Of Demigods and Wrackspurts (PJO/HP - Luna Lovegood)

[Firewillreign]

The Present:

On the last day of her life, Luna Lovegood apparated onto the grounds of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry with a loud crack.

Three years ago, she never would have managed it. The millennia-old anti-apparition wards would have bounced her off with contemptuous ease. She would have been splinted into oblivion like a bug on a muggle windshield just for having the audacity to try.

But that was then, and this was now.

Now, there were no such wards to keep her out, for there was no Hogwarts left to protect.

The ancient school had stood for over a thousand years and more besides, but there was not one trace of it left to tell the tale. The glimmering castle that had been built to last the test of time was gone, stripped from the land as if it never were. Its surroundings were not spared the destruction. The sloping lawns, flowerbeds, vegetable patches, the greenhouses that dotted the paths where students once traced to learn and laugh and live - all of it gone.

There remained nothing besides blackened earth, and a seething, putrid miasma of dark magic that lingered on the ash-drowned land and even the air itself.

Death was in the air - death and cruelty and tragedy most of all.

It was a tangible, ever-lasting taint. There would be no purging it, no restoration. It was all poisoned for good - Hogwarts would never come again. The school would never be rebuilt, and no home or hearth would ever be raised in its place, not ever again.

A part of her found that fitting.

It was an epilogue, of sorts. A final, vile testament to the evil that had devastated a nation and brought it to the brink of ruin twice. The same evil that had destroyed everything she'd ever loved in one fell swoop.

In two words, even.

Not even ghosts linger on her, tied as they once were to a home that had been obliterated completely.

No one would forget this. No one could, and the amount of blood, pure or mud or anything in between would be able to detract from it. To justify it as anything less than the utterly preventable atrocity it was.

A part of her curled in something akin to satisfaction - it's a pale imitation of the real thing and so very, very bitter, but Luna'd gone without feeling for so long that it was near overwhelming in the few seconds she had to savor it before it too flickers out and vanishes into the ether.

For a long moment, she observed the desolation with detached apathy, the light of the full moon above painting everything in her line of sight with soft, silver-white carcasses and a radiance this husk of a long-gone memory did not deserve, and then she turned away.

There was nothing for her here. There was nothing for her anywhere.

Slowly, steadily, she began to march down the dirt path to the Forbidden Forest.

...​

The Past:​

​

It is the false victory that hurts worse than any defeat - To taste the hope and joy of winning, of living to see a new dawn, only to have it taken away?

There is nothing crueler.

Luna remembered the final duel between Harry and Voldemort, the two wizards standing in the middle of a crowd of death eaters and defenders alike and still deaf to them all.

The Dark Lord against the chosen one, the hero against the monster. A clash of ideals straight out of children's storybooks and no less epic for it.

She remembered how the bang of their spells connecting was like a cannon blast, and the golden flames that erupted between them, at the dead center of the circle they had been treading marking the point where the spells collided.

And in the end, how Voldemort's spell rebounded, his wan slipping loose

And Harry, with the unerring skill of a Seeker, caught the wand in his free hand as Voldemort fell backward, arms splayed, the slit pupils of the scarlet eyes rolling upward in death.

She was among the first to run to him, her hand one of a hundred who were seizing him, pulling him, trying to hug some part of him, all of them pressing in, all of them determined to touch the Boy Who Lived, the reason it was over at last.

Maybe that was why they missed the warning signs. The joy, the heady feeling of freedom and hope that cried 'This is it, this is the end."

In another world, it just might have been.

But not in this one.

Later, when they sat in the Great Hall, cheering and celebrating, mourning and weeping in equal measure, she was the first to see the figure who slipped into the great hall.

Everyone else was too lost in the moment, too disconnected, drowned out by relief and glee and a thousand other things more to notice.

But Luna saw.

That was her greatest gift, and her greatest fault. Luna always saw, because that's what she did. She saw things people couldn't see, wouldn't see, or didn't want to see, and she always did, even when they called her loony for it and despised her all the more for doing it anyway.

'Just because they can not see', her mother had once said, 'does not mean you have to close your eyes too. Never by anyone's choice but your own.'

They were beautiful words. They were all Luna had left of her

But at that moment, for just that once, she wished she couldn't see.

She wished she couldn't see the Death Eater limping into the great hall, black robes battered and near ruined, yet holding all the same.

Wished she couldn't see the gleam of crimson splashed across his mask (blood, blood, blood - why was it always blood?), wished she couldn't see him raise his wand and seal the doors shut, before rounding back on the hall with a finality that froze her blood in her veins.

(More than anything, though, Luna wished she had been faster - faster to call out, faster to raise her wand, faster to do anything but watch in true, helpless terror as the tip of his wand lit up with a baleful orange glow and listen as his voice thundered over the din of gathered friends and family with a final, hateful roar.)

"Ignus Infernum!"

By the time Luna's wand was in her hand, the Fiendfyre had already swallowed half the Great Hall and everyone in it.

...
​

The Present:

When Luna crossed over the edge of the forest, she expected to feel something more - Nostalgia perhaps, a melancholy remembrance.

A lifetime ago, she'd found this den of dangerous magical beasts - of fangs and pincers and skittering shadows - more comforting than her own dorm room. She used to come here and walk among the thestral herds, or search among the brambles for Moon Frogs, or Blibbering Humdingers.
Most of all, she'd loved climbing the sturdiest trees she could find and nestling among the branches. There wasn't ever a better place for a nap.

The forest had been her refuge, in the early years before she'd made friends who could accept her. Who understood that seeing the world differently didn't mean she was any less deserving of a place in it, of a place amongst them.

Now though, treading between the oak and pine trees, feet drifting over a path of knotgrass and thorns, she found no comfort at all. The scent of wet grass and clean, crisp air was familiar, but that familiarity brought her no warmth.

It wasn't a surprise. It wasn't even a disappointment. She'd lost her taste for warmth amidst curse flame years ago.

She hastened her steps, her footsteps growing deft and swift as she forged forward, blindly following the pull in her gut, the unyielding pull she'd ignored for as long as she was able before the call grew too deafening and her own feeble resistance crumbled against it.

I await you.

The words were not words, but they were whispered in her mind (to her soul) and she heard them all the same.

Her surroundings blurred as marched forward, quickly forgotten. No creatures disturbed her, not even the half-dozen Acromuntala that flickered past her, on the hunt for lesser prey. Perhaps a shrewder predator could have followed her trail, but not even the keenest eyes or the sharpest senses would have discovered her as she was, with the Cloak of Invisibility wrapped around her body and the hood lowered over her head.

It was the first time in three years that she'd worn it - the first time in three years it had graced her form, for she had never managed to overcome her visceral loathing for the most subtle of the Deathly Hallows.

Even now, she wore it only because she had to. Because it completed the set.

All the same, hated it still, despised it just the same as he had since the day it was gifted to her.

Since the day she lost everything

...
​

The Past:

"LUNA!" Harry bellowed, the wand held in his grasp - The Elder Wand, the only reason the two of them weren't dead yet. "LUNA!"

She could barely look at him, and he was right beside her. Her own wand was in her hand, held aloft as she cast a desperate finite to counter the flames, but she knew it wouldn't be enough.

The Great Hall was gone, consumed by a swirling chimeric firestorm of red and orange.

She didn't understand how it happened (she didn't want to, please no-) - she didn't understand how everyone was just gone, how it was just her and Harry shielded in a dome of flickering white-blue light, wands held aloft as they tried to stop the inevitable.

Everyone was gone, gone, gone, gone-

A hand latched onto her shoulder and wrenched her around, and her spell failed. Not that it mattered, it was never her keeping them alive.

Harry's green eyes met hers, and if the sweltering heat hadn't already stolen her breath and driven her to her knees, she thought the mad, mad grief and rage and resolve burning in them would have done it just as well.

"Luna, you have to live!" He roared, eyes mad and monstrous in their intensity, and already half gone. "No matter what, you live! Be happy, be free - do whatever the bloody hell you want to do Luna, but live. Live, Luna, Live!"

There were so many things she could have said to that - so many things she should have said to that.

She never had the chance.

Harry's free hand was suddenly pointed at her, and a silver cloth suddenly draped over her shoulder. The invisibility cloak wrapped around her, the hood lowering on its own accord, tightening until it was almost bruising, until no part of her was left exposed.

Only then, at the very end, did Harry smile.

Rife with grief, loss, madness, and peace (and that's what broke her heart for the final time. He looked almost content.)

He closed his eyes before the end.

"I hope you find the crumple-horned Snorkack. Tell us all about it when we see you again, yeah?"

Luna screamed when his arm dropped, the dome with it, and the Fiendfyre swallowed

Luna screamed and screamed until her throat was hoarse and bloody, but she didn't burn.

Not when the Fienfyre washed over her cloaked form, not when it rampaged past the hall and into the castle proper, and not even when it consumed everything within Hogwarts's ward line before it was snuffed out by their collapse.

Somehow, be it by having mastered all three Hallows or by the price of final sacrifice, Harry Potter had given his cloak the power to protect her. The cloak of invisibility imbued with a power no one could ever understand, a power just mighty enough to shield her from annihilation.

Bravery beyond all measure. A Gryffindor to the end.

And when Luna was done howling in frenzied, soul-crushing despair when she'd given up on peeling the cloak off her (a cloak that would not obey until its former master's final command had been carried through), she stood.

By then, the flames had been snuffed out. Ash and dust clogged the air above her, and hid the golden sun they'd all been celebrating under.
It clogged her throat, too, and made every pull of air hurt. She was almost grateful for that. Perhaps it could have snuffed it out entirely, so she would wake up from this nightmare and find her friends and her father and everyone waiting for her, as they should be.

(Luna didn't wake up)

The cloak poured off her like water, pooling at her feet almost almost inconspicuously. As though it hadn't damned her to the worst of all hells

(Live? What is living in a world without any of you?

Nothing, that's what.)

And when she went to pick it up, to rip it to shreds or cast it to the wind or maybe to weep into it for everything she'd lost forever, she noticed a spark.

A few feet away, damningly unharmed and almost cruelly mocking in its continued existence was the Elder Wand, its tip glowing crimson and pointed unerringly at her.

Hail, mistress.

The Cloak and the Deathstick sang as one.

...​

The Present

The magic behind it was esoteric, and born of intent more than any action.

Harry Potter had mastered the Deathly Hallows. Harry Potter had died for her and willed everything he had to protect her.

And somehow, somewhere along the lines, he willed mastery of the three treasures of a bygone era to her control.

The three years that followed were nothing but grey.

Devoid of life. Color. Soul.

For three years, Luna Lovegood existed and tried to deafen herself to the one hallow out of her reach. The wand remained in a cupboard she'd locked it in, the cloak in a chest in her father's attic.

(Not her attic, never her attic, it was their house and with just her alone-)

Two were bound to her by blood and misery in such a manner that she could never let them go. In the sickest, most twisted of ways, they were all she had left.

But the Resurrection Stone was a jealous, jealous thing, and the final hallow would not so easily be deterred.

Three must be as one. Come, Mistress.

Over and over, every day, until at last Luna couldn't stand it any longer.

She knew what was going to happen when she picked the stone up - it would give her everything she wanted, and everything she couldn't have, and twist the blade of misery in her heart past the point of no return.
She knew that if she walked into the forest and picked up the resurrection stone, one way or the other she'd never leave it again.

And she. Didn't. Care.

So she walked, and she walked, and she walked. Past the shadow of the tallest trees and the lairs of the fiercest beasts, past sights familiar and unfamiliar, until she at last came to an abrupt spot, completely unremarkable in every way.

Hail, Mistress.

The Resurrection stone seemed to glimmer from atop the earthy soil and dirt, but Luna knew that anyone else would have missed the insidious little pebble. That she had found it in this unassuming patch of nothingness simply because it had never left her alone from the moment Harry passed dominion over it to her.

(She cursed him for it, sometimes. Cursed him well and proper, and hated herself all the more for it afterward)

Harry didn't know what the Hallows were. He'd mastered them and survived them simply by being too good to want them, the ultimate paradox.

Luna would not be so lucky. She knew that.

She still bent down to pick up the stone regardless.

It was cold in her hand, and her thumb idly traced the jagged crack running its surface, bisecting the symbol of the Hallows etched onto its most prominent facet. She could feel the power of the stone, worming its way up her fingertips, burrowing beneath her flash and wrapping around her soul.

Anyone else would have missed it, but not Luna.

She'd always been good with esoteric magic - maybe not casting it, but feeling it? Getting a sense of it?

As easy as breathing.

Across her shoulders, the Cloak rejoiced. In the holster strapped to her arms, the Wand crowed in triumphant satisfaction. And held in her palm, the stone hummed, graceful in its apparent victory.

Their singing melds into one sibilant cacophony

Hail, the Mistress of Death.

Hail, the Mistress of Death.

Hail, the Mistress of Death.

It's a mantra that the Hallows repeat as if Luna was meant to be happy about it. About any of it.

(About anything in this cruel, empty world.)

"What do you want?" She whispered to none and all three of them at the same time.

Conquer, the Wand suggested, for even now it was only a weapon. The ultimate wizarding weapon, but a weapon all the same.

(Conquer what? There wasn't anything the Wand could give her that she wanted)

Raise, the Stone offered, and here Luna almost choked on a sudden sob, the burst of emotion overcoming her violently and without warning. See them all once more.

(But they wouldn't be real, would they? Shades at best, false imitations at worst.)

Be free, the Cloak was the last to propose, do as you please and know that not even death can find you now.

(But Death was all Luna wanted now, so what good was such a cloak to her?)

"Mistress of Death." She asks at last, soft and deceptively low. "What does that mean?"

The mystery that had been asked for millennia, for as long as the legend of the three brothers had existed.

If she expected the Hallows to pause, or to deny her an answer, she was sorely mistaken.

Whatever you want it to mean.

And Luna understood the unspoken message all the same.

"You don't know either, do you?"

It strikes her then that, for all their vaunted power, the Hallows are so very limited in scope. An almighty wand that was loyal to none, A stone that raised shades both it and its user knew were but pale imitations, and a cloak that you could only ever use to hide.

Three artifacts that had shaped the world and whose true utility could only ever be discovered when you didn't want them, and even then they had no power but what you chose to give them - there was an irony there, cruel and bitter and wise indeed.

"Can you give them back to me?" She asked, and she knew the answer already - she knew. She just needed to hear it, to finally seal the last possibility and get on with what she should have done that very same night in the ruins of Hogwarts, amidst ash and ruin. "You call me Mistress of Death, but can I command Death to be undone?"

For the first time in years, the Hallows were silent.

And that was answer enough.

Luna smiled.

She smiled, and she chuckled, and laughed, loud and hauntingly hurt, and that sound tore the Forbidden Forest in the early hours of twilight and would go down in myth among its denizens for as long as the forest stood, for how could such a melody of grief and pain and finality ever be forgotten but in the face of death?

And when she was done, and her demons were set aside, Luna lowered herself to her knees and laid each of the Hallows out before her.

"The three of you," She spoke softly - and her voice was somehow still akin to the roar of thunder in the midst of world-shattering storms. "Are no more."

Magic began to shift, and the Hallows moaned in protest

Mistress-

"You owe your loyalty to me." She said, and they quietened down (for the last time) "This is the end. No more Hallows, no more masters or mistresses of death. This is the end."

The end of the Hallows.

The end of Luna Lovegood.

And the Hallows, ever and always obedient once their loyalty was secured, dis as their Mistress commanded.

The wand went first, crackling with power that shook the forest entire. In the blink of an eye, the wood splintered and shattered, and the power within surged one final time.

The stone came second, glimmering darkly one final time before it simply dissolved into shadows, a mournful cry echoing in its wake, and the power within surged one final time.

At last came the cloak the most loyal and obedient ever to the end, and before her very eyes it dissolved into motes of silver light. For a moment, Luna thought she could see a boy with messy black hair and such green eyes grinning at her, and her own filled with tears.

(I'm sorry, she wanted to say. But there's no life left for me here.)

All the while, the power within the cloak surged one final time.

The lingering remnants of the Hallows streamed, combined, and lit up the clearing with fractal patterns and eldritch light - a storm of impossibly condensing as the power of the artifacts that would have existed until the end of time had they only been allowed to continued to build up, and up, and up.

And when at last it could grow no more, Luna was the first to reach out, without hesitation.

"This," she repeated softly, and for a second, it was as if all the world paused and held its breath. "Is the end."

And then her hand touched magic in its purest, wildest, most uncontrollable form, and everything detonated.

Reality unraveled, and Luna with it, the tapestry of cosmic power and mortal memory that was her everything scattered and erased from existence as the power of the Hallows comes undone in a localized cataclysm beyond all ken.

A death so complete, so magnificent, that even gods would have stopped to watch in awe.

And when the light flickered out, and the clearing settled, Luna Lovegood was gone, and not even dust remained.

...​

In another world, there was a Pit.

This pit was not merely a location, but an entity. The dark and foul underbelly of creation, where all that was vile and unwanted fell, with only the strongest most savage of beasts, of concepts, of immortals managed to crawl their way back into the world above.

Tartarus was the Pit.

But Tartarus was also a dome, for beneath this land and god of unspeakable horror lay a force far, far greater than even the mighty primordial dared assume it could be.

The Chaos, or Khaos, or Gap, or any of a thousand arbitrary titles, each as meaningless as the last and all linked to the same almighty concept.

The wellspring of life, the original existence from where the universe and all within it first sprung.

Such was the way of this wellspring that it consistently birthed and gave way to new and impossible life - and such was the way of Tartarus that the Foul One destroyed it, strangled it in its cradle simply by existing, for was that not the Pits's nature and prerogative?

Only the strongest, the cruelest, the ghastliest survived Tartarus, and only because Tartarus himself cared not for the insects and maggots that crawled across his ever-slumbering form.

It was a monstrous place, ruled by monsters of the worst sort.

Certainly no place for a child (or half of one.)

Yet, by some odd quirk of fate (or Fates), a day came when a cry rang out across the Pit. A child's cry, seemingly mortal, and coming from one that has arisen from the Great Chaos itself.

Were this any other day, this story would have ended in cruelty that was the norm for Tartrus and its denizens. The child would have been an oddity, a hilarious one, and then it would have died. Killed, its life forever silenced as an infinity more before it had been, and no one would have been the wiser.

Yet, it just so happens that a god heard that cry, for the Underworld was the closest of realms to Tartarus, and for whatever reason, that same god decided to indulge his curiosity and see what all the fuss was about.

That's why instead of being shredded alive by the hoards of empousa who'd tracked down its cries, the child was rescued. The god incinerated the uppity beasts without a second thought, and picked up a mortal infant that by all rights should not be alive, for how could something so fragile survive in the Pit.

Cradling the child a girl to his chest, the god hummed thoughtfully.

"Just when I think I've seen it all." He smiled in thought, his gold eyes shining, and his black wings flared, dark as death. "Now, what to do with you?"

...​

Thirteen years later - Westover Hall:

Grover hurried them to a door that had GYM written on the glass. Even with the dyslexia innate to half-bloods, it was easy to read that much.

"That was close!" Grover sighed. "Thank the gods you got here!"

Annabeth and Thalia both hugged Grover. Percy gave him a big high-five.

Percy was happy to see him again after so many months. He'd gotten a little taller and had sprouted a few more whiskers, but otherwise he looked just the same as always did when he passed for human — a red cap on his curly brown hair to hide his goat horns, baggy jeans and sneakers with fake feet to hide his furry legs and hooves. He was wearing a black T-shirt that had WESTOVER HALL: GRUNT written on it. Percy wasn't sure whether that was, like, Grover's rank or maybe just the school motto.

"So, what's the emergency?" Percu asked

Grover took a deep breath bracingly.

"I found three," he exhaled, awe and excitement brimming in his voice.

"Three half-bloods?" Thalia asked, amazed, leaning in. "Here?"

Grover nodded.

"How is that even possible?" said Annabeth, disbelief coloring her tone. Percy understood why.

Finding one half-blood was rare enough. This year, Chiron had put the satyrs on emergency overtime and sent them all over the country, scouring schools from fourth grade through high school for possible recruits. These were desperate times. They were losing campers. They needed all the new fighters they could find. The problem was, there just weren't that many demigods out there.

"A brother and sister pair and another girl," said Grover. "The siblings are ten and twelve, and the other girl is maybe fourteen I don't know their parentage, but they're powerful. I have no clue how no one's come across them before. We're running out of time, though. I need help."

"Monsters?" asked Annabeth.

"One," Grover said nervously, looking them over desperately. "He suspects. I don't think he's positive yet, but this is the last day of term. I'm sure he won't let them leave campus without finding out. It may be our last chance! Every time I try to get close to them, he's always there, blocking me. I don't know what to do!"

"Right," said Thalia, tapping her chin. "These half-bloods are at the dance?"

Grover nodded.

"Then let's dance," Thalia declared with a nod. "Who's the monster?"
"Oh," Grover said, and glanced around shiftily. "You just met him — it's the vice principal, Dr.Thorn."

...

"Weird thing about military schools: the kids go absolutely nuts when there's a special event and they get to be out of uniform. Percy guessed it was because everything was so strict the rest of the time, they feel like they've got to overcompensate or something.

There were black and red balloons all over the gym floor, and guys were kicking them in each others faces, or trying to strangle each other with the crepe-paper streamers taped to the walls. Girls moved around in football huddles, the way they always do, wearing lots of makeup and spaghetti-strap tops and brightly colored pants and shoes that looked like torture devices. Every once in a while they'd surround some poor guy like a pack of piranhas, shrieking and giggling, and when they finally moved on, the guy would have ribbons in his hair and a bunch of lipstick graffiti all over his face. Some of the older guys looked more like Percy —uncomfortable, hanging out at the edges of the gym and trying to hide, like any minute they might have to fight for their lives. Of course, in Percy's case, it was true…

"There's the brother and sister." Grover nodded toward a couple of younger kids arguing in the bleachers. "Bianca and Nico di Angelo."

The girl wore a floppy green cap, like she was trying to hide her face; Percy couldn't really get a good look at her. The boy was obviously her little brother. They both had dark silky hair and olive skin, and they used their hands a lot as they talked. The boy was shuffling some kind of trading cards. His sister seemed to be scolding him about something. She kept looking around like she sensed something was wrong.

"The other girl is over there," said Grover, tilting his head towards the pack of roaming girls who were on another hapless boy again. "The short one sitting on her own."

Said girl was sitting alone, huddled near the bleachers away from all the action. Percy blinked at the sight of her.

"The heck?" Thalia blurted out, and Percy was kinda with her there.

The girl had maybe the oddest getup he'd seen in a while, and he'd been to friggin Olympus. Dark jeans, with a bright yellow t-shirt and a pink vest over it that was covered in bright blue and silver sparks. She had a necklace made up of corkscrews and bottle cops of all things wrapped around her neck, and a pair of bright gold and silver-blue sunglasses with star frames that absolutely dwarfed her face.

Percy looked at Grover. "Dude."

Grover grimaced. "It's not that bad."

No, it was worse. Percy was almost sure the girl would never survive her first day back at camp. The Aphrodite cabin would either mob her for a makeover or kill her on the spot for that getup.

"I'm serious, Percy. Don't underestimate her, she's a lot more perceptive than you'd think. Her name's Luna Lovegood," Grover went on, hands fidgeting nervously "but everyone calls her Loony."

And as if they'd summoned her attention just by bringing her up (which was an actual thing, because demigod lives clearly weren't hard enough), the girl suddenly leaned forward, pulled off her shades and turned to stare dead at them, cloudy-grey eyes roving over them with unnatural precision.

And then she smiled.

...​

Just an idea my cousin kept begging me to write, so I may or may not continue it depending on the reception it gets.

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Percy was an idiot. They all were.

And things were going so well too.

Infiltrate school dance - check.

Actually, dance to avoid drawing suspicion - check (somehow)

Keep an eye on the Di Angelo's - Fail.

Epic, epic fail.

Percy had let himself forget what they were here for, lost as he was in talking to Annabeth and doing his best not to stare - he'd even managed a half-decent job at it, thank Poseidon.

And then it all went wrong because of course it did.

Annabeth looked over his shoulder and froze.

"They're gone."

"What?"

Percy followed her gaze. The bleachers. Bianca and Nico were no longer there.

The door next to the bleachers was wide open.

Dr. Thorn was nowhere in sight.

"We have to get Thalia and Grover!" Annabeth looked around frantically.

"Oh, where'd they dance off to? Come on!"

She tore through the crowd in a sprint.

Percy made to follow when a mob of girls got in his way, and it wasn't even the one he would have appreciated. He maneuvered around them to avoid getting a ribbon-and-lipstick treatment a bunch of other poor schmucks had failed to escape and bolted as quickly as he could, but by the time he was free, Annabeth had disappeared. He turned a full circle, looking for her or Thalia and Grover. Instead, he saw something that chilled his blood.

About fifty feet away, lying on the gym floor, was the floppy green cap Bianca di Angelo had been wearing. Near it were a few scattered trading cards.

Percy then caught a glimpse of Dr. Thorn — He was hurrying out a door at the opposite end of the gym, steering the di Angelo kids by the scruffs of their necks, like kittens. Hissing frantically, Percy stood as tall as he could, but still couldn't see Annabeth. He knew she'd be heading the other way, though, looking for Thalia and Grover.

He almost ran after her, but stalled, grimacing. The di Angelos were in danger; they could be long gone by the time Percy found his friends. There wasn't just wasn't time.

Percy took Riptide out of his pocket and ran after Dr. Thorn.

The door led into a dark hallway. Percy heard sounds of scuffling up ahead, then a painful grunt. He uncapped Riptide. The pen grew in his hands until he held a bronze Greek sword about three feet long with a leather-bound grip. The blade glowed faintly, casting a golden light on the rows of lockers.

He jogged down the corridor, but when he got to the other end, no one was there. Percy opened a door and found himself back in the main entry hall. He was completely turned around! He didn't see Dr. Thorn anywhere, but there on the opposite side of the room were the di Angelo kids. They stood frozen in horror, staring right at Percy.

Percy advanced slowly, lowering the tip of his sword.

"It's okay. I'm not going to hurt you."

They didn't answer. Their eyes were full of fear. What was wrong with them? Where was Dr. Thorn? Maybe he'd sensed the presence of Riptide and retreated? Monsters hated celestial bronze weapons after all.

"My name's Percy," Percy said, trying to keep his voice level. "I know you have no idea who I am, but I'm here to get you out of here and get you somewhere safe."

Bianca's eyes widened. Her fists clenched. Only too late did Percy realize what her look meant. She wasn't afraid of him. She was trying to warn him.

Percy whirled around and something went WHOOSH! Pain exploded in his shoulder. A force like a huge hand yanked him backward and slammed him to the wall.

He slashed with his sword but there was nothing to hit.

A cold laugh echoed through the hall.

"Yes, Perseus Jackson," Dr. Thorn said. His accent mangled the J in Percy's last name. "I know who you are."

Percy tried to free his shoulder. His coat and shirt were pinned to the wall by some kind of spike - a black dagger-like projectile about a foot long. It had grazed the skin of his shoulder as it passed through his clothes, and the cut burned.

He'd felt something like this before.

Poison.

Percy forced himself to concentrate — he refused to pass out.

A dark silhouette then moved toward the three of them. Dr. Thorn stepped into the dim light. He still looked human, but his face was ghoulish. He had perfect white teeth and his brown/blue eyes reflected the light of Percy's sword.

"Thank you for coming out of the gym," he said. "I hate middle-school dances."

Percy tried to swing his sword again, but Dr. Thorn was just out of reach.

WHIIIISH! A second projectile shot from somewhere behind Dr. Thorn. He didn't appear to move. It was as if someone invisible was standing behind him, throwing knives.

Next to Percy, Bianca yelped. The second thorn impaled itself into the stone wall, half an inch from her face.

"All three of you will come with me," Dr. Thorn said. "Quietly. Obediently. If you make a single noise, if you call out for help or try to fight, I will show you just how accurately I can throw."

Percy didn't know what kind of monster Dr. Thorn was, but he was fast.

Maybe he could have defended myself if he could get his shield activated. All that it would take was a touch of his wrist-watch, but defending the Di Angelo kids was another matter. But needed help, and there was only one way he could think of getting it.

He closed his eyes.

"What are you doing, Jackson?" hissed Dr. Thorn. "Keep moving!"

Percy opened his eyes again and kept shuffling forward.

"It's my shoulder," he lied, trying to sound miserable, which wasn't hard.

"It burns."

"Bah! My poison causes pain; it will not kill you. Walk!"

Thorn herded them outside, and Percy tried to concentrate. He pictured Grover's face. He focused on his feelings of fear and danger. Last summer, Grover had created an empathy link between the two of them; he'd sent Percy visions in Percy's dreams to let Percy know when he was in trouble. As far as Percy knew, they were still linked, but he'd never tried to contact Grover before. He didn't even know if it would work while Grover was awake.

'Hey, Grover! ' he thought as loudly as he could. 'Thorn's kidnapping us! He's a poisonous spike-throwing maniac! Help! '

Thorn inched them into the woods. They took a snowy path dimly lit by old-fashioned lamp-lights.

Percy's shoulder ached. The wind blowing through his ripped clothes was so cold that he felt like a popsicle.

"There is a clearing ahead," Thorn said. "We will summon your ride."

"What ride?!" Bianca demanded. "Where are you taking us?!"

"Silence, you insufferable girl!"

"Don't talk to my sister that way!'" Nico answered back. His voice quivered, but Percy was impressed that he had the guts to say anything at all.

Dr. Thorn made a growling sound that definitely wasn't human. It made the hairs stand up on the back of Percy's neck, but he forced himself to keep walking and pretend that he was being a good little captive. Meanwhile, he projected his thoughts like crazy — anything to get Grover's attention: 'Grover! Apples! Tin cans! Get out here and bring some heavily armed friends! with you! '

"Halt," Thorn said.

The woods had opened up. They'd reached a cliff overlooking the sea. At least, Percy sensed the sea was down there, hundreds of feet below. He could hear the waves churning and he could smell the cold salty froth. But all he could see was mist and darkness.

Dr. Thorn pushed them toward the edge. Percy stumbled, but Bianca caught him.

"Thanks," he murmured.

"What is he?" she whispered. "How do we fight him?"

"I . . . I'm working on it."

"I'm scared," Nico mumbled. He was fiddling with something — a little metal toy soldier of some kind.

"Stop talking!" Dr. Thorn said. "Face me!"

Haltingly, they turned as demanded.

Thorn's two-tone eyes glittered hungrily. He pulled something from under his coat. At first Percy thought it was a switch-blade, but it was only a phone. He pressed the side button and said, "The package — it is ready to deliver."

There was a garbled reply, and Percy realized Thorn was in walkie-talkie mode. This seemed way too modern and creepy — a monster using a mobile phone.

Percy glanced behind him, wondering how far the drop was.

Dr. Thorn laughed, "By all means, Son of Poseidon. Jump! There is the sea — save yourself!"

"What did he call you?" Bianca muttered.

"I'll explain later," Percy mumbled back.

"You do have a plan, right?"

"Working on it!" he hissed under his breath. 'Grover!' Percy thought desperately. 'Come to me! '

Maybe Percy could get both the Di Angelos to jump with him into the ocean? If they survived the fall, Percy could use the water to protect them all. He'd done things like that before. If his dad was in a good mood, and listening, he might even help. Maybe.

"I would kill you before you ever reached the water," Dr. Thorn said, as if reading Percy's thoughts. "You do not realize who I am, do you?"

A flicker of movement behind him, and another missile whistled so close to Percy that it nicked his ear. Something had sprung up behind Dr. Thorn-like a catapult, but more flexible . . . almost like a tail.

"Unfortunately," Thorn said, "you are wanted alive, if possible. Otherwise you would already be dead."

"Who wants us?" Bianca demanded. "Because if you think you'll get a ransom, you're wrong. We don't have any family. Nico and I. . . ." Her voice broke a little. "We've got no one but each other."

"Aww," Dr. Thorn said, faux sympathy plastered on his face. "Do not worry, little brats. You will be meeting my employer soon enough. Then you will have a brand-new family."

"Luke," Percy said, teeth gritting. "You work for Luke."

Dr. Thorn's mouth twisted with distaste when Percy said the name of his old enemy — a former friend who'd tried to kill him several times.

"You have no idea what is happening, Perseus Jackson. I will let the General enlighten you. You are going to do him a great service tonight. He is looking forward to meeting you."

"The General?" Percy asked. Then he realized he'd said it with a French accent. "I mean . . . who's the General?"

Thorn looked toward the horizon.

"Ah, here we are. Your transportation."

Percy turned and saw a light in the distance, a searchlight over the sea. Then he heard the chopping of helicopter blades getting louder and closer.

"Where are you taking us?" Nico demanded, tone teary.

"You should be honored, my boy. You will have the opportunity to join a great army! Just like that silly game you play with cards and dolls."

"They're not dolls!" Nico snapped, anger overtaking his fear for a moment. "They're figurines! And you can take your 'great army' and—"

Now, now," Dr. Thorn warned. "You will change your mind about joining us, my boy. And if you do not, well. . . . there are other uses for half-bloods. We have many monstrous mouths to feed. The Great Stirring is underway."

The Great what?" Percy asked. Anything to keep him talking while he tried to figure out a plan.

"The stirring of monsters." Dr. Thorn smiled evilly. "The worst of them, the most powerful, are now waking. Monsters that have not been seen in thousands of years. They will cause death and destruction the likes of which mortals have never known. And soon we shall have the most important monster of them all - one that shall bring about the downfall of Olympus!"

"O-kay," Bianca whispered to Percy. "He's completely nuts."

"We have to jump off the cliff," Percy told her quietly. "Into the sea."

She looked at him like he was crazy, which, okay, was pretty fair given what he'd just said.

"Oh, super idea. You're completely nuts, too, then."

Percy never got the chance to argue with her, because just then an invisible force slammed into him.

Looking back on it, Annabeth's move was brilliant. Wearing her cap of invisibility, she plowed into the di Angelos and Percy, knocking them to the ground. For a split second, Dr. Thorn was taken by surprise, so his first volley of missiles zipped harmlessly over their heads. This gave Grover and Thalia a chance to advance from behind — Thalia wielding her magic shield, Aegis.

Thalia running into battle was terrifying - and Percy had been charged by the freaking Minotaur when he had been twelve. She used a huge spear that expanded from this collapsible Mace canister she carried in her pocket, but that wasn't the scary part. Her shield was modeled after one her dad, Zeus, used — also called Aegis — a gift from Athena. The shield had the head of the gorgon Medusa molded into the bronze, and even though it wouldn't turn you to stone, it was so horrible most people would panic and run at the sight of it.

Even Dr. Thorn winced and growled when he saw it.

Thalia moved in with her spear.

"For Zeus!"

Percy thought Dr. Thorn was a goner for sure as Thalia jabbed at his head, but he snarled and swatted the spear aside. His hand changed into an orange paw, with enormous claws that sparked against Thalia's shield as he slashed. If it hadn't been for Aegis, Thalia would've been sliced like a loaf of bread. As it was, she managed to roll backward and land on her feet.

He moved to charge, snarling and looking like that special kind of anger all monsters got when pesky demigods had the audacity to not die when they were attacked, but he didn't make it two steps before a loud, surprisingly powerful voice echoed over them from nowhere at all.

"Depulso!"

A bolt of purple light materialized about six feet to Dr.Thorn's right and hurtled towards him like a basketball lobbed at full force. It looked like he managed to catch sight of it near the end, but he didn't have a chance in hades of moving out of the way before it slammed into his side dead on.

There was a band like a gunshot and a gust of air that blew his hair out of his eyes, and then they all watched in disbelief as Dr.Thorn went flying, blasted away some thirty feet in a rising arc that ended with him crashing back on to the ground with an explosion of scattered snow and wind and a roared greek curse so vile Percy's mom would have fed him a bar soap if he ever dared mouth it in front of her.

