Chapter One
What?
"Enough!" A single voice rose above all others, cutting out the chatter and hash of arguments that had arisen only moments before.
"If anyone wants to continue down this senseless path then your next and last opponent will be me!" the raven haired man announced, his voice full of sheer and absolute authority that none dared to raise a word against.
The arguments had stemmed from a warship opening fire on the forum that stood tall in the midst of New Rome's city plaza. A full celestial cannon ball had blazed through the brickwork, sending showers of rock and debris falling to the city streets below.
New Rome was in full war mode, falling into defensive stature immediately.
The man walked into the middle of the fresh clearing, all Demigods creating space for him in a silent motion fueled by pure fear of the man that heralded a sense of death in his wake.
He looked around them, his eyes a darker black than the purest night. His once perfectly tanned skin had fallen pale, a small price incurred by his latest trip away from the world he'd come to know so well.
It had been Octavian, a legacy of Apollo, that had stoked the fires of war, stirring the ire of the Roman Legions against their Greek counterparts, seeking war and blood as recompense for the actions of a single possessed son of Hephaestus that had manned the cannon.
Brandishing shield and spear, Octavian was now the only man who hadn't held the sense to disappear into the crowds. His overwhelming need to have his voice heard had now successfully put him in the eyes of the ultimate predator, the most legendary Demigod to grace their worlds with his repeated loyalty to the Gods.
Perseus Jackson, the son of the sea.
For his entire life Percy had trained. Multitudes of mediums had been learned by his hands, his body, his reflexes. There ceased to be a fighting style that the son of Poseidon hadn't come across, and mastered.
Ares himself had spoken of battles where Percy had been the deciding factor to the turning of the tides, to grasping victory from otherwise grim odds that would have been the almost certain downfall of their world.
"Lies!" Octavian bellowed, hissing like a snake from the fury that had begun to well up inside him, "He is nothing more than a graceus! A powerful enemy that had infiltrated our city with plans of cutting our throats when our backs are turned!"
There was a small grunt of bemusement emanating from the lungs of the man now staring down the entire composed Legion that had come to arms against the Argo II.
"Your mouth is writing checks that your body can't cash." Percy told him with a minor degree of humor to his otherwise dark tone.
The emotions of the Demigod had long since been shattered, fractured and thrown into the dust. He'd lost his love, the daughter of Athena, to another, then he'd been rejected by the Angel after everything they'd been through.
A second chance to love another had been obliterated by the Angel so severely that he'd given up the light in his heart, turning only to the role that he now held.
The attention of the Gods had already been on New Rome, with some of them planning to intervene before the Demigods could come to arms and truly clash in a horrifying spectacle of certain death, but then Percy had returned to their senses, appearing after a period of inactivity where none could detect him. Not even Poseidon knew where his son was, or whether he was still on the mortal plane.
The Praetor of New Rome had finally arrived, watching from the side of the clearing in silence. She wanted to let Percy continue, to let Octavian be the one to sign his own death warrant, but she couldn't, not while he was still a citizen of the city.
She had to let it all play out, at least for another minute because as much as she hated to admit it or even give Octavian any grounds to stand on, he did have a valid point. The Greeks were the ones to open fire on the forum, Reyna had been ready to receive them peacefully before the conflict had opened.
"You're in the center of the camp, graceus. You can't take all of us down!" Octavian shouted as he thrust the end of his spear towards Percy who merely regarded it with a lazy glance before turning his attention back to Octavian who almost dropped his weapon then and there, ready to run and hide from the promise of tremendous pain and anguish.
"You'll never make it out of here alive, and where would that put us?" Octavian's fear had turned to malice, just as his thin lips pursed into a snake-like smile. A dull flicker of flames from a nearby pit had reflected in his eyes as it became clear what his plan had been all along.
