Author: thelighthousetve

by Meru S.

After the rain,

Droplets of water release their hold on the tips of leaves

To mingle with the green below,

To quench the thirst of the blades that ripple with the wind.

After the gusts,

A void of silence remains,

Haunted by the fading whistles of lingering echoes,

Waiting in tense anticipation

To be adorned and enlivened

With chirps and buzzes and warbles.

After the drear,

The clouds depart with the wind,

In meek submission to the sun,

Whose wintry gleam is like a jewel—

Cool, precious, scintillating,

Piercing down in shimmering shafts.

by Elaina David

Tapping tortures the tips to the toes, transmitting things that take time to talk through. Tingling turning to tough tarps taking turns tearing the thoughts that twitch through the thrashing tracks traced through time. To think that the tanks that take their thoughts, they think the thoughts though they tall, turn the tables, they think terror that terrible thought. Torches turn the tempest tint, they that think through the transparent throng. The thrum that thoughts they tilt the titan, the tall tree that twists the tempest to the themes that tell the tale they took. The throng the thong, the thing that takes the tame thoughts to turn them to tricky traps that thrust, that throw, that tangle the thinker’s tank.

by Emery Pugh

Chapter 14

Percy

I woke up.

My vision was blurry, and the peripheries were dark as if I was viewing the world through a binoculars.

I had no idea where I was. The walls around me were constructed of simple gray bricks with a single dull wooden door. Everything was plain.

I grasped my mind for memories – why was I here? What happened? Where was Annabeth?

Suddenly, I remembered. I’d been struck by a droplet of venom in battle. I wondered whether this was what it was like when you died. It’s quite possible that I was in the Underworld.

My fears of being in the realm of Hades disappeared as the door opened to reveal Annabeth.

“Percy!” Annabeth ran over to my bedside.

“Annabeth, I thought I was in the Underworld until I saw you.” I tried to sit up on my elbows, but my right arm was still injured. I collapsed back down.

“Ow!” I winced. “Dang, that arm still hurts.”

“It’ll take at least a few days to heal,” said another voice at the door. I recognized him as Pranjal, one of the camp’s medics. “You’re lucky that it was a small droplet of venom, and it hit your arm instead of your head, for instance. Some others were struck by much larger ones, and…”

He didn’t need to explain further. The three of us fell silent.

“So… how do we fight the siege tower?” Annabeth pondered. “Even Imperial gold won’t hold up against the venom – and that’s the strongest material we have.”

I shrugged. Pranjal didn’t have a response either.

Frank and Hazel, the praetors of New Rome, entered the room.

“Oh, thank the gods,” Hazel murmured. “You’re okay.”

Frank gave me a thumbs-up and grinned. He had some eagle feathers stuck in his hair, likely from transforming into an eagle. Other than that, the battle left him unscathed.

“I’m just as glad that you’re alright,” I said. “Any details about the fight after I went out? And speaking of that, how long was I out?”

Frank tilted his head and frowned, trying to recall the memories of earlier. “You’ve been unconcious for a few hours. About the battle, turns out the venom can only shoot at a relatively short range, and it’s pretty inaccurate. Most of the campers successfully retreated.”

“Ballistae should do the job, then,” I remarked. “It’s a ranged weapon, and we can all just stay out of range of the venom.”

“It should,” Annabeth agreed. “But the tower has some sort of magical protection, and our projectiles can’t get anywhere near it.”

The memories of the battle suddenly flooded back to me. I remembered how the ballista cannons failed to penetrate an invisible barrier. “Oh. Yeah, I remember now. That’s gonna be a problem.”

“Well,” Annabeth continued. “All magical barriers have some way to deactivate them. We’ll have to somehow sneak inside the siege tower and disable the protective magic.”

Nobody was excited about that. It was practically a suicide mission. You’d have to wade through hundreds of monsters, evade the venom, somehow find out how to turn off the magical barrier (undetected is optimal, but not possible), and get out alive.

“Those people are going to need a lot of unicorn horn shavings,” Pranjal murmured.

“Someone is going to have to do it,” I said. “It doesn’t look good, but that’s what we do, right? We do hard things.”

We do hard things sounded like an advertisement. Call us at 999-999-9999 and we’ll do all your hard things for you!

