Disclaimer: Text of The Lightning Thief, The Sea of Monsters, The Titan's Curse, The Battle of the Labyrinth, and The Last Olympian belong to Rick Riordan; as do the world and characters of the Percy Jackson series.
Rated: T/PG13
Comments: Rated for infrequent usages of language, violence, triggering topics [patricide, parental neglect, other Greek god stuff]. Not compliant with the Heroes of Olympus series. A reading the books story. Percy/Annabeth, Poseidon/Sally, past Thalia/Luke, canonical pairings via the text of the books.
Summary: Now: The Fates act to preserve the universe. Then: Three half-bloods appear on Olympus. They're carrying a package.
– Ψ – Ψ – Ψ –
TOWARD TOMORROW: THE LIGHTNING THIEF
ONE: COLLISIONS
– Ψ – Ψ – Ψ –
The Fates did not pause easily.
After millennia of measuring out the destinies of mortals and immortals alike, it was only to be expected that little would surprise them. The things that did were few and far between, and rarely amounted to more than an instant of momentary upset; when Kronos truly stirred with intent for the first time since his imprisonment, Lachesis's fingers slipped for only a moment on the thread. That was in 527, B.C.E. Over two thousand years later, his plan would truly began in earnest, and the Olympians would begin to suspect at the great storm that was ahead, but the Fates knew what was to be – knew that Olympus's fate would rest on the deeds of a half-blood, with a curse, a camp, and the name of a hero with a happy ending – the very instant the wheels were set into motion. They were not goddesses, not really. Goddesses were not omniscient, no matter what Athena wished.
So naturally, when the End came, it was Atropos – ender of all things – that sensed it first. The realization came upon the heels of the end of the Second Great War (complex predestined events did tend to confuse the strings, a bit – Clotho was picking tangles apart from her skein centuries after the collapse of Rome). The End of All would not be for tens of thousands of years, but it loomed forward – unmistakable, implacable – and it was undoubtedly rooted here, in this era. The gods, of course. Their follies. Their flaws. What else could it be?
Atropos dropped the scissors, and in the next blink the Fates – beyond Olympus, outside godhood – hatched a plan.
It was a bit rough around the edges, unusual for the sisters, but time was of the essence – action was needed, and it could only be undertaken now, by them. The problem was obvious – the gods were detached from mortality, from their subjects, from their children, from their believers (from their life force). And the gulf would only grow wider in the centuries to come, until it swallowed all of Western civilization whole.
It was clear as water – the seeds of destruction lay in the way the gods saw the heroism and yet casually overlooked the sheer humanity of Perseus Jackson's actions in the War. In the way Zeus swore faithfully to acknowledge his children, but inwardly puzzled at the matter's importance – in the way Perseus's final decision was not a sign of strength to the Olympian Twelve, but an oddity – in the way the great and powerful gods of Olympus, so quick to adapt to the shifting flame of civilization, still clung to the old customs in ways that could lead to naught but their own destruction – and so Clotho reached out and seized the dispersed and fading power of the defeated Lord of Time to bend reality to her will just this once, and Atropos slipped into the library of myth and removed the first legend of its kind in a long, long time, and Lachesis plunged forth and stole a handful of heroes, who had been humanity's last hope before and seemed to have taken the burden remarkably well. And they picked their moment – an argument, high tempers and sharp tongues but perhaps also, in this flash of grief, a higher likelihood of these stubborn, prideful fools listening, and understanding – and hoped for nothing less than that this would be their dip in the river Styx. Their method of wiping away vulnerability – of erasing a fatal flaw.
After all, even gods – especially gods – have fatal flaws. And that's the thing about fatal flaws: if left unaddressed, they tend to be fatal.
– Ψ – Ψ – Ψ –
CAMP HALF-BLOOD, AUGUST 31 2009
"Capture the flag," Nico said.
Percy smiled. "Capture the flag."