"Against a Camp without their ace. That place wouldn't last more than a week against our might. The full force of the Legions bearing down on you filthy Greeks would break the lot of you without their precious hero." he said as he broke out into a hysterical laugh, watching as the faces of the Roman Demigods surrounding them all began to change to reflect their sudden understanding of what the augur's words meant.
"You're full of yourself." Percy responded with an amused laugh, "I've been around the world in a time vortex that I received as recompense for getting into a fistfight with Kronos." Percy told him, shocking the crowds into another round of stunned silence.
"Don't believe me?" he asked, "Check the scars on my body? I've walked through Hell and back, I've lived a whole lifetime's worth of conflict!" he shouted, his voice raising ever higher as he whipped his hands at the side of his long brown overcoat, revealing that underneath he wasn't wearing any kind of top, it was just his exposed chest on show, hosting a variety of scars.
Most of the marks on his body were deep and long, very clear attempts had been made to try and annihilate his heart.
"And here you stand, trying so desperately to raise the might of the Roman Legions to find just one man, clutching to dignity with mass futility." Percy's tone had fallen even darker, marred with killing intent as an evil wave of pressure had rolled out away from his body, sending a blasting shock of air past all of the gathered Legions.
Before the Auger could respond there was an almost blinding glare of what seemed like pure sunshine before a human sized image of Apollo stood in the center of the circle that the Legion had made around Percy.
"Your intentions are clear, I'm sorry Percy but I can't let you go through with that. I have to protect them." Apollo spoke solemnly, almost in a barely audible whisper and yet it had been as clear as day to the Demigod opposite.
The Sun God looked genuinely sympathetic towards Percy. He knew that he'd only been trying to keep the peace between the two camps, but this particular path wasn't one that anyone should have had to walk, and it was one that had turned Percy into a true monster.
"I-" Percy was cut off by yet another flash of light, this time it was silver and platinum with a hint of lingering light before it faded away to reveal Lady Diana, the Roman Huntress with her bow already pointed at Percy.
The Greek in her was struggling to fight with the Roman because they were in new Rome surrounded by Roman Demigods. Artemis was tolerant of Percy, in fact she'd go so far as to say that she considered him a friend, but this wasn't Artemis at the moment, this was a colder and far more ruthless Hunter Goddess due to the fact that she'd had little to no interaction with him at all.
"This is an evil path you've chosen and I will not let my incredibly fool hardy brother fight you alone... Given the chance you'd destroy him at any opportunity, according to what we've seen of your past seven years." Diana told him, even her eyes seemed to become softer as she continued to speak to the son of Poseidon.
"Seven years…" Percy echoed as he looked directly at the Goddess, his intense gaze almost breaking her cool facade of control. There was something about him, something extremely powerful and undeniable. It almost made her bow quiver from an involuntary shiver.
"If you've only seen seven years of my past then you missed all of the good parts." he mused, tearing his focus away from the Huntress and back to the vibrancy of the sun itself.
"I must warn you, as a friend... You would be making an incredibly foolish decision, both of you, to attack me. Once I have been attacked by anyone, I am free to fight back, such is the code that I must now live my life, bound by ancient laws like yourselves, the only difference is that mine are a lot older." he explained, showing no hint of lies in his words, only pain through experience.
"How much did you endure before you were freed, how much had you gone through before you were finally returned to the present day?" Apollo asked, slightly lowering his bow and loosening the arrow from the tense string. Diana kept hers in perfect aim, unwilling to falter just yet, despite how much she wanted to.
Percy remained silent as he continued to stare down two Roman Olympians.
"My lord, what are you talking about?" Octavian asked, finally gathering enough courage to get up and ask his ancestor. Apollo looked towards the Demigod with a wrinkled nose, making no attempt to hide his disgust in the legacy.
"Perseus Jackson is no longer a Demigod. He was at the time that he was hunting down a weak mortal vessel of Saturn, but things took a turn for the worst. Isn't that how it went?" Apollo looked towards Percy to continue and fill in the blanks that the Gods had not been aware of.
