Somnium Semper Remotum( Percy Jackson/ DxD self insert with Avalon, Excalibur, Rhongomyniad and the blank essence): Chapter 1: In which I am Murphy’s sworn enemy

This is a commission I was asked to write by Lothwolf. Hope he and you like it. Also, as I disclaimer, the author wants to say he has nothing against Poland and Polish people or Polish food or Anything metaphorically or literally or evocatively Polish

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This was pure bullshit.

Like, I’ve said that before—hell, I’ve lived by it—but this time it wasn’t just my usual grumble when the vending machine stole my zloty or when someone served soup colder than my ex’s heart. No, this was the real, authentic, Grade-A “fuck everything” kind of bullshit. The kind that made you wonder if reality itself had grown tired of you and decided to spice things up.

And I swear to every god above and below, fuck Poland.

Not the food. Not the history. Not even the language, which sounded like someone cursed Esperanto after stubbing their toe and just kept talking like that for centuries. No, fuck Poland because this place had taken one look at me, cocked an eyebrow, and decided it didn’t like what it saw.

I’d been traveling for months now. A world tour without a camera crew or sponsors, more curse than holiday. Some people search for meaning in monasteries or deserts. I tried cities, alleyways, and the cracked faces of statues in forgotten shrines. Every border crossed peeled away something. An identity. A lie. A layer of skin, metaphorical and not. At some point, I’d ended up in Eastern Europe. And like a moth flung too close to the bulb, I got Poland.

Now, I wasn’t naïve. I didn’t expect Poland to be the land of femboys and rainbows. I’d read the forums. I’d seen the grainy TikToks. I knew this wasn't going to be Prague with prettier cheekbones. But part of me hoped for something—anything—that didn’t feel like a Kafkaesque punishment wrapped in wet concrete.

People stared. That part wasn’t new. I’d been stared at in Paris for looking Arabic even though the last thing Amazighs were was Arab, in Tokyo for being too tall, in Cape Town for being too pale and too dark all at once. But Poland? The way they looked at me—it wasn’t just curiosity or even suspicion. It was something rawer. Like I was a smudge on the lens of their national vision. Mixed-race, ambiguous features: part Black, part Amazigh, part European ghost. They couldn’t file me away. So they watched me like I was a mistake someone else made, and they’d been left to deal with it.

A woman pulled her daughter closer on a tram. Two teens whispered behind their phone, glancing at me as if I might erupt. A shopkeeper smiled like his teeth were glued in place and kept my change too long, like it burned him.

But I took it.

Why?

Because I was the one who booked the flight. Because I had the cash to afford the hotels with English-speaking staff and the taxis that spared me from public transit. Because if you’re gonna walk into a cage, you don’t cry when the bars rattle.

And because tonight was supposed to be my last night.

I’d found an overpriced little hotel near a forest preserve. Had some vodka, stared at the ceiling fan, drifted into sleep with that strange heavy-eyed float that meant: tomorrow, I leave. I expected to wake up groggy, maybe a little hungover. Instead—

—I woke up in mud.

Literal mud. Cold, sticky, clinging mud. My cheek was pressed to damp earth, and above me, darkness knotted like old leather. Trees. Endless. Sharp silhouettes stabbing into the sky. And rain.

God, the rain.

It poured like it had something to prove. It wasn’t falling; it was drowning. Each drop smacked against my face like a slap. I could barely see five feet ahead. The forest smelled like rot and ozone, like an old book soaked in motor oil. My clothes clung to me like regret.

I had no idea how I got here. One second, I was in bed, limbs sprawled in that post-travel sprawl. The next, I was soaked and alone, my breath misting in air too cold for a July evening. It wasn’t just wrong. It was wrong with purpose. The world didn’t just misplace me. It planted me here.

I walked. I stumbled. Fell. Got up again. My hands were covered in soil, blood, something else I didn’t want to identify. My shoes squelched with every step. My knees hated me.

Then—light.

Far away. Flickering. Yellow and gold.