Frank sighed. “We’ll assemble a team for that soon. Camp Half-Blood contacted us a little while ago that their part of the quest team is ready to go. We’ll have to decide who we send for that quest too.”

I noticed a small window just behind me. Outside, Jormungandr’s image flashed again, and was gone as quickly as he had come.

Suddenly, the room darkened and the window shattered and was replaced with bricks. The door toppled over and more gray bricks flew in to replace it. Thousands of projections raced by on the walls, depicting scenes of monsters overrunning Camp Jupiter and Camp Half-Blood. In another, Jormungandr rose above the camps and spat swimming pools’ worth of venom, devouring the camp in poison.

Then, I realized I was alone. Annabeth, Frank, Hazel, and Pranjal had vanished. The flashing projections had been replaced by one massive serpent on the far wall.

I reached into my jeans and thankfully found Riptide in pen form. I uncapped it and the gleaming Celestial Bronze blade shot out. It wasn’t much, and it was going to do anything to an illusions, but it gave me confidence.

The serpent laughed a deep, guttural, and cruel laugh. He whispered, Come to me. You cannot keep your precious little camp… or should I say, camps, safe.

I yelled and tried to throw Riptide at the serpent, but no sound came out. Since I was using my left arm, I threw the sword short and it clattered onto the floor.

The seas will rise and flood the earth. I can finally exit my freezing waters and enjoy warm, tropical waters. Humans, spewing gases with their factories, aid me greatly, he hissed. As a son of Poseidon, shouldn’t you be happy about this? The whole world will be your father’s realm. I will destroy Poseidon, and I will be the sole god of the sea. All land will be flooded with endless ocean – in fact, I have to thank you for that. Gaea’s power is no longer here to stop me. In return, I will let you and your girlfriend, Annabeth, roam anywhere you please. I shall protect you from the wrath of Tartarus… who has not forgotten you. Or… you can choose to fight me, and you will die in a pathetic defense of your camps against a force so powerful you cannot stop.

I’ve been tempted with many offers before. But honestly, this one was the weakest. Yeah, I like the sea, but the world shouldn’t be drowned in it. I would love roaming free with just Annabeth… but I would never let all my other friends die without me. Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter would be demolished – I would never allow that to happen.

Unfortunately, he was right about the factories – climate change caused dangerous amounts of rising sea levels. Humans were accelerating their own destruction.

One thing puzzled me, though: the wrath of Tartarus. I escaped Tartarus with Annabeth during our quest to stop Gaea and the giants… but why would he bother chasing after a mortal? I recall him remarking that he didn’t even care about the Olympians themselves.

“No! Never, slimy serpent!” I yelled. This time, my voice reverberated around the room, gaining volume with each echo.

The serpent growled with annoyance. Fool. You will be destroyed with everyone else.

The illusions disappeared, and the window and the door reappeared in their proper places. The four others reappeared in different locations in the room. Annabeth clutched her dagger with white knuckles and looked like she was ready to throw it. Frank had his bow at the ready. Hazel was in the process of summoning hundreds of millions of dollars worth of jewels. Meanwhile, Pranjal menacingly held a fork.

“You guys saw that too?” I asked. “The illusions with Jormungandr and all that?” Annabeth gave me a sharp glance. I suddenly remembered that I wasn’t supposed to say his name.

Frank nodded. “I did. He told me that he was going to destroy the world by flooding it or something. He offered to spare me, and he said I could morph into a sea creature and have the seas to myself.”

Annabeth looked shaken. “He gave me an offer similar to what the gods gave me on Mount Olympus… the serpent said he would let me design an underwater mansion for me to live in.” There was something else implied – for Percy and me to live in.

“He offered me the chance to live with my father, Pluto,” Hazel said. “I never really knew him.” She sighed, and Frank put an arm around her.

“You guys have such cool weapons. Look at mine.” Pranjal glanced at his fork. “Anyways, the serpent offered me a selection of medicines that could cure anything… something I’ve always wanted.”

“He’s offering something that each of us wants,” Annabeth noted. “Not exactly a new tactic, though, and it’s not hard to resist his deals.”

Frank nodded. “I’m not tempted at all.” The rest of us echoed what he said.

“Well… that still leaves the venom siege tower problem,” I said. “And the quest problem. And the monsters problem.”