"What?" Thalia was on her feet in a second, staring at him wide-eyed, and he shook his head.

"Not me."

"No, it was me."

The air beside him shimmered, and Percy almost forgot the burning cut on his shoulder as Luna Lovegood materialized in front of him, dotty getup and all, her star-framed sunglasses on top of her head and her arm still outstretched and crackling with purple light.

Somewhere behind him, he heard Nico Di Angelo leap to his feet.

"Luna!" He cried in relief

"Hello, Nico. Bianca." She smiled at them warmly and spoke with the same energy as someone meeting their friends on a street and not in the midst of a battle for their lives. Then her eyes rounded on Percy, cloudy grey and assessing. "And I don't know who you are."

What the Hades?

Before Percy could answer her - Because what else was he going to do? - Dr. Thorn leaped back onto his feet and bellowed in fury.

"Impudent half-blood wretch!"

And while all of them tensed, Luna just frowned and crossed her arms, looking like a put-out schoolteacher.

"That's rude."

The sound of the helicopter was getting louder behind Percy, but he couldn't help rounding on the girl and helping - that was her issue with all of this?

Then he promptly had to duck as Dr.Thorn threw himself into action. He launched another volley of missiles at Thalia, and this time Percy could see how he did it. He had a tail - a leathery, scorpion-like tail that bristled with spikes at the tip.

The missiles deflected off Aegis, but the force of their impact knocked Thalia down. Grover sprang forward. He put his reed pipes to his lips and began to play — a frantic jig that sounded like something pirates would dance to. Grass broke through the snow. Within seconds, rope-thick weeds were wrapping around Dr. Thorn's legs, entangling him.
Dr. Thorn roared and began to change. He grew larger until he was in his true form-his face still human, but his body that of a huge lion. His leathery, spiky tail whipped deadly thorns in all directions.

"A manticore!" Annabeth said, now visible. Her magical New York Yankees cap had come off when she'd plowed into them.

"Oh dear." Luna frowned. "I'd hoped for a sphinx. I've been dying for a good riddle."

And yeah, Percy wasn't even going to try and unpack that.

"Who are you people?!" Bianca di Angelo demanded. "And what is that?!"

"A manticore!" Nico gasped, awed. "He's got three thousand attack power and plus five to saving throws!"

Percy didn't know what Nico was talking about, but he didn't have time to worry about any of that. The manticore clawed Grover's magic weeds to shreds then turned toward us with a snarl.

"Get down!" Annabeth pushed the di Angelos flat into the snow.

At the last second, Percy remembered his own shield. He hit his wristwatch, and metal plating spiraled out into a thick bronze shield - but it didn't have to.

"Protego!"

Percy heard several dull thuds, and when he looked he saw a shimmering curved dome of blue light surrounding all six of them, Luna Lovegood standing in front of them with both hands outstretched.

"Sorceress!" the monster roared.

"Almost!" Luna agreed, and her hand dropped. The dome followed suit, dissolving into blue light, and Dr.Thorn must have taken that as some kind of weakness, because his tail bristled and rose in clear threat and he bellowed again.

"Yield."

"Never!" Thalia yelled from across the field.

"No thank you." Luna agreed, far more primly and with surreal politeness. One of her hands rose to the necklace of bottle caps and corkscrews on her neck and pulled a seemingly unordinary cap off in one sharp movement. Luna held it out in front of her, balanced on the end of one thumb like a coin before flicking it up into the air.

There was a flare of white-purple light and a sound like an off-pitch whistle, and the cap morphed and elongated in mid-air almost faster than Percy's eyes could track. By the time it dropped back into Luna's waiting grip, it was in the form of a spear, five feet long and blacker than night.

Something about the dark, smoky metal seemed familiar in a viscerally unpleasant way, but he didn't have time to put his finger on it. By some unspoken agreement, both girls charged the monster, and for a second, Percy thought they would run him through. But then there was a thunderous noise and a blaze of light from behind them.

The helicopter appeared out of the mist, hovering just beyond the cliffs. It was a sleek black military-style gunship, with attachments on the sides that looked like laser-guided rockets. The helicopter had to be manned by mortals, but what was it doing here? How could mortals be working with a monster? The searchlights blinded Thalia, and the manticore swung with its tail. It would have slammed into her side and batted her away, Luna's spear flashed far faster than it should have, and the beast howled as the tip of the appendage was sliced clean off.

"No!"

A massive paw descended on her head, but the blond girl ducked beneath the blow and rolled back, somehow maintaining her grip on it before she regained her balance with a half-crouch and jabbed at the manticore's chest.

He backed up and swung again, but Thalia charged him from the side and he was forced to abort the motion, tripping back as both of them herded him in.

That was about the point Percy suddenly remembered that - hey, he was a demigod too - and ran out to help.

He slid against the snow and parried away a spike aimed just below Thatlia's guard just before it would've hit her chest. He raised his shield over them, but he knew it was too mangled - it wouldn't be enough.

And just as soon as he thought it, Dr.Thorn got a lucky hit in. Luna raised her spear to parry, but the manticore stunned them all by leaping back and swiping at her full force with the entire length of his tail.

"Prot-!" She tried to start, but it was too late. The swipe shattered through the faint shimmer of blue that sprung up between them and caught her in the side dead to rights. The sheer impact of it flung her towards Percy and Thalia like a ragdoll, and he had to drop Riptide to the snow to avoid skewering her as she hit him at an angle and nearly bowled all three of them over.

She gasped in pain as they dropped, and Percy's blood went cold when he got a good look at her - there were half a dozen spikes embedded up the length of her arm and torso, one of them dangerously digging into the flesh right below her ribs. There was a patch of crimson already spreading down the side of her vest and along the inside of her chest.

Blood, his brain helpfully provided. And if every one of those was poisoned with the same crippling venom Thorn had used on him...

This was bad. This was really, really bad.

"Oh, I do love the smell of Demigod blood." Dr. Thorn laughed when he detected the wound, monstrous eyes gleaming.

"You sick freak." Thalia snarled, rising to her feet, and holding her crackling spear at the ready, but Percy could see the way her gait was unsteady - the tolls from the earlier hits she'd taken were finally piling up, and Dr. Thorn knew it too by the way he laughed again.

"Such false pride, daughter of Zeus. Do you not see how hopeless it is? Yield, little heroes."

Percy wanted to scream. His shield was busted, one of them was down, and they were trapped between a monster and a fully armed helicopter. They had no chance.

But then a clear piercing sound cut through the air. It was the call of a hunting horn blowing in the woods.

The manticore froze. For a moment, no one moved. There was only the swirl of snow and wind and the chopping of the helicopter blades.

No," Dr. Thorn said. "It cannot be—"

His sentence was cut short when something shot past Percy like a streak of moonlight. A glowing silver arrow sprouted from Dr. Thorn's shoulder.

He staggered backward, wailing in agony.

"Curse you!" Thorn cried. He unleashed his spikes, dozens of them at once, into the woods where the arrow had come from, but just as fast, silvery arrows shot back in reply. It almost looked like the arrows had intercepted the thorns in mid-air and sliced them in two, but Percy's eyes must've been playing tricks on him — no one, not even Apollo's kids at camp, could shoot with that much accuracy.

The manticore pulled the arrow out of his shoulder with a howl of pain. His breathing was heavy. Percy tried to swipe at him with his sword, but the manticore wasn't as injured as he looked. He dodged Percy's attack and slammed his tail into Percy's shield, knocking him aside.

A troop of archers poured out from the woods. They were girls, about a dozen of them. The youngest was maybe ten; the oldest like sixteen. They wore silvery ski parkas and jeans, and they were all armed with bows. They advanced on the manticore with determined expressions.

"The Hunters!" Annabeth cried.

Next to Percy, Thalia muttered, "Oh, wonderful."

He didn't have time to ask her what she meant.

One of the older archers stepped forward with her bow drawn. She was tall and graceful with coppery-colored skin. Unlike the other girls, she had a silver circlet braided into the top of her long dark hair - she looked like some kind of Persian princess.

"Permission to kill, my lady?"

Percy couldn't tell who she was talking to because she kept her eyes on the manticore.

The monster wailed, "This is not fair! Direct interference! It is against the Ancient Laws!"

"Not so," another girl said. This one was a little younger than Percy, maybe twelve or thirteen. She had auburn hair gathered back in a ponytail and strange eyes, silvery yellow like the moon. Her face was you but her expression was stern and her eyes were downright steely.

"The hunting of all wild beasts is within my sphere. And you, foul creature, are a wild beast." She looked at the older girl with the circlet. "Zoë, permission granted."

The manticore growled, "If I cannot have these alive, I shall have them dead!"

He lunged at Thalia and Percy, knowing they were weak and dazed and helpless with Luna down beside them.

"NO!" Annabeth yelled, and Percy's heart leaped straight into his mouth as she ran straight towards the charging manticore.

"Get back, half-blood!" the girl with the circlet said. "Get out of the line of fire!"

But Annabeth leaped onto the monster's back and drove her knife into his mane. The manticore howled, twirling in circles with his tail flailing as the daughter of Athena hung on for dear life.

"Fire!" Zoë ordered.

"No!" Percy cried. "Annabeth-!"

But the Hunters let their arrows fly. The first caught the manticore in the neck, just under Heri's arm; another hit his chest. The manticore staggered backward, wailing, "This is not the end, Huntress! You shall pay!"

And before anyone could react, the monster, with Annabeth still clinging to him, leaped over the cliff and tumbled into the darkness.

"NO!" Percy shot to his feet and bolted, but a loud, near-deafening crack echoed behind him and had him stumbling and nearly falling face-first into the snow.

When he turned around, feet still carrying him forward even as his instincts demanded he understand what the hell that sound was (an exceptionally stupid thing to do when running towards the edge of a cliff) Luna was gone.

"Where-?!"

Thalia's roar of surprise was cut short when another crack sounded, and Dr.Thorn and Annabeth appeared right in front of him, the still-bleeding Luna somehow on top of both. Before he could do much more than roar in surprise, the girl was yanking Annabeth off of him and leaping well clear of the firing zone.

"HOW IN TARTARUS-?!"

"Fire!"

His confused howl was cut off as another half-dozen arrows were fired into his torso. Percy's desperate confusion and relief were momentarily overshadowed by a flare of vicious satisfaction when he saw that one of them had been lodged into his eye, black blood flowing from the wound.

"Curse you, Hunters!" Dr.Thorn snarled and backed away, falling over his own feet in his haste to escape. "Curse you, Goddess! May Lord Kronos destroy you all!"

"Perhaps he will." The young girl from before stepped forward, eyes cold and dangerous - Percy almost stepped back when they flickered to him and his friends. "But you won't live to see it. Zoe-"

And then Luna drove her spear clean through the back of Dr.Thorn's skull with such force that the tip erupted out of his snarling mouth.

Maybe it was just Percy's imagination, but he thought that the manticore's sole remaining eye widened in shock half a second before he erupted into gold dust that was quickly scattered into the wind.

Luna stumbled slightly as the counterweight that she'd been balancing her spear against vanished, before turning her head to face Zoe, who'd already notched an arrow and was looking at her with the same stunned surprise as everybody else.

"I was here first." Luna looked at her very seriously. "Stealing a kill without permission isn't okay."

Zoe's eyes flickered and grew wider in disbelief, and Percy didn't blame her - he'd known the girl for all of five minutes and he was already starting to suspect that was the default response to speaking to her.

Then Luna's spear dropped from her hand, and the girl collapsed to her knees, he suddenly remembered she was bleeding from upwards of six different projectile wounds.

He started to run towards her, but this was about the point where they all remembered that there were more enemies and they weren't done with them.

There was a snap-snap-snap from the helicopter — the sound of gunfire.

Most of the Hunters scattered as tiny holes appeared in the snow at their feet, but the girl with auburn hair just looked up calmly at the helicopter.

"Mortals," she announced, "are not allowed to witness my hunt."

She thrust out her hand, and the helicopter exploded into dust — no, not dust. The black metal dissolved into a flock of birds — ravens — which scattered into the night.

The next thing Percy knew, the Hunters were advancing on their battered group.

The one called Zoë stopped short when she saw Thalia.

"You," she said with distaste.

"Zoë Nightshade." Thalia's voice trembled with anger. "Perfect timing, as usual."

Zoë scanned the rest of them.

"Six half-bloods and a satyr, my lady."

"Yes," the younger girl said. "Some of Chiron's campers, I see. And wounded too."

A loud wretch caught his attention, and he panicked when he caught sight of Annabeth hurling, her face green.

"Annabeth."

He moved to run to her side, but something in the little girl's haze stopped him. There was something unsettling about the way her eyes roved over them - as if she was taking them in and dismissing them all at once.

"And who are you supposed to be" He demanded, and suddenly Zoë stepped forward as if to smack him.

"No," the other girl ordered. "I sense no disrespect, Zoë. He is simply troubled. He does not understand." The young girl looked at Percy, her eyes colder and brighter than the winter moon. "I am Artemis," she said. "Goddess of the Hunt."

...

After seeing Dr. Thorn turn into a monster and plummet off the edge of a cliff with Annabeth and somehow get saved by the kid they were supposed to be here to protect, you'd think nothing else could shock Percy. But when this twelve-year-old girl told him she was the goddess Artemis, he could only say something really intelligent like, "Um . . . okay."

"That's wonderful!"

For the fourth time that night, all of them snapped to Luna, who'd somehow managed to get back on her feet and stumble towards them.

"Luna!" Bianca's eyes went wide at the sight of her as if finally registering the wounds that absolutely littered the other girl's body. "Luna, you're hurt!"

The blonde girl waved the comment away and ended up stumbling again. "I'm okay, Bianca."

She was not okay. She was very not okay.

Her clothes were torn and ragged, her shades were gone, her yellow shirt was basically orange from the amount of blood that had seeped into it and her skin was pale and clammy, so much so that her hair was matted and stuck to her forehead.

And despite all that, the girl was smiling like Christmas had come early.

"I've wanted to meet you for so long! There are so many things I wanted to ask you - so many creatures I wanted to learn about, but Father said I had to wait!" She beamed at Artemis (Who was a goddess, a hysterical part of Percy's mind was screaming) "I-"

She cut herself off and looked down at her torso.

"Oh dear. I don't think I have time. Does anyone have any Ambrosia? I gave my last square to this nice hellhound a few days ago and I haven't had a chance to get any more."

There was a long, incredulous pause where even Artemis seemed at a loss for words, and Luna frowned dejectedly.

"That's a shame. I think I'm going to have to pass out now." She turned to Percy one last time, and gave a final smile. "Don't worry about your friend. Apparition gets everyone a bit sick the first time."

And then her eyes rolled back into her head, and she dropped to the ground like a sack of potatoes.

...

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.​

 

[Firewillreign]

Every once in a blue moon, Percy found himself having to sit down and question whether or not the Fates had it out for him.

Even discounting the whole son of Poseidon and child of the prophecy thing that no one would tell him anything about (and yeah, he was still ticked off about that), there had to be a limit to how much weirdness life could throw at you before it became blatantly clear that someone was pulling the strings.

Most of the demigods back at camp had never even met a major Olympian besides Mr.D and maybe their divine parent, and even then most likely only on the annual field trips to Olympus every winter solstice. Certainly, he could count on one hand the number who'd had actual, full-fledged conversations with even one of the members of the council of twelve.

Percy, on the other hand?

Including Artemis, he'd met and talked to six, and seven if you counted Hades too even though he technically wasn't even an Olympian at all.

There was this quote Annabeth had mentioned to him once: Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times is enemy action.

If that was true, then seven times was a bunch of immortal nigh omnipotent grannies messing with you for shits and giggles.

After Luna had collapsed in the snow and made them all think she was dead and shaved some thirty-something years off all of their lifespans in from terrifying stress - seriously, Bianca just about had a nervous breakdown right then and there - the hunters wasted no time rushing her and Annabeth to one of their healers.

Thalia had looked like she'd have rather eaten iron nails than let either one of them go anywhere with the hunters (and Percy still didn't know what the deal there was) but between their injuries and the fact that the Di Angelo kids were scared halfway out of their minds and looking increasingly likely to pass out from shock, the daughter of Zeus ended up sticking around for the whole 'One of your parents is an absentee god and life as you knew it is over now!' speech.

Unsurprisingly, It didn't go well.

At all.

"You are a half-blood," Zoe Nightshade said bluntly. Her accent was hard to place. It sounded old-fashioned, like she was reading from a really old book. "One of thy parents was mortal. The other was an Olympian."

"An Olympian… athlete?"

"No," Zoe said. "One of the gods."

"Cool!" said Nico.

No!" Bianca's voice had quavered. "This is not cool!"

Percy would have argued, but... she wasn't exactly wrong. None of this was cool, and having it sprung on you this way of all ways was... Well. Percy had thought getting chased by the minotaur and seeing your mom get exploded into gold dust was a traumatic way to learn the truth, but tonight was quickly shaping to be a real close second.

Nico, on the other hand, was the complete opposite of his sister. He danced around like he needed to use the restroom. "Does Zeus really have lightning bolts that do six hundred damage? Does he get extra movement points for—"

"Nico, shut up!" Bianca put her hands to her face. "This is not your stupid Mythomagic game, okay? There are no gods!"

"Bianca," Thalia stepped in right about then, finally turning away from where she'd been glaring unabashedly at Zoe unclenching her fists. "I know it's hard to believe. But the gods are still around. Trust me. They're immortal. And whenever they have kids with regular humans, kids like us, well… Our lives are dangerous."

Bianca paused and paled a shade

"Dangerous," Bianca said, "like the girl who almost fell off the cliff - and Luna."

She turned to stare at Zoe - maybe because she appeared to be the oldest, or maybe just because she was the one nearest to her. "Is Luna a demigod too?"

Zoe exchanged a quick glance with Artemis and nodded. "Indeed."

"And she got hurt fighting Dr.Thorn"

"He was a manticore," Artemis said. "He is destroyed, but most monsters never truly die. He was but one of innumerable hoards - they re-form over and over again and often attack vulnerable half-bloods like yourselves. Your friend's kill is a testament to her skill and bravery, and she will suffer no last injury from it."

"Demigods aren't always so lucky," Thalia said quietly. "With monsters... it's either we train to fight them, or they hunt us down."

Bianca di Angelo shivered. "That explains… Nico, you remember last summer, those guys who tried to attack us in the alley in DC?"

"And that bus driver," Nico said. "The one with the ram's horns. I told you that was real."

"That's why Grover has been watching you," Percy said. "To keep you safe, if you turned out to be half-bloods."

"Grover?" Bianca turned and stared at him. "You're a demigod too?"

"Well, a satyr, actually." He kicked off his shoes and displayed his goat hooves. Bianca went right back to looking like she was about to faint. Percy almost smacked him upside the head for that one, and Thalia actually did smack him.

"Ow!"

"You're freaking her out, Goat-boy."

"Hey! My hooves are clean!"

"Bianca," Percy said, and he tried not to wince at the desperate look on the girl's face as she rounded back on him. He wished that Annabeth was back on her feet. She'd led orientation for new campers before - she could do a much better job at explaining everything without feeling so far out of her depth or worrying about putting her foot in her mouth. "We came here to help you. You and Nico need training to survive. Dr. Thorn won't be the last monster you meet, and now that you know what you are, your scent - that's how monsters track you - is only going to get stronger. You need to come to camp."

"Camp?" she asked.

"Camp Half-Blood," He said. "It's where half-bloods learn to survive and stuff. You can join us, stay there year-round if you like."

"Sweet, let's go!" said Nico.

"Wait," Bianca shook her head. "I don't—"

"There is another option," Zoe said.

Thalia's head snapped back to her.

"No, there isn't!" She hissed angrily

The resulting death glares could have given Medusa a run for her money.

Awesome


Eventually, Artemis herself stepped in to break up… whatever their spat was supposed to be.

"We have troubled the children enough." She intoned gravely, and her hunters snapped into motion and began unpacking their knapsacks and making camp. "Zoe, we will rest here for a few hours. Raise the tents. Treat the wounded. Retrieve our guests' belongings from the school."

"And, Bianca, come with me. I would like to speak with you."

"What about me?" Nico asked.

Artemis considered the boy. "Perhaps you can show Grover how to play that card game you enjoy. I'm sure Grover would be happy to entertain you for a while… as a favor to me?"

Grover just about tripped over himself getting up. Seriously, Percy didn't get what the bid deal was "You bet! Come on, Nico!"

Nico and Grover walked off toward the woods, talking about hit points and armor ratings and a bunch of other geeky stuff. Artemis led a confused-looking Bianca along the cliff."

"Yes, my lady."

Zoe gave Thalia one more evil look, then left to oversee things.

Which left Percy and Thalia all on their own.

"So what now?" He started slowly, because Thalia still looked like a landmine ready to go off and Percy didn't want to be in the blast radius if it did.

"I'm going to go look in on Annabeth and the new girl." She grimaced. "The other new girl - Luna, right?"

"Yeah."

"Thought so." She paused thoughtfully, before frowning. "How did she know to fight?"

"Uh, what?"

"How did she know to fight?" Thalia's frown grew deeper as she thought. "If she's a newbie demigod, how did she know how to fight? Because she was right next to me, and that wasn't random flailing. She knew how to use that spear - Actually, where the heck did the spear come from?"

"It came from her necklace-" Both of them stilled as the realization slammed into both of them. "It's a magical weapon."

Like Riptide, Or Thalia's spear and shield. But that meant-

"Somebody gave her that spear." Thalia finished for both of them, eyes narrowing in thought. "Somebody gave her that spear, and taught her how to use it too."

"Her godly parent."

"My father gave me my weapons, but he didn't teach me how to wield them." She protested, shaking her head. "No, I had to figure that out by myself. No god is going to take the time to personally train their demigod - why would they even bother?"

He winced. Ignoring the suddenly bitter edge to the words, there was a certain truth to them. Still, he didn't see what the big deal was.

"So maybe she did too." Percy shrugged.

"She's too good," Thalia argued back. "She was almost as good as me - and I spent every second I've had since I... came back training. That's not normal - and did you see what she was doing with those lights?"

Right. The freaky bolts of something that her flinging Dr.Thorn around like a bowling pin and somehow maybe teleporting.

"That... was something." He admitted - He hadn't thought about it yet because it had somehow ended up with Annabeth not disappearing forever over the edge of a cliff, and the heady relief that washed over him had almost been enough to take him out at the kneed. "It was magic."

"Strong magic. Powerful magic."

So were Thalia's lightning bolts, and Percy's control over water, but he didn't argue the point.

"So her godly parent is powerful too. Hecate, maybe?"

The goddess of magic seemed as good a guess as any, but Thalia didn't seem happy with the answer. Or the situation at all.

"Maybe." She grudgingly admitted at last, but her eyes were still narrowed. "But I still want to know who trained her."

"We could ask?"

Personally, Percy didn't think anyone had, but he wasn't going to begrudge Thalia her suspicion. Now of all times, a trained, competent half-blood who could charge into battle as unflinchingly as Luna Lovegood had just showing up out of the blue was more than a little shady.

He was curious too.

"No, I'll ask." She finally turned towards him and pointed at his shoulder. "You go after Grover and Nico and get that looked at."

"Hey, I'm fine."

She raised an eyebrow.

"I'm fine. I want to check in on Annabeth."

She smirked.

"Yeah, I bet you do."

"What's that supposed to-?"

Thalia poked him in the shoulder, and the word trailed off into a garbled hiss of pain as he leaped back some three feet away. He almost swooned from the rush of nausea that came with the jump. When his vision finally cleared up, Thalia had already crossed her arms and was staring him down expectantly.

"You're evil." He exhaled and closed his eyes, trying to get the world to stop spinning.

"You're just dumb. What were you thinking, for the record? That you'd take on Dr.Thorn by yourself? Seriously?"

He bristled. "If I didn't, we might have lost Nico and Bianca.

"I know."

He froze. "What?"

"I get it." She repeated empathetically "You did what you had to. Trust me, I know. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt and got turned into a fucking tree for it."

Oh.

Seven years ago, Thalia had been turned into a pine tree by her father, to prevent her from dying. She'd stood her ground against an army of monsters on top of Half-Blood Hill in order to give her friends Luke and Annabeth time to escape. She'd only been back as a human for a few months now, and once in a while she would stand so motionless you'd think she was still a tree.

"Thalia-"

She waved him off. "Just don't forget you have backup for a reason, Percy. Tonight could have gone a lot worse than it did. Get that shoulder patched up."

She turned and walked off without another word, leaving him with an unpleasant feeling curdling in his stomach, one that had nothing to do with the wound on his shoulder.

"Great."

Percy tried to look for Grover and Nico, but he quickly decided his odds of finding a satyr in a darkened forest weren't all that great, so he decided to wait by one of the campfires a hunter had set aside - probably for them, now that he thought about it - and watched as the followers of Artemis finished putting up their camp.

Say what you will about the hunters, but they got things done and fast.

In less than half an hour, they set up seven large tents, all of silver silk, curved in a crescent around one side of a bonfire. One of the girls blew a silver dog whistle, and a dozen white wolves appeared out of the woods. They began circling the camp like guard dogs. The Hunters walked among them and fed them treats, completely unafraid, but Percy decided he would stick close to the tents. Falcons watched us from the trees, their eyes flashing in the firelight, and he got the feeling they were on guard duty, too. Even the weather seemed to bend to the goddess's will. The air was still cold, but the wind died down and the snow stopped falling, so it was almost pleasant sitting by the fire.

Finally, one of the Hunters brought him his backpack. Grover and Nico came back from their walk, and Grover helped him fix up my wounded arm.

"It's green!" Nico said with delight.

"Hold still," Grover told him. "Here, eat some ambrosia while I clean that out."

Percy winced as Grover dressed the wound, but the ambrosia square helped. It tasted like homemade brownie, dissolving in his mouth and sending a warm feeling through his whole body. Between that and the magic salve Grover used, his shoulder felt better within a couple of minutes.

Nico rummaged through his own bag, which the Hunters had apparently packed for him, though how they'd snuck into Westover Hall unseen, Percy didn't know. Nico laid out a bunch of figurines in the snow—little battle replicas of Greek gods and heroes. He recognized Zeus with a lightning bolt, Ares with a spear, Apollo with his sun chariot.

"Big collection," Percy said.

Nico grinned. "I've got almost all of them, plus their holographic cards! Well, except for a few really rare ones."

"You've been playing this game a long time?"

"Just this year. Before that…" He knit his eyebrows.

"What?" He asked.

"I forget. That's weird." He looked unsettled, but it didn't last long. "Hey, can I see that sword you were using?"

Percy showed him Riptide, and explained how it turned from a pen into a sword just by uncapping it.

"Cool! Does it ever run out of ink?"

"Um, well, I don't actually write with it."

"Are you really the son of Poseidon?"

"Well, yeah."

"Can you surf really well, then?"

Percy looked at Grover, who was trying hard not to laugh.

"Jeez, Nico," Percy said. "I've never really tried."

He went on asking questions. Did Percy fight a lot with Thalia, since she was a daughter of Zeus? (He didn't answer that one - literally no answer was a safe answer for that) If Annabeth's mother was Athena, the goddess of wisdom, then why didn't Annabeth know better than to almost fall off a cliff? (Percy tried not to whack Nico for asking that one.) Could all demigods teleport like Luna did (No. Life would be way too convenient otherwise, and where was the fun in them all not suffering as much as possible?)

Was Annabeth his girlfriend? (At this point, Percy was ready to stick the kid in a meat-flavored sack and throw him to the wolves. Grover too, the ridiculous goat was almost choking in his effort not to laugh)

He figured any second he was going to ask him how many hit points he had, and he'd lose his cool completely, but then Zoe Nightshade came up to them.

"Percy Jackson."

She had dark brown eyes and a slightly upturned nose. With her silver circlet and her proud expression, she looked so much like royalty that Percy had to resist the urge to sit up straight and say "Yes, ma'am."

She studied him distastefully, like he was a bag of dirty laundry she'd been sent to fetch.

"Come with me," she finally said. "Lady Artemis wishes to speak with thee."

Well, then.

Percy exchanged one last, loaded look with Grover (Don't get smote, Grover's mind screamed over the empathy link) before following Zoe as she led him to the largest tent by the arc of the central campfire.

The inside of the tent was warm and comfortable. Silk rugs and pillows covered the floor. In the center, a golden brazier of fire seemed to burn without fuel or smoke. Behind the goddess, on a polished oak display stand, was her huge silver bow, carved to resemble gazelle horns. The walls were hung with animal pelts: black bear, tiger, and several others Percy didn't recognize.

Honestly, he figured that an animal rights activist would've had a heart attack looking at all those rare skins, but maybe since Artemis was the goddess of the hunt, she could replenish whatever she shot.

He thought she had another animal pelt lying next to her, and then he realized it was a live animal—a deer with glittering fur and silver horns, its head resting contentedly in Artemis's lap.

"Join us, Percy Jackson," the goddess said and gestured with a hand.

It was almost funny how she worded it like a request - Percy knew full well that when a god asked you to do something, they weren't actually asking so much as humoring your delicate mortal sensibilities by not outright ordering you outright - they didn't need to, after all.

Even if Percy hadn't known that for a fact, he didn't have to be a genius to know that it took a special kind of stupidity to refuse a goddess on principle, let alone one who'd just saved your life.

With a nod, he sat across from her on the tent floor. The goddess studied him, which made him uncomfortable. She had such old eyes for a young girl.

"Are you surprised by my age?" she asked, as if reading his mind. For all he knew, she just had.

"Uh… a little."

"I could appear as a grown woman, or a blazing fire, or anything else I want, but this is what I prefer. This is the average age of my Hunters, and all young maidens for whom I am patron, before they go astray."

"Go astray?" He asked.

"Grow up. Become smitten with boys. Become silly, preoccupied, insecure. Forget themselves."

"Oh."

Percy didn't have anything to say to that - Nothing sane, anyway. He especially had no intention of telling Artemis that her definition of 'going astray' sounded suspiciously like growing up, which was something all mortals did.

That was just how things worked, but what did he know? Immortals tended to play by their own rules most of the time anyway.

Zoe sat down at Artemis's right. She glared at him as if all the stuff Artemis had just said was his fault, like he'd invented the idea of being a guy. Maybe he would have said something if things had been a little different, but the olympian goddess was literally right there.

"You must forgive my Hunters if they do not welcome you," Artemis said. "It is very rare that we would have boys in this camp. Boys are usually forbidden to have any contact with the Hunters. The last one to see this camp…" She looked at Zoe. "Which one was it?"

"That boy in Colorado," Zoe said. "You turned him into a jackalope."

"Ah, yes." Artemis nodded, satisfied. "I enjoy making jackalopes. At any rate, Percy, I've asked you here so that you might tell me more of the manticore. Bianca has reported some of the… mmm, disturbing things the monster said. But she may not have understood them. I'd like to hear them from you."

And so Percy told her - and silently hoped that the jackalope thing was a joke, because what the fuck? - When he was done, Artemis put her hand thoughtfully on her silver bow. "I feared this was the answer."

Zoe sat forward. "The scent, my lady?"

"Yes."

That sounded ominous

"What scent?" He asked.

"Things are stirring that I have not hunted in millennia," Artemis murmured, which... didn't answer him at all, actually. "Prey so old I have nearly forgotten."

She stared at him intently.

"We came here tonight sensing the manticore, but he was not the one I seek. Tell me again, exactly what Dr. Thorn said."

"Um, 'I hate middle school dances.'"

"No, no. After that."

"He said somebody called the General was going to explain things to me."

Zoe's face paled.

She turned to Artemis and started to say something, but Artemis raised her hand.

"Go on, Percy," the goddess said.

"Well, then Thorn was talking about the Great Stir Pot—"

"Stirring," Bianca corrected. "Yeah. And he said, 'Soon we shall have the most important monster of all—the one that shall bring about the downfall of Olympus.'"

The goddess was so still she could've been a statue.

"Maybe he was lying," Percy tried to say, but his stomach was already sinking at the reminder - as a general rule of thumb, demigods were never that lucky.

Never.

And from she shook her head, Artemis evidently agreed "No. He was not. I've been too slow to see the signs. I must hunt this monster."

Zoe looked like she was trying very hard not to be afraid, but she nodded. "We will leave right away, my lady."


"No, Zoe. I must do this alone."

"But, Artemis—"

"This task is too dangerous even for the Hunters. You know where I must start my search. You cannot go there with me."

"As… as you wish, my lady."

"I will find this creature," Artemis vowed. "And I shall bring it back to Olympus by winter solstice. It will be all the proof I need to convince the Council of the Gods of how much danger we are in."

"You know what the monster is?" Percy asked hopefully.

Artemis gripped her bow. "Let us pray I am wrong."

What a wonderful non-answer that was.

"Can goddesses even pray?" Percy asked, because he'd never really thought about that and because the odds of him forcing an answer out of Artemis for his previous question were about the same as the odds of Zeus sending him a birthday present next August - one that wasn't rigged to blow up in his face.

His uncle was cool like that

A flicker of a smile played across Artemis's lips. "Before I go, Percy Jackson, I have a small task for you."

Oh no.

"Does it involve getting turned into a jackalope?"

"Sadly, no. I want you to escort the Hunters back to Camp Half-Blood. They can stay there in safety until I return."

"What?" Zoe blurted out. "But, Artemis, we hate that place. The last time we stayed there—"

"Yes, I know," Artemis said. "But I'm sure Dionysus will not hold a grudge just because of a little, ah, misunderstanding. It's your right to use Cabin Eight whenever you are in need. Besides, I hear they rebuilt the cabins you burned down." Zoe muttered something about foolish campers. "And now there is one last decision to make."

Artemis turned to Bianca, who flinched almost imperceptibly at the Goddess's regard. None of them missed it. "Have you made up your mind, my girl?"

Bianca hesitated. "I'm-"

And that's when a commotion from outside interrupted the poor girl, a loud ringing argument and a pair of voices that seemed halfway familiar drew closer and closer.

Before Percy could ask what was going on, the tent flap was suddenly wrenched open and in stumbled Luna Lovegood, a rather irate hunter on her tail (pun intended)

"You can't go in there without permission!" The hunter hissed, red in the face and looking ready to blow "You shouldn't even be moving, I've just finished patching you up!"

"Pheobe," Artemis said calmly, and the hunter's eyes went wide as her gaze snapped to the goddess.

"My lady, I'm so sorry-"

Artemis raised a hand and Pheobe's mouth clamped shut.

"It's alright, Pheobe."

The goddess of the moon turned to face Luna, who'd summarily dropped to the ground beside Bianca, crossed her legs and pulled the other girl into a one-armed hug. For her part, Bianca leaned right into it, looking so relieved she might've cried.

"You're okay."

"Of course I'm okay, silly." She nudged the girl with her elbow. "It isn't the first time I've been hurt. I know how to manage."

Artemis looked at the pair of them for a long second before turning to Pheobe.

"I will speak to young Luna here myself. Please, attend to your duties."

Phoebe didn't look happy, eyes still flickering to Luna, but she didn't even hesitate to bow and turned right around to leave.

"Thank you for treating me," Luna called after her, startling her as she made her way out. The blonde hair offered her a wide, genuine smile. "That was the very best healing I've had all year!"

Pheobe hesitated, shook her head slightly, then inclined it in a motion that could have generously been described as a nod before leaving, the tent flapping shut behind her.

Almost as one, everybody turned to face Luna, though the girl herself only had eyes for Artemis. Slowly, almost theatrically, she bowed her head to the goddess.

"Hail, Lady Artemis of Delos, Goddess of the Moon and the Hunt, Daughter of the King of Kings and the Titaness of Motherhood."

Drop. Dead. Silence.

Artemis's answering expression was the very definition of neutral, smooth as the surface of an undisturbed lake. Zoe had her eyebrows raised, half approving and half suspicious. Bianca, though, was Percy's mirror image.

