Percy had to crack a smile when he saw the partially faded out name printed on the truck, "Delphi Strawberry Service", the old cover name for Camp Half-Blood. The van was dull white, looked like it had been made in the 1950s, and had the tackiest logo of a grinning strawberry flashing a cheerful thumbs up. It looked like a real piece of work from the outside, but Percy had long ago learned not to judge things by appearance. Besides, if Paul had tricked it out as much as he claimed, it had to be useful in some capacity, didn't it?
"It...could use some work," Lucy offered finally, though she at least tried to make it sound cheerful.
"It needs a paint job, for one," Sam added. He made a show of inspecting the van. "I'm thinking something cool, like a lightning bolt-"
"We might as well add a neon sign that says "look at us, we're half-bloods!"" Keno scoffed.
"Oh c'mon, it was just a suggestion-"
Percy sighed, this really was going nowhere. "Guys, no more arguing. Yeah, it's not pretty...I think that's the point. It's going to hard enough to avoid Eris's monsters, but we also have to wary of her half-bloods. They could he anywhere and everywhere."
"Percy's right, and he's the quest leader, so come on, let's go!" Caroline ushered them each into the back except for Percy, who climbed in the driver's seat, while she entered the passenger's seat next to him.
Paul had apparently replaced the original seats with comfortable cushioned leather ones, which suited Percy just fine. He'd always been jealous of the chairs in the Big House, which seemed far more comfortable than the ordinary wooden chairs and benches in the pavilion. Probably Mr. D's doing, Percy though to himself with a bittersweet chuckle.
The dashboard was one of the classic metallic ones, finely polished down to the knobs and instrument displays, and complete with a hanging pair of fuzzy dice. But the real treasure trove was in the back, as Percy found out a moment later when Chuck Hedge began to lose his mind.
"Woooaaahh, look all at all this stuff! Lookit, lookit! We've hit the motherlode!"
Percy glanced backwards; like most delivery vehicles, the front was separated from the rear by a thin sliding panel. All he could see at first was the teens gathered around something.
"Your parents really came through for us, Percy," Sam said enthusiastically as he gently raised a celestial bronze short sword to his eye level, inspecting it in awe. The others seemed equally impressed, not none more so than Caroline, who turned and regarded Percy with amazement.
"How- how could they have found all this?" She was visibly shocked, as if this was something even she hadn't seen coming. But Percy, instinctively, tragically, knew the answer.
"The fallen half-bloods...Mom was clear sighted, she could see the weapons as they truly were, and must have collected them with Paul's help during lulls in the battle. In a way it's like...it's like all of our fallen cousins and brothers and sisters are still fighting with us. This was what they left us, their final gifts to the fight for our survival. A way to honor their sacrifice"
"Percy?"
The voice hasn't spoken up in quite some time, but Percy remembered the shy tone of the quest's youngest member, May Kinsley.
"What is it, May? Are you alright?"
"I think I've found something!"
The girl stepped forward holding something she must have found in the pile of celestial bronze weaponry. The object she was holding was not a weapon, however, instead it looked more like an old fashioned locket, golden in color, shaped like a heart. When May flipped it open, though, there was nothing inside, only a white space. The others had gathered around her in curiosity, and seemed rather nonplussed at this development.
"What is it?" Percy asked, genuinely curious as to why his mom and Paul would have included this in the stash of weapons, unless it had been a mistake. But then why would May have been so drawn to it?
"It's an inheritance to the children of Harmonia, a symbol of her blessing...and the curse that was placed on her by Hephaestus, through no fault of her own."
Lucy looked somewhat uncomfortable at this point. Percy himself was momentarily worried a giant robotic hammer might fall out of the sky and crush them to smithereens until he remembered that Hephaestus had more important things to worry about at the moment. May went on.
"According to legends, it has taken many forms over the centuries, and it gives the bearer the power to change the world, to calm the storms of war and violence, if only for a time. It was even said that Harmonia could use the original necklace's power to weaken the wrath of the gods themselves. Remember when I said that most children of Harmonia have tragic deaths? Well, the greatest of them, those who were deemed worthy of Harmonia's blessing, all had this item in one form or another. All of them accomplished great things in life...before the curse claimed them."
"So...you're saying that this locket, or necklace, or whatever it is, has the power to possibly end the war between the gods...but it's very presence may also curse and doom us to fail and most likely die in the process?" Keno asked skeptically.
"Um...yes, that's a pretty good summary of the situation, I think," May answered nervously. Percy noticed that whenever she got anxious, she always subconsciously seemed to fiddle with her hair. It was not too dissimilar to some of Annabeth's nervous habits, and it only made him miss her all the more.
