*static, bursts of noise*
*murmuring*
*something screams*
By now I'm sure you've noticed that something's wrong.
*shuffling*
*someone sighs*
*fluttering of papers*
I'm never sure how much of it makes its way through the Mist.
*coughing*
Bianca di Angelo speaking. Copy. Over. Uhm... Epimetheus. Do you say any of that anymore?
*hoarse, crackling laughter that quickly dies*
So.
*rustling*
What is it that you remember?
I really do wonder sometimes - what is it you see, all of you mortals? Do you see the doorway to death that waits for you all? Do you see the dock? Charon still crews it. Do you know the fate that awaits you where Erebus once was?
I think you do see it.
I think you just can't be bothered to remember.
*more shuffling*
*murmuring of indistinct voices*
Clarisse was supposed to be writing this, of course, but she lost patience, and none of us can't write. Not now. Not… anything. Speaking's hard, even. His curse - well.
We'll get there.
Beckendorf is taking it the hardest, of course - him and Annabeth -
Shit. One moment.
*shuffling*
*shouting*
*screams, ghastly and inhuman*
Right.
Prometheus is dead. I think we should start there, and work our way backwards, because it's very hard to keep it straight. He…
*silence stretches long*
He took something from us.
*slow, rhythmic tapping; more silence*
Well, let's start before that, even.
Harnessing the chronoptic forces. That much I still remember. Annabeth's idea. Her name, chronoptic; it was clever, I liked that.
There are places of power, across the globe; points of… resonance. Markers. Time flows from these points in space; it's anchored there. There was one in Vegas, the hotel. The cathedral in France, and the cave. The wall in China, the southeast segment. The Nazca… thing. The... rock, in Australia.
*coughing*
Sorry.
Umm.
Time.
It's just - we couldn't really beat the Titans, not without help.
We're half-gods, and they're…. distilled. More potent versions of god. Slaked their hunger with flesh and worship. Feeding on fear. Faith. Heady stuff, you know. We got Hyperion with Isis, we got a couple others by ganging up, but it's been the time-traps that have won us the improbable victories. Using the power of the pre-Titans.
They wisened up after that. They kept to their secret places, their… their cities, their castles, their… strongholds, that's the one. Away from the, the… the exceptionally old places of the earth.
So we had to bring it to them. The old gods' power. The...
*silence*
I'm skipping again, I'm sorry. It's… it's really hard to keep things straight.
* silence*
There's some simple things that we can still work at, of course. This recorder - four buttons. Annabeth can manage it. The symbols don't stick, for me. They slide away. She has her wisdom, or something, and she messed with it for a while -
*something screams, very close*
*some wordless oath*
*gagging*
*gargling*
(from far away) Fucking animals.
*footsteps*
*Bianca sighs*
Right. Prometheus. Titan of…. Ingenuity, invention. Titan of forethought. To hear him tell it, he made mankind what it is. He's probably right. The flame of the gods - all that shi- Sorry. Bad language. It slips out, I don't know why -
*silence*
Anyways.
We killed him, eventually. He tried to warn us of... something, but we didn't listen. Couldn't listen. What else could we do? It's nuts, I know - but something - Titans - they - they have -
*silence*
When they killed the gods, we lost something. All of us.
They - Titans - stole from us, certain - concepts, ideas, points of imagination. Replaced them. More primal versions, more basic. The gods - they were concepts. The Titans are more - involved. Integral. When Percy - when - arggh, not that one, maybe - when - Thalia got Hera angry. She - no, not that one either.
*silence*
Look… If you upset Hades, you would get sent to a worse part of hell. If you upset off Ares, you would have shit luck in war. These… Artificial things. Explicit. Elsewhere. Not personal.
Not your soul.
Look at - Clarisse, now, she fought Thea, Hyperion. Titans of light. Of brightness. She has no sight, now - she gouged out her eyes. They stole her light. That was personal, because she took them - she - their - argh - she put their essence in the spear, she caged them. Like Kronos in Tartaros. So it only hit her. She made that sacrifice.
We killed Prometheus. Worse. We didn't realize - we - scattered him -
I'm skipping again. Sorry.
It's just -
It's very different, what we did to him.
*silence*
We had built - weapons.
*something giggles, then laughs, loudly, uproariously*
*murmuring*
*a hissing snigger, very close*
*something slamming*
You have to understand - they knew we were coming. We couldn't beat them. Not without surprise, and we had - none. There was a traitor. The priestess of Isis - the one from Vegas - she sold us. For energy. For her gods. She brought back Horus. They fled, it doesn't matter - I guess it doesn't - they made a bargain. She sold us out.
*silence*
*sighing*
All right. From the top.
We beat some of the Titans - Clarisse mentioned that, in her writings, you can find them somewhere. If you can still read them, they're included. I can't. Annabeth is trying. The others mostly gave up. We don't know if you all are affected, we really haven't been able to check, we're - I -
I'm getting distracted again, sorry.