Namely, confused as all hell.

"Luna, what are you saying?"

Luna blinked. "I'm greeting the goddess. You do know that's Artemis, right?"

"Of course I do!"

"You know she's a goddess?"

"Of course I do!"

"Then why shouldn't I greet her as her position demands?"

Bianca put her head in her hands. "I almost forgot. Why are you like this?"

"Girls," Percy could have sworn that Artemis sounded amused "Luna, I appreciate your sense of propriety. Tell me, who taught you to greet gods as such?"

Luna smiled. "My father did."

"And your father is a mortal?"

Percy almost reared back in surprise when Luna shook her head.

"No, my lady. He's a god too. He insisted I had to learn the proper form of address because many of the other gods can get very uptight and dramatic about receiving proper respect."

Percy choked. Zoe choked. Even Bianca choked.

Oh gods, this girl had just survived a brush with death and now she was all but asking to be blasted to dust.

"Girl, watch thy tongue-!" Zoe almost hissed, but Artemis just raised a hand again.

"She means no offense," And yeah, the goddess was definitely somehow amused instead of angry now. Percy could have sworn she almost smiled "Do you, my girl?"

"No." Luna frowned. "Why would I want to offend you? That would be a bit counterproductive, no?"

"You'd be surprised," Artemis said dryly. "Tell me, then, who is your father?"

"I can't do that."

Someone made a noise that sounded like a dying wheeze. It might have been him.

"Luna," He finally said, tone more than a little desperate. Artemis didn't look angry, but that could change in a heartbeat. "Luna, you can't refuse a goddess."

"But I'm not refusing a goddess. I didn't say I wouldn't tell her. I said I can't tell her." She turned to look at Artemis again. "I'm sorry my lady, but I swore my father an oath I wouldn't reveal his identity without permission. I can't break it."

"A binding oath?" When Luna nodded, the very faintest of disapproving frowns pulled at Artemis's lips. It was still enough to raise Percy's blood pressure by about a hundred marks. "On the Styx?"

"Oh no." Luna shook her head vehemently. "Father said that if I ever swore anyone an oath on the Styx, to anyone, for any reason, he'd bind me in chains and dangle me over the abyss of chaos until the stupid falls out of me."

Percy didn't know what that meant exactly, but Zoe started spluttering in disbelief.

"But it's still very binding," Luna reassured the silent goddess. "If I try to say his name, my tongue will stick to the roof of my mouth. If I try and write it down, my hands won't be able to move. And If I try to mime it or allude to it, I'll be petrified."

Bianca reared back, horrified. "What?"

"Oh don't worry. It's only temporary."

They were all worried. They were all very worried, what the f-?

"I see"

Two words from Artemis derailed that entire line of thought.

"I hear the truth in your words." She said at last, silver-grey eyes pensive. "Very well, then. Tell me how it is you came to be in this mortal school then, along with two other demigods."

"Oh, that's easy." Luna brightened up "I was searching for a sphinx."

...

"You were searching..." Artemis was impassive again, but Zoe was staring at the other girl like she was some new and heretofore unknown kind of creature she'd never encountered before. "for a sphinx."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Well, it's a bit of a long story." Luna settled in and leaned against Bianca. "See, I was traveling down through Maine a few months ago - I travel a lot and go from city to explore - and one day my friend Carli gave me an Iris call - She said she'd heard rumors of an old, strong monster stalking around a school nearby, Westover Hall. She thought it was a sphinx, which I thought was odd because they usually don't go looking for victims all on their own, so I decided to investigate."

"Your friend led you to a monster?" Percy blurted out - he couldn't help himself. "Is she a demigod too?"

Because if there were somehow four demigods involved in all of this, he was calling it quits and getting Chiron to get down here himself.

"No, of course not. Carli is the president of the DRS"

"The DRS?"

"Yes. The Dracaena Reformation Society. D-R-S. Get it?"

...

"Yeah, no." Percy shook his head and scooted away, glancing at Artemis out of the corner of his eye and shaking his head vehemently. "I got nothing."

Artemis looked at Luna carefully. "Child. Your... friend-"

"Carli"

"...Carli. She is a monster? A Dracaena?"

Luna gave the goddess a funny look.

"Well, of course she is. She can't be the head of the Dracaena Reformation Society without actually being a Dracaena. How would that work?"

Percy was starting to question whether or not somebody had spiked his nectar when he wasn't looking because he was fairly sure only the strongest mortal drugs could induce a hallucination like this.

Maybe not even those.

"You consort with such a creature?" Credit where credit was due, Zoe somehow managed to keep her tone level and free of judgment, but her stare was no less intense for it. "You are aware of what - of whom these creatures feed upon, yes?"

For just a moment, Luna's cloudy eyes sharpened.

"Yes. But not every immortal creature is a monster."

And Percy would have argued against that, really he would have, but he abruptly found himself thinking of Tyson and the winds were blown right out of his sails. His half-brother was living proof that not all monsters were bad, and logically he couldn't be the only one either.

And Zoe evidently agreed, because she didn't do more than purse her lips and frown severly in response.

"I have never heard of this... DRS" Artemis said.

"That's alright. It was only founded last year."

"What?"

"Well, I was down in New York, and this hoard of Dracaena ambushed me - I tried to negotiate with them, but they were very insistent on eating me. So I killed them all instead." Luna nodded, a thirteen-year-old kid being all prim and reasonable about exterminating a monster nest "And when I raided their lair for supplies, I found Carli chained in their basement. She was a young dracnae who made friends with a clear-sighted mortal before her other nest mates found them and killed him."

Luna frowned sadly.

"She was very upset about it, so she tried to run away. Her friends wouldn't let her, though, and they chained her down and kept her all starved and lonely until I found her and set her free. We've been friends ever since - she's doing a good job rounding up all the productive Dracaena she can find, making sure to teach them not to attack mortals and demigods and to file all their taxes like productive members of society, and every once in a while she'll call me about any new or interesting leads, though she made a big mistake this time. She told me it was a sphinx stalking Westover, not a manticore."

Luna huffed.

"And I spent weeks practicing all my riddles, too. Carli really can be a bit dotty every now and again."

...

"Luna." Bianca... actually giggled. It grew into helpless laughter that sounded a little hysterical, which Percy thought absolutely fair considering the sheer, unmitigated bullshit they were all listening to. "Luna, you of all people never get to call anyone dotty. Ever."

"Why not?" But she smiled and nudged Bianca, expression warm and pleasant before she turned back to Artemis and finished her story. "Anyway, when I got to Westover and I realized that Dr.Thorn was a monster who wasn't attacking any students, I stayed to have a bit of a look around. I used the mist to pose as one of the students, and then I realized that he was getting all funny around Bianca and Nico, so I made sure they never stayed too far out of my reach. Not until I knew what Dr. Thorn was up to. And then came the school dance, you all came charging in."

"You knew we were demigods?" Bianca gasped.

"I figured it out." Luna shrugged and smiled. "Afterwards, I couldn't leave you alone. And we're friends now, so that was a very good decision."

"A dangerous one still," Artemis said

"Yes, but I couldn't leave them alone. Dangerous monsters don't stalk demigods for weeks. That's not how it works. They either attack and kill them as soon as they find them or they go after more convenient prey. I could have ambushed Dr.Thorn, but what if there were other odd monsters at his beck and call?"

Bianca shuddered. Luna hugged her tightly.

"I wanted to know what Dr.Thorn was doing, and I couldn't simply drag Bianca and Nico away, so I had to stay."

"Just like that?" Percy couldn't believe what he was hearing - and he was the guy who'd once had a Fury for a pre-algebra teacher. "You stuck around, just like that?"

"Yes. It was a good experience. I made new friends, and I fought a monster I've never met before." Luna smiled secretively. "Besides, Dr.Thorn was hardly the worst teacher I've ever had. Between a fraud, a friendly werewolf, a murderous imposter, a toad, and a couple more murderous lunatics, he comes out solidly near the top.

...

Percy... didn't know what to say.

"No, still got nothing."

"You are brave, child," Artemis said at last, taking the burden off of him. "A credit to yourself and to your parent, whomever that may be. And you have given me much... much to think about. But we have tarried too long as it is. Bianca."

Their other girl snapped to attention.

"M-my lady?"

"I would have your answer now."

"I'm - I'm still thinking."

Something about the way she said it, wary and bordering on scared had all of Percy's alarm bells ringing.

"Wait," He said, sitting up straight and leaning forward. "Thinking about what?"

"They… they've invited me to join the Hunt."

For a moment, the words just didn't compute. Then Percy looked to Artemis, whose face gave nothing away, and Zoe, whose expression still took on a disdainful edge whenever she turned to him, and he felt a part of himself go cold.

"What? But you can't! You have to come to Camp Half-Blood so Chiron can train you. It's the only way you can learn to survive."

"It is not the only way for a girl," Zoe said.

He couldn't believe He was hearing this.

"Bianca, camp is cool! It's got a pegasus stable and a sword-fighting arena and… I mean, what do you get by joining the Hunters?" "

"To begin with," Zoe said, "immortality."

Percy stared at her, then at Artemis.

"She's kidding, right?"

"Zoe rarely kids about anything," Artemis said. "My Hunters follow me on my adventures. They are my maidservants, my companions, my sisters-in-arms. Once they swear loyalty to me, they are indeed immortal… unless they fall in battle, which is unlikely. Or break their oath."

"What oath?" Percy asked.

"To foreswear romantic love forever," Artemis said. "To never grow up, never get married. To be a maiden eternally."

"Like you?"

The goddess nodded.

Percy tried to imagine what she was saying. Being immortal. Hanging out with only middleschool girls forever. He couldn't get his mind around it.

"So you just go around the country recruiting half-bloods—"

"Not just half-bloods," Zoe interrupted. "Lady Artemis does not discriminate by birth. All who honor the goddess may join. Half-bloods, nymphs, mortals—"

"Which are you, then?"

Anger flashed in Zoe's eyes. "That is not thy concern, boy. The point is Bianca may join if she wishes. It is her choice."

Bianca, this is crazy," He said. "What about your brother? Nico can't be a Hunter."

"Certainly not," Artemis agreed. "He will go to camp. Unfortunately, that's the best boys can do."

"Hey!" Percy protested. "

You can see him from time to time," Artemis assured Bianca. "But you will be free of responsibility. He will have the camp counselors to take care of him. And you will have a new family. Us."

And oh, low blow. Percy was beginning to understand why Thalia hated these people so much - you don't tempt an orphan with the promise of family to get them to do what you want.

That's just low.

"A new family," Bianca repeated dreamily. "Free of responsibility."

Hook. Line. And gods-damned sinker.

"Bianca, you can't do this," Percy said. "It's nuts."

She looked at Zoe. "Is it worth it?"

Zoe nodded.

"It is."

And for one horrible moment, Percy thought that was it. He was terrified that Bianca would just up and abandon her brother, and leave all of them twiddling their thumbs and watching miserably, unable to do a thing.

But at the last second, Bianca hesitated.

With almost visible effort, she turned to Luna, who had remained silent and almost disturbingly expressionless throughout the entire exchange.

"Lu? What do you think?" She hesitated, and suddenly she looked so young and unsure Percy almost flinched from second-hand misery himself. "Do you think I should join?"

Luna didn't even hesitate.

"No."

Percy exhaled in relief, Zoe bristled, and Artemis remained still as a statue and gave nothing away.

"Lady Artemis's offer is generous, and joining the hunt is a great honor," Luna explained gently, gaze flickering to Artemis before refocusing on Bianca. "But being a hunter isn't just a great opportunity, Bianca. There is a price to it."

"A trivial one-" Zoe started, but Artemis cut her off.

"Zoe."

The Leitunant went silent at once, though she was still fuming. She turned to glare at Percy, as if saying 'see?! This is your fault!'

He resisted the urge to say something rude.

"I know it doesn't seem important - Love, and all that." Luna smiled and tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "It isn't anyone's choice to give that up but yours - but Bianca, you're twelve. You don't even know what you'd be giving up, and I don't like that. Even if you were to join the hunters, don't do it before you understand exactly what it would cost. What it would take from you, and Nico too."

Percy could almost see Bianca's resolve crumble by the end of that little speech. "But.. Immortality?"

It was a weak complaint - He could tell that Bianca was just arguing for the sake of arguing, but Luna just laughed, loud and airy.

"Bianca, excluding Lady Artemis's blessings, I know about six different ways that a mortal can receive immortality." Wait, what? "None of them are easy to come by, but it can be done if you're determined enough, and there are probably at least half a dozen more that I don't know about. Immortality isn't the problem here, silly, it's experience. Lady Artemis is not one to deny maidens who honor her a chance to join the hunters, even if they've rejected it before."

Both girls turned to the silent Artemis, who slowly nodded. Once.

"See? You don't have to choose now. You're scared, Bia, and there's a whole world out there you should get to know first before you choose an eternity you know next to nothing about. You have to be smart about this."

Luna's smile turned slightly melancholy for a second.

"'Wit beyond measure is man's greatest treasure.' Live a little. Explore. Learn. Spend a few years growing and thinking, and when you're done, if you still want to be a Huntress, you can join knowing that it's your own choice and free of all regrets."

"But what about you? You've seen the world. You know everything about this demigod stuff" Bianca swallowed nervously. "Would you join, if it were you?

"I barely know a thing, Bianca. There's so much out there that I haven't seen yet and that I still want to see, but none of that's important. What matters is what you choose, and I won't bias you by trying to explain my choices. It has to be your choice, in your own time, by your own free will."

Percy was almost gaping by the end of that little tirade - where the hell had the ditzy, slightly (definitely) crazy girl from before gone? This was borderline Chiron-level advice.

He just prayed it would work (No seriously, Poseidon, if you're listening, please let this work!)

The silence stretched on, low and steady and full of tension.

And at last, finally, Bianca di Angelo turned back to Artemis and shook her head.

"I'm sorry, my lady. But I don't want to be a hunter now."

Yes!

Percy almost jumped up and danced a victory jig - only the sight of Zoe's clenched jaw and the threat of Artemis's 'poof! you're a jackalope!' threat kept him down.

Even still, he had a huge grin on his face. "You're going to love camp, Bianca. You too, Luna."

She smiled nervously. "Thanks!"

Luna just nodded. "I'm looking forward to it - I've been meaning to seek out Chiron for a while. I wanted to ask him what his stance on the Party Ponies growing monopoly on laser tag centers across the midwest and how it affects inter-species relations."

...

"Nope." Percy shook his head and leaned right back again "Still got nothing."

"Unsurprising," Zoe muttered.

Artemis just sighed

"Dawn is approaching. Zoe, break camp. You must get to Long Island quickly and safely. I shall summon a ride from my brother. Girls, go with her."

Zoe didn't look really happy about this idea, but she nodded and told Bianca and Luna to follow her.

"I wish you both the best." Artemis intoned as they left, nodding her head in farewell. "Perhaps we shall continue this discussion another day."

"Thank you for your generosity, my lady, and farewell."

Luna bowed at the waist and tugged Bianca with her, and then the two of them vamoosed, and he was left alone with the twelve-year-old goddess.

Yeah, he hadn't thought this last part through.

"So," Percy said awkwardly - the goddess didn't seem upset that she'd lost one, maybe two potential followers, but you never knew with gods. "We're going to get a ride from your brother, huh?"

Artemis's silver eyes gleamed. "Yes, boy. You see, Bianca di Angelo is not the only one with an annoying brother. It's time for you to meet my irresponsible twin, Apollo."

...
​

The Underworld - Present time

Deep in the darkness where mortals dared not dwell, a figure with golden eyes and wings as black as primordial darkness shifted.

Another appeared before him - vaguely humanoid, if just barely, and promptly took a knee.

"My lord."

The winged figure raised an eyebrow. "Well?"

"The young lady has encountered the hunters of Artemis. She and her compatriots are to be escorted to Camp Half-Blood by Apollo himself come dawn."

...

A long, tired sigh broke the silence eventually.

"Typical. I tell her to avoid the Olympians, and she goes and runs into two right off the bat. And she's going to camp, too. Now she'll inevitably be drawn into this infernal war where I cannot help her!"

There was a sudden burst of fury, though it dissipated as quickly as it came.

Instead, the winged figure paused and began to think.

"...Fine." He shook his head. "Fine. I won't begrudge her the freedom to make her own choices, but I'll not have her stumble into the machinations of gods and titans unprepared. Daimon."

The servant snapped to attention. "My Lord?"

"Fetch me a hunk of Stygian Ore from the banks of the Styx, and summon a cyclops."

"At once, my lord."

As the servant departed to carry out his will, the winged figure finally allowed himself a smile. Grim, perhaps, but when was death anything but?

"There's still plenty of times before the curtains close, daughter of mine." Golden eyes glinted and flared in the dark. "Let's see what you're up to now."

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

When Luna Lovegood first showed up at Westover Hall, Bianca didn't think much of her.

Well, actually, no. She did think something of her - the same thing everyone else in their uptight military academy of a school thought at first sight of her.

Wow, that girl is a weirdo.

Yes, it was snobby and more than a little mean, but come on.

Bianca hadn't been able to help it - with her mismatched and oddly colored clothes, the outlandish accessories and that bottle cap necklace she never went anywhere without, Luna was a show and a half right from the beginning.

Her fashion sense was a serious hit against her - it looked like someone had pulled their best wardrobe picks out of a used-goods charity drive and accessorized out of a dumpster for good measure.

Stack that on to the fact that she was, at first glance, a total airhead who went off on tangents no one understood almost every time someone asked her a simple question )or talked to her period) and her getting labeled as the school loser was a done deal by the end of her second day at Westover.

Bianca was pretty sure Luna set a record for the fastest anyone's ever been ostracized by everyone in their year group - They even gave her a spiteful little nickname and everything - Luna 'Loony' Lovegood.

Yeah. Someone probably thought they were being clever.

For the first week, Bianca didn't pay her much attention.

How could she?

She was busy enough as it was, and it wasn't like she could exactly afford to be more unpopular. Before Luna showed up, it was Bianca who was their year group's outcast - odd, friendless, never-knew-what-to-say-or-when-to-say-it-Bianca who none of the other girls wanted anything to do with and was already run ragged trying to wrangle class work and a much too excitable ten-year-old of a little brother who was all she had in the world.

She just didn't have time to be nice to the one person in school who was lower on the totem pole than she was - and wasn't that a heck of an achievement - no matter how appealing (very) it would have been to make a friend (Finally).

In her defense, it didn't look like Luna ever needed it.

No, for all that the other girl stuck out like a square peg in a round hole, no one ever went out of their way to bother her.

Oh, there were mean whispers and snide insults and all the other garbage you could've expected, but there was something about Luna that meant no one ever said anything to her face or tried to start something with her head-on.

Most even went out of their way to avoid her.

No one could put their finger on why, though.

Maybe it was because they saw the way Luna walked through Westover Hall without a care in the world - like nothing and no one could bother her, eyes always at least a little distant, head lost in the clouds.

Maybe it was because even the teachers seemed at a loss as to what to do with her - none teachers ever called her out on the blatant dress code violations, her strange way of speaking, or anything else. Not even one - Once, Bianca caught Ms. Gottschalk blinking and looking at the girl with this odd, mystified expression - it was as if she'd forgotten she even existed.

(Or maybe everyone avoided her because of the feeling - the flash of something that Bianca had once felt the first time she and Luna had locked gazes, black on cloudy grey, and an odd, eery shiver had run down her spine in the half second before the other girl turned away.)

In the end, it didn't matter. The student body ignored her, Luna kept to herself, and Bianca was fine doing just the same.

Until eventually, and rather quickly, things started to change.

...

Bianca couldn't even remember the exact thought process that led her to try her luck. Maybe it was the exhaustion - she blames the sleepless nights she spent preparing for their pre-algebra test that week on her bout of temporary insanity.

Either way, instead of sitting with Nico at their designated lunch table (and inevitably having to sit through an hour of mythomagic babble), she tried to grab the sit next to Lori Templeton.

Lori was as close to a big deal as an eighth grader could get at Westover. Smart, pretty, and friends with everyone - except Bianca Di Angelo.

Typical

That day, though...

She was lonely, alright?

She just wanted to try something different (Less Lonely), maybe have a conversation or two.

(Try and make one friend. That's all she wanted. Just one.)

Needless to say, it didn't work out for her.

At all.

She's not sure how it happened, exactly, but one thing led to another and the next thing she knew someone was shoving her out of her chair. She landed roughly on the ground and managed to avoid bringing her tray of food down over her clothes by the skin of her teeth.

Not that that helped much.

"As if, loser." Lori had spat, looking down at her contemptuously. Her friends and hangers-on all tittered and giggled "Get out of here. And brush your hair while you're at it. It's gross."

Bianca didn't yell, or burst into tears (that was the hardest fight of her life). Instead, she silently snatched her bag, left her half-eaten lunch and walked out of the lunch room and out into the yard. She found herself a nice, private corner where no one could find her and plopped down with all her stuff.

Then she started crying

(It wasn't fair, being this alone. She didn't do anything to be treated like this - it wasn't her fault she never knew what to say, had no idea how to make friends. She never understood the other girls her age. All the secrets and the gossip and the fun they had- all of it flew right over her head. It was like they lived in an entirely different world, one where she didn't belong, and it wasn't fair. Even Nico had a handful of friends to play that stupid card game with - Bianca didn't have anyone.)

She was getting herself back together (crying her eyes out), knees hugged to her chest and head pressed down when she felt someone plop down next to her.

"You shouldn't listen to them, you know."

When Bianca blinked and looked up, she found Luna sitting beside her and smiling at her gently.

"Your hair looks wonderful. I think Lori thinks so too. She's nasty to you because she's jealous. It's very spiteful of her - She'll attract all sorts of nargles like that."

Bianca had never spoken to Luna before then, but she leaped into the conversation almost before she was even aware of it (She was that desperate for someone to talk to)

"What are nargles?"

"They're funny little creatures that like to live in mistletoe. Whenever they come out, they're known to cause all sorts of mischief, and they often like to go after the most mischievous or mean-spirited people they can find."

...Was this a joke? Or some kind of children's story? But Luna was nodding and staring at her very seriously as if imparting some great wisdom.

"I don't get it." She said at last. It didn't seem like she was joking, and Bianca didn't want to push the other girl away by mentioning how stupid the words sounded, so settled for not mentioning them at all.

"That's alright. Most people don't."

... Right

Luna tilted her head - Bianca could have sworn she looked amused.

Bianca should have been upset - she didn't need yet another person out to make fun of her or have a laugh at her expense, but instinct stopped her. Nothing about Luna's words or mannerisms was malicious. Odd, far out, and most of it went right over her head, but she could tell that none of it was meant to hurt.

A refreshing change of pace.

"Why did you follow me?" She paused and frowned. "How did you follow me?"

She was sure no one had seen her squirrel herself away, and she'd deliberately found the most isolated place she could hide in and didn't intend to stray.

"I don't like it when nice people get upset by silly words. It's familiar, in a bad way. You're very clever, Bianca Di Angelo, and you love your brother a great deal. Those are good qualities for a good person - don't let the drivel weigh you down. It's no good for you" Luna tucked a lock of blond hair behind her ear and hummed lowly. "And as for finding you - I just followed the wrackspurts."

Bianca paused, frowning from underneath the haze of pleasant embarrassment that had flushed through her system at the unexpected (and almost painfully earnest) praise.

"Wrackspurts?" She shook her head. "What are those?"

In response, the blonde girl hopped up to her feet and extended a hand. "Come with me and I'll tell you. It's still lunch, after all, and you've barely eaten a thing. I've got some old fish crackers in my dorm - always good to have a food stash handy."

Bianca hesitated - Was this really happening? With Luna Lovegood of all people?

"Are they any good?"

Apparently so.

"No. They're absolutely disgusting. But I think company will make them taste better. Care to find out?"

Bianca didn't have anything to say to that, either, so up she went.

And you know what?

Those crackers were the most god-awful, revolting thing Bianca ever tasted, but damn if Luna wasn't right - company really did make them taste better.

(It wasn't much - Just two girls, two packets of hideous crackers and a half hour of a conversation she could barely make heads or tails of.

And somehow, it still meant everything)

The next morning, a commotion spread through the dorms.

Lori Templeton woke up half the school an hour before breakfast, screeching and screaming like a wild banshee, completely inconsolable at the sight of her formerly blonde hair, which had somehow been dyed a bright, hideous shade of neon-green that refused to wash out for days afterward.

No one knew who did it, but everyone - everyone, even her so-called friends were happy to laugh themselves sick at the sight of her.

Bianca tried (and failed) not to feel too viciously smug about that.

And later, when she sat by a certain blonde girl at lunch and told her what happened, Luna just smiled, cloudy eyes suddenly a bit too sharp and smile just a little too knowing (and just a teensy, tiny bit vindictive)

"Oh dear. I suppose the nargles got her after all."

Nargles, she said - the creatures that supposedly went after mischievous, mean-spirited people.

According to Luna.

"Oh."

And just like that, Bianca knew and understood exactly what had happened and why, even if she had no clue how it had been accomplished.

"I-" She swallowed the lump in her throat and focused very hard on keeping a straight face. "...Thank you."

The words felt so inadequate, but they were all she could bring herself to say.

Luna just frowned (the sharp awareness never left her eyes).

"For what? Never mind, you can tell me later. It's time for class."

She grabbed Bianca's hand and tugged her behind her, and Bianca went right along with her.

And that's how she and Luna became friends.

...​

It took Luna all of five minutes to wrap her brother around her little finger - or was it the other way around?

Eh, who even knew?

All that mattered was that over the course of one conversation of mythical (probably) nonexistent (hopefully) creatures that Luna always went on about and a single one-on-one match of Mythomagic, Luna and Nico became the best of friends.

"She's so cool!" Nico had beamed, almost bouncing off the walls with how excited he was.

"Sit down, you little lunatic." Bianca had chided, but she grinned despite herself - He wasn't wrong.

Luna really was cool.

Their life took an immediate upswing after that.

Bianca wasn't alone. She had a friend who had her back, who smiled and listened to her day in and day out and told her the oddest, most fascinating stories and helped her with her school work (And wasn't that a surprise, learning that for all of Luna's apparent air-headedness, she was almost terrifying smart and witty in anything even vaguely academic. She ran circles around Bianca almost without trying, and she was so helpful about it Bianca couldn't get upset about it even if she wanted to - which she categorically didn't)

That was probably why Nico loved her too - She indulged him almost every chance she got. She played games with him and indulged his endless questions and even managed to sneak herself and Bianca into his dorms past curfew (somehow, no one ever noticed them) to have these big late-night get-togetheres (Somehow, no one ever heard them, or even saw them - really, Bianca should have started questioning why that was, but she hadn't dared for fear of it all coming apart)

Those nights were unironically the best of her life (As far as she could remember, anyway). They shared stories and played card games and told silly, stupid jokes that had them laughing themselves to stitches. Best of all, they brought on Luna's horrible snacks and dared each other to eat them.

Bianca was sure that stunt alone shaved off some thirty years of their collective lifespans, but she didn't care. None of them did.

(Because they were warm, those moments. Warm in a way that had nothing to do with a temperature and meant everything to all of them, she could tell. It was obvious, from the achingly melancholic, bitterly grateful light in Luna's eyes that she only partially understood and the way Nico clung to her almost without noticing, the way Bianca never strayed too far from both of them herself.)

It was amazing and special, and it was theirs.

And that was all that mattered.

And then came the school dance.

...
​

Dr. Thorn turned out to be a manticore and tried to kidnap them, the asshole

Gods and demigods turned out to be real because the vice-principal with the ugliest mug she'd ever seen clearly wasn't enough.

A goddess tried to recruit Bianca to an immortal (and very tempting) eternal grils club complete with matching outfits and a mission to kill savage monsters for sport. Somehow, she turned her down and lived to tell the tale.

And Luna, predictably, knew all about everything all along and was more concerned with finding a way to corner the goddess of the hunt and asking her about something called a 'crumple horned snorkack'

Because of course she was.

...​

"So this.. mist is why none of the teachers ever seemed to notice you?" Bianca asked dubiously, still struggling to wrap her mind around it all.

Her life had gotten so, so weird.

"They noticed me." Luna countered, still staring up at the dark sky expectantly. "They just never noticed that I didn't belong. The mist - the topmost layers, anyway - alters perception more than anything else. The more experienced you are in directing it, the more focused, the better the results."

"Oh, that's how Dr. Thorn turned into a manticore!" Nico piped up, jittery as a four-year-old on a sugar high.

"Not quite - Dr. Thorn was always a manticore. He used the mist to alter the perception of his appearance - all monsters can do it, more or less, but only the very intelligent ones can consciously use it to disguise themselves from even demigods like he did with you. Very clever, and very patient."

Bianca frowned. "That sounds... bad."

Monsters as a concept were something she'd only had a couple of hours to digest, huddled against Luna in the tent the campers had set up for her and the other two demigod girls - Thalia and Annabeth. The idea of any monsters at all was bad enough. Intelligent ones - more intelligent ones like Dr. Thorn - that just sounded horrifying.

"Bad? No, it's awful. Monsters this patient are almost unheard of. Very ominous." Luna smiled. "I like it. Life is going to get very exciting, I can tell."

...

"Of course you think that." Bianca sighed - why was she like this? "So... what is the mist? Is it magic?"

To which Luna smiled even more brightly "I have no idea."

"You don't know?"

"Not at all!" She replied cheerfully. "Father wasn't very forthcoming on the topic and my prayers to Lady Hecate haven't been answered, so I suppose I'll have to figure it out myself. Isn't it exciting?"

No. No, it really wasn't.

"Sure, Lu."

Gods give her patience.

She paused as the thought registered.

... Did that count as a prayer? Did she just talk to the gods?

... No.

Bianca shook her head, this time to herself.

Best not to think about it - that way lay madness. The scary, lock-you-in-a-padded-room kind, not the Luna kind.

"How much longer do you think we have to wait?" Nico asked for both of them, piping up from where he'd been reshuffling his deck (Bianca silently despaired - he'd already been way too obsessed with that game before finding out that all of this Greek mythology stuff was real. How much worse would he get know?)

"I don't know," Luna answered patiently, still staring up at the heavens unerringly. "Whenever Lord Apollo's schedule permits, I suppose.

The three of them stood in the snow, unbothered by the biting chill (Luna had tapped each of their shoulders and a burst of lingering warmth spilled over them - 'warming charm' she had explained over Nico's gleeful questions) and tentatively watched as Artemis stared into the east like she was expecting something.

Thalia, Annabeth, Grover and Percy sat off to one side, whispering among themselves and pointedly steering well clear of the goddess's hunters, who seemed to return the whole I-want-nothing-to-do-with-you vibes and occupied themselves with packing up their tents faster than should have been humanely possible. They broke camp as quickly as they'd set it up.

Artemis assured them that dawn was coming, but you could've fooled her. It was colder and darker and snowier than ever. Up on the hill, Westover Hall's windows were completely lightless. Bianca wondered if the teachers had even noticed that the three were missing yet.

There was a sudden burst of light on the horizon. A blast of warmth. "Don't look," Artemis advised, her voice ringing loudly. "Not until he parks."

Parks?

Bianca averted her eyes, and saw that the other kids were doing the same. Luna slapped a hand over Nico's face when he tried to take a peak. The light and warmth intensified until Bianca felt almost too warm, between the warmth and the heat.

Then suddenly the light died.

She looked.

She hadn't known what she'd been expecting, but what she found was... a car?

A red sports car, like the kind she saw hanging on one of the posters in their art classroom. A bit on the small side, but Bianca didn't know whether or not that was a good thing.

The heat wafting off of it almost fooled her into thinking it was summer - even the metal was glowing red-hot. The snow had melted around the Maserati in a perfect circle, which explained why they were now standing on green grass and why her trainers were wet.

The driver got out, smiling. He looked about seventeen or eighteen, with short sandy blonde hair, blue eyes and sharp features. If she squinted, she could even see the resemblance to Artemis even if the coloring was all off. He wore jeans and loafers and a sleeveless T-shirt.

"Wow," Thalia muttered a distance away. "Apollo is hot."

"He's the sun god," She heard Percy whisper back.

"That's not what I meant."

Bianca didn't get it either.

"Little sister!" Apollo called. If his teeth were any whiter he could've blinded us without the sun car. "What's up? You never call. You never write. I was getting worried!"

Artemis sighed. "I'm fine, Apollo. And I am not your little sister."

"Hey, I was born first."

"We're twins! How many millennia do we have to argue—"

"So what's up?" he interrupted. "Got the girls with you, I see. You all need some tips on archery?"

Artemis grit her teeth. "I need a favor. I have some hunting to do, alone. I need you to take my companions to Camp Half-Blood."

"Sure, sis!" Then he raised his hands in a stop-everything gesture.

"I feel a haiku coming on."

The Hunters all groaned. Apparently, they'd met Apollo before. He cleared his throat and held up one hand dramatically.

"Green grass breaks through snow.
Artemis pleads for my help.
I am so cool."

...​

"Well." Luna hesitated (and it should say a lot that even Luna hesitated at all). Her voice echoed in the clearing. "That... was, in fact, a haiku."

Yeah, the most gods-awful one she'd ever heard. Bianca was pretty sure a part of her soul just shriveled up and died on the spot.

"Except for the last line." Luna muttered under her breath, though Apollo seemed to hear her anyway "That was four syllables"

Apollo frowned. "Was it?"

"Yes." Artemis said - she sounded like Bianca whenever Nico drove her up a wall - devoid of patience and on the edge of exploding "What about I am so big-headed?"

Definitely like Bianca then - good to know.

"No, no, that's six syllables. Hmm." He started muttering to himself.

Suddenly, Bianca was struck by how surreal all of this was. How ridiculous. Last night, she'd been just another student at Westover - and now she was watching the actual, literal god of the sun argue poetry semantics with his irate sister.

What even was her life?

"Luna," Bianca said. "I think your crackers might have been spiked with something."

She was only half joking too.

"Now-"

Luna paused, expression shifting contemplatively.

Bianca whirled to face her.

No.

"You know," Luna tapped her chin thoughtfully. "That might explain a few things. Carli gave them to me, so you may not be far off the mark, actually."

"Luna!"

"What? I told you she was dotty."

Bianca nearly tackled her, and Nico's laughter could have roused the dead.

...​

Things moved quite quickly after that.

Artemis entrusted them to Apollo, who turned his odd-looking car into a decent-sized bus for them to ride.

"All aboard!" He said, clapping h. "Great - Who wants to drive?"

Oh, heck no.

She smacked Nico's hand down the second it started twitching.

"Hey!"

"Over my dead body - no, not even then."

"She's right, Nico." For once Luna didn't let him have his way, even when he rounded on her with eyes full of betrayal. "You're far too young. Remind me to tell you the story of the last child who rode the sun-chariot - it isn't a pleasant one."

And wasn't that ominous?

Eventually, though, Apollo's eyes snapped to Thalia and pinned the honor of driving the legendary camper bus of the sun to camp half-blood on her.

She didn't look very honored (low-key terrified, actually)

"I know what you're going to say," Apollo said when she tried to protest. "You don't deserve an honor like driving the sun chariot."

"That's not what I was going to say."

"Don't sweat it! Maine to Long Island is a really short trip, and don't worry about what happened to the last kid I trained. You're Zeus's daughter. He's not going to blast you out of the sky."

"Um... Luna?"

"Don't worry, Bianca." Luna's hand latched onto her wrist and gripped tightly. Her free hand snagged the back of Nico's shirt "I'll apparate us out if we're in trouble."

Now, see, that was supposed to be reassuring (and in some ways it was) but the implication that even Luna was a little worried had her blood pressure tripling in under a second.

Nico just seemed delighted, bless his little idiot soul.

