"The knife Percy," Annabeth muttered her breath was shallow. "Hero… cursed blade…"
When my vision came back into focus, I saw Kronos grasping his sword. The he bellowed in pain and dropped it. His hands were smoking and seared. The hearth fire had grown-red hot, like the scythe wasn't compatible with it. I saw an image of Hestia flickering in the ashes, frowning at Kronos with disapproval.
Luke turned and collapsed, clutching his ruined hands.
"Please, Percy…"
I struggled to my feet. I moved toward him with the knife. I should kill him. That was the plan.
Luke seemed to know what I was thinking. He moistened his lips. "You can't . . . can't do it yourself. He'll break my control. He'll defend himself. Only my hand. I know where. I can . . . can keep him controlled."
He was definitely glowing now, his skin starting to smoke.
I raised the knife to strike. Then I looked at Annabeth, at Grover cradling her in his arms, trying to shield her. And finally I understood what she'd been trying to tell me.
"You're not the hero," Rachel had said. It will affect what you do.
"Please," Luke groaned. "No time."
If Kronos evolved into his true form, there would be no stopping him. He would make Typhon look like a playground bully.
The line from the great prophecy echoed in my head: A hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap. My whole world tipped upside-down, and I gave the knife to Luke.
Grover yelped. "Percy? Are you . . . um . . ."
Crazy. Insane. Off my rocker. Probably.
But I watched as Luke grasped the hilt.
I stood before him-defenseless.
He reached up to the straps of his armor ready to reveal his weakness, but his hand stopped centimeters away. He hesitated. Suddenly a piercing laughter ripped through the air. Kronos' voice rang out.
"Nothing will stop me Percy Jackson, I will rule the world, and I will bring down the gods. Tell me, what have they ever done for you?"
As per usual I answered intelligently by saying, "Uhh. . ."
"Let me enlighten you Percy, let me show you how you'll end up being the gods pawn, how as soon as you've finished completing their purpose for you, you will be discarded, thrown away like rubbish. Just let me show you."
The world around me started rippling; distorting my vision, then the earth seemed to speed up the movements becoming too fast to comprehend. My ears popped, then everything started going black, the last thing I remembered was Annabeth screaming my name and I was sucked into the darkness.
Blinding light suddenly flooded my eyes, I crashed into a hard floor disoriented, and slowly I was able to see again. I scanned my surroundings, noticing that I seemed to be on a huge ship; more specifically a warship. I saw a scrawny looking Latino boy calmly loading the ballistae.
I was about to ignore him when I heard the background noise. There were war cries, clashing weapons and blood-curdling screams radiating through the air.
I remembered that I was supposed to be fighting Kronos and looked around, spotting him near the bow of the ship, probably relishing the war below.
"Kronos!" I yelled, "We have unfinished business!" Kronos turned to me smirking like I was an ignorant child.
"Don't you see Percy?" He gestured to the sea of chaos below, just as the ship rumbled and another missile launched from the haul. "This is the gods plan for you, to be their piece in war, after war, after war."
Just as I was about to make a snarky comment I was rudely interrupted by a bellowing roar followed by a grey dragon the size of a car that swooped up over the ship and dropped two people on board. One was a Cherokee looking girl and the other a buff looking blond dude, the guy obviously unconscious.
Soon thereafter to more teens, who looked strangely familiar tumbled over the side of the ship, the girl was blond and the boy had raven-black hair, much like my own.
"Leo!" The blond screamed, "What are you doing!"
"Destroy them…"He faced the blond, his eyes were glazed, his movements like a robot's. "Destroy them all."
He turned back to the ballistae, but the black-haired dude immediately tackled the Leo guy at full speed sending them rolling across the deck, the Latinos head hit the deck hard, his eyes rolled up so that only the whites shown.
"Go!" The guy yelled. "Get us out of here!"
The blond ran off in the direction of helm, a few seconds later the boat groaned and tilted up at a horrifying angle. The mooring lines snapped and the ship shot into the clouds.
Me and Kronos still unnoticed.
When I say unnoticed, I mean one of us made a high pitched squeal and caused the raven-haired dude to look in our direction, and unfortunately I was pretty sure it wasn't Kronos.
The guy looked straight at us, his face full of disbelief; he mouthed the word "Luke" which was surprising. How did he know who Kronos possessed? But what surprised me even more was the fact that he looked exactly like me.
Well, not exactly, he seemed about a year older maybe seventeen, eighteen? He was taller, buffer and his hair was shaggier, but what stood out the most about him were his eyes, which were a deep sea green, identical to mine.
