Ch1: By the Power of the Golden Fleece

Percy Jackson was in shock.
Pure, utter, unadulterated shock.
After all, it wasn't every day that the daughter of the Lord of the Sky fell out of a tree.

Even more so, it was a huge shock to have someone as powerful as him around camp. Thalia seemed to spark with electricity wherever she went, a lingering smell of ozone seeming to follow her as she walked, and suddenly Percy understood what the others were in about when they spoke about him smelling of the two of them, much as Annabeth had once predicted to him, were so incredibly similar that it was painful.
Quite literally, he found to great personal pain on more than one occasion.

On more than one occasion they had come to blows in their arguments, destroying large portions of the arena in their spats over the most simple of things, and often they didn't know what exactly it had been which had prompted the argument in the first place. Needless to say, the combination of the two of them had proved to be quite the change in the mundane routine which camp tended to take on this late in the summer, especially for those whose time at camp had not involved quite as much drama as Percy's own.

On the subject of routine and normally, though, Percy had come to notice something rather poignant in his mind - Was the tree still Thalia's, now that she was, well, no longer a tree? It had been something of a sticking point for the young son of Poseidon, who had sought after the old trainer of heroes, having stewed over it for a few days.

Chiron, for his part, had hardly been useful when it came to determining exactly why they were still safe despite Thalia's magic having left the tree. He explained that the Fleece would have been doing the majority of the work, projecting what was left of Thalia's magic. Others would later suggest that it was the King of the Gods, Lord Zeus himself, who was looking out for the demigods of Camp Half Blood.
For reasons he couldn't conceive, Percy couldn't help but think otherwise.


The string of peculiar occurrences continued in full flow, things getting progressively more bizarre. Night seemed to fall exponentially earlier by the day, the twilight seeming to hang like an ornate drape over the sky of Camp Half Blood, though this seemed to be exclusive to their little section of Long Island.
Furthermore, the monsters and other various groups formerly residing within the forest outside the camp - the Myrmekes, the few rare Telkhines, and oddly a bright pink Sea Monster seemed to have found a desperate compulsion to leave the borders of the camp as fast as they could, each seeming to cast fearful glances at Half Blood Hill as they departed.

The next occurrence of any particular note was the most obtrusive, the campers agreed. Cabin Eight - unused for close to a decade by its typical inhabitants, the Hunters of Artemis - began to glow. This was not, of course, the typical little silver sheen the building typically gave out, no. The cabin itself, a miniature replica of the temple dedicated to the Goddess at Ephesus, seemed to glow with the full light of the moon, in a near-blinding silver. It was beautiful, and for most it was the first tur exhibition of the power of Olympus that they had ever encountered, the very essence of the Goddess of the Moon, the Protector of Maidens and of young children, the Goddess of Childbirth, all combining in a soothing light like a balm to the senses.

While this seemed to be a slight irritant to the older campers, the younger children, particularly those who were regular victims of night terrors or fear of the dark, seemed to feel all the more safe and secure in their beds at night. Percy himself found that the light was soothing, like the older sibling he'd never grown up with. It wasn't intrusive, on that everyone agreed, it just took a bit of getting used to, when everyone was so familiar with the idea of pitch darkness at night, and the fiendish Harpies who threatened the young demigods with eating them, should they be found out of bed past curfew. Such fears were assuaged, and sleep came easy, a first in the lives of many.


The next two changes were the most dramatic, and by far the most shocking to the Demigods.

The Hunters of Artemis, as well as the Goddess who lent them her patronage, seemed to appear out of nowhere, running straight through the borders of camp one fine evening, interrupting the campers' admiration of the beautiful twilight of that particular day, their garish silver hunting gear standing out like a stark beacon against the warm oranges, yellows and purples of the late evening sky. They didn't care to greet anyone, nor did they bother to make their presence widespread information - a fact Annabeth and Thalia seemed to insist was a rare occurrence - something was clearly on their minds, and the inquisitive child of Athena considered it her mission to find out exactly what was up.
The presence of the immortal maidens was common enough, despite some bad blood over an incident a few years prior, but the true shock was the presence of an Olympian Goddess. It was not their place, among mortals and half-bloods, for their power was simply too great, their draw entirely too captivating for the weak minds of those for whom immortality was but a faraway dream.

