Disclaimer: I don't own Percy Jackson or Harry Potter
The Unrelenting Frozen Seas: Symphony of Tempering
Chapter Twenty Six: Return to New York
Beta:
Rhode and Su stepped out of the green flames of Camp's central hearth and were immediately greeted with a sight that melted their hearts. Waiting expectantly for them was Lady Ariadne and more importantly, carried carefully in her arms, their son Theo. But it wasn't the Theo they remembered. It seemed that while they'd been stuck in the Crooked One's time dilation field, months had passed on the outside and he'd grown up quite a bit.
"Mommy, Mama, h-home!" Their baby boy greeted them in Ancient Greek, waving his arms cheerfully.
He was still struggling with his words a little, but it was a far cry from the incoherent baby babble that was all he could manage when last they saw him. A fact that brought both his mothers to tears as Su pulled him from Ariadne's arms and held him tight to her chest, smothering him in kisses that had him giggling happily at the attention.
Rhode though was struggling to rein in her spiking anger instead and turned on her son's babysitter.
"Lady Ariadne," she managed through gritted teeth, gesturing with her left arm at her son and the mostly empty Camp that surrounded them. "What happened?"
"Sadly, my dears, you've been trapped in the Crooked One's time trap for months. Many things have happened since." The goddess told them, nodding at Theo who was still being showered with affection by Su. "He's been a darling, even spoken his first words."
Rhode felt a sledgehammer hit her heart. She'd figured as much from his greeting but it still hurt like hell to have it confirmed.
"I missed his first words." She couldn't help but mutter out in dismay.
Su moved closer to her and with one arm keeping Theo steady, used the other to pull her into a loose hug.
"Sadly my dear, that is not the most important thing right now." Ariadne told her with a sad frown.
"I... You're right. Sorry." She breathed out, shaking her head. "I'm going to kill granddad."
"That's what we all hope." Ariadne said with a nod. "But there are other things you need to know. First, the Princess Andromeda was sunk but Beckendorf from Hephaestus Cabin lost his body during the mission. He's an automaton now. So don't try to kill him when you run into him leading the Campers in Manhattan."
"Least he managed to survive, somehow." Su said with some relief.
"Yes," Ariadne continued with a nod. "And he's led the Campers to Manhattan to defend Olympus. Well, most of them."
"Most of them?" Rhode asked with a frown.
"She means us," Thalia said as she and Clarisse walked out of Ares Cabin.
"Why in Tartarus aren't you guys there?" Rhode asked with a frown.
"One, we were waiting for you." Thalia said with a shrug.
"Two," Clairsse added. "We are the reserves. The plan was to wait for you two to show up, team up with you guys and hit the Titans' rear. Apollo Cabin were even nice enough to give up their claim on that flying chariot that they wanted to get my cabin to agree to the plan."
"Winged chariot?" Su asked with a frown.
Clarisse thumbed back to one of a pair of chariots being driven by her a group of her siblings towards them from the stables. One was the familiar automaton pulled one they'd gotten as a spoil after rescuing Artemis from Mount Othrys, the other was unfamiliar though and sported a pair of large avian wings growing out of the carriage.
"Apollo Cabin and the Ares kids won it as a spoil on a mission." Thalia said with an exasperated sigh. "They were arguing over it for a bit. Until Atlanta whacked some sense into her siblings and they handed it over to Ares Cabin so they could use it as part of the whole hit the Titans in the rear plan that Athena Cabin came up with."
"Nice. Alright then." Rhode nodded as she made a mental note to ask more about that dispute later. It might've seemed settled but you never know when it comes to disputes between Cabins. But like so many things lately, she had to leave it for later. There were more important things to do now.
That was also why she pecked Theo on his crown and reluctantly handed him back to his goddess babysitter.
"Mommy has to go kill grampa now." She told her baby. "Be good for Lady Ariadne, okay, Theo?"
"'Ka~!" Her son babbled.
"Mommy and Mama will be back soon." Su reassured their son.
"Ba Ba, Mommy, Mama." Theo managed before trailing off into incomprehensible babbles and waving his arms adorably at them.
"There are a couple more things I need to tell you before I teleport you to New York City, Rhode." Ariadne said as she took Theo and cradled him close to her chest. "First, Percy has obtained the Curse of Achilles at the advice of Hades. I think the plan is for him to challenge Castellan who has done the same and is now the vessel of the Crooked One."
Rhode sucked in a breath at the twin bombshells. Percy had gained the Curse of Achilles!? The notoriously difficult to obtain curse of nigh invulnerability that most died seeking? And Luke had too and more importantly had been possessed by Kronos!?
"Rhode," Su said, squeezing Rhode's shoulder and serving as her anchor as her mind swam.
"Doesn't matter." She said after a moment, dismissing everything to process later. "He's got a killzone on him now. Granddad just left himself wide open. We just need to find it and exploit it."
