Author's Note: The wait for this installment of Piece of Darkness was a lot shorter, wasn't it? I have it all written, so you'll be getting a weekly update. There's twenty chapters, so you'll have a chapter a week for the next twenty weeks!

Remember, this fic is the second in a series. Piece of Darkness I - A Knight or a Pawn is the first in the series, and if you don't read that before this you'll only have a half-assed idea of what's going on.

Enjoy.

Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson. All my fanfic writings are non-profit. 'Tis all for fun.


Piece of Darkness II - Gambit


Chapter One


"Take an eye for an eye!

Turn your heart into stone!

This is all I have lived for!

This is all I have known!"

Jean Valjean, 'Les Miserables'


Play has begun.

The pieces have been prepared and set out, the players have sat down to the game, and the opening moves have been made.

So what comes next? What comes next in this terrible game of chess, a game which has brought such terrible consequences upon so many? What comes next in this story of raging darkness and flickering light?

As in any chess match, one thing inevitably follows the initial moves: the game's first gambit, when one of the players makes some sacrifice so as to gain an overall advantage.

This is the story of that gambit.


I closed the door behind me, and frowned.

Everything in our apartment seemed fine - there were no tell-tale broken windows, open doors or burning buildings - but I had a vague sense that something was amiss. My parents were both out, and I was just arriving home from the library (it was the middle of June, and I was already deep into my summer reading list), so our home was silent - eerily so.

I shook my head, shifted my bag of books from my left hand to my right and began climbing the stairs. I was probably just being paranoid - excessively so. After all, no-one had even tried to kidnap me since that one time a son of Erebus had chloroformed me and took me to his lair on the other side of the country, so surely I had nothing to worry about!

But as I always say, getting kidnapped is like riding a bike - you never forget.

I walked across the landing towards my bedroom door. As my mind drifted back to the events of the previous summer, I thought of Camp Half-Blood. I hadn't been there since Easter, and I was hopeful that I could put off going back for another few weeks. After all, things had been very quiet for the last few months, and this lack of drama was starting to make the idea of an imminent, terrible war seem pretty daft.

With this encouraging thought on my mind, I opened my bedroom door to find Jake Wilson - the aforementioned chloroforming, kidnapping son of Erebus - sitting at my chess table, calmly gazing out the window.

(What was that I was saying about things being quiet? Why must the universe always contradict me?)

I shouted out (as if that was going to do any good), and plunged my hand into my bag, wildly searching for my dagger, but I quickly realised that I'd left it in my bedroom that morning. In fact, I'd left it on the table, so it was now sitting right in front of the Dark One.

I paused to give the intruding demigod one of my evilest glares. His chair - my chair - was a little removed from the table, and the son of Erebus sat in it with an easy grace: his feet stretched out before him, his arms resting on the chair's sides. He hadn't moved a muscle when I'd opened the door, and was still steadily staring out the window. I drew in a preparatory breath, gathering myself, intending to rush at the son of Erebus in an attempt to do him bodily harm, when he looked around.

"Oh, hi there," Jake Wilson said calmly, as though we were in fact good friends. "I was hoping you'd arrive soon. By all means, sit down. I'm here to talk."

"You're…what?" I said slowly, slightly confused that he hadn't immediately tried to kill or kidnap me.

"I come, on this one occasion, in peace," he said coolly, watching me with a hint of mirth in his dark eyes. "Sit down."

I stood in the doorway for a long, tense moment, before huffing in distaste and marching over to my bed. I kept a close eye on the intruding demigod as I reached underneath the bed for my fold-up stool.

(Nico's visits had been increasingly frequent over the past year, and after listening to him whine endlessly about having to sit on my bed, I'd given in and bought the stool.)

I dropped my bag onto the bed and moved towards my table. Still watching Wilson as though he was a wild animal, I opened up the stool and placed it opposite him.

"How did you get in here?" I asked as I sat down.

"I suppose you're wondering about the wards," Wilson said promptly. "Well, the security measures that Nico and the Hecate kids put in are very efficient - they keep out anyone who intends to do you harm, but since I don't intend to do you harm today, I walked in without a problem."

I eyed Wilson carefully. It was a little worrying that he knew so much about my protections, but then it didn't really surprise me. What did surprise me, though, was that he didn't have his sword, that his aura was so calm, and that he did not have the intimidating air which had surrounded him the last few times I'd seen him. I was very reluctant to believe it, but it looked very likely that the son of Erebus was telling the truth about not coming to do me harm.

