How it Ends
For Luke Castellan, the end begins far earlier than a knife stabbed into his arm in Olympus, or even the moment his soul merges with that of Kronos. It begins with Thalia Grace, on a dark and rainy night, curiously devoid of lightning, atop a hill.
"It's me they want," she says grimly. Her normally spiky black hair is plastered to her face, her eyeliner smudged, and mud sticking to her face in blobs. And yet, despite her being in the worst condition he's ever seen her, to Luke, she's never been more courageous.
"We can still make it if we run!" Annabeth insists, stomping her foot down. The effect, however, is ruined, because her hair, too, is stuck to the side of her face, and refuses to fly. "We're wasting time by standing here and talking! The closer we get to the camp, the closer we get to reinforcements!"
Thalia shakes her head, her brilliant dogged courage of a few moments ago gone. From the most courageous he's ever seen her, she suddenly becomes the most tired he's ever seen her. "We're never going to get there in time, Annabeth. You're a daughter of Athena. This is the most tactical way to save the most people."
"You're a daughter of Zeus! You're more important than the either of us! If anyone should be a decoy, it should be me or Luke!" Annabeth shouts. Luke glances over at the oncoming wave of monsters, and sees that even if it was once possible to reach safety in time, it no longer is.
Thalia laughs hollowly. "I'm the best fighter. I can hold them the longest." Annabeth opens her mouth, doubtless to begin a retort, but Thalia continues. "And frankly, I'm tired of running." She looks up at the sky for a moment, and then resumes. "Besides, do you see any lightning? Clearly, Zeus doesn't care either. He wants me to die here. Less trouble for him if I die before I can cause too much trouble, right? Before I turn 16?"
Luke speaks for the first time in hours, and says, "I've been… I've been stupid lately. I don't know why you're acting like this, but if it's because of me and Hermes, drop it."
Thalia looks at him for the first time in hours – maybe because this is the first time in hours that he's spoken, and the look on her face is almost pitying. Anger sparks inside Luke, and he is vaguely reminded of a brush fire that he had once seen starting in a forest, and he opens his mouth, and he's about to shout, but she speaks first. "I don't know why you're acting like this, Luke. A few weeks ago, you could actually remember the problems of people other than yourself. You're not the only one with problems."
As soon as it comes, the anger vanishes, and his shoulders drop, and he looks once again at the monsters. He can actually make out the Furies in the front now, lead by Alecto, and the Hellhounds which serve almost as their Honour Guard. Luke looks again at Thalia, and recognizes the weariness in her soul now, how she doesn't care anymore for life. He realizes, suddenly, that he longer likes her. Not because she's muddy and bedraggled, but because the Thalia he had secretly liked for over a year is now tired. And the Thalia he had liked, even after Cyclopes and Hellhounds and two years of countless other monsters, had never been tired. She's an old woman now, fifty years before her time, and he hates it.
He turns around, away from Thalia, bends down, and picks up the unconscious Grover, struggling slightly under his weight. "Come on Annabeth," he says. "Let's go."
He can imagine her jaw dropping and her gaze shifting to him, even though he's not looking at her, and has already started walking towards the camp. "You're not serious? At the least, we should make our last stand with her!"
Luke doesn't bother answering, because he knows Annabeth is the most brilliant seven-year old he's ever seen, and he knows that she'll see what he did, at half his age, so he keeps walking. In a few seconds, even though he hears no words, he knows that somehow, Annabeth had seen what he had thought she'd see, because she starts jogging after him, and speaks, "Wait up. We'll get there faster if I help you with Grover."
She rests half of Grover's body on her shoulder, so that they're both holding up equal parts of him, even though she's half his age, and she glares defiantly at him, daring him to challenge her claim. He doesn't, and they keep walking, almost jogging. In a few seconds, he starts hearing lightning bolts crashing down into the earth, but because he can't see a single one in front of him, anywhere, he knows that Thalia has begun her final stand. In fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, they arrive at camp, dripping and tired and muddy, and the camp is gathered around them, waiting for the arrival of a child of the Big Three. A centaur steps out of the crowd, and he looks at them, confused, because even though he's never seen Thalia, he knows that she's a girl, and aside from being too young, her grey eyes and blonde hair prove her to be a daughter of Athena.
"Where," the centaur begins, "Where is the daughter of Zeus?"
Annabeth opens her mouth to answer, but a nearly deafening lightning bolt crashes down with almighty power behind them, and everyone cringes and shuts their ears. After a second, when everyone's ears have stopped ringing, he realizes why Zeus has finally thrown down a lightning bolt of his own. Luke answers for Annabeth. "She's dead."
The next morning, the whole camp goes to the hill where Thalia died, and brings their weapons, just in case, even though Chiron is sure that the monsters have long gone. They don't expect Thalia's body to still be there, of course – Hades isn't nearly that kind. But when they make the trek up the hill, and reach the top, they see a tree instead, somehow fully grown even though it hadn't been there last night, and he understands what Zeus had done, although most of the other campers take longer to arrive at that conclusion.
Luke looks up at the sky, and then back to Thalia's tree, and then back at the sky, and a vicious hate grabs him, because Thalia, tired of body and soul, should not have been forced to endure life as a tree forevermore, and should instead have received a straight ticket to Elysium. His face, he is aware, is cool and blank, contrasting Annabeth's tears beside him, but inside, a fire he's never felt before, even after seeing Hermes a few weeks ago, rages inside of him. Slowly, the fire cools down, as the camp is not sure whether or not to say a prayer, but still burns inside, a slow, cold burn now. He recognizes that this fire is perhaps even more dangerous than the last, but he doesn't care anymore, because Thalia is dead, and the least Zeus could have done was to let her soul rest in peace. He looks up at the sky again, and vows revenge. Against Hermes, against Zeus, against all of Olympus.
And the end begins.
This story was actually supposed to be quite a bit longer, detailing all of Luke's story, but I thought that ending it here would be better.