"Just over seven years I was caught in that time trap, living an immortal life in the echo of a time-stream that was twisted and corrupted by Kronos' bastardly complex curse." Percy explained with a deep sigh.
This hadn't been part of his initial plan when he'd realized the gravity of the rising tensions between the two camps.
"Seven years of torture I endured in the pits of Tartarus, stuck with Kronos day in, day out, unable to be released because of the fact that we existed in every plane of Tartarus all at once." he added with a dark look falling over his eyes, one of agony from reliving the memory.
"Schrodinger's Demigod." Percy said with a muffled chuckle.
"The fun and games only got that much more intense after I broke free of Tartarus, by crossing over into a parallel plane of existence. Hell itself." the Demigod explained, watching as the two God's faces fell from expectancy of a fight to sheer horror.
"One hundred and fifty two years, six months, five days… Eight hours. It took its toll but eventually I managed to get out of Hell, breaking the time trap completely, dropping me back into this world." Percy told them, never looking away as he explained his in depth absence from the world.
Diana's bow dropped, not just from its position with Percy firmly in its sights, but completely, to the floor. She had no idea. He'd been randomly and erratically popping up on their Godly radar for the past seven years but never for enough time to be found, and even that was something that was caught in a time vortex. Each time he appeared, he was gone within seconds, but they weren't oblivious to his personal passage of time.
"He's no longer a Demigod because of his passage away from his humanity. The time spent in Tartarus and Hell have turned him from a mortal to a Demon." Apollo told them. Diana looked on with sadness present on her features.
Artemis' only male friend and he'd gone through so much that he had to be the most broken a person could be.
"I can't let you live... I am genuinely so sorry Perseus, but as a council we cannot let you go on." Apollo grew in size to his godly form. Diana, much like Reyna, had resorted to watching in silence.
She didn't want this, any of it, but Apollo couldn't lie, it was against his nature. Percy was dangerous and could possibly turn out to be a bigger threat than all of the Titans combined.
An arrow with the power of a God was propelled straight towards Percy at incredible speed. Just before it hit its mark, they all clearly heard the son of Poseidon sigh before the arrow caused a small contained explosion. Despite it's size, it's power was huge and terrifying, a solid reminder to the Demigods of what even the less powerful Olympians were capable of.
Once the dust cleared, Percy was stood with two fingers extended, having caught the arrow by the flat of it's head. It was the stopping force of Apollo's arrow that had caused the explosion. Nobody should have ever been able to do that, not even a God, yet here he was, looking disappointed with the prophet's attack.
"That constitutes towards an attack, now if I wanted to I could cast you into a cold abyss of frozen tears alongside Lucifer, but I won't because I'm kind and I like you Apollo." Percy announced with narrowed eyes before he seemed to be composing himself. He opened his hand and let the arrow drop to the ground now nothing more than a dull arrowhead with a few loose splinters hanging out of the back.
"I will leave you and the camps alone to deal with your own problems, but mark my words, this is a war that you cannot win with some Demigods and good timing. You need some seriously heavy hitters that aren't bound by your laws." Percy told the Gods, now completely happy to ignore the Demigods all together.
Diana glared at him, this wasn't the Percy she knew, not the one that she liked, this was just as Apollo had claimed. He was a pale imitation of the man that he used to be.
"Who? Who can we rely on for help in this matter?" Apollo asked, sure that Percy wasn't simply referring to himself. He must have realized that the Gods wouldn't accept the help of a man that had wandered so far down the wrong path.
"Me, you stupid bell-end." Percy almost face palmed at how simple the answer should have been, especially to Apollo of all people.
Apollo was silent for a moment, exchanging a glance with Diana which lasted no longer than a split second.
"Perseus, we simply cannot and will not ally ourselves with a Demon. I'm afraid to say, but you will be hunted now and forever until you are brought to non-existence." Apollo was seriously out of options and as proven before, his attack seemed to do absolutely nothing against a relaxed Percy, he'd need far more backup than simply Diana.