"Percy, it has to be linked," she insisted, stormy grey eyes swirling with indignation, "Can't you see it? The monsters, the long evenings and nights in summer, Cabin Eight?"
Thalia shook her head slowly, disbelief and slight apprehension plastered across her face as she understood the implications.
"You know, Annabeth," she began slowly, eyes not leaving the pine which she had once inhabited, "I always felt as though I wasn't alone, back when I lived on that hill. It was the first thing to act up, too - it might be that."
The daughter of Zeus looked to her companions, an expression of dismay washing briefly over her face as neither her cousin nor her closest friend seemed to understand. Percy, catching onto her unease, motioned for her to go on, looking to her intently as she described this seemingly impossible phenomenon.
"It was a voice, never a face," she clarified, as though that made it any more common, "And his voice was like Luke's age, perhaps? Maybe older, come to think of it," she elaborated, confidence increasing as Percy nodded along, the son of Poseidon pinching Annabeth on the shoulder to prevent her from commenting as she was clearly itching to do.

As Thalia's confidence increased, so did her enthusiasm and conviction, and she wove a tale, one that many would find fanciful and, quite frankly, ridiculous. She spoke of a young man who seemed to have the patience of Atlas, whose words were as soothing as the melodies of the muses themselves, and who seemed to come to life with the light of the full moon. This companion seemed almost ridiculous to the empirical mind of Athena's daughter, and it came to the point where enough was quite clearly enough.
"Thalia, suppose it was all in your imagination?" she interjected sharply, the words flying from her mouth with little thought at all.
The daughter of Zeus fell silent at that moment, the air around her suddenly feeling awfully empty and the smell of ozone which seemed to cling to her person feeling all the more suffocating. The feeling of oppressive pressure increased, Percy and Annabeth feeling the air pressure drop dramatically, the air being forcefully drawn from their lungs before the hold was sharply released.

"And what if it wasn't?" spoke a small voice.
The group fell silent, Thalia dropping to a knee from her position facing the tree and addressed the being who had just now entered their conversation.
"My Lady Artemis," Thalia muttered under her breath, Percy and Annabeth following her lead and dropping down to a knee out of respect from the Olympian Goddess.
"Thank you, sister, you and your young companions may now rise," the Goddess pronounced, voice soft, yet carrying across the late summer afternoon unobstructed. Percy was convinced that, should one have been listening from the other side of camp, they would have heard the Goddess' words just as clearly as he himself did.
"There was, in fact, some being within the hill atop which your tree sits, young Thalia, or at least so I would dearly like to think."
"And why is that, my lady?" Percy asked, piping up in curiosity at the Goddess' choice of wording.
"Perceptive, little sea-child," the Goddess remarked, and Percy felt his cheeks heat up at the praise from a being as powerful as Artemis herself, a being typically thought of as especially harsh on men, for whatever reason that may have been.
"I have good reason to think that, if in truth my younger sister did hear a voice, that someone about whom I care a great deal is in some state of life, the original protector of Chiron's camp, and the one who delivered the first group of demigods to this camp, the largest groups saved from the terror of the Persian heathens."

Her piece said, the Goddess turned and vanished, a slight scent of pine lingering in the air where she had once stood, and three very curious demigods were suddenly on a mission. This time, it was not some voyage across the nation, nor a foray into the horrors of the Sea of Monsters, but one of knowledge.
There was, however, one rather more important step to complete before their mission began.
It was time for dinner.


