Thalia almost sobbed. There─right there!─was Annabeth, lying unconscious in the middle of a clearing, Percy by her side. She looked so similar to what Thalia remembered. There was Annabeth─alive─and they needed to save her. They were both deathly pale, both looking like soulless husks. Percy looked ragged, more so than Annabeth. The two souls and an Eidolon in him must've been taking a physical tole.
"Now what?" Clarisse asked, dragging her eyes away from the two. Thalia didn't miss the tears she was blinking back.
"Right." Lou moved to stand in front of Percy and Annabeth. "Thalia on the left, Nico on the right and Clarisse at their feet." Thalia quickly moved around so that she was standing beside her cousin. "Now, we grasp each others hands. My eyes are going to start glowing purple and when that happens, start chanting the phrase I told you. I'm not going to be talking, I'll be too concentrated on these two so I can't give you a cue." Thalia looked at Nico. He nodded back.
"It's fine," Thalia said, looking back at Percy and Annabeth. "You're sure that this will work?"
"Without a doubt," Lou answered confidently. "Now, silence."
They obeyed. Lou stared down at Percy and Annabeth, nothing seemed to happen.
Thalia impatiently waited for Lou's eyes to glow purple, yet they stubbornly remained green. She would've stopped paying attention to Lou─her ADHD practically begging her to look at the dryads curiously peeking out at them─if not for the fact that Percy and Annabeth's lives rested on this ritual.
After ten minutes, Lou Ellen's eyes finally started to change colour. It was a gradual thing, her eyes first turned to a dark navy colour, royal blue, light blue, a strange shade of violet before they finally settled on purple.
Thalia met Nico and Clarisse's gazes. She opened her mouth at the same time as them, speaking at the same time as they did. "προσφέρουμε στον Lou την δύναμή μας. προσφέρουμε στον Lou την δύναμή μας. προσφέρουμε στον Lou την δύναμή μας." They repeated themselves again and again, nothing happening. Lou's eyes remained an eerie purple hue.
Then Thalia's arms started to hurt, as did her legs. She wanted to let go of Clarisse and Lou Ellen's hands, but she refused to risk Percy and Annabeth's lives, Lou's warning echoing in her mind.
"No matter how tired you feel, you are not to break the circle. Percy and Annabeth could be lost to us forever. Gangrow would take over Percy's body, and all of us would be too weak to fight him off at all. They could be trapped in a memory─probably Percy's worst one─forever. Or die."
And so Thalia tightened her grip, stubbornly refusing to go down, chanting with a renewed vigour. Nico was looking paler than usual, but there was an iron-like look in his eyes. Clarisse was looking the best out of all of them, her brute strength giving her more energy, yet even she looked tired.
Thalia focused back on Percy and Annabeth. They'd regained their colour, somewhat, and Annabeth's right hand twitched.
Thalia's eyes felt hot and wet and she ached to reach out to her surrogate little sister, yet Thalia chanted, again and again, even when her voice grew hoarse and her head pounded. Thalia would not let them down. Never.
Order did not outright acknowledge his creator's presence. He merely moved away from the clearing, aware that Chaos was following.
"Why, Order, must you cause such disarray?"
"Whatever do you mean?" Order assumed a humane form so that he could actually converse with Chaos.
"You know exactly what I mean," Chaos grabbed his forearm. "The Eidolons? The invasion of the gods' minds? I'm not an idiot."
Order merely smirked. "Our names are quite ironic, are they not?"
"What do you want? Just tell me. We don't need to torture the Mortals," Chaos pleaded. Order's eyes flamed at seeing his ex-lover pleading.
"What do I want?" Order repeated, shaking off Chaos' grip. "I want to see you feel the pain that you've put me through! I want you to suffer!"
"What pain?" Chaos asked.
Order snarled. "Ignorant as ever, Chaos. That apprentice of yours─you've traded me for that!"
"Lou Ellen?" Chaos realised. Order's nostril flared when he saw Chaos smirking. "Oh, she's in love with some son of Hermes. She's more like a daughter to me."
"I'm sorry?" Order asked, his carefully constructed plan to slowly torture Chaos falling apart.
"Yes," Chaos nodded. "The Fates have already informed me that she's going to refuse to become a goddess unless I offer immortality to the boy, Cecil I believe his name was."
"So you never─" Order was already berating himself. How didn't he realise?! "Oh."
"Oh," Chaos agreed.
Order frowned. "I should probably lift my spells from the gods and their children, then."
"That would be very much appreciated." Chaos took his hand. "I might just forgive you."
"Hm." Order narrowed his eyes thoughtfully, even as he obliterated his influence from anyone he'd touched. "No more spending two years with one of your play things and this won't happen again."
Even immortal beings could deal with these things without declaring a war. Well, he and Chaos could. Order couldn't speak for anybody born after them. Really, Chaos should've stopped creating things after Order.
Percy sat up. He reached for Riptide immediately, although he didn't release his sword. He looked around. Thalia, Nico, Clarisse and Lou Ellen stood around him and Annabeth. Percy was holding a pocket knife, where Gangrow was stored and they were in the middle of a clearing.
"It worked…" Annabeth realised. "It worked!" Thalia wrapped her arms around Annabeth, seeming to knock the breath out of her.
Annabeth softly snorted, wrapping her arms around Thalia. Clarisse offered her arm to Percy, pulling him up. "Thought we lost you, Prissy."
"Oh, shut up." Percy hugged Clarisse and Nico. When Thalia pulled away from Annabeth, she shocked Percy. "Ow! What was that for!?"
"Leaving." Thalia then shocked Annabeth, too. "Never do that again."
Percy found himself smiling. "We won't."
"Good," Thalia sighed.
Lou was frowning, looking off into the distance. "And it seems that the prophecy won't be coming to a head."
"What?" Nico asked. "Why?"
Lou shrugged, blinking harshly. "So Order had some plan to murder Zeus, but apparently he changed his mind, so Percy won't be gloriously destroying an army, then. Damn. I wanted to see that…"
"A lot of it already happened," Annabeth said. "I mean, I was the missing daughter, Percy was bound, then─" Annabeth stood up. Percy immediately spotted one of her hands subconsciously resting on her stomach. Percy's eyes widened. She didn't lose the child. Annabeth would've killed something. if that were the case. No. She'd given birth. Annabeth shrugged. "Doesn't really matter anymore. But Percy and I do need to go to Sally's and Olympus."
"Why?" Thalia asked, unwilling to see Annabeth go after just getting her back.
"It's my mom," Percy said. That was reason enough in his mind.
"And I'm currently a dead traitor to Olympus," Annabeth added.
"Not until you tell us everything," Nico said. "We did just participate in some ritual to get you guys out of Percy's head. I think we deserve the truth."
Annabeth and Percy exchanged hesitant stares. "It's a long story."
"We have time," Clarisse returned, lounging in the grass.
And so they recounted their tale, not for the first time and not for the last.
(A/N Okay, look. This story was never meant to be long, or have a war in it. Order was like a woman scorned, and as he said, some immortals are mature. And this story was meant to be a fun, relaxing one for me. Something to calm me down, since I have another PJO story in the works with each chapter being twenty thousand words each. This story is meant to be short─that's why the chapters have never reached past two thousand words. I still have a couple chapters─and an epilogue─left to write, too. It may be ridiculous seeming to you that I've opted to move on from what path things seemed to be going on, but it's smarter for my mental health not to get too invested in this story. Let me know what you thought of this chapter!)