Nico made an odd expression, the bastard child of a scowl and a smirk. Tomorrow would mark the two-week anniversary of the defeat of the Titans, and the last time he had seen his extended demigod family before he and his father had retreated back to the underworld to prod curiously at the damage the Titans had wreaked during their rise from Tartarus and assorted other prisons. The other battlegrounds had fared no better; the Titans' army had steamrollered across Manhattan with the force of several natural disasters and assorted hordes of juvenile delinquents, while Typhon had cut a swatch of carnage across the entire northern United States.
He'd stopped by Olympus with his father before shadowing to Camp Half-Blood, and even there, the eternal city was a disheartening combination of ruins and Annabeth's half-finished designs. Even with the full force of Hephaestus's construction automatons and Cyclopes on loan from Poseidon's forges, rebuilding was slow going. And Camp Half-Blood had renovations of its own to complete – a dozen or so cabins-in-progress the first and most pressing issue, but definitely not the last of changes coming to camp. Chiron had extended summer term, just to cope with the vast body of work that still needed to be done at camp.
Nico therefore felt justified in his disbelief when Percy had grinned at him when he'd joined the mass of campers milling around the dining pavilion and called out, "Hey, Nico! Just in time. Grab a helmet – we're blue team, but I guess you could always join Ares team – if you're into losing-"
Nico inhaled. Exhaled. Gods above, family could be irritating, Percy uncommonly so. "Percy. What's going on?"
"Capture the flag. Chiron figured since tonight's technically the last night of summer session, we might as well do something fun. Normal fun, I mean, not construction fun." Percy strapped his greaves to his shins securely and reached for a breastplate. "Ares versus Apollo. Come on, Nico – you can negotiate for Cabin Thirteen for the first time."
"Cabin Thirteen is just me and pile of bricks."
"I'm sure the bricks will appreciate you getting them off kitchen patrol," Percy grinned as he looked down to tighten the buckles on his cuirass. Nico looked at him curiously. Percy had never been cheerful, exactly, but since the end of the war, he'd seemed different – older, maybe. Not necessarily more serious – gods forbid Percy ever take something so seriously he couldn't think of a joke to tick it off – but calmer, less angry. More at peace.
Nico grumbled, "You don't even need armor, you're invulnerable," but then he smiled in spite of himself and reached for a helmet. "Apollo's blue?"
"Knew you couldn't resist," Percy laughed. He tossed a pair of wrist guards at Nico. "Try these on – standard camp guards majorly suck. I've been keeping these in case you decided to show. Malcolm used them when he was like, eight, so they should fit you."
"I'm twelve."
"That's why they should fit you."
Nico scowled. "Shut up."
"You're short. Embrace it."
With the hand not holding the wrist guards, Nico made a very rude gesture, but he had to hide a tiny smile as Percy laughed and turned away. It was hard to stay mad at Percy for long – never mind his state of mind for the first half of last year. Honestly, he blamed it on the grief – Percy really had turned out to be a good guy, in the end. Somehow, he'd even wormed his way into being a good friend, without Nico even noticing. He had a feeling Bianca had known that, and that was why she'd gone out of her way to push them together.
As he wrapped one of the guards around his right wrist, he seriously considered staying at Camp Half-Blood year-round for the first time. A year and a half ago, first looking out over the snow-blanketed strawberry fields, he'd been sure – and not three weeks ago, stumbling out of the shadows straight into an argument between a Cloven Elder and Grover's girlfriend, he'd been even surer of the opposite. Things could change. He'd consider it, he decided. The Hades cabin, along with all the cabins of the minor gods and goddesses, was still in progress – he still had time to figure it out. He had a sinking suspicion, though, that he already knew what his answer would be.
Percy adjusted his new and improved watch on his wrist (a sixteenth birthday present from Tyson) before activating it, bronzed lengths like the blades of a fan extending from the tiny watch face and flattening into a round, polished disk. It was engraved in the old style of Greek and Roman murals, but unlike his old shield, which Percy had once told him had scenes from a quest his second year at camp carved into its face, this one depicted Camp Half-Blood – but not the Camp Half-Blood Nico knew. It was Camp Half-Blood as it would look a year from now, with more than twenty cabins, arranged in a flattened Ω-shape, all shining and pristine in celestial bronze. The Big House could just be seen off to the far right of the shield's face, and campers, satyrs, and nature spirits could be seen running around, playing basketball in the pavilion, racing chariots, taking on the rock-climbing wall, training in the arena. Mrs. O'Leary crouched near the forest, in the upper left, and Chiron was aiming a bow out on the archery range below her. Near the upper right corner, Camp Half-Blood faded out to what was unmistakably Mount Olympus, or what Mount Olympus would look like when Annabeth was done with it – temples and parks, statues and mansions, and the Palace of the gods at the summit, all gleaming more brightly and majestically than ever before. Slightly below center, in ancient Greek: PERSEUS, SON OF POSEIDON, HERO OF OLYMPUS.
