AN: Rushing the story 'cuz I'm getting impatient. Sorry :(

CHAPTER TWENTY THREE:

It took a few weeks for Leo to settle into Camp Olympus, but he had eventually fit right in with the tinkering habits of the other Hephaestus and Vulcan kids. He had never felt somewhere he had felt so comfortable with being himself before in his life.

So naturally, he was wandering the woods alone, a couple hours past midnight.

He lit the way with his hand, which was encapsulated in dancing, orange flames. It had taken a while for him to control his fire powers, but after realizing that it was a demigod power rather than some kind of curse, he had a newfound enthusiasm about mastering his abilities.

So why was Leo skipping around in the forest?

Why does Leo do anything?

Touché, Leo.

Leo should stop talking to himself about himself in third person.

Good idea, Leo.

"Gah! Shit!" Leo shouted as his shoe slipped on the damp moss that covered a fallen log. He nearly smashed his head into a limestone cliff, but luckily caught himself before any damage could come to his incredibly handsome face. Both hands and his hair were alight with dancing flames triggered by the brief rush of panic that flooded his system.

Suddenly, Leo noticed a low rumbling noise coming from the cliff.

"Whoa," Leo breathed as he watched a portion of the limestone slide aside to reveal a door. Was there a due process for what to do when finding mysterious doors in the middle of a forest? Didn't Percy mention something about a Labyrinth? But it could be hot ladies behind the door! There's no delta anywhere, so technically, it's more likely to be hot ladies than a deadly, semi-sentient maze. But what if it's hot lady monsters? Gah, he should've paid more attention in training. There had to have been instructions on how to deal with these kinds of situations.

Leo finally sighed and shrugged. "Well, nothing to it but to do it."

He pushed the door open and stepped through, hoping for the best. And he was not disappointed.

"Ho… ly… shit." Leo walked into the newly revealed bunker and spun around slowly, taking in everything with wide eyes.

"Bunker 9?"

Hmm… Leo thought, must be like Cabin Nine, Hephaestus' cabin. These blueprints were… insane. It would take at least a century to build all of these ideas.

Well, he had to start somewhere. His eyes were inexplicably drawn to a sketch of an enormous Greek warship with a dragon-shaped figurehead.

"This one," Leo declared with a giddy grin. "I'll call you… Argo II."

/

The Olympians sat in their thrones in the throne room of Olympus, with the exceptions of Poseidon and Zeus, who were sitting in the middle of the grand royal chamber, joined by Hecate and Iris, and surrounded by an ethereal glow of power. The seated gods were joined by Percy, who sat in a conjured bean bag chair at the foot of Artemis' throne.

Everyone present watched with silent interest as the light spray of mist displayed the effects of the four glowing gods' efforts, projecting an image of what was happening halfway across the country.

The 2,000 foot tall storm giant appeared to be smashing its way across the country, demolishing everything in its path as it charged towards Olympus while bright flashes of light appeared to be attacking it without much success. They were careful to avoid densely populated areas so that they could accurately simulate Typhon's wake of destruction without endangering civilian lives.

It was, of course, Percy who finally broke the silence, the lingering effects of his demigod ADHD rearing its head. "Did anyone tell the Campers that we were doing this, or are they currently shitting their pants along with an immortal centaur?"

The gods' eyes widened and Percy sighed.

"Uh, Lord D, you might wanna go down there and sort them out."

Dionysus, who was surprisingly not asleep for once, nodded quickly and flashed away from the throne room.

Percy turned his attention back to the image of Typhon, right in time to see him pluck the fake Zeus out of his chariot and hold him in a vice grip.

Percy grinned at the image and bounced up and down in his bean bag chair. "Ooh ooh! Hecate! Make Typhon rip out his tendons!"

Hecate chuckled as she scrunched her eyebrows in focus, rewarded by the image of the Father of All Monster savagely tearing out all of fake-Zeus' divine tendons.

Zeus groaned. "Not again! Perseus! You are no longer my favorite nephew!"

"Oh yeah?" Percy raised a smug eyebrow. "Who's your favorite, then?"

"I, uh–" Zeus paused. "Damn. I've either killed or dislike almost all of my siblings' children. Very well, Perseus. You still hold the position."

"Why thank you, Lord Zeus. I guess on that high note, this would be as good a time as any to ask you for Artemis' hand in marriage, being in front of the family and all that."

