Chapter 29: Shit's startin to go down peeps (not official title)
The Goddess born of the sire that was Chaos felt her strength grown as her father rose from the pits of nothingness.
She smiled as she looked into the mirror of the one bedroom apartment she was renting in San Francisco, a devils smile, one that may creep across a demons face as they look upon carnage wrought by their command.
Soon she would not be shackled to the human life she had conceived in order to get through her life with a small manner of decency. Soon she would slip free and soar as an Emperor's daughter over the hoards of humans forced to bend to her will. After years of their disbelief, their infuriating sense of goodness and aggravating capacity for hope, she'd have them.
Finally.
She stretched out her fingers and black shadows fluttered around her hands and arms with a delighted ease. She looked again into the mirror and saw that all but the whites of her eyes were black, and that ink was spreading through the veins of the whites of her eyes.
And she could feel it, oh, how she could feel it, the thrum, the adrenaline, the exhilaration of it all!
The mirror she looked at swirled and changed. No longer could she see her black eyes self, but a bright, red light streamed through, crossed with specks of orange and yellow.
"Lord Father," she whispered as the voices of Chaos ran into her mind, awaited eagerly and greeted warmly. "How I have longed for this day."
Whispers of his voice, so terrible and so wrong, filled her with an utter delight, a sort of cold fire in her steel heart.
"Yes...yes, I understand," she replied to the voice that was only heard by her. "Of course, sweet patron. Of course."
More whispers, this time so loud that they spilled from her head and into the room.
"Come," she said, breathless with excitement. "Come to me here. The mist is thick and the ocean is near. America will fall all too easily to your might. Come my dear father and we will be as Queen and King of a new world."
More whispers. So anyone but the Goddess, they would have detected the small amount of mockery and the not so subtle sarcasm. But the Goddess was blinded by the joy of hearing the voice she had so missed and scheming to overcome those who she had hated so much.
"Come, come," she said again. "You have your strength and I have mine. So, stand beside me, my father, stand and bellow and roar. Send the rabbits to the hills and the rats to their sewers. Let the mortals know why they should fear our names."
Percy
So, the day wasn't going exactly as planned. Reyna's frustration was evident as the Romans 'refused' to understand the 'perfectly simple' formations she had set up as a 'warm down' activity.
"You ok?" Dakota asked.
"Yeah, fine?" I glanced back at him.
"You just look like you're imagining air quotes or something...sorry man, I don't know."
...anyway.
We were sitting outside the line, munching on stale blueberry muffins from the cafe in New Rome. There were only ten of us on watch. Reyna had wanted to assign more, but I recommended the 'less but more approach' in that there were less watchers, but there were faster switch over times. More people were equally rested like that, and I preferred to think of what would happen to someone who had had no sleep in a battle.
The thought of another death toll made my head ache.
Dakota was the only other Roman I recognised as we sat watching as the stars above us twinkled merrily, only sort of cut off by the lights from the city so close by.
I could still remember, all those years ago, the acute fear I had felt when I came to San Francisco for the first time. The pounding of my heart as I remembered where Annabeth was, trapped in the mountain, grey colouring in her hair, and the fate of the Lady Artemis, one of the few gods that held me in any sort of positive light.
I had been so young.
I frowned and sat up, snapped out of my reverie as a bright light sparked up from the Field of Mars. The light screamed up into the sky, a bolt of pure energy.
The rest of the team was running around, waking people up, bolting to New Rome and sprinting to wake Reyna.
I sat still, shocked into submission, eyes locked on the scene unfolding in front of me. Light gathered tightly packed together, a selection of shadows and burning, traitorous light. The valley filled with the smell of acid and smoke.
Creatures morphed out of the darkness as the Romans gathered and fell into formation, Shields up front, headed by Reyna riding her Pegasus Scipio. I ran as fast as I could, my armour battering at my strength, to the rainbow created for just this instant. I poised my drachma under my thumb, ready to cast it through and make my call.
Who to contact, who'd get here first?
I set by jaw and tossed the ancient coin through, my friends name on the tip of my lips.
Annabeth
Nico Di Angelo was supposed to be in Italy, chasing down his sister.
He was supposed to be learning and growing and understanding, but instead Piper and Jason woke me, exhilarated and confused, pulling me to outside my cabin, where Nico stood, under the starlight.
"Nico?" I walked towards him, frowning. "I thought you were..."
"In Italy," he finished shortly. "Yeah."