I froze. Blinked. Rubbed my eyes with filthy fingers. It wasn’t a hallucination. It was real. Light meant heat. Light meant people. Light meant a chance in hell that someone could tell me where I was, or at least let me borrow a damn towel.

And yeah, maybe it was the people who dumped me out here in the first place. Maybe it was a cult or a prank or some deranged Eastern European Squid Game. But you know what? I was cold. I was pissed. And if they planned to kill me, they better get on with it.

So I climbed.

The hill was steep, and my legs screamed in protest, but eventually I crested it and saw—

—a summer camp?

Sort of.

It looked like a Disney intern's fever dream of Ancient Greece. Marble columns that weren’t quite marble. Bronze plaques, torches burning with too-perfect flames. Buildings laid out like a child’s drawing of Olympus. Camp Half-Baked. But at that point, they could’ve been worshipping Cthulhu and juggling knives—I didn’t care.

As long as they didn’t kill me, I’d clap, smile, and say “hail Satan” if that’s what it took.

Then came the sound.

Low at first. A hum. No—not a hum. A growl. Engine. A car, speeding. The growl turned into a roar. Wheels shrieking against wet earth.

I turned.

Headlights cut through the fog like knives.

A car was barreling toward me.

“What the—?”

I didn’t even get to finish the thought.

The car came screaming out of the night, bouncing over roots, mud spraying in arcs. Through the glass, I saw the driver—a woman. Brown hair plastered to her face, eyes wide with panic. In the backseat, two silhouettes. Kids? Yeah. Kids.

Her eyes locked with mine.

And I saw it.

The second of realization. Of oh no, too fast, too late.

Then the sky growled louder.

No, not the sky—something inside it. A shudder. A rumble.

Lightning.

It didn’t fall. It descended.

A bolt the size of a god’s spear came screaming from above, white and furious, like the heavens had finally lost patience.

And it hit us both.

The car.

Me.

Everything went white.

Then—black.

I opened my eyes to a world that had been chewed up and spit out by something vast and uncaring.

There was a moment—just one—where I didn’t know who or what I was. Then pain helped remind me. My ribs felt like snapped twigs, my back a slab of agony, and my limbs? Numb. Not the painless kind of numb, the oh, something is seriously wrong kind.

I blinked again. Vision blurred. The coppery tang of blood sat heavy on my tongue, like I’d been chewing pennies. Rain still fell in torrents, and everything shimmered with that ugly, electric brightness leftover after a lightning strike. Thunder grumbled like a sore loser somewhere behind the clouds.

The car—the one that almost pancaked me—was upside down maybe ten meters away, its metal carcass twitching like a dying insect. One of the wheels spun lazily, the way a dying thing might blink before it finally went still. The engine hissed. Steam rose in white coils. The scent was unmistakable: scorched rubber, oil, wet earth, ozone. The kind of smell that whispered: someone should be dead.

Shapes moved.

My eyes squinted through the haze. The woman. She was alive. Bloody, dazed, but crawling—crawling—out of the wreck like some exhausted beast. Her hands, scraped raw, gripped the frame. She was dragging out the kids.

Two boys. Couldn’t have been more than twelve. One was conscious, helping; the other hung limp. Unconscious.

And—what?

My brain stalled.

Goat legs.

For just a second, the world hiccuped. The kid with the unconscious one slung over his shoulder… his legs were bent wrong. No—not wrong. Not human. Curved, hoofed, fur-covered. Satyr-like.

I chuckled. It sounded like a dying man trying to fake confidence.

“I must’ve hit my damn head.”

And then, the sound.

It wasn’t thunder.

It was closer. Deeper. As if the ground itself was breathing wrong.

Whump.

Whump.

Whump.

Each step sounded like a tree trunk being dropped. The rain stuttered around it. The earth didn’t shake—it groaned. The woman, bleeding and heaving, didn’t look back. She just scooped up the kids and started moving toward the camp like all the Furies of Hell were behind her.

I saw why.

It walked out of the darkness like a punchline to a very bad joke told by an uncaring god.