Zeus' concentration wavered momentarily and the storm clouds surrounding the false image of Typhon flickered unsteadily, before quickly returning to a full strength hurricane. The faces of the gods in the throne room displayed varying levels of disbelief, including Percy's own father, who he had conveniently forgot to mention his plans to.

Artemis just looked at him with an amused eyebrow raised, surprisingly with little to no objection to the topic that he had spontaneously raised, and whispered to him out of the corner of her mouth. "Impeccable timing as always, Perseus. Proposing, asking Father for permission, and informing the family, all in one go."

Percy sniffed indignantly and whispered back. "Percy. And worry not, fair maiden. I've foreseen this event already, as it was fated. It actually is impeccable timing, just without the sarcasm."

"Isn't that cheating?"

Percy shrugged. "It was destined to happen, whether I knew it would or not."

It didn't really work that way, but who were they to know?

Meanwhile, the spectators were looking back and forth between Zeus and Percy on bated breath, waiting for Zeus to smite the other god for his insolence.

They were not, however, prepared for Zeus to shrug distractedly with his eyes still focused on the projection of Typhon and say, "Yes, yes, sure. May you both be blessed with eternal and immortal happiness or whatever."

And they were definitely not prepared for the shrill, ear-piercing squeal of one pink-clad love goddess.

/

Artemis rested her left hand, now adorned with an engagement ring of diamonds and emeralds, on Percy's chest, tracing lazy circles as she cuddled into his side with his arm wrapping around her and pulling her closer to his body. They were sprawled out together on the couch in Cabin Three at Camp Olympus after a particularly sweaty sparring match, having left Olympus for the day several hours earlier.

"You know, now that I think about it, you didn't seem all that surprised that your father agreed so readily. Or that surprised that I brought it up in the first place, for that matter."

Artemis chuckled lightly and shrugged. "I knew it would happen sooner or later. I belong with you; I feel it. Can't you?" She smiled warmly when she received a nod from Percy. "As for my father, he already knew."

Percy raised an eyebrow, less surprised than he really should've been. "Apollo?"

"Yup."

"I'm gonna staple his mouth shut some day," Percy grunted.

"A wise course of action." Artemis nodded sagely. "So, want to tell me what that is for?"

Percy turned to look at what Artemis' foot pointed towards and spied a black briefcase tucked into a corner of the cabin.

"Ah yes," he nodded, "That's an immortal-catching device. Its name has been redacted from the blueprints, never to be spoken again."

Artemis gave Percy a funny look, raising one eyebrow to silently urge him to elaborate.

"We raffled off naming rights. Apollo won," Percy said, as if that explained everything. Which it did. "I swore on the Styx never to tell anyone its name, and everyone else who knew it has long since faded. So unfortunately, it's lost to time."

Artemis uncharacteristically snorted. "If Apollo named it, I am sure that it is not too great of a loss. More fortunate than unfortunate, really. So, how does it work? And why do we need it, for that matter?"

"Well," Percy shifted uncomfortably, "It uses divine energy to trap divine beings. It's a sort of ritual magic that uses an alchemical reaction to create a prison."

A cold pit of dread began to form in Artemis' stomach at Percy's obvious unease. "Alchemical… you're not saying…"

Percy nodded stiffly. "Equivalent exchange. Alchemy always requires a sacrifice. This particular device sacrifices a being's immortality to create a cage for another immortal with a strength proportional to the sacrifice's divine power."

Artemis paled. "What… who was it last time?"

Percy grimaced with a pained expression on his face. "Ideally, we would have sacrificed a lesser enemy immortal that was easier to capture; as morally gray as that is, it would have been better than sacrificing a friend. Unfortunately though, we didn't have the time nor the resources to do so, so it was Athena in the end. I volunteered, but she insisted. I think she was hoping that I would come back to fix things, seeing as I was the only one who would be able to attempt something like this. Normally, we could have just given her an Apple of Immortality from the Garden of the Hesperides, but the war was already so destructive by that point that the tree was long gone and there was insufficient power in the world to give her immortality back. She was the first to die, permanently."

Artemis' eyes watered slightly at the thought of the demise of her favorite sister. "This war… when was it?"

Percy sighed. "We put Gaea back to sleep in what would be a couple years, and I ascended to godhood. It was mostly peaceful for quite a while after that. A few millennia later, Kronos rose again and we fought in the Third Titan War. That was when I contested him for our shared domain, sent his spirit to the Void, and took full control of Time. History repeated itself yet again when Gaea and Gigantes rose, but this time we were ready and we hit back, hard. So hard that we caused them to fade."