"Go on then." Apollo dragged Thalia to the driver's seat and manually placed her hands on the steering wheel (yeah, she was that reluctant) "Take it from the top - Trust me, you'll be a natural!"

Thalia was not a natural. Thalia was very much not a natural.

"We're going to die!" Bianca hissed as the sun chariot rocketed across the heavens, its trip wild and disjointed and constantly at risk of ending via them crashing into a mountain!

They arrived at Camp Half-blood with a thunderous, disastrous landing, Thalia slamming the brakes hard enough that Bianca imagined she could feel the impact at the back of her teeth. The sun bus pitched forward and nearly flipped off-kilter, slamming into a canoe lake with a massive FLOOSH!

A great big billowing cloud of steam exploded up, sending several terrified naiads scrambling out of the water with half-woven wicker baskets.

"Well," said Apollo with a brave attempt at a smile. "Let's go see if we boiled anyone important, shall we?"

...​

Apollo disappeared with a wink and burst of golden light (sunlight, because sun god, of course)

Camp Half-Blood was a sight.

Snow had been allowed to fall lightly. Frost covered the chariot track and the strawberry fields. The cabins were decorated with tiny flickering lights, like Christmas lights, except they seemed to be balls of real fire. More lights glowed in the woods, and weirdest of all, a fire flickered in the attic window of the Big House, where the Oracle of Delphi dwelt, imprisoned in an old mummified body.

"Whoa," Nico said as he climbed off the bus. "Is that a climbing wall?! Why is there lava pouring down it?"

"Little extra challenge," said Percy, patting Nico on the back. "Come on — We'll introduce you guys to Chiron. Zoë, have you met—?"

"I know Chiron," Zoë said stiffly. "Tell him we will be in Cabin Eight. Hunters, follow me."

"I'll show you the way," Grover offered.

"We know the way."

"Oh, really, it's no trouble. It's easy to get lost here, if you don't" — he tripped over a canoe and came up still talking — "like my old daddy goat used to say! Come on!"

Zoë rolled her eyes, but it was clear she figured there was no getting rid of Grover. The Hunters shouldered their packs and their bows and headed off toward the cabins.

"Well then." Annabeth turned to them clapping her hands, but her smile was strained - clearly, the Hunters' dismissive attitude was starting to rub even her the wrong way. "Let's go meet Chiron."

"Say, who's Chiron?" Nico asked. "I don't have his figurine."

"Our activities director," answered Annabeth. "He's really nice, and he's—"

"Let's let them see for themselves," Thalia cut in with a smile. "It'll be a good surprise."

The Big House was decorated with strings of red and yellow fireballs that warmed the porch but didn't seem to catch anything on fire. Inside, flames crackled in the hearth. The air smelled like hot chocolate. Mr. D and Chiron were playing a quiet game of cards in the parlor.

As for being a surprise, it was.. sort of.

Aside from the sheer mind-bender that seeing an actual centaur was (Grover being a satyr only halfway prepared her for the sight) meeting a third god in less than twenty-four hours almost had her sitting down from how weak in the knees the concept made her.

The fact that Mr. D looked one step removed from being a homeless bum and was clearly, unrepentantly a jackass didn't help any.

"Hoo-rah," The god had said in a bored voice after they were introduced to him. He wore a neon orange leopard-skin warm-up suit and purple running shoes. A golden laurel wreath was tilted sideways on his curly black hair, which must've meant he'd won the last hand of cards they were playing. "More brats hanging around."

"Come now, Mr. D. These new campers need their orientation tour."

"Yes, yes. You deal with it." He dismissed them with an almost contemptuous wave of his hand, and Bianca was perfectly happy to split - Between Nico's mythomagic comments almost drawing his attention to them and the fact that he obviously wanted as much to do with them as she wanted to with him (nothing), she was more than happy to be led away.

(No one noticed the way his brows furrowed and his eyes lingered on Luna as she stepped away, uncharacteristically silent. No one but Luna herself)

Outside, they explained the layout of the camp and cabins. The cabins were the oddest collection of buildings you've ever seen. Zeus and Hera's big white-columned buildings, Cabins One and Two, stood in the middle, with five gods' cabins on the left and five goddesses' cabins on the right, so they all made a U around the central green and the barbecue hearth.

The architecture varied - some of it was almost what you'd expect for the home of the children of the gods - archaic, glamorous buildings shaped almost like temples in some respects.

Others, Like Poesidon's cabin, looked like a high-end beach cabin. The kind you'd find in a fancy vacation resort.

Over at the basketball court, a few of the Hunters were shooting hoops. One of them was arguing with a guy from the Ares cabin. The Ares kid had his hand on his sword and the Hunter girl looked like she was going to exchange her basketball for a bow and arrow any second.

"I'll break that up," Thalia said. "You guys check out the cabins. Tell everybody about Capture the Flag tomorrow."

"Uh, what is Capture the Flag?" Nico said.

"It's a war game, of sorts," Annabeth said, then she paused.

Something must have flashed across Bianca's face, and even Luna had stopped in her intent inspection of everything around them to turn and frown.

"War game?"

What the heck kind of camp was this?

"It's nothing dangerous." The daughter of Athena hurried to explain "It's a traditional camp exercise - A mock battle between cabin-groups. It's good practice for combat tactics and strategy preparation. It prepares untrained campers for real fights without the risk of setting them up against monsters, and a victory reflects well on you. It's even a way of honoring your godly parent, by showing off how capable you are."

"Our parents want us to fight?"

"No-" Annabeth looked pained "They want us to prove our capability - they don't want us to get hurt if we can avoid it."

"Probably," Percy muttered, then flushed when Annabeth rounded on him with a withering glare.

"It's alright, Bianca." Luna finally interrupted, nodding reassuringly. "It's only standard practice - far better to learn in here than you would out there."

Annabeth nodded "Exactly."

"Besides, a war game is hardly the worst way to practice. On my tenth birthday, Father set me up against a trio of Laistrygonian Giants to train my spear work."

Nico grinned, the little monster "What are those?"

"Eight-foot-tall cannibal giants"

See, it was hearing stuff like that that did bad things to her heart.

"Cool!" Nico cheered.

"Not cool!" Bianca snapped back

Annabeth and Percy just looked incredulous.

"Wait, what?"

"Oh yes. It was quite awful. Two of them were completely irredeemable, so I had to send them to Tartarus. The third was just a baby, though, and we got along wonderfully after I convinced him to switch to a poultry-based diet. Better for his teeth." She smiled wistfully. "Ah, I do miss Larry. I wonder how he's doing?"

She shook her head and resumed walking, Nico hot at her heels and already spitting out a hundred and one questions. While Annabeth stared after her, Percy just turned to look at her with the expression of a man desperately trying to hold on to the few scraps of sanity he had left.

"What the hades?"

"Don't ask." Bianca shook her head miserably. "Just don't ask. It always gets worse when you ask."

...​

After that, it all became a little much.

The events of the last day and everything that had happened all caught up to her, and Bianca just... stopped caring.

She filtered out the rest of the world.

(Luna must have noticed because she didn't leave her side the entire night.)

She was silent when they set the three of them up in the Hermes cabin (She missed Luna's displeasure at the sight of all the crammed kids and how they barely had space to move around), and even silent when they got to dinner.

Torches and braziers kept the outdoor pavilion warm. Every cabin had its own table, and campers were apparently expected to sit only at the table assigned to their cabin. She wound up silently squeezed between Nico and Luna, and even the infinite variety of food and drink didn't manage to stir her out of her stupor.

(Was this shock? What was even happening to her?)

She startled as Luna grabbed her hand and squeezed It tightly. "Don't worry, it'll be alright."

I hope so, she wanted to say, but settled for a nod instead.

She followed the other campers' lead after that. She dumped pretty much all her food into the brazier, a wordless, vague attempt at prayer on her mind, (No more surprises, please and thank you) and the slightest hint of a question to her divine parent (Who are you?)

(She wasn't sure she wanted to know, actually. It all still felt like a dream. Knowing proved beyond a doubt that all this craziness was real, and Bianca still couldn't decide whether that would exciting or viscerally horrifying.)

And that was it.

That night, they ended up back at the Hermes Cabin, Nico already off with a bunch of the younger campers on the other end of the gender partition while Luna and Bianca got a couple of sleeping bags and laid them out side by side.

"Hey, Lu?"

"Yes?"

"This is insane."

"That's true."

"Like, crazy insane."

"That's also true."

"And you're a bit insane for being so okay with it."

"Subjective, but also true."

Bianca laughed at that. It sounded a bit hysterical (and a little choked up)

Luna's hand found hers again, even in the dark.

"It's okay to be uncertain, you know," Luna whispered in the dark. "It's okay to be scared. I often am. But don't let it ruin the future for you. It's a whole new world for you, Bianca, and you're going to be amazing. Don't ever doubt that."

...

"...Thanks, Lu."

Loony her ass. Luna was the smartest person she'd ever known, period.

And hey, that meant she was probably right. Things would work out. They always did.

With any luck, tomorrow would be better.

...​

It wasn't.

It really, really, really fucking wasn't.

Bianca woke up, had breakfast, and before she knew it she was being fitted and decked out in armor. The leathers were worn, but the bronze plating gleamed and her helmet settled over her head snugly, blue feathers distinctive.

Frankly, she thought it was all a bit much, but no one asked her and she didn't offer her opinion either way.

Then the participating cabins got together to prepare, and the game of Capture the Flag began with a thunderous announcement from Chiron.

"Heroes!" he called. "You know the rules! The creek is the boundary line. Blue team — Camp Half-Blood — shall take the west woods. Hunters of Artemis — red team — shall take the east woods. I will serve as referee and battlefield medic. No intentional maiming, please! All magic items are allowed. To your positions!"

The fact that the activities director had to declare maiming off limits should have been warning enough - seriously, what kind of hell hole was this?

As always, Nico was ecstatic.

"Percy, this is awesome!" Nico crowed from where he was trailing after the older boy. His blue-feathered bronze helmet was falling in his eyes, and his breastplate was about six sizes too big. Bianca would have laughed at how ridiculous he looked if she wasn't having heart palpitations at the idea of him getting maimed.

"He won't get hurt," Percy promised, clearly picking up on her worry. "Don't worry, no one's been seriously injured for a while in one of these games, and he won't even be on the front lines."

"I'll keep an eye out for him," Luna murmured lowly, which did more to reassure her than anything else she'd heard as of yet. The other girl wore the same leather armor as the rest of them (and it suited her far better than it did Bianca, or so she thought) and her black spear was already resting against her side, the black metal gleaming and almost appearing to drink the surrounding light.

(It had gotten her more than a couple of looks - some people had even flinched at their proximity to the metal, which Bianca didn't get. They acted like it was cursed, but it felt fine to her)

Her spear made her look like a warrior. By comparison, the off-balanced sword Bianca was holding in her hand just made her feel stupid.

True to Percy's word, the three of them were put into guard positions by the edge of the creek, a distance away from where the blue team had stashed their flag.

"Just don't go anywhere," Annabeth instructed them. "Unless the other team makes off with our flag, do. Not. Move."

Then she put on her cap and vanished.

("Cool"

"Nico, shh!")

And that's how they spent the match - Hearing shouts and scuffles and the occasional explosion (that she would not be asking about, for her sanity if nothing else) that all came to a head when a silver figure darted past them and into the underbrush.

"Well, that's bad," Luna murmured as Zoë Nightshade darted right back out, hefting their flag and making like a cheetah for their base.

"Finally! Let's go!" Nico roared and bolted, and Bianca and Luna were after him about half a second later.

What they would do when they even caught up, she had no idea - probably sic Luna on her or something.

But it was clearly already too late.

"No!"

Percy showed up, hefting the red flag (wasn't he supposed to stay behind?) and Zoe was so clearly going to beat him to the punch that Bianca just acted without thinking.

(It was instinct, more than anything else)

She didn't know why, but she found herself screaming and lifting her leg, before she stamped down hard.

The earth rumbled like it was in the middle of an earthquake, and the dirt beneath her foot tore as a crevice erupted from the point of impact, a massive sinkhole tearing through the ground and growing, appearing to chase after Zoe.

At the last second, the Huntress looked back - her eyes widened, and she leaped straight up and to the side before the pseudo-sinkhole swallowed her, Percy following her lead almost at once. They managed to get clear by a fraction of a second.

Abruptly, the rumbling died. The sinkhole settled, and the earth slammed back shut with a thunderous CRACK.

And Zoe stood back up, eyes wide and staring at them, flag held aloft.

Bianca could almost feel the eyes on her, their gazes burning against her skin.

"I-"

"Sorry about that, everybody!" Luna's loud cry silenced them. "My new explosive spell is still a work in progress."

What?

When Bianca turned to her, Luna shook her head almost imperceptibly, grey eyes steely.

The message was loud and clear.

'Don't say a word.'

"Wait, what?" One of the campers bellowed - a son of Ares. "I thought she was one of Athena's kids!"

"The hell kind of godly parent even comes up with that kind of power?"

"Hecate, maybe?"

"Bullshit!"

The argument probably would spiral on from there, but it was Nico of all people who killed it dead.

"Hey, didn't Zoe cross the line? Isn't the game over?"

...

Slowly, everyone turned to stare at Artemis's Lieutenant, suddenly remembering what they were all doing and all hyper-aware of how she'd landed right over the edge of the hunter's territory line.

"Oh," The Ares Kid snarled and ripped off his helmet. "Son of a-!"

The Hunters cheered as both sides converged on the creek, and Luna and Bianca were quickly forgotten (Zoe's eyes still lingered)

Chiron appeared out of the woods, looking grim. He had the Stoll brothers on his back, and it looked as if both of them had taken some nasty whacks to the head. Connor Stoll had two arrows sticking out of his helmet-like antennae.

"The Hunters win!" Chiron announced without pleasure. Then he muttered, "For the fifty-sixth time in a row."

Perseus Jackson!" Thalia cried, storming toward him. She smelled like rotten eggs, and she was so mad that blue sparks flickered on her armor. Everybody cringed and backed up because of Aegis. It took all Percy's willpower not to hold his nose and retreat.

"What in the name of the gods were you THINKING?" she bellowed. "You were told to stay at your post!"

"I got the flag, Thalia!" He shook it pointedly. "I saw a chance and I took it! And it almost worked out! What's your problem?"

"I WAS AT THEIR BASE!" Thalia yelled. "But the flag was gone! You cost us the win!"

"You had too many on you!"

"Oh, so it's my fault?"

"I didn't say that." He spat "You're the one tossing blame!"

"Alright, enough" Annabeth shimmered into existence, yanking off her cap. "Thalia-"

"Argh!" Thalia pushed Percy, and there was a burst of light that blew him backward ten feet into the water.

"Thalia!" Annabeth yelled, and the other girl paled.

"Sorry! I didn't mean to-"

A stream of water erupted out of the lake and blasted her in the face, dousing her from head to toe.

"Yeah," Percy said coldly. "Neither did I."

Thalia was breathing heavily.

"Enough!" Chiron ordered.

But Thalia held out her spear.

"You want some, Seaweed Brain?"

"Thalia!" Annabeth snapped

"Bring it bring it on, Pinecone Face!"

"Percy, don't!"

Percy raised Riptide, but before he could even defend himself, Thalia yelled, and a blast of lightning came down from the sky, hit her spear like a lightning rod, and slammed into his chest. He sat down hard.

Thalia!" Chiron said. "That is enough!"

Bianca and everyone present bar Luna reared back as Percy leapt to his feet, looking downright apoplectic this time around. Behind him, the water of the creek exploded. It swirled up, hundreds of gallons of water in a massive icy funnel cloud.

"Percy!" Chiron pleaded.

And then the son of Poesidon's gaze focused on something over Thalia's shoulder, and his expression went slack. The funneling cloud of water collapsed, and the water crashed back down into the creak.

"What-"

All of them whirled around.

Someone . . . something was approaching. It was shrouded in a murky green mist, but as it got closer, the campers and Hunters gasped.

"This is impossible," Chiron said. None of those present had ever heard him sound so nervous. "It . . . she has never left the attic. Never."

It was... Bianca swallowed.

It was a mummy a withered mummy draped in light fineries that was stalking towards them, the pits of its eye sockets glowing a baleful green, as if the mists were piloting it somehow.

Luna stepped in front of her as if to shield her.

"Stay behind me." She ordered quietly.

Bianca didn't have the presence of mind to argue.

No one dared to move until the mummy shuffled in between their group. Then her voice was hissing inside their heads. Everyone could hear it because several clutched their hands over their ears to protect themselves from the hideous rasp.

'I am the spirit of Delphi,' the voice said. 'Speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python.' She turned unmistakably toward Zoë Nightshade. 'Approach, Seeker, and ask.'

Zoë swallowed.

"What must I do to help my goddess?"

The Oracle's mouth opened, and green mist poured out. There was the vague image of a mountain, and a girl standing at the barren peak. It was Artemis, but she was wrapped in chains, fettered to the rocks. She was kneeling, her hands raised as if to fend off an attacker, and it looked like she was in pain.

The Oracle spoke:

Seven shall flee west to the goddess in chains

All will fall in the land without rain

And witness firsthand the wisest kin slayer's pain

The giant to snuff out the heroes's breath

And the daughter's strife to invoke death

Campers and Hunters combined prevail

The Bane of Olympus shall lead the trail

Freedom won forth with sacrifice

And twelve at last pay the greatest price​

And just like that, the future was sealed.

...
​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous

 

[Firewillreign]

Whatever cheer had spread through the hunters after their fifty-six victory in almost as many years died a violent, whimpering death the second the Oracle dropped her latest prophecy.

Well, actually, it died the second the ordinarily inanimate and very dead (obviously) mummy just up and waltzed across the forest and into their midst like she owned the place, but Annabeth didn't think anyone was in the mood to debate technicalities.

Seven shall flee west to the Goddess in chains
All will fall in the land without rain.

No, everyone had much bigger problems to worry about, campers and hunters alike.

"Senior counsel meeting," Chiron announced grimly, his tone mirroring the mood that had slapped down on all of them - Annabeth swore she saw some of the younger, softer kids go pale. "Now. The rest of you, to your cabins. Curricular activities are dismissed for the day. Annabeth-"

"I'll round up the other counselors." She promised, and he nodded to her in gratitude before turning away to usher the lingering campers. Zoe stalked off almost immediately, and she dismissed her for the time being "Thalia, come with me. Percy, get the oracle back to the attic on your way to the meeting."

Percy's expression twisted indignantly, and he looked like he was about to argue. She shot him a look that was half-glare and half-plea

Please, seaweed brain, she thought but didn't say, take the hint.

There were so many ideas and possibilities and bad, bad half-formed worst-case scenarios worth of plans already starting to furiously swirl in her mind - the perk of being a child of Athena (though at times like this, she could almost liken it to a curse). She didn't need an argument over what was comparatively nothing piled on top of everything else.

Percy's jaw snapped shut. He looked pained and grossed out - which was fair, expecting anyone to manhandle the current incarnation of the Pythia was more than a little gross - but he nodded anyway.

"I'll get her back." He grimaced. "First year was the hellhound, second year was the Stymphalian birds, and now this. Can we not have one year where a camp war game doesn't go horribly wrong?"

Annabeth didn't answer that beyond her grateful nod - partly because, again, she had bigger things to worry about, but also because she didn't have a good answer. Their track record at normal (or the demigod equivalent of it) was stacked against them there.

"We'll help." Luna Lovegood offered, Bianca and Nico trailing doggedly after her. She extended her arm, hand pointing towards the oracle before jerking upwards. There was a burst of... something, faint as a breeze, and the oracle levitated into the air wholesale and floated a few feet above the ground like a puppet held up by invisible strings.

Percy's face immediately brightened. His grin sent an odd flutter shooting through her stomach, a feeling that she stomped on immediately.

With everything that was going on, to feel that... no. Just no.

"You lead, Percy." Luna hummed agreeably. "We'll follow."

The Oracle rotated in midair and inched closer to Luna as if to demonstrate its agreement.

"Oh, thank Poseidon." Percy grinned, completely oblivious to Annabeth's reaction (thank the fates for small mercies). Despite everything, he sounded pleased as punch for having the option to not bodily pick up the oracle - which, again, fair enough. Respected tool of the gods or not, she doubted anyone particularly wanted to touch the oracle with a five-foot pole herself if they could help it, mortal or immortal alike. "C'mon. Big House is that way."

And off they went, three teenagers, a ten-year-old and a floating mummy all off on their merry way.

Her lips twitched a little. What a sight - they looked like something out of a carnival show - only at camp-half blood, tickets half-price for all demigods!

"They're going to give half the nymphs who see them heart attacks," Thalia commented lightly.

"Probably." Annabeth frowned after them as they started trekking up to the cabins quickly, not quite running but not quite walking either

"You know, if you keep staring after the idiot kelp-head like that, even he'll start noticing."

"What?" She flushed. "No! It's not like that!"

"Uh-huh."

"It's not!"

It was a little like that, and Thalia's smirk proved full well that she knew, but Annabeth really hadn't been thinking about that. Not that exact second, anyway.

"It's about Luna," She admitted, and Thalia's smirk faded.

"New girl?" she grunted. "What about her?"

"Nothing bad." Not yet, anyway. "I'm just... curious."

"No." Thalia gasped. "You? Curious? Oh, no way."

Annabeth rolled her eyes and punched her in the shoulder - not that it did anything, mind, but it was the thought that counted. Yes, the children of Athena were a brainy bunch. They couldn't help it - they were all hardwired that way straight from birth.

Still, Luna more than warranted that kind of curiosity, and right now just looking at her was enough to twist her thoughts into a pretzel. Annabeth liked figuring things out, enjoyed it immensely, and right now Luna was yet another puzzle she desperately wanted to piece together and was fully aware she didn't have nearly enough time to do it, not when she knew nothing about her

Part of her wondered if that was by design, because seriously, nobody could be that confusing without actively trying to be.

A girl who already knew about the demigod world years before she came into camp (admittedly not that uncommon) had met, talked to and probably been gifted at least one weapon from her divine parent directly, because that spear had to come from somewhere (Very uncommon - as in, Thalia, Luke and Percy kind of uncommon) and managed to fight side by side with Thalia, keep up with her, save Annabeth herself by teleporting and land a killing blow on a manticore all in quick succession - and all that, without dying.

That was a more impressive track record than a good chunk of the older campers and a dozen minor heroes she could think of off the top of her head

"She seems like a good one," Thalia offered and Annabeth nodded slightly

She wasn't arguing that (she didn't have any reason to yet - fingers crossed, she wouldn't ever have one).

It was at least somewhat comforting to see that Thalia had a positive read on Luna, even if it wasn't all that surprising. Luna had saved Annabth - somehow - that was enough to put her in Thalia's good books as well.

The fact that she immediately managed to top that and talk her friend into rejecting a personal invitation to the hunters and Artemis's patronage from the goddess herself had to be icing on the cake.

(Seriously, the daughter of Zeus was always... electric, but even a mention or gods-forbid look at one of the hunters (Zoe) was enough to raise the risk of freak lightning strikes from 'relatively low' to 'run'.

She knew why, of course, but...

She shook her head. No. Things were bad enough without thinking about him.

"I figured she's one of yours." Thalia offered out of the blue.

"What?"

"You know. A daughter of Athena?" She shrugged. "If she's been out on her own for years... you know how it is. It takes smarts to survive on your own. And she looks the part, a little."

Annabeth pursed her lips.

She... could see where Thalia was coming from. With the blonde hair and the grey eyes, Luna did have the most common coloring of the children of Athena. And it would have taken a sharp mind to survive the kind of trials independent demigods go through in their lives all by herself.

But that wasn't good evidence.

"None of my siblings can do what she does. The kind of magic she uses... none of us have anything like it."

"So? Not every one of Zeus's kids stopped at summoning lightning. Some of them could control clouds, or cause storms. A few could even fly." Thalia grimaced, so subtly and so quickly that Annabeth almost missed it. What was that about? "The point is, different kids inherit different powers."

"Not Athena's," Annabeth countered. "My mother doesn't pass down or grant gifts like that - she values wit and intelligence more than anything else. That kind of power isn't a part of her domain. If she's anyone's kid, it's Lady Hecate, or maybe a minor goddess or spirit of magic or mist."

Maybe even an air deity if the way she levitated the oracle was any kind of clue, but if she was, why would her divine parent go out of his or her way to forbid her from mentioning them?

It was typically considered bad form to announce your parentage before being officially claimed unless your divine parent had given you the go-ahead, but the kids who knew beforehand (and those were rare) didn't exactly go out of their way to hide it.

"Whatever." Thalia didn't bother arguing. Annabeth knew that she didn't see the point of the conversation - she'd only used it as a way to avoid talking about the fiasco that had just gone down. "Doesn't really matter. As long as she's on our side, I don't care. We have bigger fish to fry."

No kidding.

Freedom won forth with sacrifice
And twelve at last pay the greatest price

They spent the rest of the way in grim silence, both of them undoubtedly lingering on what had to be the worst-sounding prophecy she'd ever heard, bar the Great Prophecy itself.

(Maybe)

Still, though, Annabeth wondered.

Beyond the strange powers, and the mysterious past, and the seven and a half thousand questions that sprung up every time she dropped a heart-attack-inducing comment - who was Luna Lovegood?
.
...

Not even half an hour later, Annabeth had her answer.

Luna Lovegood was a suicidal moron.

...

The council meeting started about as productively as it could have when both factions present hated each other and were stressed out of their minds.

"So... This is bad." Travis Stoll offered, and Clarisse glared at him like she was about to throw something at his head. The way her fingers twitched towards her propped-up spear had several people scooting away nervously.

"Are we sure he's not one of Athena's kids?" Thalia muttered, arms crossed and leaning back in her chair, and someone stifled a snort.

"Children, please." Chiron raised his hands for peace, but Zoe wasn't having it.

"Enough!"

Her fist rattled the table as she slammed it down, and Annabeth winced. Everyone winced, and now more than a few were glaring right back at her.
Word of advice: never startle armed, on-edge demigods at close quarters - or at all if you could avoid it. It never ended well.

"There is no time for talk," Zoe continued. "Our goddess needs us. The Hunters must leave immediately."

"And go where?" Chiron asked.

"West!" Another hunter growled, and Annabeth recognized her as the one who'd fed her and Luna ambrosia after the Manticore fight - Pheobe. "You heard the prophecy. Seven shall flee west to the goddess in chains. The Pythia's words are clear!"

"Yes," Zoe agreed. "Artemis is being held hostage! We must find her and free her."

"You're missing something, as usual," Thalia said, and her expression was one step off a condescending sneer. "Campers and Hunters combined prevail. We're supposed to do this together."

"No!" Zoe said. "The Hunters do not need thy help."

"Your" Thalia grumbled. "Nobody has said thy in, like, three hundred years, Zoe. Get with the times."

Zoe hesitated, like she was trying to form the word correctly, and Katie Chiron leaped right in.

"I fear the prophecy says you do need our help," Chiron said, unruffled even as Zoe's blistering glare rounded on him. "Campers and Hunters must cooperate."

"'The Pythia's words are clear.'" Katie Gardener said, and credit where credit was due, she didn't even flinch when everyone turned to her. She pointed. "Hey, your hunter's words, not mine."

"We're supposed to work together," Thalia said stubbornly. "I don't like it either, Zoe, but you know prophecies. You want to fight against one?"

Zoe grimaced, but Annabeth could tell Thalia had scored a point.

"We must not delay," Chiron warned. "Today is Sunday. This very Friday, December twenty-first, is the winter solstice."

"Artemis must be present at the solstice," Zoe said. "She has been one of the most vocal on the council arguing for action against Kronos's minions. If she is absent, the gods will decide nothing. We will lose another year of war preparations"

"Then we do it the right way." Annabeth finally offered, because this was strategy and strategy was where it became personal for her. "Cooperation. Otherwise no one gets what they want and we're all in for it, lady Artemis included."

Zoe's expression darkened, but she didn't refuse.

"Four and three," Percy said, backing Annabeth up. "Four hunters and three campers. That's as fair as you can get."

Annabeth nodded and shot him a half-smile, one that he mirrored.

"Woah, woah!" Castor (son of Dionysus) raised a hand in protest "We are getting way ahead of the curve here, and not in a good way. We can't rush into this. 'All will fall in the land without rain, freedom won through with sacrifice.' I don't know about the rest of you, but this is the worst-sounding prophecy I've ever heard. Like, on a scale of one to ten, it's a solid twelve."

"I thought the Great Prophecy was only twelve?" Travis said.

"Oh, we don't even talk about that one."

"Wait," Ofcourse Percy didn't let that one slide, eyes growing a little wide. "You guys know the Great Prophecy?"

Of course he'd be interested in the Prophecy that depended on his birth.

How could he not?

Even Thalia leaned forward in her seat.

Akward's looks were exchanged, every cabin counselor looking at the other and trying to figure out who should say what.

Katie cleared her throat a little guiltily. "Err, bits and pieces, Percy. None of us have ever heard it, but we get the idea. Olympus, big choice, all that jazz."

Thalia scowled. "Oh, that is some-"

"Enough!" Zoe looked about ready to spit fire. "Four and three, I will agree to that-"

She sounded like she'd rather shove knives under her fingernails than make the compromise

"-but I will not waste my lady's time on this ridiculous prattle!"

"Charming," Silena muttered under her breath, a dark look in her eyes. "Absolutely charming."

Zoe didn't even look at her. "I will select my hunters myself. Pheobe-"

"Of course." The hunter didn't even hesitate.

"Naomi, Celyne, A-" She cut herself off with a grimace. "That's four including myself. Choose your campers-"

She almost spat the word out, and the mood soured that much more. Clarrise was already twitching for her spear again.

"-and choose them now. We leave at once."

"Miss Nightshade-" Chrion started to protest, probably to complain in that polite way of his on how offensively bull-headed she was being (he had thousands of years of experience doing the same with every flavor of demigod imaginable) but he never got the chance to finish.

Between one second and the next, the air shifted. The temperature dropped, and their breaths misted over. A powerful presence washed over the meeting room, thick and suffocating, and a great flash of purple light burst in the corner of her vision.

Everyone leaped back from the table, weapons drawn in a heartbeat even as the light faded to reveal-

"Dad?" Castor asked, stunned

"Mr. D?" Asked... pretty much everyone else.

The disbelief was palpable, and for good reason.

Mr. D looked the same as he always did, at first glance. He materialized on the chair at the end of the table with the same disheveled hair, the same eye-sore of a leopard-spotted shirt, and those gods-awful purple running shoes kicked up on the table, but something about the whole get-up was off this time.

His skin was a shade less pale and his posture was straighter, firmer. His watery blue eyes were still bloodshot, but now there was a hardness to them that bordered on menacing.

Worse, the feeling in the air that had marked his arrival hadn't dissipated. No, that strange pressure and abrupt sense of danger had only intensified in. his presence.

This wasn't Mr. D, the bummed-out camp director.

No, this was Lord Dionysus, and he wasn't happy.

This was bad.

Annabeth swallowed and tried to wipe the unease off her face. She caught Percy doing the same even as his hand inched towards his pocket - where Riptide was - out of sheer instinct before he stopped himself.

"Mr. D" Chiron said steadily, but there was a wary undercurrent to it - the same one they were all feeling. "I had thought that you wouldn't be joining us."

"And I had hoped so myself, dearly, but since when do I get anything I want when it comes to this accursed camp?" He snorted mulishly and leaned back in his chair. "Whatever. Let's get this over with."

Everyone tensed at those words - everyone, even Chiron. He wasn't talking about the council meeting.

"Dad?" Castor said slowly, and valiantly flinch react when Dionysus's eyes snapped to him. "What's going on?"

For a long, nerve-wracking second, the god said nothing.

Then he raised a hand-

"By the divine commandment Zeus, Lord Of Olympus, Camp Half-Blood's borders are hereby closed."

-and snapped his fingers, and an all mighty presence slapped down on the room, blew out past the big house and spread, further and further and further-

"There. Done."

-until it disappeared with no warning, leaving all of them gasping and doubling over from the sudden relief.

"What the Hades-!?" Percy spluttered.

"Not him." Mr. D snorted. A bottle of Diet Coke materialized in his hand the next second and he popped it open in one motion. "Believe me, Perry, I'd actually prefer him over the headaches this is going to induce by the time everything is said and done."

"My lord." The dread building on Zoe's face (on Chiron's too, even if the old centaur hid it well) made a part of Annabeth go cold. "What is the meaning of this?"

"It means exactly what I said what it means." Mr.D took a sip of his Coke before clearing his throat dramatically. "Until commanded otherwise, Camp Half-blood is in lock-down. No one gets in, and no one gets out."

There were several sharp intakes of breath.

Zoe paled. "But my quest-"

"Is officially on hold." He snapped, irritated. "Or do I have to repeat myself?"

The 'I better not,' went unsaid, but everybody heard it loud and clear.

Everyone but Zoe, and Annabeth had to admire the sheer bravery it took to square your jaw and argue with an Olympian even if the strategic part of her brain was screaming as Zoe stepped forward.

"Lady Artemis is in danger."

"We are well aware." He answered dryly. "Apollo wouldn't shut up about it until his father threatened to blast him for non-compliance. For an emergency council meeting, it was mildly entertaining."

Annabeth wanted to groan. That wouldn't go down well.

And sure enough, Zoe's eyes flashed in ire.

"Lady Artemis is in danger! She is in chains!"

Mr.D looked bored. "Here we go again."

"We cannot-"

"I cannot?" The god's eyes hardened again. "I cannot?"

Zoe inhaled sharply, but didn't back down, even as Chiron tried to reach for her.

"Miss Nightshade-"

"The hunters will not abandon our Lady-!"

And that's about the point where Mr. D's eyes lit up with a baleful purple glow.

Zoe's mouth clamped shut.

"Oh, shit." Someone whispered.

"The hunters," when he spoke, his voice echoed, like two people were talking over their other and didn't quite overlap. "Will do as they are told. And Artemis?"

He took another sip of his coke, though his eyes never dimmed and never left Zoe's horrified gaze (it was hard to look at her like that.

"Well, she's a big girl. She can hold on long enough for us to - how did Athena put it again?" He paused in thought before shaking his head. "Something, something, plan, blah blah blah. Or better yet, Artemis got herself into this mess. She can do us all a favor and get herself out."

And that seemed to be that. A stunned silence followed.

Annabeth carefully didn't look at Mr. D when he finished speaking, but it was a near thing. She exchanged a wide-eyed look with Thalia, and Percy after her, and then... everyone else instead. Zoe wasn't looking at anyone, content to stare at Dionysus, horrified (he continued to ignore her with ease, flipping through the pages of a Wine Weekly magazine that hadn't been there a second before).

Pheobe looked ready to lunge at the god (as suicidal as that would be) and Chrion just looked as grim as a grave.

What the Hades was going on?

Annabeth could barely think - the gods of Olympus never interfered to stop a quest. Certainly not one that would benefit them, unless they'd somehow forsaken Artemis.

But why? And why in Zeus's name would any of the gods go along with something so insane, let alone her mother?

For a long moment, no one moved.

And then Zoe's face flickered and cooled into something nearly inhumanely expressionless, and Annabeth's stomach dropped.

She didn't know how, but she had a good feeling the Lieutenant of the hunt was about to say something dangerous. 'Blasted-to-bits-by-an-enrage-god' dangerous.

"Zoe-" Percy blurted out, having seen it coming too. "Don't-"

"Well, this is a mess."

Everyone paused.

Luna Lovegood smiled from where she was leaning against the far wall, Nico and Bianca nervously hovering by her sides, and wait, what-

"How long have you been there?" Thalia said, gobsmacked,

"More or less since the beginning." Luna shrugged.

"How?" Katie asked, looking around the table "Why didn't anyone catch them?"

"The wonders of the mist and a good confundus charm," Luna answered, smiling pleasantly. "If it makes you feel better, I think Chiron knew I was here."