It was huge—easily ten feet tall. Limbs like engine pistons dipped in hair. A torso sculpted from the worst kind of bodybuilding magazine covers. Vascular, animalistic. No clothes, save for tight white Fruit of the Loom briefs that made the whole thing more grotesque than funny.

Its top half was shaggy brown fur. Its head—its damn head—wasn’t human. A snout stretched out, glistening and wet, brass ring gleaming in its nose like some bull-god from a forgotten myth. Black eyes glared with pure hate, and two horns curled upward, jagged and thick, like a crown of violence.

The Minotaur.

Not a Minotaur.

The Minotaur.

Some deeply buried part of me remembered stories. Greek myth. Labyrinths. Broken-necked heroes.

Nope.

Nope nope nope.

I wasn’t Odysseus. I wasn’t Theseus. I didn’t even have a shoelace, let alone a sword. That thing belonged in a comic book crossover or a cocaine-fueled fever dream.

And worse—I was in its path.

The lightning had yeeted me closer to the camp’s border, for better or worse. I was within spitting distance of the arch that marked the summer camp’s entrance, and I could see the trail of wet footprints left by the woman and her charges leading toward it.

I forced myself upright.

Every muscle screamed. My legs wobbled. Blood dripped from somewhere behind my ear.

But I stood.

Because that thing was moving toward the car. Toward them. Slowly. Deliberately. Its nose twitched. It sniffed the air like a predator picking out the scent of wounded prey.

And then it made a noise.

It didn’t moo. It didn’t roar.

It bellowed.

A violent, gurgling howl, as if all the hate in its beastly soul was trying to tear free through its throat. The sound hit me like a body blow, rattled in my chest, made my teeth ache.

The Minotaur grabbed the wreck of the car.

I watched—frozen—as it lifted the half-melted frame above its head.

Like it was cardboard.

And it threw it.

THREW it.

Not away. Just—up and out. The car spun mid-air, a hunk of metal shrieking like a banshee. I ducked instinctively even though it didn’t come my way. It hit a tree maybe twenty yards from me and exploded into twisted metal and sparks.

The sound was like a jet engine backfiring while screaming. You didn’t hear it—you felt it. Your bones knew it. The air split, and even the rain paused, shocked into silence.

Nope.

I turned and staggered toward the camp archway, crossing whatever invisible line separated forest from safety.

My legs buckled.

I collapsed against a pine tree just inside the border. Bark dug into my shoulder like judgment.

But I’d made it.

Inside.

I gasped, lungs dragging in air like it cost money. My vision blurred, then cleared.

Up ahead, deeper in the camp, I saw orange. Shirts. Robes. People.

Finally.

Sanity.

Maybe.

I turned back.

The Minotaur had cornered the woman. The two boys were just inside the border, crumpled together. The conscious one—goat-legs, maybe? The inverse?—was cradling the unconscious kid like glass, screaming.

“MOM!”

The word cracked through the air, sharp and raw. Not just panic. Agony. Despair wrapped in a twelve-year-old’s voice.

It pierced something in me.

I’d heard that scream before. Not the same voice—but the same sound. That sharp-edged helplessness that gouged the soul.

It was a tragedy, blooming right there. One that hadn’t yet finished being written.

I told myself the truth.

There was nothing I could do.

I was unarmed, half-dead, probably concussed. The smart move? Stay down. Let help arrive. Someone had to have a gun. A spell. A miracle.

Right?

Then the boy screamed again. His voice cracked.

And something inside me shifted.

Not like fate. Not like destiny. Like an old machine grinding to life. A furnace relit.

I stood.

Again.

Against every demand of muscle and bone.

My hand touched something on the ground.

A rock.

I picked it up.

It was small. Pointless. But it felt right in my hand.

I threw it.

The rock flew with a whisper.

It hit the Minotaur in the back of the head.

It stopped.

Slowly—it turned.

I inhaled. Exhaled.

This was suicide. This was stupid. This was—

“YO, ASTERIOS!”

