Disclaimer: This is a work of fanfiction based on the Percy Jackson universe. All recognizable characters, plots and settings are the exclusive property of Rick Riordan

The First Demigod

Chapter: 4

Freedom

He was playing an old game, lost in his thoughts. One that someone taught him a long, long time ago. Was it a demigod, or a monster? He didn't know anymore. Did it even matter?

As he stared at the ceiling of his prison, trying to remember, his hands formed into rocks, scissors, or papers. This was a game he would always win.

He was nowadays forcefully reduced to human size, but once he had been mighty and powerful. Had helped the gods defeat the Titans. Didn't he have a memory of once throwing boulders as big as mountains. Together with his brothers!

Before they should fade away, disregarded by the gods and forgotten by the mortals, until only he alone remained. Desolate, he continued to stare at the ceiling of his prison, ignoring the world, so same, so sterile around him..

Orphanage

Percy lay panting on the floor. His ears were ringing from the explosion and he could taste something bitter in his mouth. A loud voice cut through Percy's droning.

"Why, Percy. Don't you feel up for a game of dodgeball?"

He turned around on the floor and looked up into the face of Joe Bob. But he couldn't help but notice that this version of Joe bore no resemblance to the one he grew up with. He witnessed Joe growing taller and taller before his eyes. The sixteen year old youth grew before his eyes into what was probably the largest person Percy had ever seen. He observed how Joe Bob's clothes stretched until all of a sudden they all ripped. Scraps of fabric fell to the floor.

Percy watched eyes wide as Joe grew farther and farther from what could have passed for human. His skin became rough, his fingernails grew longer and longer, but Percy really recoiled in horror when suddenly several glowing orbs seemed to rise from nowhere. Each of them was the size of a ball and they all began to circle Joe's body.

Seeing several black glowing spheres defy the laws of gravity snapped Percy out of his shock. He looked around for the first time and only then noticed the small crater immediately beside him. The first sphere appeared to have missed him by a hair's breadth.

Percy pushed himself up from the ground and came staggering to his feet. Standing just a few feet in front of him was what used to be Joe Bob, staring at him with an almost maniacal grin. Percy gaped in disbelief as the something slowly raised its hand and grabbed one of the burning orbs with one hand without crying out in pain.

He just caught sight of the grin on Joe's face widening a bit more when he performed some kind of throwing motion with his arm.

The threatening red glowing black ball flew in Percy's direction. The latter drew in a sharp breath and threw himself to the side. Just in time, as the flaming projectile whizzed past his right shoulder.

He frantically scrambled to his feet and began sprinting for the nearest exit. He was only several feet away from the other door when he heard a resounding laugh and something hissing behind him. Percy ducked at the last moment. He could feel the flaming projectile searing the hairs on the back of his neck. The heat burned against his skin, the flames licked eagerly at him, but even worse, the flaming projectile flew right into the door, burying it under rubble in an explosion similiar to one in an action movie. The last door out was now blocked.

Another loud laugh rang out in the hallway.

"Poor little Jackson. Is his last way out gone?"

Panic-stricken, Percy turned and caught sight of the gleeful grin of his fireball-throwing attacker. The latter strolled casually in Percy's direction as if he had all the time in the world, while another fireball danced around his hand.

"Open your arms and embrace d...", his last words were stuck in his throat as a thoroughly abnormal sound was heard. A kind of smacking and a gurgling for air.

Percy stared with disgust at the part of Joe Bob's body that used to be his stomach. For from this now protruded several black curved claws sharper than daggers. For a second, the monster stared with a confused but pain-distorted look at the five claws that had pierced its belly, before it suddenly gave a bloodcurdling howl and crumbled to dust.

Percy stared at the floor in utter bewilderment and horror, where the last dusty remains of his former monster-turned-roommate lay strewn about.

A cackling laugh of a sweet-as-honey voice suddenly filled the hallway and, to Percy's ever-increasing horror, a much more hideous figure emerged above the remains of whatever Joe Bob might have been. Previously seemingly invisible, how and that this was even possible, Percy could not explain, it now stood several meters in front of him.