I didn't need him to spell it out, and he wouldn't appreciate my pity. So I smoothed my features and acted as if it was merely business that he had left them for, and not the crushing of his dreams, the breaking of the final strand he still had grasp of when the rest of his life fell away.
"What's happened?"
"Chaos has awoken," Nico said calmly, only his flicking black eyes offering any thought to the panic within. "By someone on earth. He's rising. Risen, I should say. Well, not all of him. But, you know."
"Ok," I took a deep breath and closed my eye. "Ok. How long?"
"Till he's fully out? A few hours, maybe a day if we're lucky, but..." he swallowed. "Annabeth, when he has fully risen, there is no way we'd be able to stop him."
"Can we stop him anyway?" Piper asked, demanded, charmspeak sneaking in as it did whenever she worried.
"We have to," I said, low, determined. "We don't have a choice."
"Annabeth!"
I jumped and turned to where someone had yelled my name. Thalia panted around the cabin and appeared, her short black hair flecked and upright, as if she'd been electrocuted. "Chaos!"
"I know," I said. "Do you know where he is?"
"Jupiter," Thalia said, pulling to a halt next to her brother. "Camp Jupiter."
I felt ice steel itself in my stomach. "How?"
"Artemis told me," Thalia said, gaze clear, missing the meaning behind my question. "Annabeth, she can grant us fast passage through the Wild."
"Go then," I said hurriedly. "How long will it take you to get there?"
At this Thalia grinned. A fierce, reckless grin. I wondered if she had done it before. "To San Francisco? 10 minutes."
Harry
"Thanks, Percy," I said, ending the call with a hand through the mist that had appeared with the Iris Message.
"Harry!" Kingsley called, from atop of the stage, where he stood filling in the magical folk who had responded to their call for help about the rise of Chaos. "Where to?"
"San Francisco," I said grimly.
"How many?" Kingsley turned to the crowd, the messengers to the other countries disappearing through the fireplaces in a flash of green smoke.
Spindly arms hoisted themselves above the crowd. I did a quick count. Not enough.
Kingsley looked over at me, realising as soon as I did.
"Oi! Hey!" I yelled, coming onto the stage and turning out to the nervous crowd. "Once you go, you come back, take someone else, and then comeback. You do not stop until everyone is in San Francisco, or knows how to get there."
Kingsley gave a rough estimate of where the Camp was and short pops burst around the room as people disappeared, swirling in on themselves.
it was mesmerising to watch, black in departing and black in arriving. Like a furious dance, the numbers lessened and swelled.
While activity flurried, Kingsley offered Harry his hand and I grabbed it, crunching into the apparation and losing myself on the way to war.
War with Chaos.
Doomed to lose didn't even half cover it.
Percy
"PERCY!" Reyna screamed, as one of Chaos's monsters charged at me, fire spewing from it's mouth.
I leapt out of the way and sprayed water, lifting it up from the broken fountain, coating the monster and crushing through it with my sword, the celestial bronze spinning it into thousands of smouldering stones that cools and turned to dust, a dust that coated the battlefield, dust mixed with blood and screams and bodies.
"Thanks!" I called, ducking through another monster and cutting it in half, watching as the bright, menace of the yellow of its eyes dipped and died.
Reyna fought a ways off from me, her hair half of what it had been before the fight, charred along the edges.
I watched in a brief moment of calm, helplessness settling over me, all consuming, all deadening. For every monster that we killed, three more erupted from the ground.
No.
I crunched bravery and hope into every inch of my being. I inflated the little I had, and then I took some on loan.
I yelled a war cry and dashed into the thickest part of the fighting, right near where thousands of monsters frothed around where they had just been born. Their light combated the dark of the night and the friendly fire from the stars.
I leapt through the air and cut through them, burning rocks swinging back from where my sword arced, streaming next to my cheek and burning against my cheeks, my skin, my neck.
But I didn't feel it, save from a tingle, a tickle of heat.
And then it happened.
I started to slow down.
My adrenaline left me in the worst state that it could have. Angered, the enemy swarmed like moths to a light bulb, like ants to sugar.
And I would have died.
I would have died.
If all the monsters sizing around me didn't fall to the sudden onslaught of arrows, silver tipped and raining from the sky.
And then jets of light, green and red and blue, shot along with them, raising the hairs on the back of my neck, colliding and exploding on contact, the air swarming with the dust of the dead.
A war cry, long and brutal and real, exploded from the Romans, and a voice larger than what had been there before cried out in answer.
Jace
After Clary's exhausted face had disappeared from the Iris Message, the line to the Portal started moving.