“We’ll have a Senate meeting sometime later today or tomorrow,” Hazel’s eyes seemed distant, as if still in the illusion. “As of now, Percy, get some rest and heal up.”

by Harper Smith

I am a girl who is a witch.

No one has ever told me I am a witch but no one has had to,

for I can feel it in my chest as though it is a second heart that beats. 

I live in a world where no one is kind to witches unless they are good.

A good witch is a thing of legend, 

the kindly woman down the road with her healing touch,

the strange little girl in the woods who guided you home as a child,

the birds that seem to sing a little sweeter when you are sad. 

A good witch is something to be revered, to be treasured and loved as if she was your own grandmother, 

But that kind witch is often rare. 

More common is that of the hag, the moss maiden, the beldam, the crone. 

a witch of the dark parts of the forest, a witch of the night, a creature of nightmares and of song, something that is not human but is instead 

Fear, the fear of men and of children, the fear of the shadows on your wall, the fear of the night and the things it will bring, the fear of loss and of losing, 

and the secret hope inside of the chest of all women. 

Witches are vile, evil creatures, 

they told me, 

you better stay away from those woods.  

Such a 

p r e t t y  y o u n g 

      t                       

  h

i

     n 

             g

will do no good against something so evil as that. 

I am not a good witch. 

I know this because they have told me, with their eyes and their smiles and the prickly hardtightcrushing way they grip my shoulder when I speak too loudly or too much.

I have no family left, so I am an orphan. 

(they tell me this with pity in their eyes like I do not already know)

I have no husband, so I am a spinstress. 

(they tell me this with sympathy in their voice, as though talking to a child, or a very elderly woman)

I have a strange, off-color to my eyes, so I am an abnormality. 

(they do not tell me this but I hear them whisper.) 

They do not care about me or they would have offered me help,

when my father left six years ago, 

when my mom disappeared into those woods, 

when my brother was stolen by those forest creatures of the night, 

when this creature of the night was made to be all I had left, 

but yet they whisper anyway,  

as if they do care,

as if my state of being is somehow as important to them as their own child’s when they have given nothing to me that they would give their own–

It is not enough to be a witch. I must be an outsider, too. 

I have tried to be a good witch. In my younger years it was all I tried to do,

To mold myself to be better,

To dull the sharp edges of my weary heart,

To take what is broken in me and make it whole.

But I am angry, so much so that I sometimes feel I am

n 

o 

t 

h 

i 

n 

g 

except this anger, this burning hot fire in my chest.

angry at

my father, 

my mother, 

angry at those creatures and the monster sister they left me, 

angry at this town and the whole world, 

angry at myself. 

A good witch cannot be fueled by hatred, they say,

she can only bring light. 

She uses her magic only for others, 

brightening their lives at their beck and call, 

wanting nothing for herself but the smiles on their faces and filling her heart with the happiness and the full cup of others. 

I cannot be that way.

I have tried, oh I have tried, but how

can I gorge myself on the joy of my fellows if I seem to bring them none?

I cannot seem to wash away the stains of their disapproval more than I can wash myself of my sins, of the magic and rage that fester deep in my body.

Sometimes, 

the fire of that anger sparks too close to that arcane magic

and it catches,

and there is no hope of putting it out until I have let go. 

So I must, indulging the 

brilliant 

blinding 

beautiful 

magic inside me, 

freeing it so watch it spark through the air, 

dance its way upwards to the rafters,

and God it is gorgeous, 

and I finally feel free.

Sometimes, when I am feeling particularly trite,

I will allow it to blaze a stack of hay into smoke.

I am a not a good witch, 

but my magic is my own. They can never take it from me.

They have taken so much, and those who have not taken have given 

nothing all the same,

but I am my own. 

One day they will fear me. I know this to be true.

I will earn my name among the crones who burned and stole and pillaged through the night, 

the Blacked Dawn, the Faceless Woman, Lilith herself, 

I will be one of them in time, and they will all hate me, 

and use my stories to scare their children into soft sweet terrified sleep.

I will be all that (and more, more, please i want to be more) someday,

but for now–

for now I am only Melissa. 

That is the only name I know, 

and it is a name of anger and fire and impurity and imperfection,

but it is mine.

I do not have to be a good witch for it to be mine.