Everyone looked at the centaur, who crossed his arms non-commitaly.

"It's against the rules, but given the circumstances and the whimsical nature of fate, I had a feeling they deserved a place here" He offered. "I do hope there is a reason you chose to listen in, isn't there, Luna?"

"I think that a line of the prophecy referred to me," Luna dropped that tidbit with the same energy as someone picking out what shirt to wear for the day. "And Nico and Bianca were curious."

The elder of the Di Angelo's looked vaguely embarrassed at that, but neither of them budged.

"What line?" Zoe hissed, and oh, she'd gone right back to being pissed.

"Does it matter?" Luna looked from her to Mr. D, who'd finally raised his head from the magazine Annabeth was certain as anything he hadn't actually been reading. "There is to be no quest, after all."

"Oh, look," The god drawled. "A smart one. Lucky me."

"Not smart," Luna said brightly. "Just cautious. Why would I go on a quest that even the gods are scared of?"

Everyone froze.

...

Someone made a sound like a dying wheeze. Probably Castor

Slowly, Mr. D tilted his head. Chiron made an aborted movement, as if to shield Luna from his gaze.

"Would you care?" Dionysus said slowly, quietly, and the tone did jack to to reassure any of them. "to repeat that?"

"Mr. D-"

"Chiron." The centaur went quiet, almost against his will. Probably against his will. "Do not speak. I'm asking the girl a question."

He looked back at an impassive Luna

"Well?"

"Have I said something wrong?" Luna frowned. "I don't think so. You disappeared to Olympus the second the prophecy was issued and you returned only to prevent anyone going on it, despite the fact that an Olympian is in danger."

Pheobe made a sound, half distressed and half furious.

"It's not very hard to guess at." Luna shrugged. "You are afraid, Lord Dionysus-"

"Don't" Annabeth begged, finally kicking herself into motion but Luna wasn't listening.

"-Of what this prophecy might mean. And so are the rest of the Olympians."

Overhead, a deafening peal of thunder cracked and shook the roof of the big house. Dust rained down from above as everything shuddered. The air doubled in pressure, till it was almost hard to breathe.

"I suppose it's hardly the first time - The Great Prophecy proved that - but I had thought it was clear by now that even gods cannot prevent prophecies from coming into fruition. Apparently not"

That was maybe three insults in one go - to a god.

"Shut her up," Beckendrof murmured to her. "Please, for the love of all the gods, shut her up!"

"You." Mr. D's eyes lit up again, this time with literal purple flames. The heat in the room went from bearable to sweltering in an instant, and several of them cursed. "Are either very brave or very stupid. Neither will save you."

And there came the inevitable consequences.

Thalia went for her spear. Percy reached for his sword. Everybody else either backed away or did the same.

None of them should have bothered.

"But is she wrong?"

Annabeth swore she felt a part of her soul curl up and die when Zoe stepped in front of Luna, fists clenched. Pheobe followed suit.

"Do you think that being the second in command of my sister's little girl band will protect you?"

Zoe didn't answer.

"Do you think that we will obey an order that would have us forsake our lady? Does Olympus, my lord?"

The god smiled, and the expression was terrifying. Annabeth remembered suddenly that Dionysus was the god of madness.

"Ah, more mortal treason. Just what I needed to lift my spirits."

"Dad-" Castor tried, one last time. "Dad, please-"

"Be quiet." The demigod's mouth snapped shut, and his hands shot up as if trying to physically pry it open to no avail. "I won't kill the little fools, if only because Artemis will make an exquisitely painful nuisance of herself should she somehow get free. But I do think sometimes as say, a vine of Pinot Noir ought to teach them some manners."

The god raised his hand, light and power coalescing along his fingertips. Annabeth, Percy, Chiron, and damn near everyone else tried to surge forward, only to freeze and lock up as something held them in place.

She struggled, desperately, but it felt like trying to walk through molasses with a thousand pounds of iron strapped to her back.

Utterly useless.

And just before the three girls were blasted into grapevines, Luna side-stepped Pheobe entirely and raised a hand, almost politely.

"Before you do that-"

"Oh? Are you going to grovel? It won't do you any good. I so rarely get a justifiable opportunity to make examples out of arrogant demigods - I certainly won't be giving this one up."

"Not quite, but thank you for letting me. " Luna smiled and cleared her throat.

Then she screamed.

"AVE, DOMINE BACCHUS!

The heat cut out.

The pressure keeping the demigods trapped in place vanished.

And Mr.D toppled out of his chair and began to scream, his skin glowing a mottled gold and his features shifting and distorting with bursts of light.

"Dad!-" Castor surged towards him, but Zoe's dagger flew past his face in warning and struck the far wall.

"Touch him and you will be reduced to dust!" She snarled

"What have you done?" Chiron gasped at Luna, and it was the first time Annabeth had ever heard him sound so horrified.

By contrast, the girl remained as unruffled as ever (But her eyes were steely.)

"I invoked his Roman self."

That... meant nothing to any of the demigods present, but Chrion, Zoe and Phoebe reared back as if struck.

What?

"That-" Zoe looked at Luna. "To invoke an Olympian's counter-aspect here of all places - a territory that is entirely, fundamentally Greek... the agony would be debilitating."

Slowly, the lieutenant smiled with her teeth barred.

"Good."

"Yes, I thought so too," Luna said agreeably, before looking at where the downed god was still screaming loud enough to deafen an ordinary mortal and glowing even brighter. "Also, possibly rather explosive. We should run."

...​

They bolted out of the Big House even as the building continued to shudder and creak, the walls heaving with the force of Dionysus's howls. Overhead, dark storm clouds filled the sky and lashed with devastating bursts of lightning, and the very wind felt dangerous as it blasted past them

The gods weren't just angry, they were enraged.

(And somehow, none of them were smiting them.)

"Miss Nightshade," Luna said. "If we're going to go on this quest, I suggest we do it now. Before the resident god overcomes the chism and makes us all wish he stopped at just turning us into grapevines."

"What did you do to my dad?" Castor demanded angrily, stepping towards Luna - or at least he tried to until Pheobe cold-cocked him in the jaw hard enough that Annabeth swore she felt the impact in her teeth.

"Hey!" Clarrise snapped, electric spear arcing.

"Enough!" Chiron roared - and the shock of it was enough to stop the daughter of Ares and half the remaining councilors from dogpiling the hunter. "Enough - None of you comprehend the gravity of what has just occurred. Child, what you've just done-"

He looked at Luna, but it was Zoe that responded.

"She's given us a chance to save my lady." She said definitely "Pheobe - gather the others."

Pheobe sprinted without another word, even as Chrion shook his head.

"Miss Nightshade, you can not leave camp. No, listen to me," He raised his hands. "The gods ordered the boundary closed. You quite literally can not set foot over the borders - the power of the gods binds us in place."

Zoe just looked murderous

"I will find a way!"

"Oh, we're so dead," Bianca whispered to no one at all.

Grover, silent until then, whimpered in agreement.

"Nah." Nico grinned. "We have Luna."

"Yes, you do. I already have a plan."

Zoe whirled to her so quickly that Annabeth almost got whiplash trying to keep up.

"How?"

"Magic." She knelt on the ground and unzipped her rucksack - Annabeth only now realized that she was wearing one, and so were the Di Angelos.

Had they expected this? Planned for it?

Luna caught her eyes and winked.

"Constant Vigilance."

What?

"We can't help you." Beckendrof looked harried. "Whatever you're doing, we can't - The gods will be furious. They'll take it out on the other campers."

"Oh, don't worry," Luna promised. "I have a plan for that too."

"What-?"

She struck out with her hand, faster than anyone could react, and aimed it center mass at the at the rest of the councilors.

"Stupefy maxima!"

A wave of crimson light exploded out of her hand and flung every one of the councilors bar Chiron and Thalia away. When they hit the ground, they didn't get back up.

"Cool!" Nico cheered. "Which one was that?"

"Mass knock-out spell." Luna indulged him, smiling just as gently as ever despite everything. "Now they're not accomplices, and the gods can't punish them for helping us."

"I am still here-" Chrion began, but Zoe had her bow drawn and knocked and aimed at his throat in the time it took him to get out all four of those words.

"Hey!" Percy protested and tried to step forward "Let him-"

"Percy, it's alright." Chiron looked at Zoe. "You understand the consequences of this?"

"I do"

"You will likely face the wrath of the gods, even if you succeed."

"I do not care. My lady comes first."

Overhead, the sky rumbled. The air stirred.

And Chiron nodded in defeat, and made no move to step away.

"Very well."

"I'm coming, of course." Luna hummed. "So are Nico and Bianca - I won't leave them with a god I've personally upset, that would be idiotic."

"We're coming too," Thalia said forcefully, glaring right back when Zoe turned to her. "Campers and Hunters combined prevail. We're coming. Or do you want to argue this again?"

"Fine."

Annabeth and Percy exchanged another look.

He smiled weakly.

"Three for three, huh? Quests in as many years, I mean."

She smiled. "Most people go on one major quest their whole lives, Percy."

He shrugged. "Guess we're not most people."

No. No, they were not.

They couldn't not go. Thalia had already vowed to go, and there was no changing her mind. Annabeth wouldn't let her go alone, and Percy was more likely to switch over to Kronos then he was to leave them alone, so that was that.

Gods, her mother was going to kill her.

Luna frowned "There are twenty hunters all in all, right?"

Zoe blinked and nodded at the girl's question.

"Right. Two then, just in case."

Oblivious or perhaps uncaring of the way everyone was staring at her, she pulled two objects out of her pack. A bottle cap and... was that a soda can?

Placing the two of them down in front of her, she raised one hand over each and closed her eyes.

"Portus."

Blue light began to stream out of her palms and into the trinkets. Trash?
Whichever it was, the bottle cap and the soda can seemed to drink the light, glowing brighter and brighter as more of it was poured into them.

At last, the light cut out and she pulled her hands away, smiling in satisfaction

"All done. Two one-way portkeys, ready to go." She picked them up and stood up, took one step forward and nearly face-faulted.

"Woah!" Thalia grunted as she caught her.

"Sorry." Luna stood back, face pale and creased with sweat. "Sorry, that kind of magic takes a lot out of me."

"What are these... portkeys going to achieve?" Zoe eyed them skeptically.

In answer, Luna tossed her the bottle cap.

"Wait for it."

Not two minutes later, Phobe crested the hill, the rest of the hunters trailing after her in one row.

Luna beamed.

"Alright, line up and hold hands."

Everyone stared and didn't budge an inch.

Luna huffed.

"Hold hands unless you want to stay here, with him."

She pointed to the big house, which was enough for everyone to remember (how did they even forget the god not a hundred meters away?)

"Do as she says," Zoe ordered, and aside from Thalia bristling at the commanding tone, everyone moved.

Annabeth would have protested how fast everything was moving, really she would have but a) She had no idea what the Hades was happening anymore and b) Dionysus wouldn't listen to reason either way.

"Alright!" Luna grinned, bubbly to the end, and pulled on Nico's arm, which held Bianca's, who held Pheobe's and so on. "Is everyone ready?"

"For what?" Percy asked, and he sounded about as stable as Annabeth felt. "You haven't told us anything."

"The mystery's half the fun!" came the cheery reply. "Here we go! Butterbeer!"

"What the f-!?" Thalia scowled, but that was bout as far as she got when the world exploded.

Instantly, Annabeth felt a jerk somewhere behind her navel. Her feet had left the ground. She could not unclench the hand holding the huntress at her side; it was pulling her, both of them, all of them onward in a howl of wind and swirling color, dragging them into infinity-

The last thing Annabeth saw with any clarity was Chiron's face, resigned with heavy despair as if he was seeing them all off into their doom.

(He very likely was)

And then everything vanished, and they were gone.

...​

Elsewhere:

Atop an ancient mountain and deep inside a ruined fortress, a General tipped his head back and roared with laughter as a certain spy's latest report came in.

"Oh, that is just golden." He wiped a tear from his eyes. "Not only are the Olympian dogs so quick to abandon one of their own, they don't even have the basic competence to prevent mere demigods from escaping right out from under their noses."

"That's gods for you," Across from him, Luke Castellan stood with fists clenched and a glowering expression on his face. "I'll send out some of our forces to harry them, keep them away until the winter solstice-"

"No."

"-No?" The traitorous son of Hermes blinked. "No, my lord?"

"No." The titan repeated, leaning back and rolling his neck. The movement caused his vertebrae to pop audibly. "Oh, that never gets old."

"My lord, why-?"

"Patience, brat." He grinned as Luke clenched his jaw. "Oh, don't give me that look. Or are you so blind as to not see the opportunity we've been given here?"

"With respect, my lord." Luke ground his teeth. "What opportunity?"

"The Olympians have shown the demigods their true colors. Selfish, self-serving brats who'd forsake one of their own just to hold on to their ill-gained power." The titan's grin grew wider "And now Thalia Grace and Percy Jackson, the two viable candidates for the Great Prophecy, have seen it for themselves."

Luke's eyes went wide, and the general chuckled.

"Finally, you see as I do. This is everything our King has been waiting for. So yes, Castellan, we will be sending out our forces. But not to harry them, oh no."

"No, we're going to help them, and finally pave the path to watch Olympus burn."

The titan stood up and towered over the demigod.

"Now, make yourself useful and summon my cousin. If we're going to ensure that 'twelve at last pay the greatest price'," Atlas barred his teeth in dark delight. "We'll be needing some crafty counsel."

After all, two titans were ever better than one.

...​

Next Chapter: The Wrath Of The Gods

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous

 

[Firewillreign]

Over the span of a day and a half, Nico's whole world had been flipped on its axis.

Heck, if anything, that was an understatement.

His life hadn't just been flipped around - it had cartwheeled off the path of sanity, sprinted around in circles until everything was spinning into chaos, and then immediately leapt head first off a cliffside and into a ravine full of crazy.

And Nico?

He had been and was still loving every last second of it.

Greek gods, greek monsters, and the demigods in between - it was like a deluxe edition of mythomagic come to life, and he got to live through all of it for real!

Better yet, all three of them did.

Luna and Bianca were right there with him, along for the ride just like he was, and neither of them (Ahem, Bianca) could blow him off this time around because they were busy with homework or found it boring.

Ha! How sweet was that?

Sure, the manticore thing had been kind of/sort of/definitely a little petrifying (He'd always known that Dr. Thorn was a bully of a teacher and a nasty piece of work, but he hadn't expected him to be a literal monster) and the undead mummy and her crazy death-prophecy-of doom sounded like all kinds of bad news even to him, but as far Nico was concerned, the good still outweighed the bad.

By about a hundred metric tons at least. How could it not?

At least one of his and Bianca's parents wasn't only still alive, but an actual immortal god. They were both demigods, like Hercules or Achilles or Thesueus - How many other orphaned ten-year-olds could say the same?

How many others dreamed that they could do the same?

It hadn't even been forty-eight hours yet and Nico had already started having the kind of adventures people only ever heard about in myths or read about in children's stories.

He'd met the Artemis, and gotten to ride the sun chariot with the Apollo (Which had been amazing, even if he hadn't understood it at all - wasn't the sun supposed to be a giant ball of gas in outer space?). He'd even gotten to hold a real sword and compete in a real war game with a small army of other demigods!

(He might not have actually done anything, but the experience still counted! Everybody had to start somewhere!)

Even the whole mess that followed after that with the creepy Oracle of Delphi hadn't been too bad.

( Luna had shielded him and Bianca from the Pythia's poisonous gaze, and Nico had been so unnerved by the thing that he hadn't even had the time to feel embarrassed about hiding behind her. He didn't say a word about it but even beyond being a literal walking talking corpse, something about that mummy had just felt wrong - and strangely angry)

Now, the whole Mr.D thing that came after that - honestly, Nico was torn.

On the one hand, being in the presence of an enraged god?

Not fun. Very not fun, even - Extremely not fun.

On the other hand, Luna had once again pulled a Luna and taken down an enraged god with nothing but words, and just four at that.

Not even a complete sentence sentence, barely a phrase, and down he went. The bragging rights alone made the unease (read: mind-numbing terror) of the experience so freaking worth it.

"Yeah, that's right. That's my friend. She beat a god. What are you going to do about it?"

And hey, pretty much everyone in any kind of position of authority at Camp Half-Blood had seen it, so no one could try to deny it happened or fudge the details to make Mr. D (who was a massive jerk, stacked mythomagic profile or no) look better.

Awesome. Just... Awesome.

Which brought them neatly to the present.

And the Portkey.

("Do not let go, Nico - the anchoring charm shouldn't allow you to, but don't even try, just to be safe")

Now, Nico hadn't known what a portkey was. He hadn't known a thing more than anybody else Luna had talked to, which basically amounted to 'hold on tight, don't let go if you can somehow manage it, and take a deep breath if you need to'

"Butterbeer!"

Luna yelled the nonsensical word out (was that even a thing?) and woah gods-!

It happened immediately.

The world dissolved in an eruption of bright lights and before any of them had the time to even breathe, they vanished, sucked into an ocean of color and howling air!

Nico felt like a hook just behind his navel had been suddenly jerked irresistibly forward. His feet left the ground; he could feel Thalia and Percy on either side of him, (They'd volunteered to keep an eye on him, not that he needed it) their shoulders banging into his; they were all speeding forward in a howl of wind and swirling color.

Somebody screamed. The part of Nico's mind that was capable of conscious thought didn't blame them.

The world continued to swirl.

His sense of balance vanished in the throes of vertigo, and the pressure didn't let up - if anything, it got worse with every second. The entire experience felt like riding the world's most unstable rollercoaster straight into the eye of a hurricane. He held on to Percy and Thalia as tightly as he could, pressing his eyes closed to focus, but even with his best effort and Luna's assurance ringing in his head, he was sure his grip was going to break any second and he'd be flung into oblivion.

(It was exhilarating - and insanely terrifying. )

And just as soon as it began, it was also over.

The lights winked out. The wind and the pressure vanished. Reality came hurtling back to his senses, and his feet landed on solid pavement as the world reasserted itself. They materialized in a drab and grey alleyway of sorts, crammed between two tall buildings and empty of anything save a large, rusty green dumpster that looked like it hadn't been used in fifty years. The sound of honking cars and general mid-day traffic drifted in from somewhere behind them.

"Hey," was his first excited thought "I stuck the landing-!"

Naturally, that was the very second Thalia and Percy staggered into him and all three of them tumbled onto the ground in a groaning heap.

"Augh!"

"Sorry!"

It wasn't just them, either. Except for Luna (of course, ) Zoe, and a couple of the more nimble hunters, everyone present was getting thoroughly acquainted with the ground beneath them,

"Oh, Styx." Thalia gasped, rolled to the side and clutched her stomach "Son of a-"

"Hey! Watch the language!" Percy protested weakly, struggling to his feet and pulling up Nico. "The kid's barely twelve."

"Ten." Nico corrected.

"See?" Percy glanced at Thalia reproachfully. "That's even worse."

Then he paused and shuddered, looking disturbed.

"Oh my gods, I sound like my mom."

The daughter of Zeus looked about as impressed with that statement as Nico was.

"Go to Tartarus, kelp-head."

The jab was probably supposed to sound harsh, but Thalia was so green in the face that the bite was sapped right out of it. She looked about five seconds away from puking her guts out.

Nico and Percy both frowned at her.

What was up with her? She hadn't landed that hard - No one had.

"Let's avoid names of power, please," Luna called out from a couple of feet away, sighing as she helped Bianca up. "We're very lucky we managed to get away as it is. Drawing any kind of attention to ourselves right now would be a ruinously bad idea."

"She's right. No names." Annabeth pulled herself up, staggering slightly but remaining on her feet. "We defied a direct order from the king of the gods and the Olympian council by proxy - I can't even begin to describe how much trouble we're in. Great heroes have been smote for less. And what happened with Mr. D-"

Her eyes flickered to Luna and she hesitated, biting her lip. Confusion and wariness warred over her expression, but Luna only smiled in that consistently knowing way of hers, calm and collected as ever.

"In my defense, he was attempting to prevent us from going on an oracle-sanctioned quest. Trying to interfere with prophecized events often achieves nothing or hastens them, and it's historically proven to be a terrible approach either way. Even the Council of Twelve can't supersede the fates." Luna pursed her lips a bit. "And if we're being entirely honest, I didn't much like the idea of being turned into a fruit. I doubt any of the hunters would have enjoyed it either, so I'd say that things worked out for the better."

Everybody looked at her with wide eyes.

Well, Annabeth and a few others did. Bianca just looked tiredly amused and resigned and Nico for his part didn't even try and hide his grin.

"She...has a point?" Percy offered and raised his arms in surrender when Annabeth rounded on him with a withering glare. "Hey, wise girl, I'm just saying. The Big Three tried to stop a prophecy swearing off having kids and... well, we all know how that worked out for them."

Percy pointed at himself, then at Thalia, who rolled her eyes and waved theatrically.

"You'd think millennia of existence would help have helped our fathers work on their self-control, but nope." Thalia snorted and ran a hand through her hair. She looked loads better already. "They didn't even make it a hundred years before going at it again. Typical."

Annabeth spluttered a bit, probably on account of not having a good answer for any of that.

"You - that's not the point!" She turned back to Luna. "You brought an Olympian god to his knees. You attacked him and made him scream. That's - That's-"

She made a violent motion with both hands.

"How?"

Luna gave her a little frown and raised an eyebrow

"I didn't attack him - I just greeted him. Very, very enthusiastically. Technically, he attacked himself" She raised a hand when Annabeth opened her mouth to speak. "And before you ask, the full explanation happens to involve a remarkably long story that I can't get into in the kind of detail a child of the wisdom goddess would appreciate without a good bit of time on hand and a very thorough lecture on the adaptive and almost paradoxical nature of the greco-roman pantheon, but I promise I'll try as soon as we're somewhere safe."

Annabeth didn't look happy with that and Nico really couldn't blame her for not being satisfied. He'd understood maybe one in every five words of that - Which was pretty good for any conversation with Luna, actually - and he still had enough questions of his own to fill a notebook or three.

"She's right," Zoë said, mirroring Annabeth's earlier words before she or anyone else could get a word in edgewise. "There's been enough time wasted and enough treasonous talk as it is."

Thalia scoffed. "Weren't you all for treason five minutes ago? Or is that only on the table when it's you getting what you want?"

Zoë's eyes flashed, and Grover winced. "Oh, here we go."

Nico knew that Zoe and Thalia didn't like each other. He'd seen them glaring at one another and heard the way they argued back at the council meeting in the big house (before everything had gone straight to Hades in a handbasket), but for the most part, he thought they'd probably be happy to stay out of each other's way.

Maybe it was the fear and the lingering stress, or the still-hounding knowledge that the gods were probably already out for their heads.
Or maybe it was as simple as an old festering grudge finally exploding after simmering for who knew how long.

Whatever it was, it had Zoe whirling on Thalia with genuine fury all but pouring off of her in waves.

"Just because I happen to be ready and willing to cross any boundary set by the Council of Twelve to aid my lady," The lieutenant hissed sharply "does not mean I am keen to. Unlike you, I happen to have the foresight to avoid unnecessary risks."

"Hah!" Thalia crowed. "Don't make me laugh. Which one of us had to be saved from being blasted into a bowl of grapes by a twelve-year-old girl?"

"Thirteen." Luna corrected, but neither of them was listening.

"Face it, Zoë, you're full of it, and you always have been!"

"Hold thy tongue!"

"Make me!"

"Are you two seriously doing this right now?" Percy tried to interject, but again, neither of them was willing to stop.

"Thou are a hypocrite, Thalia Grace!" Zoe was out and out snarling now, expression as fierce and savage as any predator she had ever hunted. Her speech seemed to change with her anger - becoming denser, more formal and archaic with every passing word. "Thou are so quick to lambast me for perceived slights and ignore that everything I warned you off came to pass. Betrayal from that boy-"

"Don't you dare bring him into-!"

"was inevitable, and rather than hold him and thyself responsible for the consequences of thy poor judgment, thou seek to burden me with thy misery!"

"Oh, everything just has to be about you, doesn't it!?" Thalia roared "Why am I not surprised? Gods, you can't stand the idea that the reason I hate you isn't because you were right about Luke,-"

(Annabeth and Grover flinched, and Percy's eyes widened before he scowled)

"-it's because you're a cold-hearted, stuck-up, self-centered arrogant bitch!"

...

Total. Silence.

Nobody said a word or moved a muscle. Nico was pretty sure most of them had stopped breathing together.

"Interesting."

Zoë's face was a mask of perfect calm - her voice, on the other hand, was so blisteringly cold it would have made antarctic glaciers cry with envy.

"Thou are so vehement in your hatred for me." She said softly and stepped forward until she and Thalia were almost nose to nose. The other girl didn't step back, but it had to be a near thing - Nico was nowhere close to them and he still wanted to flinch back himself. "Perhaps thou are even correct, and I am everything thou accuse me of being."

Nico swallowed.

(Something awful was coming, he could tell)

"But at the very least, I can say that have never failed so momentously, so colossally and completely as to necessitate being cursed into a tree like a nymph of old, and by mine own father at that." Thalia went white. "All those years lost, all that sacrifice... all of it bared for the sake of a treacherous would-be rebel who betrayed everything you stood for without a single regret and sold his soul to the Crooked One for the promise of ill-gotten power and glory."

Zoe shook her head one final, damning time,

"How pathetic. How shameful."

...

...

...

There was no warning.

One second Zoe and Thalia were face to face, and the next the daughter of Zeus had her foot buried in Zoe's abdomen with so much force and speed the huntress was lifted clean off the ground and flung back some six feet in an instant.

She collided with the wall behind her with a painful thudding impact and gasped in pain, and Nico surged towards her before he was even aware he was moving.

"Thalia!" Annabeth screamed and lunged, Percy and Grover hot at her heels and yelling just as loud. The Hunters were already charging.

Thalia was still faster.

Nico swore a part of his soul left his body when her spear suddenly materialised in her hand, the smell of crackling ozone flooding his nostrils and helpfully informing him that his chances of getting roasted as collateral had gone from 'barely any' to 'you're dead'.

He'd seen Thalia blast Percy with a lightning bolt at point-blank range, and he had no delusions whatsoever that he could shrug it off like the son of Poseidon had. As amazing as it had looked (Sorry, Percy), actually getting hit by one of those things was a whole other bucket of nope.

"Stupefy!"

But of course, Luna was still there, and Thalia hadn't had the time to learn that turning your back on Luna Lovegood without a plan was never a good idea.

Ordinarily, the demigoddess would have been more than capable enough to evade, but she couldn't dodge what she couldn't see coming, and the enraged demigod was seeing nothing but the target of her ire. The jet of red light caught her in the side and she was out like a light, slumping to the ground like a puppet with cut strings.

"No!" Annabeth bolted for her. "You-"

"She's just stunned, like the others back at camp. Give her fifteen minutes and she'll be right as rain. Maybe even less if she's as hardy as I think she is." She raised a hand in surrender "I didn't hurt her, I simply stopped her from tapping into her father's domain and drawing his attention to us."

That brought them all up short.

"Demigods with more tangible magical powers actively draw on their parent's domains and spheres of influence. They're... wired in, so to speak" Luna explained. "The divine parents usually ignore it, but the king of the gods is actively looking for us. If she had summoned lightning - and we all know she was about to, let's not deny it - he would have been able to pinpoint our location like that."

Luna snapped her fingers for emphasis.

Bianca hesitated and poked at her shoulder. "Couldn't you have just told her that?"

"Too slow, and she wouldn't have listened." Nico had never heard Luna sound so... flatly uspet. She turned to Zoë with an expression that was placid, but may as have been carved from rock. "She wasn't very fair to you, but that was still exceptionally ill-done. And cruel."

"I - I did not intend-" Rather than getting angry, Zoe looked... ashamed. She closed her eyes and sighed, steadying herself "That was a mistake."

"Yeah, no kidding." Percy glared, and Phoebe moved to step in his way before stopping as Zoë.

"No. Enough of this. Enough of all of this. I will-" She grimaced. "Make amends in my own time."

She turned to Luna.

"Where are we?"

Luna looked at her for a long moment, a strange pressure to her regard, before she shrugged.

"Los Angeles."

The sudden tension popped like a soap bubble, replaced with instant incredulity.

"Wait, what?" Grover shook his head in disbelief. "What?"

"We were just on Long Island," Annabeth muttered. "That's impossible - LA is thousands of miles away - it's a forty-three-hour drive!"

"It is." Luna agreed, her smile finally sliding back into place. "But who has that kind of time to spare? I prefer my portkeys for a reason."

"Port-what nows?" Percy looked so lost it was almost funny.

"Point-to-point mass teleportation spell, centered on a physical object. Hideously exhausting to make, but well worth the price."

"Cool!" Nico grinned.

"Crazy." Bianca countered, but she looked awed too.

"But how?" One of the hunters whose name Nico wouldn't even try to guess at shook her head in disbelief.. "Even the greatest witches would struggle to achieve such a feat. Only the gods, perhaps - Lady Arte-"

"No names!" yelled... pretty much everyone present.

"And you can make these any time?" If Annabeth's eyebrows rose any higher, they'd probably achieve orbital lift-off. "You can travel anywhere like this?"

The Hunters and demigods alike looked unabashedly jealous at that, even as Luna shook her head.

"Not quite anywhere." The jealous looks intensified. "Really. There are plenty of places that are warded against external travel, or have too much power for a portkey to safely anchor itself to without the risk of... bouncing off. Los Angeles is one of the few exceptions after the fact even though the mortal entrance to the Underworld is nearby somewhere."

"It is, and let's not go anywhere near it," Percy said vehemently, and Grover nodded vigorously.

"Why would the Underworld be an exception?"

"Reasons."

"Reasons?"

"Reasons." Luna agreed.

Annabeth went to ask again, before pausing and closing her mouth. She looked a bit miserable as she shook her head.

"That's all I'm going to get from you, isn't it?"

Luna had the grace to smile apologetically. "Sorry. A lady must have keep secrets."

Zoë frowned and said nothing at all.

Annabeth made a strangled noise of frustration and turned away, covering her face with both palms. Her shoulders heaved a little as she took several deep breaths.

Bianca made a sympathetic noise and stepped closer to pat her on the back gently.

"There, there. It gets better with time, I promise."

"...Really?"

"Not even a little, but hope either kills you or saves you, and I'm not dead yet."

"That's the spirit!" Luna cheered encouragingly, "Now let's head out. I didn't pick this city just because it's easy to get to, and I know a great place we can regroup."

She stopped and eyed Thalia, who was still out cold where Grover had propped her against the alley wall, her head slumped to one side.

"I've nearly exhausted myself already. I can't levitate her all the way and hide us from prying eyes with the mist - who wants to carry her?"

There was a pause.

Percy frowned when most eyes turned to him, then it donned on him and he scowled.

"Oh, you guys are the worst."

...​

A few minutes later, they set out.

"She can never know about this' Percy had looked them all dead in the eye as he hefted Thalia up in a piggyback hold. "Never. She'll stab me in my sleep."

(Grover had laughed so hard he'd nearly cried, and even Annabeth hadn't managed to hide her smirk fast enough either. Percy's betrayed look just made the whole thing better.)

Walking through the streets of LA was a treat and a half.

True, they didn't get to see much of it as Luna led them through back alleys behind and between rows and rows of low-rise buildings, but Nico didn't mind - After four months at Westover and its grey-bleached walls devoid of colour or soul, any change of scenery was enough for him.

Besides, he'd never been in a big city before.

There was Las Vegas and that one hotel he and Bianca had stayed in for a couple of weeks, the one with a game room so large it seemed to stretch on forever, but that was pretty much it.

Before that, they'd... had something. Probably. It couldn't have been anything too important if he couldn't even remember it, right?

(Right?)

Still, they probably made quite a sight in the few instances where they crossed a busy road or weaved through oncoming traffic. Nico and the rest of the demigods were dressed more or less normally in jeans and t-shirts and whatever else they'd had on them during the escape, but the hunters were all dolled up in their silver gear and had their packs and bows hefted over their shoulders.

A handful of people had given them an odd look or two already.

When he asked Percy about it, the older boy had only shrugged lightly, careful to avoid jostling Thalia.

"The mist is pretty good at what it does, Nico. The mortals probably think the hunters are... I dunno, mean-looking girl scouts or something."

One of the hunters closest to them turned and glared over her shoulder, and both of them had to look away to muffle their laughter.

Eventually, though, they reached their destination.

And, well... it was a surprise?

It was a small double-story diner on the side of the road with its own little parking lot and a large sign by the driveway that read Poultry Planet! - 10 AM to 10 PM Everyday!

"Luna?" Bianca looked just as lost as Nico felt. "Are you sure this is the right place?"

"Sure is." Luna nodded.

"It smells like monsters," Grover said fretfully. Everybody tensed, but Luna just looked at the Satyr like he'd said something silly.

"Of course it does. I'd be very surprised if it didn't."

And with that entirely unsatisfying statement, she started to cross the parking lot and headed straight for the front door. Nico and Bianca exchanged a look, and then they bolted after her first, quickly followed by the rest of them.

Nico caught up with Luna just in time to see her place her hand on the doorknob.

There was a sign on the door - Closed for repairs - and the front windows were boarded up, but she didn't look at them at all.

"Is it locked?" He prodded, and Luna's free hand came up to ruffle his hair reassuringly.

"Not for long. Alohomora."

Her palm flashed a bright blue and the door clicked open in the time it took Nico to blink.

"Shall we?"

As the sign said, the inside of the diner was, in fact, in need of repairs. Oh, it wasn't a wreck or anything, but it clearly wasn't anywhere near ready for business.

The floor was polished marble with black and white domino patterns, and the front wall and the ends were dominated by a row of quaint little booths, but the central service counter to their left was missing all of its stools, and a literal brick wall stretched out from behind it, running along the length of the diner and dividing it nearly in half, save for a door at the far end of the walk-way marked for staff.

"Hmm. He's remodeling." Luna looked a little put out as she took it all in. "That's a shame. I liked the original - it was lovely."

Bianca blinked and sidled closer to her.

"Who's remodeling, Lu?"

"My fr-"

She was caught off when a loud clanging noise drowned out her words and half of them reared back several steps, like someone had struck a metal shutter hard enough to have the material rattling on its hinges.

Zoë was already slipping her bow into her hand before Luna caught the tail end of the motion and shook her head.

"No weapons, please. He's a friend."

Zoë's eyes narrowed.

"Who is he?" Nevertheless, she lowered the bow (but kept an arrow knocked all the same, because... well, she was Zoë.)

The clanging continued sounding from behind the closed door, and Nico and Co were so caught up in it that they almost missed Luna's pleased murmur.

"You'll find out in... just about - ah, here we go. And three, two, one..."

Right on cue (A cue that all of them would greatly appreciate being let in on) the door flew open and the honest to gods giant burst through the door, roaring at them furiously.

"Intruders!" He bellowed, towering so high up that his head practically scraped against the ceiling, and Nico would have wondered how annoying it must have been to duck under the doorframe every time he wanted in or out if his soul hadn't been scared halfway out of his body.

Bravery was all well and good, but having an eight-foot-tall (at least) and visibly enraged giant not ten feet away from you in an enclosed space was not good for his blood pressure, and he was only ten.

Yikes

"Lastroginian!" Zoe hissed, and the giant eyes snapped to hers. He clenched his fists, and his bare, heavily tattoed biceps flexed with the force of the motion - those things were as big as Nico's head.

Double yikes.

"Huntress!" He snarled and took a step forward, and it was probably Luna's quickly raised hand that stopped Zoe from raising her bow again. "Get out of my diner! No Olympian affiliates are allowed under my roof without signing the pact of nonaggression with HR, and we don't open back up for another four months. Leave, or I'll knock the-!"

Whatever unpleasant threat that was going to end with faltered into stunned silence when the Gian't eyes flickered, landed on Luna, and promptly went wide as dinner plates.