I stood next to Alec, his blue eyes flicking from person to person, looking for Magnus, Izzy, but neither were there.
Idris had pooled together, grateful to an answer to why the stele's hadn't been working, and determined to save the world.
Put aside the petty things, the things that divided us.
I watched as Jocelyn and Luke phased through the portal, seraph blades clutched in their hands.
Izzy had left with Magnus on a Matter of Great Importance (his words, not mine) and were still missing. Alec had been hazy on the idea of some sort of weapon that Magnus had been building ever since we'd asked him about the whole thing, all those moons ago.
"Jace!"
I turned and saw Simon hurrying along to Alec and I.
"That's what your mother calls me. What's wrong?"
"Where's Izzy?"
Alec shook his head. "I don't know. She said she'd be here."
"Simon!"
Izzy, speak of the devil, materialized beside Magnus, who promptly rolled his eyes when Izzy flung herself into Simon's arms.
Or rather, she moved near to him and he enveloped her in an all encompassing hug.
"What took you so long?" Alec demanded, the relief in his voice indication of how worried he'd been.
"Magnus picked something up," She said, deliberately dramatic and mysterious.
"Was it a massive di-"
"Jace," Izzy snapped. "No! Jesus!"
"You called?" Magnus asked, grinning, his eyes enriching his smile to look even more like a cats.
"That's my line," Simon muttered.
"Sorry, Vampy," Magnus said. "But we all have moments of pure hilarity."
"That's a very new word for it," I told him.
"Thank you."
I frowned.
"Ready?" Alec asked as the line moved fast through to the portal. We were only a few people away now. To San Francisco, where the other Shadowhunters of the US presided, guarding the West Coast.
"Not even slightly," Simon said. "But thanks for asking."
"You'll be fine," Magnus said, flexing his fingers and closing his eyes. "Could I interest you in a lift, Alexander?"
"Can you interest us all in a lift?" I asked.
"Jace, shut up," Alec rolled his eyes. "Sure."
"I have this irritating one person policy," Magnus shrugged. He held onto his boyfriends arm and they melted into air, like the witches from Macbeth.
"That was very Star Trek of them," Simon muttered.
I gave him a look. "Mine was a little more Shakespearean, but, ah well. We can't all be masters of the English Language."
"How could it be 'more Shakespearean'?"
"As in I referred it directly to Shakespeare."
Isabelle rolled her eyes.
The Nephilim before us disappeared through the portal, the swirling lights catching them and sending them off to the war front.
I headed in first, not looking back, not at the people watching my black-clad back climb through the portal, not at Isabelle who would be pissed I didn't let her go first, and not at Simon, who was terrified, but wouldn't admit it.
He was brave, Clary's friend.
I'd give him that.
Clary
Ginny rested her wand as she fixed the last of her breaks. Almost despite herself, a sigh of relief echoed from her lips.
My stele sat a little to the side, it's burning imprint seared over my collarbone, near my heart, thumping the healing iratze through my body.
"Are we ready?" Ginny asked, almost begrudgingly pulling herself onto her feet, standing beside me.
We were overlooking the Grand Canal, the first place that Ginny had thought of when the Warehouse collapsed around us. The darkness that had threatened to erase us completely was so encompassing that I gave her full marks for the compromise, despite the fact that we were now lost and stuck and only just out of the view of late-night tourists.
The moon was absent behind clouds and the water, the water that stank of sewerage already, became only more deflating and unwelcoming.
I thought about what we had seen. The winged warlock and her swords. The warlock swaying. The warlock chanting over a pot of blood.
I thought about how we didn't stop her. How we had to, this was our fault, we were supposed to turn the tide on this whole thing, turn the boat around, win the war.
We were part of the prophecy, and I couldn't help wonder if fate had been decided once we had let Lila go.
"I'm ready," I said, determined, pushing my hair behind my ears.
Ginny offered me a small smile, and in that instant of comradeship, I knew that she had gone through everything in her mind, over and over again, faster and faster, wondering where she'd gone wrong.
Like me.
We'd stop this. We weren't dead yet.
Ginny grabbed my hand and we apparated, losing ourselves in the passage to Camp Jupiter.
To the place that Annabeth had told us to go.
Sorry this took so long to get up! I've been completely overtaken by an original story and then Summer starting, and also been wasting a lot of time on tumblr. Which is bad. Because hell I am getting so sick of that goddamn website.
Anyway, enjoy, hopefully the final chapter will be soon.
And the penultimate chapter will be before that.
Yay.