Answers, it just so happened, came rather easier than they expected, when it was announced that the Goddess Artemis herself would be speaking to them around the campfire. The idea seemed hilarious to many among the campers, even some of the Goddess' own huntresses wondering what exactly had prompted such a decision from the normally withdrawn lady of the moon, and so much conversation had sprung up surrounding the topic the Lady of the Hunt would discuss this night.

The Lady Artemis was a figure who inspired much respect among the Demigods of Camp Half Blood, and she knew it. Be it her fearsome reputation for never tolerating disrespect, or be it her history of unwavering kindness to those who had been unjustly wronged in their lives, she stood in front of this arena of heroes, these subjects and warriors of Olympus every inch the Princess she was, aura pulsating her trademark glow of ethereal silver, the light of the moon her spotlight and the grasses of the forest around her providing her bare feet with the most soothing of carpets on which to walk as she spoke. The trees echoed her words and the night itself fell silent to carry the sounds from her mouth.
As she breathed in, she closed her eyes, almost feeling the crowd of some hundred and fifty children of her siblings and cousins leaning in in anticipation of her words.
She exhaled, prepared in her heart of hearts to broach the subject which she had suppressed in her mind for so long.
It felt so wrong to even so much as think of speaking about it, and yet the signs could not be pointing in any other direction.
Thalia watched as the Goddess exhaled, her silvery eyes opening as she readied herself to begin this tale, and it was then that she knew that all her questions would be answered this night, why that hill seemed to have been a home, a memorial of sorts, and not just a protection for the camp as so many imagined it to be.
"I ask you to think back to the times when the land of Hellas found itself at war with the peoples of the Persian Empire," the Goddess began, her voice little more than a whisper and yet carrying across the amphitheatre without any effort, as though the night itself were carrying her words.
"The Gods of Olympus still sat on their original thrones, atop the mighty peak of Olympus itself, where the people still came to pay their obseiances in the fine games they put on each year, be they the Olympic, Pythian, Nemean or Isthmian games. As such, they received blessings from the Gods, and with such levels of interaction came mortals, much like yourselves, you heroes assembled in front of me."

Many people nodded along, understanding that, of course, the Gods had always been the overlords of Greece, and the Games, despite the lack of direct rule. It made sense that the great Generals and Kings of ancient times were children of the Gods, much like they themselves were.
"While many of the glorious leaders and figures of prominence you may have been introduced to in your lessons of history and culture, they were not all the children of the Gods sired, for there were many more than them alone. The children of the Gods in such times had children, grandchildren. It was once speculated that Aphrodite's blood ran in the veins of Caesar, or that Ares and Athena were both ancestors of Leonidas, despite neither being his own parent."

This statement was met with murmurs of disbelief, the very notion of growing to be old enough for kids of their own…
It was insane, quite frankly, especially to the older ones among the campers, who had lived through the hell of loss, and through the torture of dealing with it.
Thalia looked at Percy, who seemed in utter shock, and she could relate; she found herself thinking of how she might look as a mother, before quickly rejecting that idea, the ridiculousness of it all forcing her to suppress a laugh for fear of interrupting the Goddess.

"This, however," began the goddess, snapping many out of their individual daydreams, "came with consequences."
The mood in the arena dropped, the fire dropping as dreams of happy demigods faded. After all, there had to be a downside; there always was in this life of theirs. The brightest sparks, as they said, always burn the shortest.
"The Demigod kings knew how to spot those of their own, and they were good, giving them roles in society which they knew would suit them, many descendants of Gods becoming prominent military figures, or famous artisans, metalworkers and sculptors. They ran society, the blood of Olympus projecting her power upon her subjects. It was all well, and we Gods were remiss in hoping that such an age of stability would last."