My voice rang like a whipcrack.

“How does it feel to know that even your own mother couldn’t love your ugly mug?”

It turned fully now.

Its face twisted into something even more inhuman which was a feet in itself.

And it charged.

The Minotaur’s breath sounded like bellows in a forge, fireless but furious. Each hoof-fall cracked the mud, scattering stone and root like shrapnel. Its eyes locked onto me—not the vague hate of a predator, but the sharpened fury of a wronged god.

And I? I just stood there.

What else could I do?

I'd screamed at a legend, mocked it to its snout, and now I had its full attention.

Just as planned.

I stumbled sideways, dragging my body away from the camp’s entrance. Away from the boys. Away from the woman. My legs were trembling beneath me, barely more than soaked sticks. Every breath rattled like a dented can.

But I had his attention.

Good.

That was the plan.

Stupid, suicidal, very me plan.

The beast followed, slow at first—like it wanted to savor this. Its hands curled into fists the size of dinner plates. Its chest heaved, rising and falling with that same fury you see in an animal seconds before the killing blow.

Up close, it was worse.

The thing smelled like slaughterhouses and burnt leather. Rotting hay. Dried blood. Sweat so thick it hung in the air like a fog, a cloying presence that clung to my throat. Sulfur crept beneath it all, as if something hellish had crawled into its lungs and made a home there.

I stood there and looked into its eyes.

Not animal eyes.

No.

There was intelligence in there. Not human intelligence—but the cruel, deliberate kind. The kind that knew pain and loved sharing it.

Behind it, I saw the woman reach the camp. The boys stumbled through the archway. They collapsed together, tangled limbs and relief.

And further inside—I saw movement.

Silhouettes.

Weapons.

Help was coming.

But not fast enough.

The Minotaur reached me.

It stopped. Towered.

I was nothing in front of it. A soaked silhouette clinging to a tree. My head barely reached its stomach.

It leaned in, snorting.

Hot breath hit my face, thick and wet and stinking of death and decay. Its nostrils flared. Its lip curled, revealing teeth that looked like they'd been carved from old ivory and soaked in bile. Up close, it was less beast, more… mistake. Something that shouldn't have existed, a sketch of a monster drawn by a child and made real by a cruel god.

I met its eyes.

Behind me, boots thudded against wet earth. Shouts. The sound of drawn weapons. But still distant.

Not enough.

It would kill me before they reached me.

I knew that.

I reached into my coat pocket.

My fingers found something small. Smooth.

A crumpled pack of cigarettes. Half-empty.

I pulled one out, lit it with the cheap Bic lighter I kept for moments like these.

Death seemed like as good a reason as any.

I stuck the cigarette between my lips and inhaled. The taste was sharp, chemical, dry. Filthy comfort. I blew the smoke into the beast’s face.

It snarled.

Good.

I looked up, lips twitching into something that might have once been a smile.

The Minotaur bent its knees. The ground cracked beneath its hooves. Not a metaphor—literally cracked. Spiderweb fractures raced across the mud, slicing through the earth as if reality itself braced for impact.

Its muscles coiled.

It was going to punch me.

No—destroy me.

I could almost hear the air being dragged into its shoulder. See the rain bending away from the pressure. Feel the taste of copper rising at the back of my tongue.

Something told me that this would end with me lacking a head.

The cigarette trembled at the corner of my mouth. I took one last drag.

And smiled.

Why?

Why did I do it?

Why did I scream? Why did I stand? Why did I throw a rock at a bull-headed abomination that could tear me limb from limb?

Because of a boy’s scream.

Because of a mother’s pain.

Because sometimes the only thing standing between a monster and a child is someone too stupid—or too tired—to keep walking away.

I remembered something. A voice. Gravelly. Gentle.

“It is never wrong to help others.”

My grandfather’s voice. Long dead.

The man who taught me how to throw a punch, and when not to. Who had taught me how kindness a rebellion and decency a weapon.

I looked death in the eye and whispered:

“Of course.”