"Can you at least...can you use the power of the necklace to end the war now? We could sure use the help of the other gods, especially my grandpa Hephaestus. I'm sure he'd really like to make it up to your mom." Lucy said with a pensive look in her eyes.
"I- I don't know...only a fully realized child of Harmonia can wield it to its full potential. I'm still pretty new to this whole thing...I could try-"
"That won't be necessary, May, don't worry about it," Percy said as reassuringly as he could. He'd been that terrified twelve year old once, he knew exactly what it felt like to not even understand the full extent of your own powers, let alone how to control them. "Anyways, something tells me that necklace won't work with Harmonia's power locked away behind the magical net of Hephaestus. We still need to free her to fulfill the prophecy."
"Well, what are we waiting for?" Sam said enthusiastically. "Let's get this show on the road!"
"Hell yeah!" Chuck shouted for all the world to hear, raising a celestial bronze knife in the air. Everyone immediately turned their gazes on the child.
"Um...Hades yeah?" he pumped his fist again, more awkwardly this time.
"Aw, get over it, snowflakes!" He finally snapped, and this finally seemed to break the tension in the van, as everyone burst out laughing. At last, it appeared, they were ready to get going.
It took about half an hour before Chuck lobbed the first of many "are we there yets" in Percy's direction. By that point, they were still struggling to break out of the bottleneck in Manhattan forced by panicking and fleeing civilians. It pained Percy to see his beloved home torn apart by the ravages of Eris' war. Worse yet, he had a feeling they had not seen the last, or even the worst of it.
"If things are as bad in San Francisco as they are here…is there any hope?" Keno asked, so quietly that to Percy, it almost seemed more like an extension of his own thoughts. But in fact someone else must've heard, because he heard some soft rustling behind him. Since they were stopped up anyways, he glanced back and saw Lucy sitting next to Keno, who was staring out of the back window, which displayed a clear view of the carnage they were leaving behind.
"There's always hope, Keno," she said as she placed her hand on top of his. "We've just gotta believe in the prophecy, and ourselves."
"Prophecies have been wrong before."
"This one won't be, not with Percy here."
Percy said nothing, but simply returned to the business of driving. He could not escape a melancholy glance from Caroline, however. He wondered just how much longer he could bear this weight on his shoulders, and then he almost started to feel that wherever he was, Atlas had it far better than he did.
"Why would Eris do this?" Caroline fumed as they continued to pass by town after town enthralled in riot and panic, speaking to no one in particular, it seemed. "For fun? Is this some kind of twisted game to her?"
Percy took a hand off the wheel and placed it on his daughter's shoulder in an effort to comfort her. He took a deep breath, mentally convincing himself once again that he would not be smitten now because the gods were at war, which was good because he was about to tell her what he really thought of them, and it wouldn't be flattering.
"The gods...sometimes the gods are just petty, Caroline, they can be vindictive and arbitrary, often for very bad reasons. For reasons that we, let alone mortals, would find ridiculous. But it's never for no reason. The gods always have a reason, however twisted it may seem to be. Sometimes, they may even be working for the greater good, and simply decide to mess with us as much as possible along the way. So Eris has a motive for this, too. The problem is figuring it out."
Caroline hesitated, Percy could practically imagine the gears turning in her mind just like they did with Annabeth whenever she was deep in thought. "Well...what do we know about her, aside from the fact that she's obviously Harmonia's opposite? They must have some kind of shared control over the world."
"That's basically it. Annabeth- your mother, knew a lot more about the histories of the gods than I do. But she taught me a few things here and there on our adventures and in Greek mythology studies at camp. Harmonia and Eris have a relationship kind of like the sun and the moon, or a yin and a yang. Neither is more powerful than the other. Harmonia represents peace, while Eris represents strife. Both are part of the human experience, both can bring out the best and the worst in humanity."
"But how can peace be a bad thing?"
Percy paused, because he had asked Annabeth almost the exact same question, word for word, the first time she had explained this to him.
"It's not that peace is bad...it's that humans are imperfect, we become complacent, we begin to abuse our power...and that leads us back into war again eventually. That's the influence of Eris. And sometimes...sometimes adversity really can bring out the best in people. So that's why the gods think that Eris is necessary. But when you have too much of that adversity…well, this happens. And that's about when Harmonia would step in and calm things down. Like World War II. Or the Cold War. But right now, Eris has full control. If we don't do something soon...civilization itself might collapse. This is nothing, if she manages to get some hotheaded world leaders to launch nukes at an enemy..."