Someone in the crowd gasped, and a hundred or so heads turned to the source of the noise. The aforementioned source was possibly the least expected; Artemis' lieutenant herself. Zoe Nightshade. The immortal maiden was famous for her stoicism even in the most high-pressure situations, a fearsome warrior who had defended Olympus since the time of Herakles.
It seemed, however, that even the strongest had moments at which they might break.
The Goddess paused at the outburst from her lieutenant, eyes flitting across to meet the girl's gaze. Steely glare softened slightly as they saw, or perhaps even sensed…
Something.
Nobody could tell quite what it was, but they understood.
The lieutenant knew something, and so it was within her right to react in such a way.

To two children of the Elder Gods, however, the reaction meant something.

Zoe Nightshade, to Percy, Thalia and Annabeth, had been a figure held in a great deal of respect, or at least she had been raised to such a standard when she had proved herself to be much more than the hardline recruiter of unsuspecting young girls that Thalia had encountered in the forests on her trek up north towards camp all those years ago.

The maiden had imparted much of her experience upon Thalia and Annabeth, tolerating Percy's presence, be it through a lack of desire to displease the Lord of the Sea or otherwise. Each had become proficient over the past week in which the Hunters had been at camp, in the art of skirmishing combat, either through the bow and arrow as it had been in the case of Thalia and Annabeth, or with the less conventional Akontia, or Javelin, in Percy's case. The javelin, he had found, was light despite its length, and he had discovered surprising skill in the practice, potentially a consequence of his father's skill with the Trident.

If the huntress knew the person in the hill, then they were important, because Zoe cared little about those who had no impact on her life.
Suddenly, the group were alert, greedy for information, minds racing as they thought up potential reasons for their mentor's reaction, some reasonable, and yet others stretching the boundaries of reason, even for the wild and unpredictable world into which they had been thrust by virtue of the divinity in their blood.

Their reserved expectations of the Goddess' story however, were incorrect.
They were getting everything.
Moving on from her lieutenant's little outburst, the Goddess continued her tale, voice dark and tone grave as she trudged on with her story.
"When the Persians invaded, it was only natural that the children of the Gods would move to defend the land of their birth, and so it was, that the Armies of Sparta, of Athens and Corinth, even of the Ionians who stood up in rebellion against their oppressors, were each ruled, led and manned by the blood of Olympus, and the Persians were repelled, time and time again, by the blood of Olympus.
What we the Gods, despite all our wisdom, did not think of, was the idea of other Gods involving themselves. Darius called himself the God-King; he was not too far from the truth, for within his veins flowed the blood of the Gods, and his greatest Generals, each had the blood of the Gods coursing through their veins.

The Achaemenid Dynasty, for so long regarded as God Kings, were truly just that - children of the Persian Gods, and yet where we the Olympians detached ourselves from the lives of our children, the Persians were always there.
What these pretendant Gods did not understand, however, was that our own blood flowed within the veins of the Achaemenids; they were the descendants of King Perseus through his son Perses, and so we could not intervene, such is the way of Olympus."
This incited much conversation between the demigods, each wondering aloud why it was that the Persian Gods were not bound by the ancient laws in the same ways as the Greeks had been. After all, how bad could it be, giving their kids a little help every now and then? They also, however, understood the situation in which the Greek Gods had found themselves
"Darius went to war in the 490s BC, with his mighty army and fearsome troops. They came from the south, remarkable feats of engineering in their wake, and even going so far as to sack Athens. You have all heard of the subsequent events, the Battle of Marathon and the Persian retreat which followed, and then the battles at Thermopylae, Salamis and Plataea some ten years later."