After the first couple - Hyperion, Thea, Krios, Iapetus - we build weapons. Bombs. Terrible weapons. God, I - gods - they're time-bombs. Literal time-bombs. Bottled… pieces of, of… time. They break the world. We tested them - oh, God - it - there's a spot in Namibia that's not going to heal. Not ever. We tested the weapons, the bombs, and - Hecate's kid - when the armies were chasing us -
*silence*
*deep breathing*
The armies are gone.
So is Hecate's kid. Soaron - that was the name.
Doesn't matter.
A good chunk of land and water.
Lost in time.
All of it.
The pieces of it - you can still see them. You can hear them. Screaming. Someone gets out, occasionally - not often - and sometimes just... part of them. They don't make it far. The vortex gets them back. You'll see a shadow, sometimes - there and then gone. Someone reaching - then gone. Looking at it…
*silence*
A shattered mirror, bits and pieces of it that are there and then drawn back. It's a pillar. A pillar of shattered glass. A rip in the air. Fragments.
It's really horrible. I've seen a lot of horrible things, but this - it's bad.
*laughter*
Not the worst. But bad. I'm not proud of it.
But we used it. We had to.
Clarisse had guided us to the oasis - a place like the others - Vegas, and all that. Percy had moved the waters. Thalia struck with the sky. I had moved the earth. We had found the pillars of it, the time - time-anchor, I think they called it - and -
*silence*
I don't know how we did it, but we… bottled it. Captured… it.
Then went straight to them. Couldn't hide it. The aura was… bad. Strong. You could feel it. We flew. Rustled up some - I don't remember what you call them. Wings. Hoped for Kronos. Got…
*laughter*
Got held up.
He was waiting.
Prometheus.
Above the city. Istanbul. He knew what we had done. Knew somehow. Could see it, I guess - the aura was... well. He saw us. Saw us long before. Revealed his true form. Killed all of them - the mortals, not us, we had - something, I don't remember, it stopped it from hurting us - a fleck or a sluice or - fleece - something - and -
*silence*
*quietly*
He begged.
In a voice that shook the earth, he begged. Begged for us to stop. To listen to him. He begged for us to flee. To take the weapon away, somewhere far. To throw it into the sea. Off into space. Something. Anything.
His form burned at the edges of the ocean. It was so strong. The city - beautiful, it must have been - burned. It all burned, because of him. His power. People screamed all at once, but it was like toys. Far away. It stopped very quickly. One little scream, echoing up to us, from ten million people who perished, all at once.
And with his form of fire, with all of that sheer fucking power at his fingertips. he begged.
We fired.
No choice.
*silence*
*silence*
*something whimpering*
*silence*
So.
Time-bomb. Used.
Kronos still left abroad. Somewhere.
We can't do it again.
He doesn't know that, but we couldn't. Even if we wanted to - and I don't think we do - Prometheus… his…. Death?
It leaves us lacking. Our ingenuity. Our cleverness.
So.
That leaves us with diminishing options.
Percy still has the Atlantean silver sword.
Thalia has her Hunters.
I have…
*soft laughter*
What children of Hades always have. What's left.
Percy went to the oceans. He'll go to Oceania. Australia. The distant land. He'll find Tethys. He'll manage something, like he always does. So do Annabeth, Zoȅ, a dragon, a kraken, and… others. I forget which. The Hunt goes through the old land. Thalia leads them. Clarisse, Beckendorf, Silena - they'll follow. They'll find… something. The Omphalos stone. The crown of Alexander, or the bones of Xerxes. Something.
I've gone to the pits.
Tartaros.
The buried god of old, he of pits and chasms. The darkness. The places beneath Gaia's face, where no light has reached for millenia.
I'll bring it back with me.
I know, in my soul, that nothing that the Hunt can scrounge can deal with the Titans. They know all of it. No Olympian artifact, no rock at Delphi, can beat them now.
It has to be the old spells. The places now forgotten.
Tartaros held Kronos for millenia.
It holds other things still.
This is not an age of gods of thunder, gods of light, or gods of the day.
This is an hour of the dead.
My name is Bianca di Angelo. I was born of the dead, raised from the dead, cast from time and then returned. Thrice reborn. I have walked the moon and the path of the Hunt; I have weathered ages in the desert. I have dined with witches and demons.
All of it pales to the pit.
I can see them around me now; specters, nightmares of twisting sound and sight. Laughing. Crying. The bent, the broken, and the twisted.
They know.
I am coming.
Coming to free them.
Coming to marshal them.
Coming back with an army of the fallen and the damned.
May the gods one day look upon me and weep to see what I have done.
My name is Bianca di Angelo. This recording, I leave to you - all of you, for whom the Fates conspire to leave some damned recording in your hands.
I wonder -
No.
No time for that.
And still -
What is it that you see?
What is it that you remember?
Does it seem to you, beyond the Mist, that the world is slowly ending? Does it seem to you that time has begun to twist and to stand still?
I wonder.
But wondering is a luxury, and I don't have that, not -
*giggling*
*shrieks*
*hideous laughter*
*screams*
Not anymore.
Farewell, old friends, old companions, old lovers that may-have-been. You have this record. Gods willing you'll have more. Clarisse's writings - those are here somewhere. You can find them.
As for me?
I go down.
Down, from here.
Down.
Down….
Down.
*silence*.
*click*