With wings similar to an oversized bat, it almost filled the entire hallway of the orphanage. Its ears and nose also resembled one, while its razor-sharp teeth and dust-covered claws, however, were closer to the evil and man-hungry monsters of childish storybooks.

Another cackle echoed through the air before she spoke in a honeysweet voice that sounded nonetheless distorted and not even remotely human, "Did you really think someone with your scent could hide from Alekto, sweetie?"

"Mrs. Dodds?" Percy asked uncertainly. He wanted nothing more now than to escape this asylum as quickly as possible. He had seen many abnormal things in this orphanage, but none of them even came close to what he was now witnessing from the front row. He tried to take a step backward, but his foot only touched the rubble lying on the ground.

"What now sweetie. Are you going to pay for your crimes and give it back? We know you're the thief," the oversized bat calling herself Alekto purred.

"But I didn't steal anything," Percy objected in what he hoped sounded like a brave voice. The monster before him, however, seemed unfazed by his words as it spread its wings. Perhaps it could smell his actual fear, but he still felt it was more than fair nonetheless to receive an award for his brave display. After all, how many times had he faced such a creature before?

"Then I will wrest it from your lifeless ghost before I toss it into the deepest depths of the underworld," Alekto cackled aloud before she pushed herself off the ground and soared in his direction at a speed barely slower than a bullet. She raised her clawed hands while still in flight, licking only to rip him open and gleaming blood red in the dingy glow of the old lights.

Percy stood rooted to the spot, watching the color play of the claws as if hypnotized. All his instincts were screaming at him to move, but something made him stop. For his earlier fear had suddenly faded. Something inside him, buried deep within, felt something akin to familiarity and knew what to do.

At the last moment he snapped out of his momentary trance, and as if he had done it a hundred times before, he rolled underneath the flying monster. Still rolling, Percy caught sight of a side door leading to the bathroom. A loud crash and a furious bloodcurdling scream sounded behind him, but Percy didn't waste a second looking back.

He instead rushed to the bathroom and yanked the door open. Percy was unaware that he had almost ripped the door off its hinges, he rather kept running, ignoring the water damage on the walls and ceiling and trying not to think too much about the acrid smell and the more than suspicious yellow stains that were everywhere. He had one target in mind, the window on the other side of the front door.

Percy had almost reached the small half-height window when the door he had come from was completely ripped off its hinges. A furiously nagging Alekto, or whatever this creature was called, stood in the doorway of the bathroom with a large red bulge on her head.

"You know this is a boy's bathroom, don't you?"

The very second the sentence crossed Percy's lips, he slapped his hands before his mouth in shock. He hadn't meant to say that sentence, much more that sentence came over him again instinctively. Like it just felt right to say something like that.

Alekto howled with a screech. "I'm going to skin you alive, Son of the elder one."

Once again she spread her wings, but this time Percy knew what to expect. He took another step backwards and thus had a wall behind his back again. With a scream louder than any before, the monster dashed flying at him but once more, Percy escaped her claws, rolling past her to the right instead of under her.

Something deep inside him knew that he would have to change his tactics slightly. And this something was right once again. For if he had tried to roll under the approaching Alekto again, he would have been torn apart by her razor-sharp claws. But instead, he heard another crash that made him blissfully happy, and a furious, pain-filled scream. A soft laugh escaped his lips.

Percy stopped again, confused. He was fighting a monster that mistook itself for some kind of policeman, called him a thief and wanted to take him not to prison but to the underworld as punishment, where it would skin him alive, or perhaps the other way around. In any case, there was not the slightest reason to find this funny either, but he had nonetheless laughed.

He remembered back to his days as a child, of his dreams, often blurred and twisted. But that laugh from the unknown man remained etched in his memory even years later. The smile on the man's lips, his movements slowed by the mud, and the sound of the wind.

Something inside him seemed to stir.

The rain that just poured down from the clouds, turning the ground into a muddy mass.

His breathing calmed down. His heartbeat became slower, more steady.

He remembered the storm gusts in his dream, how real they had felt, how they alone had almost brought down the soldiers. He would not forget that power of the storm and the rain even at the end of his life.