He'd need Jupiter and Neptune by his side at the very least. Perhaps Venus could do something in the way of lowering his guard with her charmspeak.
"Oh for fuck sake, I've had enough of this." Percy sighed once more before turning his wrist as casually as ever, causing a swirling ripple of black smoke to appear at his side.
"I'm going to say this once, and only once. You're wrong, I'm not a Demon, and I can help you in this war if you accept my conditions, all you've got to do is promise that none of you will attack me if I attend a meeting of yours." Percy told him, looking towards Apollo for a response. It was quite a lot to take in. When was Apollo ever wrong when it came down to important things?
"How will we find you?" Diana asked wearily. Percy looked her way, letting the two of them lock eyes. This was the first time she'd really noticed it but there was something different.
His eyes were cold, so very cold and not holding the same mirth that the once vibrant sea green orbs held, no, something had drastically changed aside from his once near perfect iris' that were now as cold and dark as night.
"You don't. I find you when you wish to speak with me. Oh and one more thing, stop calling me Percy Jackson." he said, his tone grounding them, freezing them in place.
"My name is Death." And with that, he had vanished through the opening he had created. Neither Diana nor Apollo could sense him at all, which made them both wonder whether or not they had actually sensed him in the first place or whether they had simply witnessed him entering the camp.
"This needs to be taken to Olympus." Diana told Apollo before she had vanished. The Sun God sighed knowing that it was now his job to ensure the continued safety of the Romans and in turn the Greeks who were in their ship a few miles away.
After an intense debriefing to the rest of the Olympian council, Artemis had been in such a hurry to escape the bombardment of questions from the throne room that she very nearly crashed into the side of the clearing where her hunters had been holed up for the past few days.
She'd been so busy with dealing with the current crisis of Percy's return that she'd literally had no time to even check on the safety of her hunters, a very selfish thing in her own mind but no less necessary considering what they now knew about the mysterious enigma that had been Percy Jackson's life for the past three months which for him had been a hundred and fifty nine years.
"Lady Artemis!" Thalia almost fell off of her camping stool where she'd been positioned as the night time lookout. Artemis nodded, gaining her breath once again before gazing towards the moon.
Everything under it's silver gaze was within her sight and jurisdiction, yet as of now, he never would be.
"Is everything ok milady?" Thalia asked, getting to her feet after noticing her mistress' distress. If it was immediately obvious to Thalia then it must have been bad.
Artemis almost laughed at her. OK? Of course it wasn't. Percy was back but as someone else entirely. The Gods had been forced to tell the campers that Percy had disappeared but as part of the plan to switch a Demigod from each camp in order to strengthen their bonds.
They had no idea what they even could say on the subject of his disappearance.
They didn't know where he was for the first month, but Tartarus? That definitely wasn't on their list of suspicions, and for over a hundred and fifty years of what must have been constant torture before he'd finally escaped from his torturous bonds.
The thing that got to her the most was what he had become. Surely he couldn't mean the Death? She so desperately hoped that it was just a name he'd earned from his incredibly vengeful slaughter of Hell's denizens, but deep down she knew that hoping for that was going to be a lost cause. She'd sensed something about him being cold and she was sure that was what it was, the fact that he was Death itself.
"No, I'm really not. Excuse me, I need to try and contact someone. Inform the hunters that I shall be returning to camp later tonight. I'll explain everything to you soon Thalia." Artemis told her with a wave of her hand before bolting off towards the forest behind them. She'd need privacy for what she was planning on doing.
She vividly remembered him telling her that he couldn't be found, but that when they needed him then he would be the one to find them and right now she needed him to answer some personal questions, and if he wasn't actually a Demon but Death as he'd claimed, then he would have no problems with indulging Artemis' curiosity.
Finding a spot in a clearing with a stream sounding off not far from her location, she decided that she was where she needed to be. Directly under the moonlight that shone down with expectant vibrancy.