Caroline didn't respond, but the implication was clear, and Percy suspected she might be as frightened as he was right now m, if not more. He hated the thought, hated himself for stating it in such bleak terms. He wished he could've offered greater comfort to his only daughter. But that would have required lying to her, and that was something he would have felt even worse about.
Several hours later, the Delphi Strawberry Service truck and its precious cargo had made the trek, without incident, deep into the rural middle of America. Whenever Eris' army was waiting, clearly they hadn't yet managed to pinpoint their location. There remained a faint hope that they might sneak into San Francisco undetected. Percy would've liked to have kept going all night, but he was completely exhausted, not only from driving, but from his talk with Caroline earlier, and getting his team killed by falling asleep at the wheel didn't exactly sound like a heroic way to go. As best he could figure, they were now in a small town called "Mount Pleasant" somewhere in rural Ohio.
He'd already decided to stop at the first hotel that they came across, and even the fact that it looked completely old and dilapidated wasn't enough to dissuade him. The place would do for the night. Tomorrow, they had another long day ahead of them. With any luck, they would avoid the trail of Eris' army for some more time, and figure out the plan for what they were going to do when they got to San Francisco.
As Percy led his exhausted cohort into the hotel lobby, he hardly noticed a young man in a suit reading the evening paper sitting just a few feet away. As soon as the teen had confirmation of his targets, and as soon as they had gone upstairs to their rooms,he discreetly stood up and, after asking the help desk woman for directions, went to the nearest bathroom and opened an Iris-Message channel with a shadowy figure.
"Omega, I have made contact with the enemy. Six half-bloods, one child satyr."
"Is Percy Jackson with them?" the figure asked.
"Affirmative, sir."
"Good work, Lady Eris will reward you handsomely. Shadow them until you can pass them on to someone else. I am leading a strike team from Mount Tam to meet them head on. Keep me updated."
"Yes sir," the spy said before terminating the connection.
Omega hated working with monsters. Just because he believed Eris was right, and thought that Olympus deserved its fate, didn't mean he liked having to partner up with savages who naturally hated his kind. Still, the beasts had their usages. They were powerful, not as cowardly as men, and expendable. If they could help him kill Percy Jackson, so much the better. When he and Eris liberated the world from the loyalists who defended the tyrannical Olympians, they would cast the monsters into Tartarus along with them. Then, at long last, the world would be free of the gods. The gods who let his mother die in the streets like a dog when he was only a child, who struck down his first and only love for daring to oppose them. Who were the architects of the world's misery, and expected mankind's adulation when their half-blood children inevitably made everything right again.
It was this same arrogance which had driven his own father, his godly father, Morpheus, to join the Titan Army. But now even he had been pulled in by the wicked charms of Olympus. He had abandoned him, disowned him. Just as he'd abandoned Omega's mother. Eris...she was the only one who understood. The only one who had kept her promises. Together, she had said, they would make the world new again, this time, in their own image, not that of Olympus. And they had all but succeeded. She'd managed to have all of the legendary Seven killed, even Percy Jackson. And soon only the worthy few would remain to claim the inheritance of the new earth. And he, a nobody to his father, a lost cause to his old friends, he would be at Lady Eris' side when their dream was realized.
Listen now, Duncan. You are not like the others...you are special. You see things as they really are, you see through the lies they have fed you. It has been a long time since I have met a half-blood like you.
Come, child, free your mind at long last from the chains you have borne all your life. You are home now.
You are home, Duncan. This is your home. I am like your mother, and you...you are the closest thing to a son I have ever had. My alpha and omega…
Duncan...only Eris called him Duncan anymore, that was the name of his old self, the self that thought he was a loyal servant of the gods. Instead, he'd been drawn towards the affectionate phrase she had always referred to him with...alpha and omega. The first and the last.
He was not the first, of course, but when he and Eris reigned, he would indeed be the last. So he became Omega. He gave himself completely to the darkness, seeking comfort and warmth in it. In the darkness, he could not see his past, he could not even conceive of it. The gods could not hurt him or the ones he loved anymore. Now it was they who feared him. Now it was he who had helped capture a goddess. The darkness was a cloak that hid away any vulnerability, that masked the insecurity he had felt once upon a time. All that was replaced by Omega. And when he slew Percy Jackson in their coming battle, Omega would stand above all as the hero who had brought down the last great hope of Olympus, and ushered in a glorious new age of true equity.
He allowed himself as smile as the armored vehicle containing the elite strike team he had brought with him rumbled across the vastness of the desert. Final victory was mere hours away.