"-Luna!?"

"Hello, Larry." The blonde girl raised a hand and waved cheerily. "How've you been?"

"Larry?" Percy's jaw dropped, and he almost faceplanted from where he'd been trying to balance Thalia's weight with one hand and fish through his pocket for his sword with the other. "Reformed cannibal Larry? Chicken-tastes-better-than-people Larry?"

"What?"

Instead of answering (or maybe just choosing to answer without words), Larry bounded forward with two thunderous steps and scooped Luna up into a hug so tight it hurt to look at, twirling around and the spot as he crushed her against his chest.

"Luna!"

"Oh, gods." Annabeth had a dazed, faraway look in her eyes. "It's Tyson all over again."

Nico didn't know who Tyson was, but the way Grover and Percy twitched made it clear they did.

"I've missed you too, Larry. We have a lot of catching up to do." Luna patted the giant's arm gently as he finally put her down. He beamed toothily as she did, displaying a mouthful of sharp, uneven yellow teeth so jarring the sight of them alone would have given every dentist in the state a nervous breakdown. "I know the diner could use some work, but I don't suppose your kitchen is in working order? Even by my standards, it's been a very long day, and I think we could all do with some food."

...​

After welcoming them inside and apologising profusely for all the yelling, Larry headed off into his kitchen.

Before long, they heard the sound of pots clanging, a fryer sizzling, and a scent of deep-fried goodness wafted over to them well before

"Oh, wow," Bianca whispered, and Luna giggled and poked her with her elbow.

"You have no idea."

Soon enough, Larry came marching back out with trays heaped with what may as well have been Elysium to the rest of them with how hungry they were - fried chicken with sides of fries, salads, fruit cups, and enough milkshakes and cold water bottles to go around.

"Dig in!" He said cheerfully, and they fell on the food like wolves. For his part, Larry seemed happy enough with dragging an oversized stool closer to their table and going at his own plate of chicken wings, popping the things into his mouth one at a time like little pieces of popcorn.

When they were finally done, Luna was the first to lean back against her seat cushion and say in satisfaction. Nico felt that - he'd eaten so much his stomach felt like it was about to burst.

"That was wonderful, Larry, thank you."

"Oh, this was nothing. It's a shame my new Rotisserie Oven delivery was delayed - damn amazons and their lousy shipping" He muttered under his breath. "If you'd come here the day after tomorrow, I could have served you the really good stuff."

What?

"You're kidding, right?" Nico asked. "This stuff is amazing! I've never eaten so much in my life!"

Larry flushed - which was something, given how fierce he looked when not wearing that expression - and he waved a hand awkwardly. "I'm glad to hear it."

"It was generous, and we are grateful," Zoë said on her part. "I-"

"Do we owe you anything?" Thalia interrupted, and pretty much everyone listening paused carefully.

Thalia either didn't notice or didn't care, sitting up and polishing her plate as well - she'd woken up a few minutes after Larry had settled them into the booths and hadn't had a chance to do much more than groggily blink her eyes before Annabeth had jumped out of her seat and dragged her out the door.

Nico had no idea how the daughter of Athen had done it, but when the duo came back a little while later, Thalia didn't immediately go for Zoë throat. She still hadn't even looked in the hunters's general direction - it was like she refused to acknowledge her existence entirely, and for the moment, Zoë seemed happy enough to return the favour.

"Of course not. It's on the house. Any friend of Luna is welcome here." The giant said firmly, and Thalia offered him - well, it wasn't a smile, but it wasn't the sullen grimace that the daughter of Zeus had been aiming at anyone bold enough to look her in the eye for the past hour and that was probably about as good as it was going to get.

Then she went right back to glaring at her empty plate, and the sudden tension popped.

Phew. Crisis averted

(for now)

"So what brings you to Los Angeles?"

"Divine affairs," Luna answered, which was true enough even if incredibly vague. "A quest."

That was a lot less vague, and Larry frowned. The comfortable ease drained from his features, and his lips pressed together tightly.

"A quest?" Even his voice changed. It deepened with wariness, rumbling ever so slightly at the edges. "Dangerous business, quests. Never good for heroes."

His gaze shifted to Zoe.

"Or hunters."

"Thy concern is noted."

"We'll be careful," Luna added, but Larry didn't look any happier.

"Is there anything I can do to help?" He asked "I don't mind. I could close up shop and come with you-"?

"No," Luna answered so quickly that Larry flinched back, a wounded look on his face and she hurriedly shook her head. "Larry, I would love to have you along with us, but this quest has just started and it's already shaping up to be horrifically dangerous. I'd never forgive myself if you got hurt on my behalf - and there's a limit on the number of quest-goers as it is."

Larry nodded slowly. "I suppose twenty-seven is a bit much for any quest."

"Oh, we're not all going. The prophecy specifically numbered seven"

"Only seven?"

And the giant's frown came running right back

"It is for the best. Twenty-seven questers, demigods and divine touched alike." Zoe offered out of the blue. "Unfriendly monsters would be able to pick up our scent from miles away. It would be suicide."

"I guess that's true." He admitted, sounding entirely too displeased about it.

Luna smiled gently. "You already have. We've only just started anyway. We still don't even know for certain where the prophecy is leading us, only that we have to head west."

Larry stilled and straightened. "West?

Nobody missed the change in posture.

"Yes," Annabeth said slowly. "'Seven shall flee west-"

She cut herself off before she finished the line, but Larry didn't seem to have noticed. His eyes had gone hazy in thought, and his features had visibly darkened.

"Larry?" Luna prodded gently "Larry, why does that upset you?"

"West is bad." He mumbled. "West is dangerous."

That sounded just peachy, didn't it?

"Larry?"

"Monsters," He said at last, looking all too uncomfortable about it. "There have been stories and rumours hovering about for some time now. Dracaena, hell hounds, empousa - even more. All kinds of monsters moving across the country in big, big numbers, and all of them heading west - to San Francisco."

Luna's face twisted in blatant shock for the first time since anything to do with this quest had happened. Across from her, Zoe went silent and so still she may as well have been carved from stone.

"It's not just the regular chumps either. Dangerous things are coming out of hiding, Luna. They're calling it the Great Rousing."

Percy jolted in recognition - why, Nico didn't know, but the son of Poseidon flicked his eyes to Zoë, who responded with a single nod and nothing else.

A memory niggled at the back of Nico's mind - Hadn't Dr. Thorn said something almost exactly along those lines before Luna had dusted him?

The realization was chilling.

He felt Bianca shift beside him, and when he looked at her he could tell that she'd made the connection too.

"It's all one big mess." Larry missed the byplay entirely, lost in his story. "Very old, very powerful monsters waking from their slumber or crawling straight out of the Pit to join the calling, and it's provoking all the lesser ones into following in their footsteps."

He scowled heavily.

"A few of my thick-headed cousins came after me a few weeks ago. They said they were looking to head west too, just like you, and they wanted me to come with them. Didn't quite like it when I said no, so I had to give them a good thumping to send them away, but they'll be back sooner or later looking for trouble. They always are."

Luna looked troubled by that. "Will you be alright?"

"Always am." The giant said gruffly. "But you're the one heading west, and no matter how good you are, Luna, no one is safe in San Franciso these days. Promise me you'll stay away from it?"

Luna gave him a very careful look.

"I promise I'll do my best to stay out of San Francisco if I can at all avoid it."

He brightened up.

"Good! Now, there's still some leftover chicken in the kitchen, so I'll pack you a few take-out boxes for your quest." He hopped off his stool and spun off the spot "Back soon!"

For a long minute after he left, no one said a word.

It was Percy who broke the silence at last.

"So, San Francisco is crawling with all kinds of nasty monsters, and it's probably one of those places we a hundred percent shouldn't get anywhere near." he sounded like a soldier marching off to his death - entirely too resigned to the inevitable. "So that's probably exactly where we need to go, isn't it?"

Everyone nodded grimly.

"It seems likely," Luna said lightly as she looked at Zoë "But I suppose the decision ultimately lies with our quest leader."

"We go." Credit where credit was due, Zoë didn't even hesitate. She didn't even stop to consider it - whether that was because she didn't have to or because she'd already chosen her course alone was anyone's guess. "As soon as our packs are ready, we set out. Luna."

"Yes?"

"Can you create a portkey to San Francisco?"

"No. I wouldn't dare try. There's so much mist and divine interference centered on that city that even attempting to portkey to its general vicinity would be foolish to the point of insanity. At best, we'd end flung far and wide across the other end of the country. At worst..." She shook her head slowly. "You don't want to know."

Zoë grimaced, but she didn't look surprised.

"Very well then. We can take a train-"

"Wait a second," Annabeth interjected. "Who's we?"

There was a pause.

"The prophecy specifies seven. We're over the limit by twenty. We can't take everyone. It's Zoe's quest - that's one. Who are the other six, and what happens to the rest?"

"I'm almost certain a line of the prophecy applies to me. I'll go, if you'll have me." Luna offered, and Zoë nodded. "But Bianca and Nico come with me."

"What?" Bianca asked

"Yes!" Nico crowed.

"Impossible." Zoë crossed her arms.

"I wasn't asking, sorry." Luna countered, and the lieutenant clenched her jaw. "They're involved in this. Our escape from camp implicates them in the possible consequences. They'll be seen as co-conspirators in our defiance of the Olympian council. The gods would punish them every bit as harshly as they'd try to punish us, and that's a risk I refuse to take. I'm not letting either one of them out of my sight until I know they're safe, whenever that may be."

"You would bring them on a quest-"

"And risk throwing them out of the frying pan and into the fire. Believe me, I'm well aware of the irony." Her brows furrowed and her eyes narrowed. For maybe the first time since he'd met her, Luna looked... not angry, but closer to it than he'd ever seen her get (closer than he'd ever thought she could get. Today was a day firsts all around it seemed, and only a few of them were any good) "Ours is a world of extremes. If I have to choose between them being in danger where I can help and them being in danger where I wouldn't even be aware of it..."

She trailed off and shook her head.

"It isn't even close."

Zoë looked like she wanted to say something scathing, really she did... but she paused. Her eyes went first to Nico, who did his best not to flinch, and next to Bianca.

"Very well." she ground out. Likely because she knew Luna was way too useful to give up. "Very well. Who else?"

"I'll go." Annabeth offered. Zoe looked at her. "The hunters saved us once, a long time ago. I owe it to your lady to try."

"I'll go too."

Nico was pretty sure he wasn't the only one to blue-screen a little when Thalia of all people spoke up, not looking up from the table.

Zoë didn't look happy (did she ever?) but she didn't refuse either one of them out of hand.

"Wait, hold on." Percy sat up quickly. "I'm going too-"

"Absolutely not." Zoë hissed "The child is bad enough. I will not have two boys on this quest if I can help it-"

"But you can't help it." Thalia stood up from her seat suddenly, and half the hunters in the diner sprung up with her until Zoe stilled them with a hand. "Percy's got a better track record than most adult demigods."

"Are adult demigods even a thing?" Bianca muttered.

"You'd be surprised," Luna whispered back.

"That is irrelevant."

"Irrelevant my ass. He fought the Minotaur, the Hydra, Polyphemus-"

"Thalia, names," Annabeth said warningly, looking nervously from side to side as if expecting those same monsters to pop out from behind the countertop or something.

"Whatever. Percy's good, and I trust him to have my back. He goes."

"That is not thy - your decision to make."

"Too bad. I'm making it anyway." Her eyes narrowed dangerously. "And just so we're clear, it's either he goes on this quest, or you and I go at each other right now and fuck whatever happens next."

Zoë leaped from her chair. "Do you think I fear you, you-"

"Zoë." Phoebe put a hand on her shoulder. "Perhaps it's for the best."

"What-?"

"We can't afford a fight, not now of all times," she said brusquely. "The gods are no doubt already scouring the west for us, and we can ill-afford to draw their attention. We need to split up as it is, and this works as well as anything. The rest of us can head back east, draw their attention, pull the heat off of you."

"You're going to draw the god's attention?" Annabeth asked, "On purpose?"

Her tone screamed Are you crazy?, but Zoë's current second-in-command just grinned with way too many teeth.

(Seriously, did the hunters practice being intimidating and approachable? Nico bet that they did.)

"We're hunters." She declared. "We don't just follow trails - we know a thousand and one ways to throw them off. And believe it or not, this is hardly the first time we've had to evade gods."

Phoebe turned to Thalia.

"Your father chief among them. For all that he's lauded as the 'lord of honor,'" She snorted derisively. "We've been afforded very little of it from him over the millennia."

Thalia crossed her arms.

"He's a hypocrite and a shithead. I'm not apologizing for him. If I start, I'd never be able to stop."

The hunter inclined her head.

"True, and I'm not asking you to. However, I will tell you this much," She put her hands on the table and leaned forward. "You're going on a quest to save my patron, and your obstinance has prevented the presence of another hunter on this quest in place of the boy."

"The boy has a name," Percy muttered, but Annabeth drove an elbow into his ribs so quickly it almost knocked him off the edge of his seat.

"If this quest fails, and by some chance you survive, I will be holding you at least partially responsible," Phoebe promised, and Thalia glared so fiercely that Nico expected her to shoot lightning out of her eyes.

"If this quest fails and we make it out by the end, then between the Titans, the Olympians and everything in between, you'll have to get in line."

"I will. In the meantime," Pheobe turned to Zoe, who'd been watching the proceedings with a resigned, off-handed kind of anger. "We'll get your gear ready. Weapons, clothes, drachma and ambrosia - the works."

Zoe glowered darkly for another little while, eyes latched on Thalia and Percy, before she nodded so stiffly it was a miracle she didn't break her neck.

"Wait, what about Grover?" Bianca asked, and all of them suddenly remembered the Satyr who'd stayed silent for the entire. conversation.

"The limit's been reached," Annabeth said, and she sounded a little guilty. "We can't add him on, or we'd be going against the prophecy."

"But won't the gods be looking for him too? What if they catch him?"

"It's okay." Grover gave a brave smile. "I can lay low too. There's probably a nice park or something nearby and-"

"Phoebe," Zoë said, and the other hunter nodded.

"Satyrs can be useful. He can stay with us."

"Ohgodsthankyou!" He collapsed in relief immediately and Phoebe rolled her eyes.

"Wimp."

"Hey! I'll have you know I kicked Medusa in the head that one time! And-"

Zoë's palm cracked against the table and he clammed right up. Percy gave her a reproachful look for that one, but she didn't seem to notice.

"No more talk. As soon as the packs are gathered, we leave at once."

"And go where?" Annabeth asked.

"Union Station can't be too far from here." Percy offered. "We could catch a direct line and be at San Fransico by tomorrow."

Everybody stared.

"What?" He crossed his arms defensively. "I know can have ideas too!"

"He's right."

"I know." Zoë didn't sound too happy about that, and Nico swore he saw Thalia's lips twitch. "Let's move."

And that was when Larry finally came back out of the kitchen, two bags full of take-out boxes in either hand.

Luna flashed him a thumbs-up.

And then it was time to go.

...​

They said their goodbyes quickly.

Larry gave Luna another crushing hug and offered each of them a solid handshake. When it was Nico's turn, the motion almost lifted him off his feet. That had been fun.

Then he gave them each a fifty percent discount coupon.

"For your next visit," He explained with a smile. "Something to look forward to. Good luck!"

Larry was cool, Nico decided. Not Luna or Percy cool, but cool enough.

The Hunters (and Grover) followed them all the way to Union Station. It took them twenty minutes to cross the distance, and everyone had at least one hand on a weapon of some sort the entire way there, wary of monster attacks.

(Or worse - God attacks)

But nothing happened.

It was almost too easy, and Nico could tell that made the more experienced demigods twitchy as all heck. There was this poorly hidden manic energy to them, as if they were ready to leap into action at a moment's notice. Luna's hand never once let go of his the entire way there.

When they finally got to the station it was Grover who slipped in first. "I got this."

He hopped up the stairs, past the milling crowds and through the main entrance faster than Nico had ever seen him move. Less than ten minutes later, he came running back out, seven tickets ready to go.

"Here. One each."

"Wait," Percy did a double take. "First class?"

Thalia looked just impressed "Grover, how much did these even cost?"

Grover shook his head and smiled nervously. "Don't worry about it. Every Satyr with a Searcher's license gets a pretty generous spending budget at the start of the year. I saved it up a bit, converted some of it to mortal money and... well, it's not like I'm using any of it right now."

"Dude."

"Seriously, don't worry about it. I can't help you on the quest, but I can at least do this much."

Annabeth and Thalia gave him a quick hug, and Percy gave him a big high-five.

"See you soon, G-man."

"I hope so." He muttered. "Come on, you should go. Stay safe."

With a final wave at Nico and Bianca, the Satyr turned around and headed off to where Phoebe and the rest of the Hunters were waiting for him. Zoë nodded at them once, and that was all the farewell the needed before walking back the way they came and melting off into the crowds.

"Will they really be okay?" Bianca asked lowly, and Zoë exhaled wearily.

"We can only hope. Let's continue."

Boarding the train was the easiest part.

Grover had gone above and beyond, and they'd wound up with three neighbouring compartments back to back.

Or two, technically, because Thalia had marched right into hers the second they'd stepped onto the train and slammed the door shut behind her with so much force it'd nearly bounced back twice before the click of a lock sealed it in place.

"Such a child," Zoë muttered, and Annabeth shot her a glare.

"It's a ten-hour trip." Luna stepped in between them before things could get out of hand for the hundredth time that day. "We've all had a very long day, and something tells me tomorrow isn't going to be any easier. We should try and get some sleep."

"I have questions I want to ask you."

"I'm sure you do." Luna smiled a little wistfully "You'd have been such a Ravenclaw, Annabeth."

"What?"

"Nothing. I'll answer your questions, but now now. You're dead on your feet. We all are."

And maybe Nico could have argued against that, but at that point, he was barely even listening. He's made the mistake of sitting against one of the insultingly comfortable seat cushions and his eyes had started dropping almost immediately.

Before he knew it, he was out like a light.

...​

Two men stood face to face on the edge of a cliff, the wind howling furiously around them but failing to so much as ruffle their clothes.

The first might as well have been a living statue. Seven feet tall, with dark slicked-back hair, grey eyes like stone and light brown skin. His form was rippled and corded with muscle, clearly visible even over the expensive-looked business suit he wore. His face had a brutal quality to it, and he had hands that looked like they could snap a flagpole in half. He kept clenching and unclenching his fists, as if in anticipation for a fight.

His companion was only a little less intimidating. Every bit as tall, only a little leaner, with long black hair that trailed in a ponytail behind his back and a face that was riddled with silver scars and horrifically marred flesh.

The scarred man spoke first, his voice far more gentle and poised than his appearance suggested, but no less powerful for it.

"I must admit, I would not have expected this from you, general."

"Did you think you were the only one capable of planning ahead?"

Unlike the scarred man, the general's voice matched his appearance perfectly. Rough and heavy, and with and added quality to it reminiscent of a rockslide.

"Hardly, cousin. But I wouldn't have thought that you of all our kin would choose exercise such ... discretion. It is most unlike you."

"Bah! Why should I put in the effort of crushing the demigod brats when the Olympians so readily offer them up on a silver platter? Only fools do not seize advantages so readily given, and it will make our inevitable victory that much sweeter in the end."

"Zeus and his ilk falling to their hubris would be poetic." The scarred man agreed. "But why come to me?"

"Isn't it obvious? I want no room for failure. I will provide the forces and the heavy hand to bend the would-be saviors to our will, but it will be your silver tongue that forces them to lay down their arms of their own accord." The general sneered "Unless you think yourself incapable of it?"

The scarred man smiled, unbothered by the implied insult.

"Oh, hardly. I just wanted to hear you say it. I think... yes, I have just the right thing in the mind."

"Well?"

"Now, cousin, it would be poor of me to spoil the surprise so soon. " The scarred man chided, and then he turned and looked straight at Nico. "Especially when one of the very same demigods you're so fixated on is currently present listening to every word. I'll be seeing you again very soon, Mr. Di Angelo, but until then, I'm afraid your little dream is at an end."

Then he raised his hand and snapped his fingers, and the world dissolved into motes of blinding light.

...​

Nico's eyes snapped open.

(Something was wrong.)

"S'going on." He mumbled tiredly, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. Had he just been dreaming?

The rest of the six were already up and hovering over him.

"No," Luna said. Her lips were pursed, and the others looked just as grim. "We're still at least an hour short, but the train's stopped and all the lights have been knocked out."

"This is bad," Thalia murmured, tightly gripping her spear shaft. She tensed as a sound washed over their compartment, loud and shrill and all too familiar.

A growl, deep and rumbling. Screams began to echo down the train.

"God or monster?" Bianca asked with wide eyes, and Percy clenched his jaw as he uncapped his pen. Riptide sprung into being in all its glory, the celestial bronze blade glowing in the darkness.

"It doesn't matter. We aren't sticking around to find out."

He turned and swung the sword at the window, and it exploded outwards in a shower of spraying glass. He gestured with the window, where Nico could see nothing but miles and miles of flat, dry land, and the only light was coming from the moon.

(Were they in a desert?)

"Time to go."

Thalia went first, raising her foot onto the ledge and catapulting herself out. She landed with a grunt and gestured for Annabeth, who jumped out after her, followed by Zoë and Bianca hand in hand.

Nico didn't get a chance to try.

Luna jumped next, and then raised her hand behind her.

"Wingardium Leviosa."

Gently but quickly, he floated right through the broken window and dropped down beside her, and Percy hopped out last, still glancing beside him with his sword out and ready.

(The screams had gotten louder.)

"Go!"

They bolted., leaving the train behind.

Nico didn't know how how they ran after that, or how they knew where to go. He didn't know how he kept up, even when his feet felt like they were screaming and his lungs burned. His heart alone felt like it was being squeezed by a cruel, uncaring fist, but somehow he still managed to keep up.

What he did now for sure was that things started going truly wrong when a road appeared in front of them so abruptly that it had to be magic of some kind.

They stopped, heaving with breath and staring warily.

Ahead of them was a two-lane road half covered with sand. On the other side of the road was a cluster of buildings too small to be a town: a boarded-up house, a taco shop that looked like it hadn't been open since before Zoë Nightshade was born, and a white stucco post office with a sign that said GILA CLAW, ARIZONA hanging crooked above the door.

Beyond that was a range of hills… but Nico noticed they weren't regular hills. The countryside was way too flat for that. The hills were enormous mounds of old cars, appliances, and other scrap metal. It was a junkyard that seemed to go on forever.

"Whoa," He gasped, partly in awe and partly because he still couldn't steady his breathing.

"Something tells me we're not going to find a car rental here," Thalia said.

"This place is dangerous," Luna said, and her voice was laced with such uncharacteristic iron and urgency that had them all on edge instantly. "It's roiling in so much magic I can almost taste it."

She shook her head.

"We shouldn't go anywhere near it."

Naturally, that was when the fates finally came calling.

"You punks aren't going anywhere at all."

They turned - it almost didn't matter. The sheer presence and tangible power of the figure who'd appeared behind them still just about knocked them to their knees.

Percy's face drained of color

"Oh, no."

He was a big man with a crew cut, a black leather biker's jacket, black jeans, a white muscle shirt, and combat boots. Wraparound shades hid his eyes, but genuine flames flickered from just beneath their surface, and the air shimmered from the sheer heat.

"Oh yes, Jackson." He smirked cruelly "I've been waiting a long time for this."

Looking at him, Nico felt smaller and more pitiful than he'd ever had. Dr. Thorn might as well have been a kitten when compared to this being. Just being in his vicinity was making it hard to breathe.

"Lord Ares," Zoë said calmly, but the grip on her bow had gone white-knuckled. Nico recognized the name immediately.

This was the god of war - and he meant business.

"Zoë Nightshade." He tutted and shook his head. "You made a big mistake when you refused to play ball."

"My lady needs me."

"Not my problem," Ares said bluntly, and Zoë's calm expression broke. For just a second, her face screwed up in an expression so hateful it would have made a Drakon run for the hills.

Ares just laughed.

"Artemis knew the risks, and she still messed up. Whatever happens to her from now until or if we get her back is on her." He shook his head. "Just like whatever comes next is on you. Orders are orders, and you willingly disobeyed an edict from the council. The trip's over, punks. Time to face the music."

"We go nowhere until Artemis is safe!" She raised her bow, arrow aimed directly at Ares's face. "

The god shrugged.

"Refuse all you want. One way or another you'll be on Olympus inside of an hour. Beating you to a pulp before I slap the chains on isn't going to be a problem." He grinned. "Hell, it's my bonus for dealing with this waste of time."

"Lord-" Luna barely opened her mouth before Ares raised a hand. A huge, two-handed sword materialized in his grip. The hilt was a large silver skull with a ruby in its mouth.

"Luna Lovegood." Ares swung the sword around in a lazy circle, as if he were testing its weight. No one missed the implied threat. "The girl who knows things she should have no business of knowing. I heard about your stunt with the old drunk. Fair warning - try that shit with me, and I swear by the moirai that I will flay the skin off your flesh, fashion it into a rope and strangle you to death with it."

"Back off!" Percy and Thalia stepped up and hefted sword and spear respectively.

Ares didn't look even a little intimidated.

"Oh, just you wait. I'll get to you in a second. You too, daughter of Zeus." He shook his head. "Man, you little shits have no idea how badly you're in for it, do you? Half the councils wanted to blast you to dust because of the Great Prophecy, and now you've given us the perfect excuse. Not even daddy dearest will save you, assuming he'd even want to."

"Screw you." Thalia spat.

"That's the spirit. It's no fun if you don't at least try." He raised his sword menacingly "Now let's get started."

Then a burst of golden light that interrupted Ares for half a second before he would have charged. The air swelled with heat. When the light died, a red-hot car was parked between them and the war god.

A very familiar car.

"No way," Nico whispered, even as Apollo hopped out of the driver seat of his Maserati, decked out in greaves and armor with his bow slung over his shoulder."

"Apollo," Ares growled and yanked his shades off. Nico almost recoiled at the sight of the flaming sockets the god had for eyes. "What the Hades do you think you're doing?"

"Oh, nothing much." The sun god hummed cheerily, turning back half a second and waving. "Hey guys. How've you been?"

"Apollo." Ares snarled, but Apollo didn't turn around just yet. Instead, he gave a wink and a nod at Zoe, who didn't look as annoyed as she had the last time she met Artemis's twin.

No, if anything, she looked... hopeful.

What?

"Apollo." Ares spoke through gritted teeth. "I'm not going to ask - again. What do you think you're doing?"

"Well, I was following Father's orders, of course - scouring the west in search of these unlucky dudes so I can drag them to Olympus as requested, but then I realized something." Apollo titled his head with a contemplative look. "If someone were to succeed in capturing the these questors, then their quest fails automatically. The quest who's purpose mind you, is to free my baby sis. Meaning Artemis will remain in the hands of the Titans, chained like a slave, possibly for the rest of eternity."

Apollo's countenance twisted with fury.

"Fuck. That."

His voice rumbled with so much power that those two words alone nearly burst Nico's ear drums. The air grew warmer and warmer until it bordered on uncomfortable.

Across from him, Ares barred his teeth.

"So you'd go against the council too? You'd risk losing everything for your defiance?"

"For my twin?" Apollo chuckled and leaned forward. In his hands, a sword materialized. The hilt was solid gold and the blade was a pillar of pure flame. "If you have to ask, then you're an even bigger fool than you look."

Ares's expression hardened. The air grew warmer by several degrees again, and now it was outright sweltering.

"You know what? fine." He raised his sword "Father will make you beg for mortality by the time he's done with you for this betrayal, Apollo."

"You know, he just might." The sun god admitted and leaned forward one final time. "But that's a risk I'm happy to take. And hey, on the plus side, no matter what happens next, I still get to give you the beating you've been begging for for centuries, and that's a reward all on its own!"

Ares's eyes blazed.

"Then come forward and try if you dare, ανόητε!"

The two Olympians charged and Annabeth screamed.

"RUN!"

The seven of them turned and fled for their lives right as the gods clashed, and everything went straight to Tartarus in an explosion of light and power.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Annabeth hates Ares.

To some, that might have sounded like a no-brainer.

Athena and Ares's ancient rivalry was an olden, brutal thing. The warrior's spirit and the stratagem of battle had been at odds since her mother had first burst out of Zeus's skull, and for all that their feuds had simmered down in the present day and age, if Annabeth had a drachma for every other conflict and literal war that had been spawned by or brought on as a result of their clashes, she'd be rich enough to buy half of Olympus.

There was a reason the Athena and Ares cabins were always at each other's throats at Capture the Flag or any of the other camp war games, and it wasn't because Clarisse and her siblings were stubborn as mules and liked to use every minor disagreement as an excuse to punch someone in the face.

(Well, not entirely)

The demigod children of both war-governing Olympians were damn near biologically wired to challenge and compete against one another... but that wasn't why Annabeth hated Ares, no.

If it was something as shallow and downright asinine as inheriting a grudge then Athena and Poseidon's equally volatile history would've meant she'd have hated Percy, and that couldn't be farther from the truth.

(Quite the opposite, actually, but that was a whole other kind of problem)

Unlike most of her siblings, Annabeth didn't just oppose Ares and everything associated with him on principle. No, her grudge was personal, and it traced its way all the way back when she, Grover, and Percy had gone on that (literally) fateful quest to retrieve the master bolt.

She'd disliked him from the second he'd shown up in that diner even if she'd had the obvious self-preservation instincts not to to show it. The way his mere presence had purposefully twisted Percy's emotions left and right and twirled him halfway out of his mind all so Ares could play at being magnanimous and assert his dominance over them had been enough to press half a dozen of her buttons in one go.

When he'd sent them off on that ridiculous side-quest and nearly gotten them killed by mechanical spiders, it had taken genuine effort and all her willpower not to draw her dagger and try to stab him right in the flaming eye socket, but that was practically the default setting for most any mortal interacting with Ares while unprepared for it - And any child of Athena being exposed to any spider ever, but again, that was a whole other kind of problem.

It wasn't until the very end of the quest when they'd escaped the Underworld by the very skin of their teeth and found Ares waiting for them on that beach did Annabeth truly begin to loathe the god of war.

It wasn't enough that he had played them like fiddles (What was it Percy had called it... a plan worthy of Athena? Talk about adding insult to injury), Or that he had almost succeded in getting them all killed and used as a catalyst for what would have been a civilization-ending war, no. In the end, after everything they'd been through and all the terrifying near-death experiences they'd just barely survived (Grover had nearly been dragged down to Tartarus), Ares still had the gall and the cruelty to stand in their way and try to stop them from returning the bolt.

When Percy had stepped up to duel him, Annabeth had felt part of her shrivel up and die at the sheer unfairness of it all. She was the child of wisdom and strategy - she should have had a plan, a plot, a clever trick to tip the scales in their favor, but she'd had nothing. She was forced to watch and pray for a miracle, any miracle, for what strategy could three twelve-year-olds use to stand up against an Olympian god?

It was just like the night Thalia had sacrificed herself all over again. All her years of training at camp, all that time sharpening her mind and body to prepare for anything amounted to nothing in the end. Once again, Annabeth was the useless spectator watching a friend throw themself into an unwinnable farce of a fight because it was a choice between that or rolling over and dying right then and there, and neither Percy nor Thalia would ever go down without a fight.

Ares had forced her to relive that hopeless despair, and even if Kronos had been the one pulling his strings all along, Annabeth would still despise him for his part in it for the rest of her life and until the end of time after that.

The fact that he'd chosen to curse Percy after he'd lost like an idiot because he was too drunk on his own power to remember never to underestimate any opponent just cemented her loathing because seriously, how petty could you get?

(Stupid question - Ares was a god, and while Annabeth would never dare say it aloud, she was pretty convinced you could better categorize them not by age or power or position in the divine hierarchy, but by the number of times they lashed out like a group of unimaginably overpowered and horrifyingly vindictive prima donnas).

Annabeth knew that wouldn't be the last time they'd come face to face with a god, be it Ares or another Olympian or one of the litters of other minor and not-so-minor non-Olympians out there - between Percy's role in the great prophecy, her tendency to ignore her better sense and follow him everywhere (and she always would, caution be damned) and the fact the fates were almost definitely borderline psychopaths out to get them, the odds were so heavily stacked against them that they'd have more luck beating Argus in a staring contest than they would at avoiding the inevitable.

The gods couldn't be beaten, not by any demigod or even an army of them at that - but maybe they could be outsmarted. Tripped up. Stalled and delayed until she could figure something out - whatever.

The point was, Annabeth would do something.

Anything at all

(She swore she'd never sit on the sidelines like that again, and to Hades with the consequences)

Well, two years and two quests later, as all seven of them turned and bolted away from the rampaging gods, a slightly hysterical part of Annabeth couldn't help but thank her past self for having the brains not to swear that on the river Styx because there were no words in any language to describe how badly she would have broken that oath if she had and how utterly screwed they all were either way.

"RUN!"

They made it about ten feet, sprinting full-tilt towards the entrance of the ludicrously vast junkyards at the kinds of speeds only adrenaline-crazed demigods could output when Apollo and Ares's blades finally met.

Boom.

The first blow wasn't so much a blow as it was a cataclysm. The earth bucked and ruptured. The air burst deafeningly. An unholy blast of scalding heat and light and hellish pressure slammed into their fleeing backs like a super-volcano going off right behind them and flinging them up and away so violently that Annabeth's neck nearly snapped and she almost blacked out from the vicious acceleration.

The disorientation from the sheer impact couldn't have lasted more than a few seconds, but it felt like an eternity. An eternity that they spent flying, a million tons of force blowing them so high up that, had Zeus been watching, they'd have been smote a thousand times over before they could ever hope to hit the ground.

And then they stopped rising, and Annabeth felt enough clarity rush back into her brain in an infinitesimal instant to recognize how far below them the junkyard and the growing carnage from the battle of the gods was-

Holy -

- and then gravity struck like a viper and they began to fall.

Most of the screamed - Thalia howled.

The air nearly deafened her to it anyway as it whistled past her ears. The mountains of garbage and ruin stretched up towards them as they hurtled straight down, like the fingers of death itself as it (or was it he?) prepared to close its fist and crush them into oblivion.

Percy's hand latched around her wrist and hauled her through the air even as they fell, close enough to wrap both arms around her with a hold tight enough to make her ribs creak and leave bruises in its wake - Annabeth wouldn't have bothered questioning how he'd managed it even if she'd had the will to. It was Percy, so, of course, he was there, somehow trying to do anything even though there was no water below or anywhere close enough to save even him, let alone any of the rest of them.

(Or maybe he was still trying despite that, - Yes, that sounded more like Percy. Loyal and steadfast to the point of suicidal stupidity and until the very end)

Annabeth didn't have time to process all the feelings that came with that (regret, crippling guilt, sorrow, the whole fun-size package) - there wasn't enough time for that. Instead, what little part of her was even capable of rational thought was in the middle of absolutely losing it over how ridiculously, brutally unfair it was for this to be the end after everything they'd lived through before.

Kronos must be laughing himself to literal pieces.

She didn't know where the ugly thought came from, but as the ground came up, and up and up, Annabeth had just a heartbeat to brace and close her eyes-

"ARRESTO MOMENTUM!"

-and snap them right back open again.

She'd forgotten about Luna, who stretched out her arms and bellowed out the two words maybe five seconds before they hit the ground and splattered like bugs on a windshield.

Annabeth stopped.

As in, she literally, completely, halted, and so did the rest of them - like someone had hit the pause button and frozen them mid-motion.

Unlike every other bit of extraordinary magic Luna weaved in the day and a half Annabeth had known her, there was no visible tell to this one, no light or pressure or force. One second, they were at death's door, and the next they froze above the still-rumbling ground, the momentum going from terminal to nonexistent in a way that would have had physicists the world over ripping their hair out by the handfuls in hysterics.