Just then Kronos started roaring with laughter, "You see Percy," He said between gasping for breath. "Behold, is your future self, a puny insignificant pawn of the gods."
"What?" We both stared at Kronos in confusion.
I patted my pockets for riptide but the pen-sword hadn't yet returned. I could only watch, as
Kronos casually strolled over to the apparently future me. The me had his sword out by now, a replicate of riptide, but he didn't look ready to fight. I now noticed how bad he looked, his dirty clothes were ripped and bloody, his eyes had dark circles, he looked ready to drop on the spot, and in no condition for a battle with the titan lord.
"Well, well," Kronos rumbled, "We meet again."
"I've defeated you before Kronos, and I can do it again, so either you give up Luke or you go to back to Tartaures the hard way." The future me readied his sword. I noticed that the Cherokee girl was dragging the blond guy towards the lower deck; she had obviously observed the danger.
Before the stand-off could become a full scale battle to the death, the blond walked out of the helm.
"Hey Percy, I-" She stopped, frozen, she stared at Kronos. "L-Luke?" Her voice quavered "B-but we defeated you."
I got a closer look at her face.
"Annabeth?" I breathed.
She looked over and noticed that there were two Percy's; she looked back and forth between us so fast I was worried her head might fall off. Her gaze finally settled onto Kronos, she still looked shaky, and probably had a lot of questions, but was forcing herself to focus on the matter at hand.
"What are you doing here?" She said almost confidently, unsheathing her dagger.
Kronos grinned, obviously amused by our reactions. "Oh you know," He walked over to a Chinese guy who was looking disoriented, I don't know where he came from, but I noticed that the dragon was gone. "Causing chaos." Kronos cackled and grabbed hold of the Chinese guys arm and in a flash of light they both disappeared.
"Frank!" The future me shouted, rushing to the spot that they had vanished from.
Older Annabeth turned on me, "What in Tartaures just happened, who are you, and why are you here?" Her glare was bearing down on me, burning holes into my skin; I hated it when she looked at me like that.
"Well," I said, "I was fighting Kronos-"
"How were you fighting Kronos? We already defeated him!" Annabeth yelled.
"I dunno!" I yelled back, "One second I was fighting the titan Lord and now I'm in the middle of yet another war with my apparent future self and best friend!" Future me walked over.
"How are you me?" He asked, "And what happened to Frank?" Where did Kronos take him?"
I was very confused now; they were asking too many questions. "Guys, guys calm down one question at a time please."
"Tell us exactly what happened." Annabeth demanded.
I was not one to disobey a direct order from Annabeth. "We- I mean me and you- past you- and Grover, were in Olympus. I was fighting Luke- I mean Kronos- and it seemed Luke gained control for a little bit, he said only he could defeat Kronos." The others nodded, like they already knew this, which I supposed they did. "So I gave him Annabeth's dagger- the cursed blade- and he was about to stab himself in his Achilles heel, but then Kronos gained control again and brought me here, 'To show me that I'm just a pawn on the gods.' At least that's what he said."
"He just regained control?" Older me said in disbelief. "But that's not what happened for us."
"It's not? Historical events can't just change, can they?" We both turned to Annabeth, who was in deep thought.
"Well," she said. "If someone went back in time from our timeline than they could've changed it, but technically If someone did change it, than it would always have happened." She put her head in her hands.
"Wait!" I burst out, "What about my Annabeth? I mean the one from my timeline. She's up in Olympus, she's hurt." Older Annabeth flinched and rubbed her arm, as if remembering an old wound. "And Grover…" I ran my hand through my hair and started pacing. "This is not good."
"Hey, I'm pretty sure that Grover and I could handle it," Annabeth said confidently, but her facial expression betrayed her, I guessed she was thinking about how bad it was at the time. Annabeth was injured, Grover was drained, and most of the campers were down. The hunters of Artimis were still fighting of course, and so were the party ponies but according to what the future versions of him and Annabeth, they were only able to defeat Kronos because Luke was able to overpower him.
"Annabeth?" The Cherokee girl said coming up cautiously from below the deck, she looked between the three of them "What just happened?"
"I think we should find out what the heck happened with Leo before we explain, we'll have a crew meeting when both he and Jason wake up, I need answers." Annabeth said, sheathing her dagger before going with the girl to go check on Jason.
A/N: Hey guys! This is the first story ever that I posted so I hope that you enjoy and pleasereveiwbecauseineedencouragemeantanditwouldhelpalot. Anyways I plan on writing longer chapters later on, I don't have a regular update sceduale yet so please bear with me.
~PrisonerOfDreams