The assembled crowd nodded along, familiar with some of the Ancient Greeks' greatest battles and victories, though there was still significant confusion as to how the Goddess' words were relevant to what was clearly a phenomenon caused by her domain, the lunar cycle itself having descended into chaos since Thalia emerged from the tree.
"You see, at this time my Father noticed something, a factor which stuck out like a sore thumb. Balance is good, it maintains society as we would like it to be, and yet we had not provided balance. We as a council were not fulfilling our pledge of keeping parity across our realms and dominions.
Each Olympian provided blood to the people of Hellas, and it was clear that their influence was positive in this age of Gods fighting each other in this proxy war, with mortals as the worthless ammunition. Each Olympian had lost children but me, for my hunt was a band of maidens, and unwelcome on the fields of war in the armies of Hellas' kings.
I was all too happy not to send my handmaidens, my sisters into this hell that you mortals call war, for I do not wish to ever lose one of my handmaidens. They are the best that Olympus has to offer, and they shall be forever.
My father, however, decreed that each of us must provide for the defenders of our kingdom, and so I did."

This remark was met by gasps, much like Lieutenant Nightshade's own, and the silence that had descended upon the arena as the Goddess spoke was shattered.
The maiden goddess had a child? It was impossible.

The Goddess began to speak once more, this time picking out one particular person in the crowd of onlookers in the amphitheatre. Thalia Grace felt the weight of the Goddess' gaze on her as the being of immense power spoke once more. She could only assume why; perhaps because she had actually conversed with this being, or perhaps because she had shared his home for some length of time. She could only speculate until the Goddess resumed her tale.

"I created him from moonlight," the Goddess said, voice catching briefly. She looked aside, and the arena fell silent, campers and huntresses alike turning away as one, unable to see the Goddess, a pillar of their world, lose herself in such a manner.
"I created him to be perfect, everything that I am, and yet without all the imperfections that exist within my flawed mind. Alas, I could only give him so much power, lest my father kill him out of spite."

Thunder rumbled across the sky, lightning illuminating the sky in a brutal show of power from the King of the Gods. This, however, did not seem angry or annoyed, more exasperated than anything. Artemis looked skywards and smiled briefly.
Percy would later swear that he saw the Olympian Council sitting there, in the sky, hidden by the clouds and illuminated in that one single moment.
Annabeth would call him a fool and punch him in the arm.
"I named him Thales, the name being derived from the muse of Thalia, the Grace, and taking the meaning of Flourishing. He possessed all my skill in the bow, and with wisdom to rival my sister herself. He was the best man I ever knew, and the standard by which I hold all of his gender."
An onlooker might've sworn that the world stopped in that moment, for it was so still, so silent. The night itself seemed to glow silver, for the power of the Goddess reigned so supreme at that moment that she may, for those beautiful moments, have been the Queen of Olympus. Each hero felt the moon's light as it shone, felt the power within each ray, and for a few scant moments there was no rock in the sky, only the chariot drawn by the Ceryneian Hind.
For a moment, Artemis ruled the realms of Olympus, such was the power behind her assembly of Gods in the sky felt it, the ornate silver throne on the council of twelve shimmering for a moment. The muses sang, their tune one that echoed the soothing tones of the forest, and the entire population of the celestial city appeared in the sky, a concert of the divine lighting up the sky like the most ornate of orchestras in the most decorated of venues. Many of the mortal onlookers fainted there and then, their minds unable to comprehend the sheer volume of power on show. Yet more screamed, the truth of their world, the knowledge of the sheer power of the Gods too terrifying to understand.

Zeus, almighty King of the Gods, smiled.
For the first time since the dawn of the Silver Age, people understood the Goddess Artemis.
It was beautiful, and it was terrifying.


A/N
Right, we're moving quickly, and it'll keep going like this. Already you can see some of the things I want to change, stuff like the idea of honour and respect among the Gods, and for the Gods. Apollo won't be a whiny teenager, Zeus won't be an overgrown child. Once more, Gods is the key word here. I'll be skipping through the canonical timeline, and slowly introduce some more of the ideas I want to explore along the way, including honour in combat, and the idea of heroes - the classical kind.
Let me know what you're making of this so far, and once more, look out for updates in either of my current stories. I post as soon as I have a chapter, so no real consistency, which is a part of the reason for my posting of this.
I don't own PJO.