And speaking of hysterics -

They dropped down to solid earth so gently they might as well have just been stepping off a curb, and just as soon as her feet hit the ground Thalia dropped to her knees and threw up in a violent heave.

Zoê staggered back and steadied herself by reaching for Bianca, who was getting a crash course on the wonders of hyperventilation, hand pressed over her ears and staring down at her feet like she couldn't believe they were back on solid ground and not pasted all over it instead.

Percy let go of Annabeth and stumbled off to the side, face blanched and wobbling like he was a second away from toppling, and she would have toppled if Luna hadn't seized her arm around the bicep and forced her upright with a sharp tug. Her other hand tugged on Nico's wrist, whose hair had been blown back by the wind and had his lips parted in an expression so frozen with disbelief it would have been hilarious if things were any different.

As it was, the sight of the ten-year-old who'd nearly just died on their watch felt less funny and more like a dagger to the heart, especially when his features started contorting and his eyes grew wet.

"Luna-"

Luna plopped her hand down on his head. There was a brief flicker of white-gold light, and Nico paused, twitched, and beamed.

"That was so cool!"

She'd heard the youngest Di Angelo use the same phrase some ten thousand times in the last six hours alone, but this one was different. He was nearly bouncing on the balls of his feet, his eyes were a little too wide, and his smile stretched a little too long, to the point where looking at it made her jaw twitch in sympathy.

"Can we do that again!?"

Even his voice was off, a hint of hyperactive mania beyond any ordinary demigod ADHD lingering beneath the words.

"What did you do to him?"

"Cheering charm. A terribly unhealthy emotional suppression technique, but he's too young to control his panic and he can't lock down now." Luna glanced at her, and she never looked more like a fellow daughter of Athena than she did then, a hurricane brewing in those halfway familiar eyes of hers. "There are very few forms of magics I dislike using, Annabeth, and even fewer still that I hate, but those of the mind-altering variety have more than earned it."

Luna jerked her head away

"But needs must." She looked at Zoë first, then panned her eyes between the four of them left, bar Thalia, who was still on her knees.

"Needs must." She repeated firmly. "We need to move, right now."

"Luna," Bianca cut herself off with a gasp, the words clogging her throat. Her chest heaved and rattled. "W-We just- We just-!"

"Bianca."

The older of the Di Angelos snapped her eyes to Luna, who crossed the distance between them with an honest-to-the-gods leap and seized both of her shoulders with a white-knuckled grip, the only sign of panic Annabeth had ever seen from her.

"Not now, alright? Not now." She stressed the words when Bianca went to shake her head. "That was terrifying, I know. Believe me, I know, but you can't think about that now. None of us can."

As if to agree with her, the earth rumbled and shuddered with power. In the distance, Annabeth could see mountains of rubble collapse from the force of the vibrations.

"Push it down, Bianca, focus on moving, alright? Because we just nearly died, but if we don't get out of here right now, we will die."

Annabeth didn't see what Bianca's reactions to that was. The earth tremored again, and she made the mistake of turning around to assess the danger.

Bad idea.

Bad, bad idea.

Even at a distance, Apollo and Ares's battle wasn't a fight meant for mortal eyes - it wasn't a fight meant for any sane eyes, mortal or immortal alike.

The god of war was a behemoth shrouded in blood-red mist, and every swing of his sword was carnage incarnate. He drove Apollo back with gargantuan overhead strikes, lacking grace or finesse but making up for it in weight and power. Every time their blades clashed, he drove the sun god back a step, and the earth buckled under sheer strain. The entire junkyard shook and heaved under the pressure.

And Apollo gave as good as he got. Every one of Ares's strikes was stronger, more savage, and barbaric, but for every blow that landed, Apollo handed back three more. He ducked and weaved slashed vicious rents across the metal of Are's breastplate, biting at the flesh below.

Worse, Apollo was the sun incarnate, and he was covered in a pulsing corona of golden light that ignited the air itself. Every time Ares locked blades with him, his sword and armor glowed red-hot and dripped molten metal that had the other god howling in fury.

Around them, a circle of superheated molten metal and bubbling debris was expanding as the heat and pressure of the god's mere presence destroyed and reshaped everything around them with every passing moment.

Annabeth tore her eyes away from the sight and resisted the urge to scream. She had to clench her fists hard enough to draw blood to ignore the stinging pain in her eyes and blink the spots out of them, and her entire face felt like she'd been baking out in the sun for hours.

(Later, she'd wonder how she'd even survived glancing at them, for divine form or no, Apollo and Ares's power made manifest should have blinded her at best and disintegrated her at the most likely.)

When her eyes stopped flickering in agony, everyone was already up.

Except, again, for Thalia.

"Thalia, snap out of it!"

Percy was trying, he really was, but Thalia was nearly insensate and just about decked him in the face when he tried to help her up. Her hair stood up at the ends, her skin crackled with sparks of blue and white, but she stayed on her knees, half-gasping and half-snarling at something only she could see.

He dodged another raking blow and shot Luna a desperate look.

"Can you do anything about her?"

"A cheering charm won't work. Her constitution is too dense and I can't overpower her without spending too much magic. " Luna said grimly and turned to rummage through her pack with the speed of someone who'd learned to work under pressure, if only just. A second later, she pulled out a corked vial of amber. "Diluted calming drought."

She didn't hand it to Percy, though. Instead, she pitched it to Zoë, who caught it with a look of dawning understanding.

"Make her drink it. Force it down her throat if you have to."

To her credit, Zoë didn't hesitate.

Thalia's fists flailed and lashed out when the huntress approached, hitting nothing but air as she snarled and gasped at everything and nothing at all, but Zoë - Annabeth stood up too slowly to catch what exactly the hunter did next, but between one blink and the next she maneuvered Thalia's arms behind her back, pinned them there while uncorking the vial with her teeth and pulled her head back to tip it down her throat.

It was messy, borderline disgusting what with Thalia snarling and spitting up what little of it she could manage, but Zoë held her study long enough for the first swallow, and she went abruptly still on the second.

Zoë stepped back, and Thalia staggered to her feet, her face eerily blank aside from the very beginnings of a grimace.

"I'm going to kill you for that."

She said the words with no inflection and almost no tone to speak off, the results of whatever it was that she'd just drunk.

Zoë barely even acknowledged the threat.

"You might not get the chance." The hunter's eyes flickered to the right, where the divine light show had grown in pressure and intensity. "Move. Apollo's blessing protects us from the heat and the fire, but nothing will save us if we tarry."

She turned and bolted, and Thalia gave a full-body twitch before leaping after her. It was almost impressive - even when drugged into sensibility, her pride rankled at having to obey Zoë.

Regardless, everybody followed.

Behind them, a scrap mountain was boiling, rising up. The ten toes tilted over, and Annabeth realized why they looked like toes. They were toes. The thing that rose up from the metal was a bronze giant in full Greek battle armor. He was impossibly tall—a skyscraper with legs and arms. He gleamed wickedly in the moonlight. He looked down at them, and his face was deformed. The left side was partially melted off. His joints creaked with rust, and across his armored chest, written in thick dust by some giant finger, were the words WASH ME.

"Talos!" Zoë gasped.

"Who—who's Talos?" Bianca stuttered.

"One of Hephaestus's creations," Thalia said, her tone still blank but with her features drawn back in alarm "But that can't be the original. It's too small. A prototype, maybe. A defective model."

The metal giant didn't like the word defective.

He moved one hand to his sword belt and drew his weapon. The sound of it coming out of its sheath was horrible, metal screeching against metal. The blade was a hundred feet long, easy. It looked rusty and dull, but Annabeth didn't figure that mattered. Getting hit with that thing would be like getting hit with a battleship.

"That sure doesn't look defective!" Percy yelled, brandishing his sword, for all the good that would do. Compared to Talos, he looked like a gerbil waving about a toothpick.

"Hephaestus must have roused him to stop us." Zoë cursed viciously, drawing her bow and readying an arrow. "He will not move to aid Ares, but he can command his creations to attack us in his stead!"

"So the god can't even be bothered to show up, but he can kill us by proxy?" Percy snarled back. "Oh yeah, that's just golden!"

"Looks bronze to me," Nico muttered, and Luna dragged him even closer to her side and held him close.

Annabeth didn't have much time to think about how furiously bitter Percy sounded (not that she or anyone else was any better. What the fuck was wrong with the Olympians?), because the giant defective Talos took one step toward them, closing half the distance and making the ground quiver even more fiercely than before.

"Run!" Bianca yelped.

Great advice, except for the part where it was utterly useless. At a leisurely stroll, the celestial bronze giant could outdistance them easily.

They scattered instead. Thalia drew her shield and held it up as she ran down the highway. The giant swung his sword and took out a row of power lines, which exploded in sparks and scattered across Thalia's path.

Zoe's arrows whistled toward the creature's face but shattered harmlessly against the metal.

"Incarcifors horriblis!"

A bolt of green light lanced out and hit the ground at Talos's feet, and the ground melted. Talos stumbled as the earth surged up like quicksand and entangled his feet up to the ankles in vine formations, tripping him over and dropping him to his knees with enough force to bring down a small building.

The titanic prototype's twisting joints creaked loud enough to raise the dead, but he was far from finished.

"Leave Talos to me!" Luna's voice rang out thunderously, rolling over Annabeth like the other girl was bellowing out a megaphone. "Look out for the strays!"

"Strays?" Percy asked from where he'd sprinted next to her, and Annabeth's eyes went wide as she caught a flicker of bronze hurtling to his side.

"Strays!" She yelled back and tackled him down just as something large and fast blurred over them, the air above them distorting from the speed of its passing. They rolled over the side, and Annabeth ignored the flash of pain as something sharp cut into her shoulder on account of the adrenaline and leaped up to her feet beside Percy, dagger sliding into her hand neatly.

Still, both of them gaped when they caught sight of the celestial bronze monstrosity looming over them.

"Oh," Percy shook his head in disbelief. "Hephaestus must think he's funny."

The eight foot tall replica of the minotaur must've disagreed, because it let loose a bellowing roar of challenge. Smoke exploded out of its quivering nostrils, and sparks erupted out of a gnarly open cut on the side of its neck. Its left half was deformed and littered with dents and pockmarks, and instead of an arm, it had two misformed lumps for limbs on its right side.

"Why is it always bulls!?" Percy yelled as it lowered its head horns first and charged. "I don't even like bulls!"

They threw themselves to opposite sides on unspoken command. The minotaur automata rumbled past like a freight train and barely had the time to turn before Riptide lanced down on it from behind. It tilted, but the Celestial bronze arc still cleaved through the top of its skull and lobbed a chunk of it clean off, horn and all, exposing whirring golden circuitry below.

"Oh, yeah. This is real familiar."

With a kind of fluidity solid celestial bronze shouldn't have been able to manage, the minotaur twisted forward and lashed out with his misshapen limps. Percy's eyes widened and he tried to dodge, but the end of its second arm caught him in the ribs with sickening force and knocked him off his feet wholesale.

He landed hard and gasped, losing his grip on Riptide just as the minotaur rumbled towards him, a metallic hoof raised and ready to stamp down on his head. And it would have, too, had Annabeth not sprinted in behind it and jumped on its back, seizing it by the remaining horn and driving her dagger through the opening in its neck.

Immediately, the minotaur screeched and bucked violently, trying to throw her off, but Annabeth gritted her teeth and pulled. With a shower of sparks and an even louder screech of sliding metal, her dagger sliced halfway threw its neck and it froze. Its arms went limp at its sides, its form seemed to tilt side to side before it slowly, ponderously toppled snout-first into the rubble.

Annabeth had the presence of mind to leap off before the hundred tons (at least) of divine scrap metal face-faulted.

"Thanks." Percy struggled to his knees and shot her an unsteady grin. Her eyes narrowed at the hand that was pressed against his side. "Man, I hate bulls."

"Are you alright?"

"Fine." He paused, gingerly pressing his side. "Okay, pretty bruised and I'm counting at least two cracked ribs-."

"Percy!"

"It's fine. A little dip in some water and I'll be good as new."

"We're in a desert, seaweed brain. Where exactly-?"

The words died on her lips as her mind blue-screened. She reviewed her memory of the last ten-something hours, tried to connect them to the situation they were in right now, and failed miserably.

"We're in a desert." She whispered, momentarily ignoring the carnage of Are's and Apollo's ongoing fight and the cacophony of half a dozen other problems piling up in the background.

Percy tilted his head in confusion. "... Yes?"

"In Arizona."

"Yeah, I read the sign too."

Dear gods (The very, very few who weren't after their heads), how was he not seeing this?

"We took a train in LA... and ended up in Arizona"

"Is this a trick question? Because I'm not so good with those-"

"For the love of-!" She waved a hand furiously. "Percy, we're in Arizona. We took a train from LA to San Franciso! That's a ten-hour trip along the Pacific. Arizona-"

His eyes grew as it dawned on him "-That's... that's a whole other direction."

They exchanged grim, stunned looks.

Something was very, very wrong-

They were cut off when a spire of lightning descended from above and struck Talos' gargantuan head straight on. When the light and the abhorrently loud thunder faded, the giant slumped over and collapsed. Naturally, because of his size that meant that the impact felt like having a land mind go off beneath their feet, minus the physical explosion.

How Annabeth and Percy managed to stay upright was a mystery, but when the rumbling was done, both of them stared as Thalia leaped off the side of Talos's head, limping on one leg towards them but otherwise looking none the worst for wear.

Percy looked like she felt. "How even-?!"

"Luna bound his legs." Thalia gritted her teeth. "And then she did something to me to make me hit harder than I ever have, but only once-"

"Tapped into the deeper layers of the Duat-" Luna offered from somewhere, but Thalia cut her off with a growl.

"Nope. Don't bother, no one's going to get it anyway." She glared at the two of them. "So can the two of you actually help now, or do you need some more time to make out?"

Both of them flushed and spluttered.

"We were busy!"

"Oh, I'll bet."

"Back off!" Percy snapped, gaze flickering to Luna. "I thought whatever you gave her was going to chill her out!"

"It was a mild calming drought. It only prevents emotions from overwhelming the drinker. It doesn't stop them wholesale." Luna frowned. "Still, you are a very angry person, aren't you Thalia?"

Thalia rounded on her, a snarl on her lips, but she paused. "What's wrong with you?"

Luna smiled weakly, skin pale and shimmering with sweat. Her hand was pressed to her abdomen, and to Annabeth's alarm, she could see hints of crimson spreading from beneath her grip.

"Too much magic. And a fragment of shrapnel from Talos's landing."

"Luna!" Bianca sounded horrified.

"It's alright. I've had far worse. Perhaps I'll tell you of the time I wound up in my Grandmother's Mansion. Father was livid." She chuckled and made to take a step forward and staggered forward instead. She would have faced fault had Zoë not reached out to grab her. "I'm fine. It's time to go!"

She pointed to the distance, where the glow of Ares and Apollo's battle still raged.

"Even if Apollo can hold Ares at bay forever, their fight will attract more attention than we could hope to afford. We need to leave, now."

"She's right," Zoë declared, throwing Luna's free hand over her shoulder and pulling her up. "We need to leave before any more of the Forge-lord's creations rise after us. Or worse."

"And go where?" Annabeth interrupted, and everyone turned to her.

Quickly, she told them what she'd told Percy, and Zoë's expression darkened like a thundercloud at the realization.

"I did not even think-" She spat and shook her head angrily. "We make our way on foot, then."

"But what if whatever sent us here sends us somewhere else?" Bianca asked, and Thalia grimaced.

"We'll burn that bridge when we get to it. Right now, the big question isn't about how we got here, it's about how we're getting out."

"Oh, that one's easy." A new voice called out behind them, loud and inescapable. "You're not."

Thalia didn't even hesitate. She whirled on her feet and lobbed her spear, still crackling with lightning, straight at the source. It whistled threw the air at a pace that was borderline terrifying, its tip gleaming with power-

"Oh, please."

-only for its intended target to swat it aside bare-handed, a dark, contemptuous look on his face as he watched it arc to the side and snap as its shaft cracked against Talos's side.

Thalia made an aborted attempt a yell before freezing, and a part of Annabeth that wasn't dipped in ice wondered whether that was because she refused to show weakness in front of an enemy or because she recognised said enemy as she had.

"Oh, fuck."

Tall, middle-aged, dressed in full Greek armour with no helm to hide his curly black hair and blue eyes. His features would have been charming in a smile, but right then they may as well have been carved from marble. In his free hand, he held a three-foot-long oak staff with dove wings and two snakes wrapped around the shaft. The Caduceus.

Annabeth wished that was the end of it - she would have given up so much for that to be the end of it, but it wasn't.

Her eyes strayed to the even more familiar figure standing beside Hermes, dressed in her own gleaming armour, equally devoid of a helm, and meeting an identical pair of grey eyes with trepidation.

Athena stared back, features still, and her lack of an expression did nothing to hide her from the disappointment in her eyes.

For a long moment, no one dared even breathe.

"Annabeth." When her mother finally spoke, her voice was iron. Cold, unyielding in every way, and she almost buckled beneath the weight of it. "Daughter of mine."

Annabeth swallowed, fingers limp in terror. "Mother-"

"Do not speak." Athena's voice didn't rise an octave, but it may as well have slit Annabeth's throat for how effective it was at silencing her. "You have disappointed me, child."

A pit to Tartarus could have opened up at her feet and swallowed her whole, and Annabeth wouldn't have felt any more despair than she felt right then.

If Athena noticed, she made no sign of it.

"Disobeying the will of the council, playing party to an assault on an Olympian" Athena's eyes flickered to Luna, who was so pale now she looked a step away from passing out. "Attempting to act on a quest with no knowledge of its requirements and no possible comprehension of its ramifications."

She shook her head.

"Foolish beyond description. Unwise."

Coming from the goddess of wisdom, unique was all but a direct synonym for unworthy.

(Having her still-beating heart carved out of her chest would have hurt less.)

Hermes remained silent as a grave.

At her side, she could feel Percy's fear give way to outrage as he puffed up, and her hand automatically shot out to grab his wrist before he could leap forward and get himself smote on her behalf, but she shouldn't have bothered.

Of all people, it was Zoë who stepped in front of her and met her mother's gaze, handing Luna off to Bianca with one shrug of her shoulders.

"Is it unwise, Lady Athena," The lieutenant's voice was calm in the same way a predator baring its teeth would have been. "To forsake my goddess? To forsake Lady Artemis, who has often been your stalwart ally over the millennia and against innumerable foes time and again?"

Athena's eyes narrowed.

"I do not forsake your lady lightly, Zoë Nightshade. I would have thought you with all your years would be intelligent enough to recognize that.

Zoë's expression twitched in momentary rage, but she said nothing as Athena spoke.

"I do not double in malice or hedonistic cruelty. I do not forsake Artemis lightly. I observe, Lieutenant, and I learn, and when I have, I make the most logical choice. Very rarely is it a kind choice, and very rarely do I enjoy it, but I follow it all the same. This is one of them, and whether or not you understand the full scope of it, the fact of the matter remains the same. You have committed treason against Olympus, and now the consequences come calling."

"We are on a quest!" Zoë snapped, fury shaking her words. "Sanctioned by the fates! You cannot interfere!"

"Couldn't." Hermes finally spoke up, and Zoe's gaze turned to him. He looked as grim as ever, or grimmer still. "We couldn't interfere until Zeus himself ordered us to. This should tell you exactly how serious this is, that even the king of the gods would defy Fate."

"And you would obey him on this?" Zoe spat, but this time there was something desperate to her rage. "You would also sacrifice Lady Artemis out of fear."

Annabeth couldn't blame her for the suicidal impudence or the despair. The quest was over - they couldn't escape one Olympian, much less two. It was so far out of their hands that even trying would be the height of stupidity, and with her mother right there, they couldn't even hope to negotiate.

It was over.

And Hermes knew it too, because he didn't look angry

"Girl, this last century had been one entire pile of shit after the other. I've sacrificed enough in the last decade to drive you insane a hundred times over." He chuckled ruefully, bitterly. "At this point, goddess or no, Artemis is just another name on the moirai-damned list. Now let's get this over with."

His caduceus lit up with a sharp, viridian glow, and he raised it towards Zoë-

There was a burst of light, and Hermes reared back as Apollo and Ares materialised standing between them.

Or, Apollo did at least, his armour tarnished and banged up, and bleeding golden ichor from a cut across his brow, but otherwise fine for the count.

Ares, though?

When the god of war landed in a crumpled heap at Apollo's feat, he did so stiffly, as if paralysed and incapable of movement. Worse still, his skin was black as rot and covered in boils, with poisonous green foam bubbling out of his mouth and eyes the colour of pond scum, weeping trails of coagulated pus and coloured slime.

Hermes swore violently and reared back even further, looking nauseous. "What did you do to him?"

"Nothing less than he deserved," Apollo smirked cruelly, the glow to his skin savage in it's intensity. "Everyone sees my sun chariot, my poetry, and my bow, and they forget that I'm the god of plagues as well."

He aimed a particularly vicious kick to Ares's side, who heaved with the blow but remained immobilised, his face locked in an expression of clear and utter agony.

"This little masterpiece? One part bubonic plague, one part Spanish influenza, a pinch of gangrene, a few more bits and pieces mixed together, and then all of it multiplied by... oh, let's be safe and say ten thousand." Apollo's eyes flickered to Hermes and then to Athena as he hefted his sword between "He'll burn through it sooner or later. Until then, back off, brother, sister, or you're next."

"Apollo." A spear appeared in Athena's grip, though she didn't heft it in the sun god's direction yet. "You court calamity."

"And you court my rage." Apollo snarled, his glow growing brighter, the air growing warmer. "Ask the muscle headed fool how that's going for him."

"These questers won't be leaving this yard, Apollo. The council won't have it."

"You mean Father won't have it."

"Do you believe there's a difference?"

At that, Apollo actually laughed. The sound made Annabeth's eardrums scream. "If there was, things would look a damn sight better than they do right now."

There was a tense silence as the gods assessed one another, and Annabeth and the six slowly, without even consciously realising it, inched back.

"This is bad." Bianca whimpered under her breath. "This is so bad."

Understatement, thy name is Bianca Di Angelo. This wasn't bad, it was lethal. They barely survived the opening salvo of two gods clashing - three was a death sentence in every way.

"I think I finally understand that line of the prophecy," Luna whispered, so low that Annabeth barely heard her. Her head was lolling to the side, and she looked like she was hanging on to consciousness by sheer force of will alone. "The daughter's strife, to invoke death... Father, please."

"Apollo." Hermes leaned forward. "Don't do this. You can't hope to best us both."

"You are outnumbered." Athena stepped forward. "Surrender. You have no allies."

Apollo bared his teeth like a beast and crouched, and Annabeth's breath shuddered in her lungs.

Right as it became clear that the gods were going to charge, right as Apollo was about to swing his sword, the air changed.

The heat was replaced by a powerful chill, the wind calmed and died, and a powerful, tangible presence dropped down on all of them like an anvil of impossible weight.

"He has me."

All three Olympians stiffened and turned as the fourth god manifested beside Apollo - and he was a god, for there was no other explanation for the power Annabeth could feel roiling against her very bones as it washed over all seven mortals and stole the breath out of them.

He was draped in a cloak of darkness, standing lean and muscular, with a regal face, honey-gold eyes, and black hair flowing down his shoulders. His skin was the colour of teakwood, and his dark wings (Annabeth barely batted an eye at the sight) glimmered in shades of blue, black, and purple.

"Thanatos." Hermes rumbled, and Athena's eyes narrowed. Zoë went very, very still at the name. "Why are you here? This is no business of yours."

"That," The God of Death spoke in a deep, melodic voice "Is what you think, little Olympian."

When he turned to the seven of them, Annabeth almost flinched at the sight of him. Thanatos was beautiful in a way that had nothing to do with the physical, not entirely. It was a timeless beauty, remote and untouchable, and laced with something she suspected she literally could not comprehend.

(And it scared her. Very, very much)

His golden eyes passed over her first, and all five of them, before settling on a beaming Luna Lovegood.

"Luna."

What?

"You came."

What?

"Of course," The god of death's eye's softened, ever so slightly. "You called, daughter."

What?

She wasn't the only one that twitched. The demigods looked just as stunned, Zoë was no better, and Hermes and Apollo both looked like they'd just taken a hammer to the face.

Athena's features had gone stock-still, the same as Zoë's.

"Death can not beget a child."

Thanatos chuckled deeply as he turned around to face her. "How very rich, coming from the maiden goddess with a brood of her own nearly a dozen strong. Perhaps even larger"

Athena didn't so much as twitch in reaction.

"You intend to interfere, then?"

"But of course. Or do you think that I will allow you to drag my child and her friends to Olympus and present them to that unsightly disaster of a king unopposed?"

"So the Underworld declares war on Olympus" Hermes spat, hefting his Caduceus.

"Ah, Olympians." Thanatos's smile was cold as ice. "So quick to assume, so quick to pounce on any perceived opportunity. My Lord Hades's affairs are his own, as is the rest of the Underworld. I come alone and for the sake of my daughter and those she's chosen to throw her lot in with. They fall under my protection by that virtue alone, and if your King takes offence to my interference, he can come forth and face me himself."

Thanatos leaned forward, and behind him, his wings expanded and shook.

"If. He. So. Dares."

"Bold words." Hermes's face twisted in a rictus at the insult. "From the god who was chained and conquered by a mortal."

Thanatos didn't show an iota of rage at the barb, unbothered by his ancient humiliation.

If anything, he seemed only amused.

"Was that the best you could do?" Hermes hissed and Athena said nothing at all. "I genuinely can not tell if you say that to insult me, or if your youth-"

"Youth!?"

"-Truly conveys your ignorance and stupidity, little page, but allow me to educate you all the same."

Thanatos stretched out a hand, and the darkness of night solidified into a spear of stygian iron, engraved with symbols Annabeth wouldn't have been able to make heads or tails of if she'd dared to pull her attention away from the gods.

(Identical to Luna's, a voice whispered in her mind)

"I am Thanatos." The god's voice rumbled with power. "Born of Nyx and Erebus I was. The Night and The Eternal Darkness gave me form, and I was old long before the Titans and their ilk walked the lands. I was ancient millennia before Zeus Olympios was but a smidgen of recalcitrant seed clogging Kronos's loins, and I will be here long after your vaunted ruler fades into the Chaos of nonexistence."

Thanatos stepped forward, and it was like all of Arizona shook with his movement.

"I am Death, little godling, and death can not strike out against the mortals it will reap. I could not rend Sisyphus's essence for his treachery for the living were not mine to seek, only to collect. But you are immortals, are you not?" Thanatos's smile was the fruit of nightmares, and Athena's spear raised immediately. The tension skyrocketed just like that. "The rules that bound and still bind me now do not apply to you, do they?"

"You think we fear you?"

"I suppose we're about to find out. No more words now, for those are wind and doubly so from Olympians. Instead, Let me show you what it means to invoke the wrath of a Primordial!"

And with that terrifying declaration, Death hefted his spear and charged.

...
​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Thanatos thundered forward, and Athena shot forward to meet his charge. Her silver chalcidian helm coalesced into being over her head, and her legendary Aegis appeared on her left arm as she hefted her spear with the other to meet Death's own.

She struck like a viper to deflect the oncoming attack. Celestial bronze met stygian iron, and the impact resonated with a haunting metallic dissonance that echoed across the heavens. The very air wailed with the power of it.

The clash of arms lasted only a beat before Thanatos plowed forward and through it with his weight and deflected her spear with such strength that the goddess's guard was blown wide open. She staggered back several paces and tried to compensate for the sudden vulnerability with a raised forearm, brandishing Aegis in all its wretched glory.

This wasn't the mere duplicate Thalia Grace wielded, but the genuine article. The original shield of millennia gone by, the first and most horrible incarnation of Medusa's head immortalized in service of the goddess who'd twisted her shape into monstrosity by the craftsmanship of Hephaestus himself. Enemy lines and armies entire had broken and fled when the wisdom Goddess carried the shield into battle, and such was the terror the gorgons facsimile inspired that even immortals did not gaze into it lightly.

Faced with it at point-blank range, Thanatos didn't even flinch.

Transferring his spear to a single hand with an almost condescending fluidity, he lashed out with his free arm in the split second it took Athena to regain her footing. The air distorted and cracked more fiercely than any thunder as his fist tunneled through it to strike at her.

Athena caught the first bone-rattling blow with Aegis, barely, but Thanatos gave her no pause the second strike was that much fiercer. The collision was so great that she was driven half a foot down and back across the splintering earth as she tried to brace for the impact, her feet carving trenches through solid stone and crushing it to fine rubble.

Shielding was a failing strategy if there ever was one, so as he reared back for the third hit, forgoing the use of his weapon entirely, she swapped tactics. With swiftness her foe did not expect of her, she weaved under the oncoming blow and flung herself to the side, allowing the motion of his overextended swing to carry him and force him to stumble ever so slightly.

The moment of imbalance was minuscule, something no mortal or demigod warrior could have hoped to capitalize on, but it was enough for Athena to reaffirm her grip on her spear and lunge forward, aiming to drive it through his unprotected back - unlike her, Thanatos wore no armor beyond his black robes.

A worthy tactic, but she'd miscalculated - she failed to account for the wings.

As she thrust her spear forward, the primordial's wings unfurled and snapped open in all their majesty. The resulting explosive atmospheric distortion was comparable to getting smacked in the face by a category-five hurricane. Gale force winds bombarded Athena, throwing off her aim and nearly blasting her off her feet entirely for her troubles. Furious air currents slipped through her helm and stabbed at her eyes like tempestuous daggers, forcing her to grunt and angle her head away on instinct.

A costly mistake.

Thanatos turned on the spot and backhanded her so savagely that her helm all but caved in like tin foil from the power of the blow. The force sent the goddess rocketing away and into a veritable mountain of scrap metal and ruined, discarded treasures.

She slammed into like a meteor, pulverizing her way through it and forcing her so deep into the ground below that the earth heaved and bucked like the waves of Poseidon's seas, flinging ruined debris up and everywhere.

The tremors could've probably been felt from the other end of the state.

Thanatos regarded his work silently and, when the goddess made no move to reemerge and return to the fight (if you could be generous enough to call it that) turned to regard the inferno raging behind him.

Like him and the little wisdom goddess, Apollo and Hermes had spared one another no words before leaping into battle. Perhaps the sons of Zeus simply knew each other too well to attempt diplomacy. Or perhaps they were simply that eager to spill blood and sow carnage at one another's expense.

Considering the capricious nature of the Olympians, Thanatos knew that the latter was just as likely as the former.

Either way, The two gods were locked into a vicious deadlock. Apollo had wreathed himself in a corona of solar flame and divine presence that reduced his surroundings to bubbling magma and burning air, and every swing of his blade had abandoned every pretense of grace and polished fluidity and replaced it with an unhinged fury befitting the worst of Tartarus's monsters instead.

That, or Ares himself, but seeing that said war deity was slumped a distance away and was currently doing his best impression of a jittery, mold-infested lemon battery courtesy of Apollo himself, perhaps it was he who fell short in that regard

Hermes met this new barbarity with a hard cruelty of his own, an inhuman snarl twisting and morphing his features into something that would have driven any mortal wretched enough to see it into the throes of madness. His Caduceus shone with bursts of red and green radiance of its own as he fought back, deflecting every savage strike with speed befitting the swiftest of Zeus's brood.

Every clash was akin to a cluster bomb going off, and the roars of the two gods were deafening beyond even that.

It truly was such an ugly display.

Ugly... and honest.

"Children." He tutted in disappointment. "So dramatic."

Still, he moved to intervene.

So long as he continued to fight on Luna's behalf, even indirectly, it would not do for Apollo to fall. For all his power, there was only so long that he could maintain a corporeal form on such short demand, after all.

He took a step towards the warring Olympians, just one, before stilling and snapping his head to the side as the spear that would bore through his headshot past at ludicrous speeds, the very edge of the leaf blade scoring a shallow cut on his cheek as it whistled past.

Black, inky shadows seeped out of the trivial wound, and he raised his hand to trace it in surprise even as the flesh knit back together nigh-instantaneously.

That she'd managed to land a blow, even one so inconsequential as that...

He dismissed the younger godlings and turned to face Athena

Her armor was tarnished and covered in pockmarks and rents, and her helm was misshapen and damaged on the one side where he'd landed his last strike. Golden ichor seeped from the grooves and rents in the ruined helm and trailed across her neck in glistening lines, but she hardly seemed to notice.

"Your fortitude is impressive, daughter of Metis," He acknowledged with a tilted head. "But it is often wiser to know when to lay down your arms and surrender to a superior foe."

"Indeed." She agreed with a level voice, not a hint of unease to her. She twisted her hand, and her spear once again coalesced in her grip from motes of light. "And it is wiser still to never underestimate a seemingly inferior opponent, lest they strike you down when you least expect it."

Well, then.

"Fair enough."

Hermes and Apollo now completely forgotten, Death and Wisdom leaped into battle once more and promptly began to rip each other apart.

...​

As to where Bianca and her friends were in the middle of all of this... they weren't.

The very second that the gods and the primordial (Luna's dad, who was also Death - what even was her life!?) had started duking it out, there were no words needed.

It was almost awing, the way the seven of them acted like a team. In perfect unison, like a well-oiled combat machine, they turned and hightailed it the Hades out of there, sprinting for their lives as the world started out and out exploding behind them.

There was nowhere to go but forward, metaphorically and very literally, and so they sprinted across plains of ruined metalwork and lost treasures in the only direction they could, running until their lungs felt like ballons stretched to the point of busting.

And then they ran some more.

"Keep going!" Luna gasped, and it was only the sheer adrenaline that kept Bianca from stopping in concern.

By that point her friend was so out of it that Zoë was half dragging, half carrying her by her side, her skin only a shade away from being milk-pale and shimmering with sweat. Her left arm was glued to her side and her shirt was damp with a nauseating amount of blood. More than even Thorn's spikes had managed to draw out of her, and there was no time to stop and treat her here.

Damn it.

She knew Luna kept shrugging it off and claiming she'd had worse, but Bianca's growing fear (that was practically her default emotion now) refused to abate.

She looked like she was about to d-

"There!" Thalia yelled, snapping her out of that line of thought (Very likely for the best).

The daughter of Zeus pointed ahead, and Bianca followed her gaze to salvation. There was a boundary there, a point where the junk seemed to pool in on itself and go no further. The edge of the dump.

The barren, empty road and desert-like surroundings beyond that would have once been uninviting and eerie, but compared to the alternative behind them, it looked like the path to blessed Nirvana (Or was it Elysium, now?)

She nearly cried at the sight. They were close, now.

(Or were they?)

She hesitated, her sprint faltering ever so slightly.

Bianca was capable of basic pattern recognition. She knew it wouldn't be that easy, because literally nothing else had been, right from the beginning. Her every instinct all but screamed it.

That's why, when things went wrong again, she wasn't even that surprised.

It still hurt, though. They had been so very close.

The only warning was the smell of ozone. It overcame them suddenly, clogging and overwhelming, heavy enough to drown in.

Thalia stopped dead.

"No."

Overhead, the darkness shifted. The stars vanished, swallowed by the tapestry of thunderclouds that stretched infinitely, from one end of the sky to the next.

"No no no!" Thalia screamed up at the dome of darkness and fury "Don't you dare-!"

And that's when the heavens were cleaved open, and Bianca finally witnessed Zeus's wrath firsthand.

The lightning nearly blinded her long before the thunder all but blew out her eardrums. When it did strike, Bianca was almost grateful for it - one second of unspeakable agony, followed by a ringing silence and an unnatural kind of peace.

But even if she could not hear, she could still see.

Even as the searing glow of the lightning dulled, she could still see the arc of crackling power that descended from above, that was still descending from above, even now, lancing not at them, but at the gods they'd left behind.

No, even that was wrong. Not gods.

God. Just the one.