Artemis raised an eyebrow. "If you know how to do it, why not do it again this time?"

"Well, up to that point, Tartarus was happy to watch from the sideline as everyone fought their own wars and stayed out of it, seeing as how Gaea was simply put back to sleep and the Gigantes would reform eventually. But when we started tossing them in the void, he got really angry, and started his own campaign against Olympus. That's when it started getting really messy, and led to the events that caused everything to go to shit."

"So we capture her this time, and…" Artemis trailed off.

"We bring her before the Primordial Council and allow them to judge her. If we follow due process, not only will we be safe from retaliation, we could potentially gain protection from any of the Primordials council as a whole. They're not supposed to interfere, just like Olympians aren't supposed to interfere with mortals, but just like gods, they sometimes bend their version of the Ancient Laws. If we conduct a formal dispute, the Council won't be able to turn a blind eye and will have no choice but to take disciplinary action, even if only to prevent setting a precedent for allowing rule breaking."

Artemis adopted a thoughtful expression for a moment. "So the world was destroyed in a divine war with Tartarus?"

Percy shook his head. "No, we won that war. Barely. We used the device to capture Tartarus and sent him to the Primordial Council; that's how I know so much about them. Unfortunately, Tartarus had a failsafe in place in the form of a demi-primordial. One that the Fates allowed to exist despite know what kind of danger he posed. That's why I was so angry with them before, but my warning was mostly just so that they didn't interfere with my interfering. "

Artemis gaped at him. "Tartarus had a child with a mortal woman?"

Percy grimaced. "Yeah. The kid was a seriously messed up dude. He was super powerful, had no sense of morality, and was unfailingly loyal. A dangerous combination."

"So how did this demi-primordial end everything?"

Percy's eyes had a faraway look, as if he was literally looking into the past. Or the future. Or both. Semantics.

"The mortals were already suffering when the war with Tartarus began," Percy explained slowly. "They were becoming overpopulated and as a result were enduring famine, disease, and war. A destructive divine conflict pushed the mortals past their breaking point and survivability became nigh on impossible. The gods were weakened as the humans began dying off while Tartarus thrived on their pain. That's part of what made the war so difficult. So by the time the war ended, the entire planet was a mess, the mortals were nearly extinct, and the immortals were hanging on by a thread. Then, Tartarus' demi-primordial, named Mudamir, went to Atlas, took the sky from him, then just dropped it."

Artemis gasped. "What kind of idiot would allow Ouranos to reach Earth?"

"The male kind." Percy grinned wryly, attempting to lighten the mood.

Artemis let out a shaky, disbelieving laugh. "So I'm guessing the sky crushed everything and destroyed most of the gods' domains, which started the fading?"

"Yeah," Percy nodded, "Everyone was already so weak, so it was impossible to hold on for long. Any attempts to do so were rather… destructive. Counter productive, to say the least, seeing as how they only helped to destroy other domains. You and I were pretty much the last, in fact. Most of your domains were already gone, but one of mine was still going strong, seeing as Time isn't a physical domain. I never relied much on mortal belief since I wasn't part of the original Mythos, so I was actually still pretty close to full power at that point.

"But anyway, you still had the Moon, so we pooled our divine power to protect it as much as we could while everything else turned into a cataclysmic ball of death. We hung out on the Moon where we were the safest for a couple decades, just you and me, while we watched everyone fade. The Primordials faded too, seeing as how they were personifications of the very domains that were being destroyed.

"When you were fading, you gave me these," Percy pulled out his necklace with the rings and the charms, "And you knew I was going to come back, because you knew I wouldn't be able to resist doing something stupid to save the people I love."

Percy laughed wistfully. "So your last words to me were a wish to meet again. You always did have a way of encouraging my mayhem-causing ways without making it seem like you were."

Artemis just smiled innocently. "Wait, 'pretty much the last'? And when you first came back, you mentioned something about Chronos with a C-H."

"Right," Percy nodded, "Like mine, Chronos' domain wasn't physical and didn't rely on mortals, like Fate and Destiny do. Time exists even without mortals to experience it. Anyway, after you faded, he sacrificed himself to give me a power boost to help me make the jump back, and now here I am."

Artemis pulled him in closer. "Well, I'm glad you came back." Her words were muffled against Percy's chest.

He smiled into her soft auburn hair. "I'm glad I came back too."

/

AN: So we finally get some answers…