Then several things happened at once. Percy jerked up his hand that had unconsciously formed a fist and thrust it in the direction of the monster coming back to her feet. At the same moment the toilet lid exploded, spattering everything with a fragrant and not at all smelly sewage, while at the same time a wind blew through the bathroom, as if out of nowhere, and brutally tore Alekto off her legs again and not against, but through the white bathroom wall.

Screaming and flailing, she smashed through the wall and landed loudly and roughly a few meters away on the lawn behind the orphanage, where she rolled over a few times until she came to a halt on the ground. Her oversized bat wings hung grotesquely at a less than pleasant angle over her head and sand, as well as dirt, flowed out of some of her wounds instead of blood.

Percy stared at the huge hole in the bathroom wall, which he, or rather the suddenly appeared squall, had caused. He barely noticed that his shoes and socks were soaked with the stinking drainage water. Instead, he felt as if all his strength had left his body. He only just managed to keep himself from passing out and falling headfirst into the sewage.

But Percy's head turned in a flash, more than disappointed and slightly frantic, in the direction of a high-pitched screeching scream that had become very familiar to him. However, this was coupled with the sound of something else.

"Don't you dare Son of Hermes or I will drag your soul to the depths of the underworld...", her words died away as something smacking penetrated through to Percy. He could only now make out the outline of a figure standing over Alekto, who was already dissolving into dust. The sunlight shining over the figure made it difficult to see anything. But Percy nevertheless heard a voice.

"Always the same threats, one would think that after millennia they would have gotten more creative, but no. Don't you dare or I will drag you to the underworld, blah, blah and blah again. As if there weren't far worse things than that."

The person speaking looked up and even from afar Percy could make out the sandy blond hair, blue eyes and generally athletic build of a boy slightly older than him. The only thing unsettling, ruining his appearance of a hero based on fairy tales and myths, was a thick, deep pale scar that ran from the bottom of his eye down to his chin.

"Ah," the newcomer spoke as he spotted Percy staring at him. "You must be the new one. Jackson am I right?"

The earth was shaking.

He opened his eyes and it was true. A change!

In front of his cell was the abyss. He had been threatened at one time to simply be pushed into Tartarus, the place of no return. But something seemed to do just that, to return. He watched with more interest than during the entire last century, how the ground trembled directly in front of the abyss. How small stones and boulders came loose and plunged into its depths.

Until suddenly a large, scarred and with dirt and blood stained hand came to light. Next followed a second, also scarred, dirty and bloody.

A tall figure, dressed in rags that did not even begin to cover him, revealed himself. He looked sickly, but muscles that could hardly be overlooked still traced across his body. But most striking was this feeling that emanated from him. A feeling he had not felt for millennia...

"Perseus?" he whispered in a voice barely louder than a breath of wind. He was surprised at how his voice sounded, but even more surprised that it still worked at all.

The man looked up. His poison green eyes, drenched in blood and with a small white gleam looked down at him in recognition.

"Briareus?" the man now known as Perseus murmured back.

"You're alive," Briareus breathed.

"Yes, it looks that way," Perseus replied still as surprised by the sight as he was. "What are you doing here?" he continued to ask.

"Resting, enjoying the view," Briareus replied. His sarcasm was no more of a surprise to him than that he was even able to crack a joke about his own sad existence.

A gurgle, which once could have been an amused and friendly laugh, but now resembled something incomprehensible escaped from Perseus' throat. Against his will, the beginnings of a smile began to form on his lips.

"But you, you are free. Tell me, what does the Warlord of Olympus intend to do with his newfound freedom?" Briareus pressed on.

The gurgling faded and Perseus' expression became unreadable until he opened his mouth. "Freeing a friend and after that. After that, I will reclaim something that has always been mine and will always be mine alone."

In a temple hidden far from any civilization, in the depths of Alaska, a giant of a man covered only in lion skin and carrying a club as large as many full-grown men, guarded a sword glowing in the darkness.

Author Notes:

Here I am again. Took a little longer, but finally a new update is here. There should be some issues cleared up for those who have been paying attention and have read a bit between sentences.

I am happy about any form of feadback.

Also check out my HP story as well as my soon to be available next PJ story which will begin during the Trojan War.

Next chapter will feature a big ass boss fight against...?
Have a Merry Christmas.