Bianca did not see Thanatos and Athena. She did not see Hermes - the three may as well have been gone. Her head was fuzzy, her thoughts suddenly slow - she barely even remembered what they looked like.

But she could see Apollo, somehow, and she could see the way the lightning struck at him, the bolts burning through his chest.

She couldn't hear a thing, but she could still see the sun god scream.

It was horrifying.

Someone grabbed her arm and hauled her to her feet - had she fallen? She hadn't even noticed that all seven of them had been blasted clean off of their feet.

Luna - of course it was Luna - was pulling her up despite her ruinous wounds, her eyes blown open in panic as they met hers. Her mouth moved silently, but Bianca couldn't hear a thing.

Her gaze was still on the screaming god that only she seemed to be able to see - the lightning did not relent, white and blue streams arcing over his skin and crumpling it like paper. Flecks of glowing gold were rising off Apollo's writhing flesh, as though it was scorching the luster off his skin.

Could the god of the sun burn?

Yes, he can.

Such was the ordeal of the last forty-eight hours and the strangeness of everything going on in her head at the moment that Bianca didn't even question the strange voice that slithered into her mind, or even pause to consider whether or not listening to it was a good idea.

That's bad, she thought sluggishly.

Indeed. And you and your friends will suffer far worse than he if you don't escape.

That's even bad-er, she thought back, and resisted the urge to giggle hysterically.

You can save them. Him too. You can save all of them.

Now that sounded like a good idea. But Bianca had no idea what to do.

I can show you. Reach below, child.

Luna was tugging at her shoulders frantically, but Bianca wasn't even aware of her existence as she dropped to her knees and began scrabbling at the junk at her feet, tossing aside useless garbage and priceless treasure by the handfuls in her search for... something.

She found it when at last her hand reached solid stone. Her fingers traced the triangular symbol perfectly carved into the earth.

(Δ)
​

A Greek delta, Bianca realized, even if she didn't know how she knew. More importantly, she could feel power thrumming through and beneath it, power and potential, and she knew instantly that this was their way out.

But how?

Open it, the voice coaxed her, all that lies below is yours to command by right of blood. Open it now.

Bianca pushed down on the Delta, and it lit up with a blue glow.

Two things happened then.

One, the fog that had been dulling her senses like a double dose of magical helium straight to the brain dissipated instantly. Sound and clarity and terror came rushing back in, and she suddenly realized that people were screaming at her to move.

Luna, Zoe, Annabeth, Percy, even Nico. Especially Nico.

Everyone was screaming.

And second, Bianca had just enough time to realize that, to realize that something horrible was about to happen before the ground at her feet disintegrated and she plunged into the abyss waiting below the surface.

She screamed as fell, hand gripping the edge of the splintering earth in a desperate attempt to hold on, nothing but open air and darkness stretching out beneath her as the chasm she'd unwittingly torn open began to grow, expanding outwards beginning to swallow everything around them.

"Bianca!"

"I'm sorry!" She wailed. What had she done!? "I didn't mean to! I saw Apollo and I saw you and I- I thought- I thought I was saving you!"

Bianca couldn't see anyone but Luna, hanging on to the ledge beside her with the very tips of her fingers, which meant that either they were behind her, or-

Or they'd fallen.

Their friends - her brother - they were gone.

Oh gods, what had she done!?

"Let go!" Luna yelled (The first time she's ever truly raised her voice) over the roar of cascading devastation - everything in their vicinity was sliding towards the chasm like quicksand surging to fill in a cavernous depression. "Bianca, let go, or we'll be crushed!"

The words were wasted - Bianca's hands were already slipping, her hold breaking on both physical hold and her very sanity. It had all caught up at last- all the stress, all the harrowing fear of the past two days that had been squeezed into a box and compressed by virtue of Luna's presence came rocketing back out, ripping rationality to shreds.

She barely felt it when she finally, too lost in her waking nightmare to acknowledge her fingers losing their hold.

What did it matter? She'd lost everything else.

She'd destroyed everything else.

No, the voice that had caused this whispered in her ear, one final time, You made a choice, as all who come to one of my crossroads must. Now fall, and walk the path you paved yourself, daughter of Hades.

The last thing she'd heard was Luna's voice, raging helplessly against the inevitable.

"ACCIO BIANCA DI ANGELO! ACCIO PHOEBUS APOLLO!"

And then they fell into darkness, and Bianca knew no more.

"NO!"

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas, and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Percy woke up slowly, nursing the mother of all headaches.

Naturally, his day got worse from there.

Crawling back to consciousness was hard. He wasn't usually a heavy sleeper - demigod dreams and all the omens and general nastiness that came with them tended to take the fun right out of zonking out, but this time around his mind seemed to cling to that dozy state of half-wakefulness that came right before the real thing and damn near refused to let go.

Eventually, he managed to blink his eyes open and dimly determined that he was flat on his back, in utter discomfort, and lying somewhere dark and unrecognizable.

He sighed deeply.

Yeah, this seemed about right.

It said a lot about his divine train wreck of a life that waking up and finding himself in strange, unfamiliar places while feeling like death warmed over wasn't exactly new. Heck, after three years and just as many equally deadly quests in this Greek hero shindig, it was well on its way to becoming a time-honored tradition, and not the fun kind either.

Which shouldn't ever be a surprise, not even a little. Percy wasn't always the smartest person in the room, but when it came to the gods and their messes, he didn't have to be to know that none of it was ever the fun kind.

Still, expecting the messes was one thing. Dealing with them was a whole other thing.

'Where?-' He tried to think dazedly, straining to remember what and/or where he'd gotten up to this time around before he made the terrible mistake of trying to sit up and immediately got smacked in the face with a tidal wave of pure misery.

Everything hurt. His bones creaked and muscles ached like they'd been trampled by a herd of rampaging centaurs. Every one of his organs from the neck down felt like they'd been replaced with paper maché and bruises, and the less said about the unholy pounding in his skull and between his eyes, the better.

"Di immortals." Hie rasped disbelievingly, throat dryer than course-grit sandpaper. Swallowing barely dimmed the sensation behind his tongue. It burned like he'd been gargling Greek fire. "What hit me?"

"About a hundred million tons of scrap metal and dumpster refuse." A familiar voice answered. "More or less."

He felt his eyes widen and he rolled onto his side, ignoring the way his everything screamed in protest of the sudden motion.

"Annabeth?"

The daughter of Athena smiled from where she was sitting slumped against a mortar-grey wall, tired but genuine, and raised her hand in a half-hearted salute.

"The one and only, seaweed brain."

The wave of relief that washed over him at the sight of her was practically a trained response after all these years. It was a heady feeling, and Percy let himself bask in it for a beat, let it dull the sharp edge of exhaustion and soreness that he could still almost taste, because every injury he'd ever taken on a quest always seemed to be competing to outdo the last and he'd take whatever break he could get.

No good thing lasts forever, though, or even very long at all with his luck, and it only took him about five seconds more to get over the sudden relief and the lingering haze from his not-so-blissful blackout.

He looked at Annabeth, really looked at her, and he felt his stomach drop. Even in the relative dark, she looked awful. Her skin was a little too pale, her eyes were a little too haggard, and there was a particularly vicious-looking ring of bruises across her forehead and trailing down the left side of her face. The right side wasn't half as bruised, but it made up for it with an ugly vertical gash trailing from her cheek and up, the skin a vile green at the torn edges and visibly inflamed. The wound was so bad that half her blonde curls on the side of the cut had gone reddish-brown with dried, crusted blood.

Gods.

It was the most awful state he'd ever seen Annabeth in, ever. Not even their time in the sea of monsters came close, and they'd survived a literal explosion point blank and sent days out on the sea, one step removed from sea-creature bait. She looked like she'd gone ten around with the entirety of the Ares cabin - or maybe just Clarrise on one of her off days with no one to referee.

"What happened to you?" He asked, horrified. "What happened to us?"

"I have no idea, Percy." Now that he was paying attention, even her voice sounded off. Woozy and off-kilter. "Bianca did something, I think, and then we fell."

"Fell?"

And then it all came back to him.

The prophecy, the quest, the escape, the gods.

And the lighting in the end right before the ground gave out and... nothing.

Nada. Zilch.

(Or was it Zeus?)

"Fell." He repeated, a bit dumbly, because it was either that or he'd start screaming and probably ruin his vocal cords for good "Fell where?"

"I don't know." Annabeth closed her eyes, and wasn't it telling, how miserable she sounded? "We must have been separated in the fall, and by the time I woke up, it was only the three of us. I don't know where the others are - I don't even know where we are."

...

Well. Well.

Ignoring the hollow feeling clawing at his gut, he panned his eyes across the room - no, not a room. This was the most obvious dungeon Percy had ever seen in his life. Bleak grey walls, cracked and uneven ground, no windows and no doors and only a single wax torch for lighting, and were those rusty chains hagging down from-!?

He stopped. "Wait, did you just say the three of us?"

Because there was him, Annabeth made two, so-

"Hi, Percy."

He turned on the spot, once again ignoring the pain arcing through his nerves to find Nico huddled behind him, hugging his knees and leaning against the wall across from him, inches away from a ridiculously massive door of burnished celestial bronze.

How had he missed him? How far off his game was he?

Nico gave a brave attempt at a smile when he stared, but it didn't reach his eyes and the wobble to his lips gave the game away. He didn't look anywhere near as banged up as Annabeth did, but that was about the only good thing he could say - the poor kid was so obviously scared out of his mind it hurt to look at.

Half their friends (and Zoë) were gone, the three of them were locked up the gods knew where and since he and Annabeth had no chance of lasting in a long fight with the state they were both in, that meant...that their backup was a ten-year-old who'd held a sword once in his life, in a mock-up war game, and never even used it.

Percy looked away. His head felt like it was filled with static, trying to put the pieces together in a way that didn't spell out a death sentence at least one of them, probably all of them, and failing harder than he ever had at any of his pre-algebra classes.

(And he'd killed one of his teachers that one time.)

"Fuck."

"Percy."

"Sorry." He muttered, entirely on reflex. He'd never been more sorry in his life. "Slipped out. Nico, pretend you didn't hear that."

"...okay."

"Right." His eyes flickered up to Annabeth. "Got a plan, wisegirl?"

"I don't have anything to work with. I'll figure something out when we know more. Until then?" Her smile was about as blank and dead as he was starting to feel on the inside. "Pray."

If that was meant to be a morbid joke, it fell flatter that paper.

Pray to who?

Most of the Olympians were out for their heads and the only one who clearly wasn't had been barbecued alla Zeus right in front of them and was nowhere to be seen. Luna's father was... something entirely out of Percy's frame of reference and Annabeth's mother and Hermes had been about five seconds from imprisoning them herself before it all went sideways in the most explosive way possible.

And his dad...

Percy swallowed

Poseidon had been, as always, nowhere to be seen. And this time, it hurt a lot worse than it ever did before.

CLANG

The three of them twisted and jumped in alarm when the door frame shook and rattled ominously, the sound of bolts sliding out of place

Nico shot to Percy's side so quickly he almost bowled them both over, and not a second too soon. The door swung in on its hinges, and searing light and noise thundered in.

A centaur in mismatched bronze armor stood in the doorway, eyes roving over the three of them sharply. Behind him, roars and chants sounded out, louder and louder until they all blended in a cacophony that reminded him of a sports stadium in the middle of a wild game.

"You're awake. Earlier than expected too, with those injuries." The centaur grinned, teeth barred maliciously. "Good. That means you're strong."

"Yeah, we are." Percy didn't stagger when he straightened, but it was a torturously near thing. He pulled Riptide out his pocket and uncapped it, raising his sword in a stance a hundred times more confident than he felt. "Now who the hell are you?"

The centaur didn't look the least bit bothered. If anything, he just looked even more excited.

Thrilled, even.

"I am the herald. You are to follow me. Now"

That...answered nothing at all. Typical.

"Where?" Percy took half a step back and bent at the knees, just a little. "And why?"

"Because my lord is courteous, and offers all strays an opportunity to greet their host in person. So you will follow me, demigods, and I will present you to him at once." The centaur's grin widened until it was nothing short of demented. "And then Lord Anteus the Earth-born will decide whether to grant you the privilege of battling in the Arena and earning blood and glory among the challengers, or kill you where you stand and claim your skulls in dedication to his father, the mighty Poseidon!"

...

"...What?"

...​

"What the shit?" Thalia stared harder. "What the actual shit?"

"Eloquent."

When she woke up, she found a stranger looming over her. An older man, with short gray hair and a clipped gray beard. He'd been dressed in black mountain-climbing pants and a bronze breastplate over a dark shirt, and he'd smiled in greeting the second her eyes had focused on him.

"Hello. My name is Quintus."

Naturally, she did the reasonable thing and kicked him right in the face.

Being the first thing an unconscious demigod saw when they woke up disoriented from battle and injury was a good way to get stabbed, maimed, or just plain killed.

Still, this... Quintus had taken the hit with as good a grace as anyone could have. He hadn't kicked back or drawn a weapon and had let Thalia recover at her own pace, which was probably better than what she would have offered him had their roles been reversed.

She had been begrudgingly impressed.

And suspicious as all hell.

Never mind that she'd woken up in some kind of decommissioned forge with a mouthful of ambrosia being forced down her throat and Luna lying next to her, as equally dead to the world as she had been.

No demigod liked being vulnerable. It rankled.

That had been bad enough. But this...

"Where are my friends? And what is that." She whispered, pointing a finger at the... form of golden light and shimmering shapes that was stretched out on floor before them, the dull glow growing brighter and brighter by the second.

"Who," Quintus replied, gazing at her with familiar grey eyes. "Not what. Who. And the answer would be Apollo. It appears that your father truly has no originality."

"What?" The word burst out of her, not a little helplessly.

In response, Quintus shrugged.

Shrugged!

"Apollo has disobeyed Zeus," The name made something in Thalia howl. " previously, and the oh-so-just King of Olympus has punished the impudence by stripping him of his immortality on two separate occasions, each thousands of years apart. I suspect that this was supposed to be take three, so to speak, only the process was interrupted.

Thalia processed that, apart of her registering the disdain in his words, before filtering it out just like damn near everything about this mess. Instead, she'd asked-

"What does that mean? What's happening to him?"

And how bad is it?, was the unspoken addition.

"I have no idea, and while that is refreshing and I'd just love to linger behind and watch an Olympian receive some of the comeuppance they so richly deserve, I'd rather not take run the risk of disintegrating should his condition grow... out of hand."

"!?"

Whatever expression her face made right then, hade him smile.

Thalia hated that.

"No more talk now. You can have your answers in due time, daughter of Zeus. For now, it's time for us to go." And then he up and hefted Luna into his arms before looking at her expectantly. "Unless you have any more urgently pressing questions?"

She glared at him furiously.

Was he serious!?

"Ye-!"

"No, no, sorry, I didn't make myself clear. That was an entirely rhetorical question. It's time to go."

And then he turned and began to march away without another word.

Thalia stared after him in disbelief, before quickly breathing in and out.

Once.

Twice.

Three times.

Then something in her mind finally snapped, and the daughter of Zeus well and truly lost it.

"SON OF A BITCH!"

She lunged.

...​

Bianca curled up in the darkness and cried.

It wasn't long ago that she'd woken up in the tunnel, covered in dust and dirt and utterly alone. She'd stumbled about, dimply noting the grey, outdated walls and the pool of murky water by her feet that seemed far too deep to be natural and tried to look for help.

It hadn't taken her long to remember what had happened, and what she'd done, and that's about the point where she broke down in tears and utterly lost it.

Nico. Luna. Annabeth. Zoë. Percy

She'd lost them all. She'd killed-

She choked on a sob and curled up deeper against the wall she was leaning on, lost in her own despair.

"Moo"

...

"Moo."

What?

Slowly, she lifted her head off the ground and stared, because she hadn't just heard a cow. She hadn't. Homicidal monsters and greek gods or no, there were lines.

And yet...

Sticking out of the pool of water not ten feet away from her was a cow. A cow's head, precisely, with faint scaled skin the color of blueberries and black, deep eyes completely lacking in malice.

Bianca stared with tear tracks running down her face, hopelessly lost and confused as the creature continued calling.

"Moo."

Abruptly, it dove beneath the water that shouldn't have been deep enough to hold it and resurface just as quickly, shaking its head every which way and nearly splattering her in water.

And when she raised her head again, her jaw dropped.

Because the cow was holding something in its mouth, balanced between its teeth.

A familiar silver bow.

"That's... That's Zoë's"

The realization was blinding.

"You know where she is."

"Moo."

She didn't know how the cow (the literal cow) managed to make a noise of agreement, but it somehow did.

And for the first time since she'd woken up in this nightmare, Bianca dared to hope.

"Can you show me the way?"

And somehow, it did.

...​

As always, leave your comments and ideas and if you don't like it, please be courteous.

 

[Firewillreign]

Percy grit his teeth as centaur led the three of them out of the cell and into a long stretching tunnel with bricked walls and a low-hanging ceiling. The lighting was terrible - a few torches hung on the bricks to either side of them, but the flames were too low to do much of anything.

"Quickly now, little heroes." The centaur said lips pulled in a twisted smirk "The master awaits his new entertainment."

Percy considered making a move then, just to be spiteful. He hated it when monsters started to gloat - the general smugness just rubbed salt into the whole 'I'm going to try to gut and probably eat you now' wound, and the fact that most of the ones he'd tangled with tended to have terrible dental hygiene and often had bits of gods know what stuck between their teeth didn't make things any better.

He was still battered and bruised and aching all over, but he'd fought things bigger and meaner than a lone centaur on worse odds. He could feel Riptide pressed against the inside of his jean pocket just fine, and bad shape or no, three feet of celestial bronze at relatively close quarters was a great equalizer.

Then Nico stumbled at his side, and Percy abruptly remembered the real problem - the ten-year-old anvil of a handicap weighing him down.

Percy's eyes flickered to Annabeth on his left, and she shook her head ever so slightly.

Not now, the look in her eyes said, and Percy clenched his fists and hissed a curse under his breath so nasty his mom would have made him gargle soap three times a day for a week just to wash it out if she'd heard.

Neither he nor Annabeth were good enough to fight their way ahead, watch each other's backs and cart Nico to safety with them out of here.

They didn't even know where here was, or if the others were here as well - there was no way they could take the risk.

Damn it.

He forced himself to exhale and turned back to the centaur, whose smirk had grown into a full-blown gleeful grin, complete with - yeah, Percy called it - gnarly yellow teeth.

He'd probably caught that entire exchange and understood exactly what it meant.

"A wise choice. And right on time, too - our escort has arrived."

In front of them, the sound of heavy footsteps came closer. Two huge forms appeared out of the gloom — eight-foot-tall Laistrygonian giants with red eyes and fangs, dressed in pieces of battle-scraped bronze armor and leather cuirasses beneath them.

Somehow, from the hungry looks they gave him, Percy got the impression that these guys weren't on Larry the poultry-extrodinaire's christmas card list.

"Now march."

...

Up ahead, he could see bronze doors. They were about ten feet tall and emblazoned with a pair of crossed swords. From behind them came a muffled roar, like from a crowd.

"Oh, yes," The centaur sounded euphoric in a way that had Percy's stomach roiling - Chrion and the party ponies were a whole other ball game compared to this lunatic. "The games have just begun - the master always loves a fresh fighter."

"Who's your host?" Percy asked.

The centaur barred his teeth in delight "Oh, you'll see. You may very well earn his favor, Percy Jackson. He's your brother, after all."



"My what?"

He wasn't surprised that he knew his name - on some days, it seemed that every half-monstrous creature that ever crawled out of Tartarus knew who he was, but brother?

Immediately he thought of Tyson, but that was impossible.

One of the giants pushed past them then and opened the doors, letting light and cheers rush over them. Then he turned around and picked up Annabeth by her shirt and said, "You stay here."

"Hey!" she protested, but the guy was twice her size and could likely break her in half in the time it took Percy to lunge for him. The other had already put his hand around Nico's neck in silent warning.

"Go on then, demigod. Entertain us. We'll wait here with your friends to make sure you behave yourself as befitting the master's honored brother."

The way he said 'honored' sounded more like 'cursed'. Or maybe 'screwed' - those were almost one and the same.

Percy seethed, but there wasn't a damned thing he could do but play along, and everybody there knew it.

"I got this."

She nodded as much as she could with the grip the Laistrogonian had on her, lips pursing and eyes set in a grim, understanding slant. "Watch your back."

Nico was pale as milk and stiffer than a plank of wood, but he still tried to smile.

"Be careful, Percy."

Then the centaur urged him toward the doorway with a forceful wave of his hand, and Percy walked out onto the floor of an arena.

...​

It wasn't the largest arena he'd ever been in, but considering the whole place was enclosed and almost definitely far underground, it was impressive - and that wasn't a compliment.

The dirt floor was circular, just big enough that you could drive a car around the rim if you pulled it really tight. In the center of the arena, a fight was going on between a giant hellhound - easily thrice the size of the one that had attacked him on his first year at Camp, and a dracaena.

Except for the size, the hellhound was more or less exactly what would have expected - a canine wall of bristling dark fur, red eyes and a mouth full of fangs nearly the size of his forearm, but it was the first time he'd seen a dracaena this close.

She wore bronze armor that stopped at her waist, and would've had a beautiful face, except her tongue was forked and her eyes were yellow with black slits for pupils. Below that, where her legs should've been were two massive snake trunks, mottled bronze and green.

She kept moving by a combination of slithering and lunging side to side as if she were on living skis, and she looked terrified. He'd seen and been in enough fights to realize she was trying to flank the hellhound and trying to keep its snapping jaws at bay with thrusts of a javelin, but it kept batting the clumsy jabs away with a paw wider than Percy's head was and snarling rabidly.

And the horribly one-sided battle wasn't the worst of it - not even close. Percy pulled his eyes off it for one second to look at the rest of the arena and nearly seized in panic.

"You've got to be kidding me."

The first tier of seats was twelve feet above the arena floor. Plain stone benches wrapped all the way around, and every seat was full. There were giants, dracaenae, centaurs, and stranger things: bat-winged demons and creatures that seemed half human and half you name it—bird, reptile, insect, mammal - and those were just the ones he could vaguely recognize.

But the creepiest things were the skulls. The arena was full of them. They ringed the edge of the railing. Three-foot-high piles of them decorated the steps between the benches. They grinned from pikes at the back of the stands and hung on chains from the ceiling like horrible chandeliers. Some of them looked very old—nothing but bleached-white bone. Others looked a lot fresher - still heavy with flesh and gore and crawling with writhing maggots-

Gods.

He looked away as his stomach roiled - and got a picture-perfect look at the most damning display of all.

In the middle of all this, proudly displayed on the side of the spectator's wall, was something that made no sense to him—a green banner with the trident of Poseidon in the center.

What was that doing in a horrible place like this?

What did his dad have to do with a horrible place like this?

Sitting below the banner, on a raised, elaborate diseased and in a seat of honor was the largest giant Percy had ever seen before. He must've been fifteen feet tall, easy, and so wide he took up three seats. He wore only a loincloth, like a sumo wrestler. His skin was leathery and dark red and tattooed with blue wave designs.

And his eyes? Black, beady, and naturally, focused dead center on Percy.

When he took a step back and twitched for Riptide in his pocket, still hyper-aware of the other two giants at his back, the one on the throne grinned nastily and turned back down to the fight beneath them.

Right in time for it to end.

The dracaena made to stab at it again. The hellhound slipped past the blow and clamped down on the shaft and heaved with its weight before pulling, yanking the snake woman off her feet and flinging her away like a rag doll. The javelin was knocked out of her grip right as she hit the dirt.

The hellhound snarled victoriously and advanced, hackles raising. The dracaena writhed in fear, but she couldn't get up. One of her arms was badly mangled.

She met Percy's eyes pleadingly "Help!"

He made to move, but a rough hand gripped his shoulder.

"If you value your friends' lives," the same damned centaur said, "you won't interfere. This isn't your fight yet, Jackson. Wait your turn."

Percy clenched his fists, trying to think of something, but it was already too late - The hellhound pounced.

He closed his eyes right as its jaws snapped shut and the arena was filled with the sound of wet, heavy tearing. When he opened them again, the dracaena was gone, disintegrated to dust that poured out from between the hellhound's teeth like golden sand.

The monsters in the stands roared their approval. On cue, a gate opened at the opposite end of the stadium and the hellhound bounded out in triumph.

That's when the red giant rose from his seat and raised his arms. Standing upright, he looked like the world's most monstrous sumo wrestler.

"A poor fighter, but good entertainment!" he bellowed, and the crowd surged with the words "Yet still nothing I haven't seen before! It is time for a new contestant."

He raised an arm and gestured to Percy.

"Mine own brother, Perseus Jackson, stands among us now! Perhaps he will prove mettle worthy of a child of the sea god!"

Percy stared like an idiot.

Tyson was one thing, but this guy?

"How are you a son of Poseidon?"

Which, in hindsight might have been the wrong thing to say, because the giant's expression darkened dangerously.

"I am his favorite son! His truest and most dedicated!" He boomed. "I am Anteus the giant-born! Behold, my temple to the Earthshaker, built from the skulls of all those I've killed in his name! Afford me the proper respect, or yours may soon join them!"

Percy stared in fresh horror at all the skulls—hundreds of them, at least—and the banner of Poseidon.

How could this be a temple for his dad? His dad was a nice guy - or, he was decent, as far as Olympians went.

He'd never ask for a Father's Day card, much less somebody's skull.

So where is he now?, a treacherous voice whispered at the back of his head. Where's Poseidon now, when you need him once again?

"Percy!" Annabeth yelled behind him. "His mother is Gaea! Gae—"

Her Laistrygonian captor clamped his hand over her mouth and cut her off, but Percy heard enough.

His mother is Gaea. The earth goddess. Annabeth was trying to tell him that was important, but Percy didn't know why. Maybe just because the guy had two godly parents. That would make him even harder to kill.

Because clearly, being fifteen feet tall with biceps bigger than basketballs wasn't enough of an advantage already.

"I've heard many a tale of you, fellow son of the sea!" Anteus smiled down from his dias. "Enemies and Allies old and new have sent word to me on your behalf. To kill you, to capture you - even to spare you and aid you on your way!"

What?

"But neither god nor Titan can command the fate of one who has not proved himself in this arena! Only I decide your fate! And so I will!"

Anteus raised a hand, and the gate at the end of the area rose again. This time, an entire horde of monsters marched out of the dark. Dracaena, giants, and some creature that looked like the unholy cross of a seal, a dog and something he didn't even want to imagine - and there were nearly a dozen of them all in all.

"Now, what weapons will you choose?"

"You're crazy, Antaeus," Percy said, but his eyes never left the horde coming his way. "If you think this is a good tribute, you know nothing about Poseidon."

"Ha!" Anteus sneered contemptuously, but he didn't rise to the bait. "Prove your worth and then we may speak, brother. Else your fellow half-bloods will join you in death and all your skulls sacrificed in glory to our father. Now arm yourself! Will you have axes? Shields? Nets? Flamethrowers?"

Percy pulled Riptide out of his pocket.

"Just my sword."

Laughter erupted from the monsters, but immediately Riptide appeared in his hands, and some of the voices in the crowd turned nervous. The bronze blade glowed with a faint light.

Anteus raised his hand for silence, and the arena held its breath.

"Round one!" The giant called gleefully. "Start!"

And just like that, the monsters surged toward him

Dad, He thought - prayed, as quickly as he ever had before, I know you're not supposed to interfere - and I know this quest is probably making things worse, but I'm in a really bad spot and I could use a sign right about now.

Anything.

...

There was no answer.

Somehow, Percy wasn't surprised. Something cold and bitter curled up in his gut, just before the first giant lunged for him with a sword he promptly began fighting for his life.

...​

"Well." Luna Lovegood opened her mouth, paused and closed it again as she visibly tried to collect herself. "Well. This is... a mess."

Thalia shot her a look so flat if it had edges it would have cut air.

"You don't friggin say."

"I don't often, no." The other girl agreed, and the daughter of Zeus - and what a riot that turned out to be - twitched so hard blue-white sparks began to flicker between her fingertips. "I like to look on the bright side. Fewer wrackspurts that way.."

See, ignoring whatever that was at the end, that right there was the kind of holier-than though bullshit answer that would ordinarily have Thalia itching to stab someone.

Except, she got the distinct and entirely annoying impression that Lovegood meant it, which was almost as annoying and somehow the least of their problems right now.

"Except." Luna staggered to her feet and nearly tumbled over again. Thalia took a step forward to brace her. "I don't think there is a bright side."

"Quite."

Both of them turned to look at Quintus, who'd crossed his arms and kept to the far end of the abandoned forge ever since Thalia had made it clear she was one wrong move from running him through with her spear and lighting him up like a lamppost.

She'd already tried to, and she would have kept at it too, except that the man had offered ambrosia and nectar for both of them and still hadn't put one toe out of line yet.

"Well, metaphorically of course." The man craned his neck and gestured to the tunnel where they'd left Apollo behind, where the golden glow "I'm afraid that the god of the sun losing control of his material avatar and unraveling is going to be very bright. Cataclysmically so."

That again.

"You were serious." Thalia pursed her lips. "Apollo's about to explode."

"In a sense, yes."

Right. Naturally.

Why the fuck wouldn't he?

"How big an explosion?" She demanded. "Can we outrun it?

Because she was not dying here, like this, with Annabeth, Percy and all the others missing.

She was not dying at her bastard of a father's hand, no matter how indirectly - the great prophecy was one thing, but if the three fates thought they could do her in like this they could fuck right off and take their accursed miserable strings with them.

And Quintus shrugged. "You could walk out of this chamber with me and take five steps in any direction, and you'd find yourself clear of any danger. Unless you know exactly what you're doing, distance means very little in the Labyrinth."

The name niggled at her mind, but she didn't get to voice the obvious question - Luna beat her to it.

"I guess you'd know best, wouldn't you?" The other girl had finally pulled her concerned gaze off the literally melting god long enough to pin the shady ally of circumstance with a look. "Quintus."

There was a long pause, and the man abruptly went ramrod straight. Thalia snarled on instinct and hefted her spear.

"You know."

"I do." Luna seemed to understand whatever context it was that flew clear over Thalia's head. "My father makes a habit of teaching me all about the most notorious living souls determined to fly the final coup. You're near the top of that list."

"... I see." He whispered. "So it is true. I'd hardly believed it. Luna Lovegood... the daughter of Thanatos."

Luna pursed her lips. "That secret spread quickly."

"Secrets often do. And the more valuable they are, the faster they travel." The man regarded her grimly. "Of course, having the right informants helps too. And I have plenty - there are a great many forces searching for you, Miss Lovegood. You, and all your fellow questors."

"Is that how you found us?" Thalia growled, mostly to hide the fact that nearly every word in this conversation was loaded with implications that were flying clear over her head.

"I would have thought you of all people would seek to avoid me," Luna said. "He might not interfere on principle, but even then I wouldn't have expected you to risk drawing my father's conscious attention."

"I wouldn't and I'm not. I heard of you, yes, but I stumbled upon you entirely on accident." Quintus smiled humorlessly. "And believe it or not, at the moment your existence is the least stir-worthy. Your purpose, on the other hand..."

Luna inhaled sharply. "The prophecy."

"'Twelve at last pay the greatest price.'" Quintus hummed in agreement. "The reckoning of the Olympians has come at last. Even those who would ordinarily be skeptical over it harbor few doubts - not after that embarrassing display in Hephastus's dumping grounds. Now the beasts are crawling out of the depths to watch the hammer fall, and it promises to quite the display."

"Is that why you helped us?" Luna asked softly.

"Perhaps. I certainly want nothing in return, if that's what you're worried about." Quintus shrugged. "I will not interfere in your quest. Either you fail, and the status quo remains the same, or you succeed, and things get interesting."

There was nothing good about the way he said interesting

"Either way, I have no further stake in this game."

There was another low, meaningful pause.

"Though I suppose I can offer you one last, out of the goodness of my heart." He smiled wearily. "I expect you'll want a way to navigate out of the Labyrinth?"

"No."

Quintus blinked. "No?"

"No," Luna said firmly. Then she reached over, startled Thalia "We're going to help Apollo."

They were going to do what now?

Sure enough, she began to cart Thalia away towards the tunnel where they'd left the collapsed sun god, the harsh blinding glare stinging at their eyes.

Until Luna whispered something under her breath, and a wave of something settled over Thalia's skin. The glow - the part of it she could see - went dim enough to be bearable.

"There's nothing you can do," Quintus called behind them as they left him, but he didn't try to follow them.

Inside, they found Apollo. - Or at least the flickering body that should be Apollo, sprawled across the stone and shifting. With every blink, the features of the body melted and warped into new proportions - old, young, tall, short. His body shivered and pulsed and changed like wet clay that refused to dry.

"Zeus must have been trying to get him out of the way and keep him there. Only he didn't have the time to do it properly and I dragged him in after us as we fell." Luna dropped to her knees beside him. "This is ugly - It's as if his mind's been shattered and he doesn't have enough left to put himself back together."

...

What in Tartarus were they supposed to do about that?

"There's a spell," Luna murmured in answer to her silent question. "A last-ditch effort. Ordinarily I wouldn't dare try this on any immortal, much less a god, but we need him if we want to find the others in the Labyrinth, and we'll need him even more if the other gods come after us again."

Thalia had almost forgotten about that.

"That sounds good." She turned to look at Luna warily. "Not safe. Are you sure this is going to work?"

"Hardly." Luna said bluntly "I'm about to delve into the mind of an Olympian to put his psyche back together before his physical manifestation splinters and kills us all. If I make a single mistake, the sheer force of his unconscious presence will obliterate my mind and likely disintegrate my body. But I don't have any other choice."

...

Well. That was...

"I don't know what the fuck you expect me to say to that." She said, and that was the most honest she'd been all week.

"Bianca and Nico and the others are at stake, so wish me luck and guard my back until this is done." Luna smiled - or at least she tried to. the upward pull to her lips looked forced this time around. "Be wary of Quintus - I don't think he means us harm, but better safe than sorry."

And then she turned around and reached for Apollo's flickering head, ignoring the light and the heat haze shimmering off his skin.

"Legilimens."

...

Nothing happened.

Luna's hands were pressed to Apollo's head, but there was no change to him.

If anything, the heat and the light started to grow slightly worse.

Thalia cleared her throat and tried not to shift back in alarm. "Is something supposed to-"



"̸̡̺̹͚̃̑͗̀̇̕͝Ļ̴̢̼̥̝̝͈̮̫͔̑̐̈̒͐̐̈́͜͝e̵̞̦̎̑̈͆̃͋̏̓̈́̚͜ģ̴̧͈͓͉̩͍̤̩͈̒͋̍̒͌̃̍̾̊͆̊̈́i̴̢̨͕͓̫͙̯̯̬̯͗̈́̽̄̽͆͌̾͌͑̂̀̐̌̎l̴̢̛̪̙͙̞͉͈͍̮̘͚̲͙̀̀̈͐̇̊̊̒͆̄̑̕̕͜ï̴̳͔̹̬̆̓̀̂̕͘m̵̨̥͔̝̥͇̺̌̊͋͂͑̓̍̉̀̿̔e̶̢̛͌̔̍̐͋͋̊͌͘͝͝n̷͔͍̭̰̘̟̙̳̔̃͌͒̑́͘ͅš̶̯͇̦̬̞̺̺̩̺̹̭̝̜͋̏̾͋͜͠͝ͅ.̷̩͙͉͍̦́͂̿͌͝"̴̲͙̩̻̍̽̓̿͊̉̀͊̓̽͐͗



And then there was pain, white-hot and fiery and stabbed right into her brain. It was like nothing she'd ever imagined in her worst nightmare, and Thalia screamed and screamed and burned as she was hooked and pulled along into the fiery ocean that was the fallen god's mind.

...​

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