AN. As of 4/7/2011, this fic officially sucks. Rewrite in progress.

The boy slept.

He had black hair falling over his tightly shut lids, which cased brilliant green eyes, hidden from the world in his slumber. The rise and fall of his chest was the only indication that he was actually alive, not dead as would have been previously presumed. He lay on a twisted bed of vines, hardened and gnarled, forming a rectangular shape for him to sleep on.

The place in which he slept may once have been glorious, in its prime, perhaps, but now it was old and dilapidated, with broken pillars and a missing roof, vines twining over the marble floor and crawling over the cracked stone pillars. The place in which he slept was on the very top of a mountain, on a cliff above the sea, where the people believed the gods would watch over them. It held a remarkable view of the sunrise and sunset, whereby each glimmering ray of gold, pink, orange or yellow would be splayed across the clear sky, casting miraculous images on the crystal-clear blue water beneath.

And so the boy slept.

And as he slept, he dreamed.

At first he dreamed of endless strawberry fields, and a blonde girl, laughing at some joke he had told her. He dreamt of a bonfire, soaring with his spirits as he expressed his utter bliss. He dreamt – oh, he dreamt – but the images he dreamt of were simply too good to be true.

The boy muttered something and tossed on his bed of vines. Darkness now infiltrated his dreams, clouding out the happiness, and the taste of chocolate chip cookies on his tongue. Cold, touching the deepest pits of his mind as he slept, twisting and turning. A voice, emanating out of the darkness. "Good," It whispered. He felt its grip around him, vice-like, and cried out, even in his sleep. Rivulets of sweat cascaded down his cheeks, and his back.

And as he dreamed, figures emerged onto the relic of what used to be a palace.

Their expressions were unfriendly as they watched the sleeping boy, but there was an unexplained curiosity in their eyes. There were five of them in total, each of them bearing a gladius, and they approached him with the caution of one approaching a monster, or a rabid dog.

The first was a girl, and she beckoned quickly to the second as she got nearer and nearer to the sleeping form of the boy. Her eyes searched his face as the second girl joined her.

"Is he the one, Reyna -?"

The first girl, with honey blonde hair and grey eyes, hurriedly shushed the second girl, who had caramel hair tightly bound in an inescapable ponytail. Reyna, the blonde one, slowly removed two lengths of unbreakable cord from her pocket, and she began to bind the boy.

He hardly resisted, still being in his restless sleep, and the job was done in no time at all. Reyna and the second girl pulled the final knots, and then the remaining three – a boy and two other girls – quickly helped them lift the boy from his strange bed of roots and off the ruins.

The moment the boy broke contact with the bed of roots, it recoiled sharply into the earth. The five were unsure for a moment as to what to do, but they quickly recovered and heaved the boy's sleeping, lifeless form away. Warriors did not hesitate, and they were warriors.

And throughout this the boy slept. He did not move or thrash or struggle, because he was still dreaming of his one paradise and of his hell, with a blank, open-mouthed expression. His expression and face was almost endearing, and had the five listened close enough, they would have heard a sigh coming from the heavens as he was carried away.

The sigh faded, and was followed by a barely audible whisper.

Sweet dreams, Perseus Jackson.

As I said, this is a rewrite. Flames accepted.