"Then what do you want?" I said, though not as brusquely. It's hard to keep up the antagonism when your mortal enemy suddenly starts acting like a normal human being.

"Oh, I was in the area, thought I'd drop by," Jake said airily. I gave him a blank look, and he added, "Though I was wondering… have they told you about the prontos profiteia yet?"

Wilson had first mentioned this mysterious prophecy back in the good old days when he'd been nice enough to kidnap me. I'd asked Nico about it, but he'd been as clueless as me, and I hadn't gotten a good moment to ask Chiron, the ancient centaur who seemed to know everything.

"No," I said flatly, "and you didn't risk coming here to ask me stupid things like that, so why don't you cut the crap and get to the point?"

Wilson didn't reply, but sighed heavily. He closed his eyes and rubbed them, seeming almost weary. Now that he wasn't looking, I examined him more closely. He looked a little older, a little more worn. His tanned, handsome face was not yet lined with age, but it seemed a little too drawn, a little too pained. He wore the same leather jacket, T-shirt and jeans, and he had grown a little taller. Despite having an air of tiredness, though, he seemed, strangely, stronger and more powerful.

I felt a new emotion as I looked him over. I still had that sense of instinctive dislike which I'd borne towards the half-blood ever since I'd first seen him downstairs in my father's shop. Now, though, this was accompanied by a strange sense of familiarity. It was not that I felt like I knew him, exactly, but I felt as if I had some kind of old, deep and completely inexplicable bond with the son of Erebus.

Wilson opened his eyes, and I quickly looked away before he could catch me looking at him. I didn't want the kidnapper to think I was interested in what he had to say, after all.

"Remember when we last met?" he said quietly, glancing out the window again.

"No," I said drily. "When was that? It must have been so fleeting, I can't recall it. Was I unconscious or something?"

Jake rolled his eyes, and for just a moment he looked like a normal guy. Even though I knew he was probably here to try to make me join his crazy fight against the gods, that glimpse of normality made me happy to listen to what he had to say.

"I remember," I added. "What about it?"

"I know you don't believe anything I told you," the son of Erebus said, straightening up in his seat. "I know that you don't want to join me, but did you wonder, even for a minute, why I choose this? Why I hate the gods?"

I thought back to that chat we'd had in my tiny cell.

"You told me why," I replied. "You believe that the gods killed your mother."

"Oh, yeah," Wilson said, "I forgot I told you that." He paused, looking thoughtful, and dragged his chair closer to the table so that he was sitting squarely across from me. "You don't believe it, though, right? You think I'm deluded or that I'm just crazy?"

"Well…" I considered that for a moment. I certainly didn't believe that the gods had killed Jake's mother just because they didn't like him, but nor did I think that he was nuts enough to completely make something like that up.

"I don't really know," I told him, meeting his eyes. "I don't believe anything you say, but I don't completely disbelieve what you told me."

Jake laughed - a normal, calm laugh, rather than the crazy, angry laugh you'd hear from a corny villain. "I admire your honesty, Cyrus," he said cheerfully. "It's annoying, but it's nice to talk to someone who doesn't feel compelled to grovel."

"If you could see things the way I can, you'd be this honest, too," I said, not thinking. The words had barely left my lips before I started cursing myself for giving away far too much information. I'd studiously avoided telling Wilson anything about my sight, and now in a moment of stupidity I'd given him the thread he could use to draw out everything.

Wilson seemed unsurprised, however. Instead of starting to question me, he said, "Oh, I meant to mention that."

I eyed him warily. What fresh hell was this?

"They haven't told you about the prophecy yet, but have they told you that you have pure sight?" Wilson asked coolly, as he picked up one of my chess pieces and rolled it between his thumb and forefinger.

"Pure what?" I said flatly. I really don't appreciate being reminded how little I know.

"Your sight, Cyrus," Wilson said, in that vaguely supercilious tone which made me want to introduce his head to the wall. "It's not just clear sight, which one mortal out of a hundred thousand has. The sight you have is something that comes along once in a generation - maybe not even that often."

I stared at him. I wasn't sure what to be more astonished by - the fact that he knew so much about my sight or the fact that he seemed to know more than I did. A sudden hope lit up my mind - perhaps, in an ironic twist, the Dark One would be the person who'd finally answer my questions?

"But what is it?" I asked, rather hopefully. "What is pure sight?"

I held my breath in anticipation, watching Jake carefully. He did not look at me, still examining the chess piece, and shrugged.

"That's a story for another day," he said softly. "I just thought I'd give you a little thread to pull, but I'm not here to tell you about yourself."