"Perseus, I need you. Come here... Please." She'd fallen to her knees, closing her eyes and starting the closest thing to praying that a God had ever gotten to.
She felt nothing, not even the wind shifting through her heightened senses. Opening an eye to eagerly look around she found nothing. To her disappointment she couldn't see nor feel his presence at all.
She returned her focus to the water thinking of how much the old Percy would have loved this spot. A thought had come to her, she'd figured out how to summon him.
Closing her eyes once more and giving every ounce of focus that she had, she whispered one thing.
"Death..." There was a rustle of leaves before nothing but the gentle water could be heard.
"Hello Lady Artemis." A strong and caring voice spoke up just behind her. She couldn't believe that it had actually worked. He truly was something extremely powerful to have answered a summons that had been made with nothing more than a single word. Getting to her feet and turning to face him she was stunned.
There he was, the Percy Jackson she knew, simply older and more refined. He stood with an impeccable black suit complete with a dark raven colored waistcoat that matched his long swept back hair perfectly.
The only thing that was different was the fact that his eyes no longer shined with an emerald gleam but instead seemed to hum with a dull lifeless black, a solid reminder of who he'd become.
"Perseus." she gasped, still amazed that he'd actually answered the call and come here to her. Percy sucked his teeth, much to the initial annoyance of Artemis. It was an emotive that if any other male had made in her presence, she would have given them a free genital removal service, but this wasn't any male and he had already proven that the divine arrows rivaling her own had been nothing more than baby-town frolics to him.
"You're going to keep calling me than aren't you?" he asked her. It was a question that he already knew the answer to but he wouldn't blame her for her consistency. He was, to her, still just Percy Jackson, an image of the man she once knew, now with unfathomable depths of power.
"I have to. Calling you Death. It hurts me Perseus, because it's just a constant reminder of where I failed to save a Demigod, a friend. It resulted in that friend being tortured for over a century and a half!" Artemis argued, her eyes were so close to threatening to betray her emotions.
She wanted so badly to just be able to act cold towards him. It would have made dealing with this whole situation so much easier for her. She wasn't going to dare to dwell on the reasons why it hurt her so much because deep down she already knew that she'd always harbored a secret soft spot for the boy that had saved Olympus, now returned a man that held the power to destroy it.
It was the same son of Poseidon that had taken the burden of the sky, Atlas' eternal imprisonment, from Artemis' very shoulders to ensure that no more of her hunters would be harmed in the Titan's advances of war.
It was a selfless act that Percy had accepted without any hesitation or consideration for his own well-being.
Of course it was going to be him.
The one male in thousands of years that she felt some semblance of positive emotion towards had only ended up holding the mantle of one of the eldest and most anciently revered personified deities in existence.
"Well if you must then please just stick to Percy." he said at last, smiling in her direction. It sent a chill down her spine and she wasn't even sure why.
It wasn't a sinister smile, but rather something that remained of the man she knew before. A small thing that survived the torture he'd endured. His signature lopsided grin was yet to make an appearance, but an endearing smile was more than Artemis had hoped for.
"Fine, Percy. I... I need you to clarify some things for me." she told him nervously. On her way back from Olympus, she'd aged, considerably considering she'd been in the form of an child when she'd left the camp days ago, and as Diana she'd been a couple of years older than that, but right now, for some reason, she felt the most comfortable being his physical age of early twenties. Who knew that Death looked so good for his age?
"Go ahead milady." He bowed his head at her. Incredible, even after ascending from mortality into quite possibly the Reaper himself, he still showed her nothing but respect. More and more unwelcome thoughts about the possibility that what she felt was possibly reciprocated by him had invaded her mind. She forced herself to focus on only what was important.
"Where does your allegiance stand?" She stared at him. His face went blank for a moment and he held no emotion as his eyes stared into hers but they were empty, he was not looking at anything in those brief few seconds. It was almost as if he was in many places at once but having to split his focus between them every now and then.
