of his mind.

And it was growing quieter by the second.

Kill.

Kill.

Kill.

Kil-

The command halted as he listened to the scary blonde girl tell the rest of his so-called friends about...a way to release him.

Release him from what?

This was how he'd always been...right?

He sat there, listening.

Lotus Flower. Staff. Curse. Brainwash.

How the only way to free him was to find the Lotus Flower with a map taht would magically track it.

That was currently lying in a big, grey, cabin.

The whisper in his mind begged for them to stop speaking, that she was going to use the information against them-

The woman controlling him smiled, releasing a new command.

To destroy.

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Using instincts he didn't know he had, he snuck by the cabins and the Big House, places he felt he should remember, but didn't.

Inside him, he felt that whisper growing into a shout that battled against Circe's commands. It wasn't enough.

Stop, the voice pleaded. Stop.

He didn't stop.

Instead he walked inside the grey cabin like he owned the place. No one questioned him.

This place had been a home for someone he once loved. Maybe it still was. But it didn't matter.

Only Circe mattered.

The blonde girl had said that a way to fix him would be inside this room.

Part of him begged for her to help.

The rest ignored it.

And there-

On the bed.

A book, titled in Ancient Greek, 'The Curse of the Lotus Flower', opened to a page with a familiar lotus tipped staff. And the map the blonde had been talking about. As well as other pages of research and notes.

He clutched the lighter he had stolen from the prison they called an infirmary. It physically pained him to set fire to his last hopes.

And yet he still did.

And he let the bunk burn as well, for good measure.

Before the fire could spread to the rest of the cabin, he gathered moisture in the air and used it to put the fire out.

A startled gasp echoed from the doorway, and suppressing a curse, he turned to face the blonde girl.

'What the hell, Percy?' She shouted, waving an ivory sword. 'Do you not want to be saved?'

Kill.

Kill.

KILL.

KILL HER.

KILL HER NOW.

He uncapped his sword and drove it into her heart.