"Then why are you here?" I retorted sharply, annoyed by his refusal to give me the answers for which I'd been praying.

"I am here," Wilson replied slowly, "to tell you about myself."

"What could you possibly tell me that I actually need to know?"

"As I was saying," the son of Erebus said, putting down the chess piece, "I believe - I know that the gods killed my mother. You don't trust me - which is understandable, I did kidnap you - and so I came here today to prove to you that I am right about my mother, and that the gods are even more ruthless than you think."

Wilson reached into his inside jacket pocket. I tensed, prepared for him to withdraw a weapon (although if he had a weapon, me tensing wasn't exactly going to do anything), but instead he took out a piece of dark rock, about the size of a tennis ball. He placed it in the middle of the chessboard, and I examined it.

The rock was, in fact, a chunk of obsidian. It was very shiny, reflecting the sunlight, and had several edges which looked sharp enough to cut carrots. After I'd been looking at it for a few seconds, I realised that it had a very faint aura - it was difficult to make out in the direct sunlight, but I could just about see it - a dark, hazy outline which rippled, almost imperceptibly, with tiny waves of energy.

"This is a memory stone," Wilson explained. "It was taken from the banks of the River Lethe and infused with a memory. Stones like this can take on a powerful memory, storing it, and that memory can be experienced by others if someone can find a way to activate the stone."

"How do you activate it?" I asked automatically.

"The powers of a shadow demigod can unlock it," he answered. "With a single touch of darkness, I can release the memory held in that rock into the minds of me, and anyone else near to me."

A dull chill crept down my spine. I had a pretty strong feeling that I wasn't going to like whatever was trapped in this stone.

"So what is it?" I asked, meeting his gaze again. "What are you going to make me see?"

Jake Wilson placed his palm upon the piece of obsidian, and closed his eyes. Shadows began to float from the rock, billowing out in cloudy waves, streaming over Wilson and me. My vision began to dim, the sunlight fading. Just before the darkness claimed us completely, I heard Wilson murmur something, almost too quietly to hear,. It took a second for me to understand what he'd said.

"My mother's death."


First, there was pure darkness.

I could see nothing, hear nothing and feel nothing, except for a slow cold breeze that seemed to blow from all angles. I could sense Wilson near to me, but I could not tell if he was to my left, right, or above or below me.

A moment passed, a very quiet, still moment. Then, the darkness began to lighten, softening into a very, very dark blue, then into a grey, then, all at once, it faded away utterly, and we were suddenly floating in the sky.

We were suspended miles above the ground - far below, I could see a city, but it looked little more than a vague blot on the ground. At first, I was too stunned to even react, and I simply stared around blankly.

That soon changed when we began to hurtle towards the ground.

One minute we were completely still - the next, we were steaming downwards. I'm not ashamed to say that I let out a terrified scream - who wouldn't? I twisted about in the air and caught sight of Jake, a few yards away. He, too, was falling at an ominous speed, but his expression was composed - clearly, this was all to be expected.

I took a small measure of comfort from that, and managed to stop myself screaming. We fell and fell, tumbling through the air, slowing only when we were within touching distance of the city's taller buildings. I realised, as we began to hover once more, that we were actually suspended over Chicago. I looked around: judging by the height of the sun above us and the depth of the traffic below us, it was late afternoon. The cars were tightly packed in long lines which stretched on into the distance, and the streets were busy with the melee of people swarming away from school or work.

"My mother was coming to pick me up from school," Wilson said, making me start. He'd floated over next to me - by this point, we'd stopped falling completely - and was now surveying the hubbub below with a look of resigned morbidity. "Normally I walked home from school, but this afternoon, I got in a fight and she had to come and collect me."

We began to float even further downwards, drifting along streets as we did so, snaking through the metropolis like ghosts with a plan. Finally, we came to a halt over a busy intersection, where four streets met. We hovered about twenty or thirty feet above the ground, but not a single glance was cast our way - proof that this was nothing more than a memory, an echo.

"There she is," Wilson said softly, pointing at a blue, old Volkswagen near the front of one of the lines of traffic. I squinted, trying to see the driver of the car. I concentrated, and reached for my sight.

The scene around us grew a little wispy, presumably as my sight showed me that it was nothing more than a sort of memory construct. I ignored that, instead focussing on Jake's mother. It was hard to make out her physical appearance, but she looked of a similar build to Jake. She was tall, with dark hair, and she was tensed behind the wheel as though eagerly awaiting something. Surprisingly, she had an aura - very faint, nowhere near as strong as that of a demigod's, but there nonetheless. I glanced at Wilson, and then back at her: their auras were very similar in colour, but the son of Erebus's was far stronger and larger.