Percy shook his shield arm once to test its stability, then glanced at Nico and smiled. "I really hope no one decides to go extra hard on me just because of the curse. I think Tyson's getting tired of making new shields for me. Ready to go, Dead Boy?"
Nico groaned, "Don't you start with Thalia's stupid nickname-"
And suddenly both he and Percy felt rather than saw a shimmer of gold envelop them. In the next moment, they had disappeared.
– Ψ – Ψ – Ψ –
MOUNT ROBSON, AUGUST 31 2009
She lived for the Hunt, and the Hunt for her.
The Hunters of Artemis were not a normal set of girls – even within a world defined by Greek myth. Nymph, spirit, demigod, or mortal – it didn't matter what their natural inclinations were. There was something about the vow, about devoting heart and soul to the goddess of the Hunt, that transformed all who undertook it. When Artemis had approached her on Olympus, asking her to serve as lieutenant of the Hunters, Thalia had hesitated. She liked battle as much as the next powerful demigod, but didn't have any particularly strong feelings about the Hunt – always spoken with a tone of reverence, always with a capital 'h' – and honestly, a bow was not her weapon.
Until the night before her sixteenth birthday – and even a little after that – Thalia had hated ranged weapons with a reach any longer than a javelin. She hadn't even noticed the change within her. It had shocked her a few months ago when she had taken out her old spear and realized that she hadn't used them since . . . since Mount Tam, really.
Thalia had seen daughters of Demeter slice a goat open from throat to legs in an offering to Artemis, mortals manipulate the Mist with a snap of their fingers, nymphs whittle bows out of hardened ash and eucalyptus. Being a Hunter, being more than just the daughter of Zeus, had changed her. Was still changing her.
It was thrilling.
At Artemis's request, Thalia had led the Hunters, who had been sweeping up the tattered remains of the Titan army still left stranded around Manhattan, on vacation, of sorts, hunting for a bronze ram, whose horn apparently blessed postwar reconstruction. It probably didn't exist. Thalia didn't mind; she'd missed this, the Hunt, the chase, all it entailed. The evening before, the Hunters had set up camp on the lee side of Mount Robson, laughing and joking together – it seemed like it had been too long since they'd enjoyed each others' company, without the shadow of dead comrades and battles to come hanging over their heads – and Thalia had leaned against a tree, observing, a smile playing on her lips. The Hunt did that, too. Away from the smoke of burial shrouds and the ruins of Olympus, it was easier to breathe. Not to forget, but to accept. This was a good idea, she'd thought. Even if it was a very bad excuse for a hunt.
And then one of her scouts had caught sight of a ram with horns the color of pennies.
"Kallisto," Thalia murmured, "the cliff face. Phoebe, Megan, the torches – smoke it out. Ai, Jackie, spears out, get ready for close-range. Does anyone know anything about this ram? Mythologically speaking?" She glanced around, then sighed. "I didn't think so. Watch the horns in case they're poisonous, and the mouth, in case it breathes fire. Everyone else, into the trees, bows at the—"
"Thalia!" someone cried out. "Thalia, you're—"
Too late. Thalia stared at the golden light engulfing her, but before she could even move – she had gone.
– Ψ – Ψ – Ψ –
OLYMPUS, JUNE 22 2001
The air hung charged and still over the council of the gods.