"My allegiance stands with myself. I fight for what I believe is right. You've picked a beautiful spot by the way, I really appreciate the way the moon reflects off of the running water." he told her, smiling gently as his eyes gazed towards the stream.
That made her feel... Strange. She greatly enjoyed his words given the fact that she'd specifically decided to sit her after thinking that the old Percy would enjoy it. Maybe, just maybe, he hadn't actually changed that much.
"Ahem. I've gotten the answer I wanted but there was just one more thing. I needed to ask something of you." She told him sheepishly. He seemed to do nothing more than simply readjust his footing as he waited for her to tell him what she wanted him to do.
"I need you to-" she began before the man in front of her had held his hand up, silencing her from the instant she saw it.
"No." Percy told her immediately, his well natured smile never once leaving his face as he watched her from his stoic pose.
"B-but you don't even know what I was going to ask!?" she almost demanded. How was he able to convey so much raw power just through his sheer confidence around her?
He was just so at ease even given the fact that, projectiles from the Sun God aside, her divine form could possibly cause him a few painful reminders that even to Death, Goddesses should not be provoked to their last nerve.
"Your tone was all I needed to know what you were asking. You're not a fool my dear lady, you would know more than most that the only thing you'd need to appear sincere when asking would be if I would venture back into Tartarus." he said, explaining everything and destroying her line of querying in a heartbeat.
She shamefully looked at her feet, he'd known it immediately just from her tone of voice? He really had changed into something else.
To her utmost surprise, when she lifted her head he was still there, casually gazing at the stream.
"You're still here?" She was almost questioning herself about it. Why was he still there?
"Of course, you wished to ask me a... Let's call it a favor. Just because I do not wish to go to Tartarus for you, does not mean that I will not help you out. Is there anything else you would ask of me that won't involve me possibly getting my wings clipped?" he asked her with a slight hint of sarcasm.
It was small, barely noticeable, but Artemis had cracked a tiny smile at him. So it was there. The old Percy was still there, just hidden under layers upon layers of grief and whatever else was piled on top of him before he'd become Death.
"You could help me with the Hunt for a little bit, perhaps give Thalia some personal training. She's willingly taking your position on the quest as you'd gone missing. She'll be going with the Seven through all of their trials, it would be beneficial to everyone if she were to train under you for a while, and I figure that... Well, you're still her cousin, she'll want to see you." Artemis reasoned with him. Percy nodded in agreement, he couldn't fault her logic on that one.
"Very well, I'll train her, and the rest of the Hunt for a few days and prepare them for the worst to come in this fast approaching war. I'll be in the middle of your camp at ten o'clock sharp. Warn your Hunters not to attack me or I'll throw them at Jupiter." Percy warned her with a serious expression.
Artemis shimmered in a silvery display before her features had changed somewhat. This was what Percy remembered from earlier that day. It was Diana instead of Artemis.
"You'll throw my Hunters at my father?" she asked in confusion. Why in Hades would he ever do that? Of course at this point it was clearly obvious that the only thing the King of the Gods could do in response to Death was to sit in his throne and let his aggravation continue to rise.
"No." Percy stated simply before starting to walk off. Diana shifted back into Artemis but held the exact same expression as before. Percy stopped walking before turning his gaze back to Artemis' perfect silver eyes.
This was the first time he'd been able to properly appreciate them without the risk of dismemberment at the hands of the very Goddess that he'd found himself experiencing some strange emotions towards in his earlier years.
"The planet." he clarified before there was a rustle of leaves in the wind and he was gone. He didn't even need to use the same teleportation as the Gods, he could just be anywhere he wanted at any time.
It left Artemis curious as to how much power he now held but at the same time horrified that Percy could potentially hurl one of her Hunters into space if they made the wrong move in the morning.
The truth behind the face of Percy Jackson was something that Artemis found herself truly unable to leave unseen.
This was a rabbit hole that she could feel herself being actively drawn to, and she was ready to dive head first and see how far it really went.