Slowly, the traffic creeped along until the Volkswagen reached the very top of the line.

"Now it happens," Jake said, his voice dull.

The lights changed and the Volkswagen moved, speeding up as it crossed through the intersection. As it reached the halfway point between the road it had been on and the road it was heading onto, a very strange thing occurred.

A sudden bolt of light shot down from the sky, zooming past Jake and me. It wasn't lightning, but something else - perhaps a bolt of pure energy, perhaps even a spirit of some kind. It seemed to come from nowhere, and when I looked at it, my eyes throbbed from the power gathered around it. It emanated a sheer, cosmic intensity which I'd come across only once before - and that had been in the aura of an Olympian.

The bolt, unobserved by any of the people below, flew directly into the Volkswagen. The car shook as it absorbed the energy, and then suddenly accelerated. I focussed, trying to use my sight to see what was happening to it, and I made out a dull sheen of energy that had suddenly formed around the car, but I felt like there was something behind it that was just out of sight, some force that was concealed.

I could see the frantic movements of Jake's mother as she tried to regain control of the vehicle, but it seemed that there was nothing she could do. The car careered out of its lane and, in the blink of an eye, smashed into a passing SUV.

The traffic ground to a halt, and people began jumping out of their cars, hurrying over to the crash site. As the sounds of ambulance and police sirens began to echo down the street, the city began to grow wispy, the buildings, people and vehicles dissolving into mist. In a moment, everything had faded to grey, then black.


My eyes shot open.

We were back in my bedroom, sitting at my table. I pulled my hand away from the obsidian as though it was an angry crocodile, but it didn't matter now. The memory had been shared, and there was no way to get it out of my mind. Jake stowed the stone away in his jacket, making no sound, merely meeting my horrified gaze with an immovable expression.

"What was that?" I whispered. "Was that… the Olympians?"

He nodded.

"How do you know?"

"The being that gave me this memory told me so," Jake replied.

"And who gave it to you?"

"That doesn't matter right now," he said, shaking his head. "The being I serve, who I have served ever since it revealed this to me."

"You're talking about Rhea?" I said.

Wilson didn't reply.

I shook my head in disbelief. I had never trusted the gods, but I hadn't thought they would deliberately kill someone, particularly in what seemed like such a random way. It was so odd, so uncalled-for.

But then Jake had said that it had been done because of him. But why would they kill his mother, and not him?

"Why—" I started to say, then paused, gathering my thoughts. "Why did they kill your mother? Why not just kill you?"

Wilson didn't reply right away, his eyes remaining downcast. It was only after a long moment that he answered, "A son of Erebus is a powerful ally. The gods thought that if they killed my mother, it would break me, making me need them, making me want to be a part of their world."

I said nothing. That made a scarily large amount of sense.

"You see now," Wilson said, glaring out the window. "You see now why I fight the gods. I didn't just decide in a fit of annoyance to try to tear down Olympus. The Olympians did this to me, and they are the ones who must pay."

He met my eyes, and I finally understood why he was showing me this - he wanted me to know exactly why he did what he did, because he didn't want to me think of him as some irrational lunatic. The demigod knew that I would still fight him, but he wanted me to understand what it was that I defended. Suddenly, the sunlight which was between us - for we were both in shadow, and a beam of light cut through the air above the table - seemed to me to be an impenetrable, uncrossable barrier.

I was struck by the enormity of the situation, and yet it was caused by one simple moment, one single car crash. It took only a few seconds, but the fate of the world depended on whether it was a mere accident or a purposeful act of murder.

"It's all begun now," Jake said, standing up. "This could be our last opportunity to talk. That's why I wanted to show you this. I don't expect you to join me, but I want you to remember every time you work to help the gods that you are helping the beings who struck down my mother. As you kill the creatures that will be loosed on you and your friends, I want you to ask who the real monsters are."

"But doesn't this make you just like them?" I said, also rising. "Surely by fighting them, by trying to tear down civilisation, you're becoming a monster too?"

"Maybe," the son of Erebus said calmly, holding my gaze unflinchingly. "Maybe I am turning into a monster." He paused, and glanced down at his feet before concluding, "But then maybe the only way to destroy a monster is to become one."

Without looking at me again, Wilson turned and strode out of my room. I followed him, but by the time I'd made it onto the landing, he had vanished into the shadows.

I sighed.

"Well," I said aloud. "So much for having a quiet summer."