Emergency meeting, Hermes had explained to them in his summons. Better not be late. And that was all he'd said. The gods, however, had an inkling of the matter at hand; enough of an idea to maintain a rare silence as they assembled in the throne room of Olympus, even when Poseidon appeared in his throne with a swirl of sea mist and the quality of a storm about to burst, even when Zeus stormed into the hall twenty minutes late for a meeting he himself had called, even when Hades settled into his temporary throne with sense of barely-concealed triumph.
Three hours ago, Thalia, daughter of Zeus, had reached the hill bordering Camp Half-Blood, and made her final stand.
Understandably, the vast majority of the Olympian twelve were doing their utmost to think of anything but the matter at hand.
Hermes shuffled a stack of letters whose destinations had been improperly labeled with aggravation in his expression.
Dionysus idly toggled the tab of his Diet Coke back and forth.
Aphrodite stared at her nails as though attempting to hypnotize herself.
Even Ares cleaned his knife, careful not to meet the eyes of any fellow god, though at times a strange, bloodthirsty smile that he was not quite quick enough to hide played around his mouth. All were sure –only Hera looked on expectantly, though she, too, was quiet – to avoid looking at any of the gods sitting at either end of the council hall. From beginning to end of the Olympian throne area – loosely the shape of a teardrop, with Hades's temporary throne set opposite that of Zeus and Hera's – the air crackled with tension as Zeus, Poseidon, and Hades glared at each other with the kind of venom only blood ties can create.
Some council sessions of Olympus truly lived up to the idea of thirteen all-powerful beings gathered to solve problems of their own creation. Some council meetings changed the fate of civilization, rocked the worlds below and above, altered the course of history.
And some were glorified family arguments. The kind that rattled the tables and resulted in massive natural disasters in the mortal world, but glorified family arguments all the same.
Hades spoke first:
"So," he said, with a flippancy that hid a savage sort of triumphant smile, "how that daughter of yours?"
Zeus roared with anger; he leapt up and hurled the bolt by his side, but before it could reach Hades, it impacted with the air and fizzled out. The curse of the throne room of Olympus. Even Zeus, unless he meant to start a war, could not attack a fellow Olympian with intent in this place, by ancient law. Hades laughed – a frozen sound like breaking glass – and held out his hand; the shadows of the hall obediently swirled together and solidified into his blade of Stygian iron, sharpened to kill and engraved with ancient rites for the damned. "Go on, little brother. Blast me. See how the Fates will reward you then, oathbreaker."
Zeus raised his arm as if to strike again, but Poseidon, at his left, interrupted, his own voice as cold and edged with underlying anger as the sea preparing for a storm. "Hades, while insensitive, is correct; you've already paid back the monsters he sent after your daughter, have you not? Does the girl not still live?"
"As a tree! Unthinking, barely capable of feeling-"
"Alive, nonetheless. Perhaps Hades was wrong to pursue her with such zeal-"
"You as well turn against me, Poseidon? You alone, who has the ability to understand the sheer treachery-"
"Treachery! And yet it is just and well to send an army of monsters after a child – and you, Poseidon, you who plays the innocent and yet sends Lamia after a twelve-year-old girl—"
Poseidon laughed, but there was no humor in it. Instead, a dangerous light was glinting in his eyes. "She was in my domain, brother. Those who walk along the sea must be wary of being swept in."
"Our brother is wise," Hades snarled. "He strikes when insulted. So explain to me, then, Lord Zeus, how this brat's presence on the earth was not an insult to me – your brother, who you have forced into an oath eternal that you proceed to shatter within half a century—"
Hades and Zeus was standing now, truly angry. The very air between them crackled and boiled, as though the force of their glares were causing it to twist in agony. Poseidon rubbed his forehead wearily; he, too, was angry, but not to the point of distraction, unlike his brothers.
This was, of course, typical. Someone at least partly outside this conflict had to keep a level head (he tried very hard not to think of any other reason why he would seek to temper his brothers' anger at each other – and, in turn, at any future children they would sire). "Brother," he sighed, "why not simply go to Camp Half-Blood yourself and change her back to a human? The transformation was intended to be a temporary measure, you said so yourself—"
"You would allow him to simply escape the consequences of his wrongdoing?!" Hades shouted, at the same time Zeus raged, "I would, but I had not counted on my jealous wife who went and made the transformation permanent—"
Hera sniffed in disdain, but wisely said nothing. Zeus plowed on, "Perhaps I made a mistake in siring Thalia—"
Hades laughed harshly. "Perhaps?"
"—but if so, it is a mistake that could not be corrected! Your claim justice, Hades, and yet commit but a further wrong—"
"Zeus—" Poseidon said wearily.
"So says he who would risk the age of the gods for a fleeting mortal pleasure," Hades rasped.
Zeus stopped protesting. Hades continued with a hint of victory in his voice, secure in the knowledge that in, this, at least, he was right, "Oaths are more than restrictions, little brother – there are motives for rules, you know. And the reason for this one is as clear today as it was when you demanded I relinquish my own children to your ever -responsible care. Perhaps Poseidon is right. Perhaps there was no reason for me to hunt the Grace girl so fiercely – it is only Olympus at stake. The prophecy said nothing about my domain."
Zeus opened his mouth as if to protest further, but no words came out. Instead, he turned away, face ashen. Hades smirked in triumph.
"Hades," Poseidon said softly, "had Thalia– hunted all her life for a mistake not of her own doing – been the child of the prophecy - what reason would you have given her to love the gods enough to save us?"
The smile disappeared. Zeus inhaled sharply before straightening, resolve tight in his every feature.
"Whatever justification you give, brother, you are not the executor of the Fates' will," he said, with a sense of forced calm and control. Hades reared back, expression dark, ready for another battle. "You had – and still have – no right—"
Two unexpected things happened then.
"Father," Athena said sharply.
"Not now, daughter—"
"Father!"
Zeus turned, rage given form causing electricity to spark around his body like armor made of storm clouds, but stopped when he caught sight of the second unexpected thing. The other gods followed his lead and froze as they understood why Athena had cried out.
In the center of the throne area, a light had appeared – first a faint golden shimmer, but quickly growing in size and intensity. Within seconds, it had flared so brightly even the gods, whose true forms vaporized mortals, were tempted to look away. Within its golden heart shadows flickered into visibility – three tongues of darkness that solidified into the faint outlines of three teenagers.
Before the gods' astonished eyes, the light seemed to shrink behind these children as their forms gained color and definition. In the space of a heartbeat, the light had disappeared as quickly as it had come, collapsing in on itself and vanishing, and the three children – two boys and a girl – lurched from the air where they'd been suspended a foot or so off the ground onto the floor.
The three demigods – for they could only be half-bloods, with both boys wearing Greek armor over t-shirts and jeans (though the younger one was wearing only a breastplate and a right wrist guard) and the girl clearly garbed in the attire of one of Artemis's hunters – froze, as if they were as surprised they were there as the gods were, glancing around at the high arches and marble curves of the throne room from Olympus. Then, as one, they turned and stared at the gods. For a moment, no one spoke.
"So," the elder boy said – dark hair and green eyes that were too bright and familiar for comfort – "definitely not in Kansas, then."
By his feet, a package, still glowing golden from the trip, tumbled to the ground.
– Ψ – Ψ – Ψ –
NOTES:
Lachesis – the middle sister of the Fates, who measures the thread of destiny.
Atropos – the eldest sister of the Fates, who cuts the cord.
Clotho – the youngest sister of the Fates, who spins the thread.
cuirass – a Greek breastplate.
Lamia – daughter of Poseidon, once a beautiful queen of Libya who later become a child-devouring demon; mother of Scylla and the first of the lamiai, vampire-like creatures who kill infants and seduce men.
Next update: After I finish writing college application essays. Gods know when that will be.
NEXT TIME, ON TOWARD TOMORROW: THE LIGHTNING THIEF: "Father . . . don't you recognize me?" "My own what?" "There hasn't been a hero worthy of his own myth since the seventeenth century." "For you, young heroes - a quest. You are used to quests, are you not?" "Do you understand?" "Yes . . . yes. I understand." The gods demand answers. Percy, Thalia, and Nico don't have many – but the Fates do. Stay tuned for all this and more, in Toward Tomorrow - Chapter Two: Confessions.