"That's the spirit." Clarisse said with a grin. "Let's kill that old hasbeen."
"Best of luck with that," Ariadne said with an encouraging nod. "Also, be on the lookout for Chiron and whatever reinforcements he might bring. He left to rally his cousins, the Party Ponies, and whoever else he could. Last I heard, they were heading towards Manhattan but I am unsure whether they've arrived yet. There is too much interference from the Titan's side for me to get a clearer read than that I'm afraid."
"That's alright, my lady." Thalia, of all people, reassured the goddess. "We know you tried your best."
The Ares kids all nodded. Whatever Ariadne had done whilst Rhode and Su had been away must've made a great impression on them if she'd won their loyalty like this.
Ariadne just smiled and looked Rhode and Su in the eye.
"Are you ready, Rhode, Su?"
Rhode and Su exchanged a look before turning back to the goddess and nodding.
"Let's do this. We go to war!" Rhode proclaimed to Ares Cabin and they thundered their approval, their voices dripping with battlelust.
"Fight well, heroes." Ariadne said before with a nod of her head, they were all consumed with a bright white light.
Rhode, Su, Thalia and the Ares Cabin rematerialised in Hudson Park some distance from a battle scarred George Washington Bridge. It was clear that whichever group of Campers had been guarding it had put up one hell of a fight, there were scorch marks everywhere and even still burning patches of green Greek fire. But it was also clear that the Titans had pushed them back as a host of their monstrous army was making their way across it unhindered.
"Drakon!" One of the Ares Campers pointed out the wingless dragon that was slithering its way towards the bridge as the other monsters gave it a wide berth. It was a behemoth that was over two hundred feet long that had no legs and moved on its belly like a snake.
"Remember what Lady Ariadne said," Clarisse shouted as she leapt into the winged chariot. "It can only be killed by a child of Ares and I called dibs. So leave it to me. Everyone else, deal with the rest of these jackoffs!"
"I'll provide fire support from the air!" Thalia shouted as she jumped into the automaton chariot even as Clarisse's chariot leapt into the air and made a beeline towards the Drakon.
"From the air!?" Rhode asked, looking at Thalia questioningly. "Thalia!?"
Thalia's only response was to nod to her chariot's driver who cracked the reins hard and sent the vehicle soaring into the sky where Rhode's sister began firing bolts of lightning at the monster army ahead of them.
Alright, another story I'll have to ask about. Rhode thought as she brandished her trident.
"Lady Ariadne helped her overcome her fear of heights a little." One of the Ares kids shouted as he and his remaining siblings formed up into a phalanx. "Now snap out of it Rhode! We have incoming!"
"I see them," Su shouted as already in her Ent Armor she slammed her fist into the ground and caused a tangle of oversized roots to shoot out of the ground to impale a squad of charging Hellhound riding Telekhines, breaking the momentum of their charge entirely.
Rhode added to their misery by sending a barrage of icicles that took out the remainder.
Sadly this seemed to clue the enemy in that they were a threat as suddenly in a burst of darkness and frozen winds, two very unwelcome figures emerged to face them. One Rhode recognised as her sister and one of the traitorous minor gods, Despoina. And the other was a dead ringer for one of the descriptions they'd got from Chiron when he described the principal Titans: Koios, Titan of the North.
"Bastard of my Father! I challenge you to combat!" Despoina exclaimed, her voice ringing out over the battlefield.
Rhode could already see she didn't have much choice. If it kept the short tempered goddess from assaulting Ares Cabin and gave them more of a chance against Koios?
"I accept! Su, help them against Koios!" Rhode ordered and strode towards her divine sister with no fear in her eyes.
Thalia kept her breathing steady as she rode through the sky. It had taken time for her to adjust and not freak out when flying, or driving, or both, but she had done better than she had the first time and she refused to fail now when it counted most. She was not about to let all that practice with Lady Ariadne's illusions go to waste. Sure, it wasn't exactly the same. Lady Ariadne's Mist constructed scenarios were ultimately safe. The goddess wouldn't let her get hurt, but they had felt real enough that now that she was experiencing the real deal… It wasn't quite as scary as it used to be. It still left her heart racing but that she could handle. That level of fear was something that she dealt with every time she fought a monster. She could handle this!
It was with that thought in mind that she swept her spear through the air in the direction of the ranks of the monstrous army below, sending blasts of lightning shooting from its tip every so often to keep the horde of monsters off Clarisse's back. The daughter of war fought like a deadly animal as she used her telumkinesis to manipulate multiple weapons at once like some freaky Jedi trick. She pulled them out from a mokeskin bag she had gotten a hold of that seemed to hold an unlimited supply of weapons.
The Drakon snarled and hissed, snapping its massive jaws at Clarisse and attempted to paralyse her with its eyes, but the daughter of war didn't seem to care as she stabbed at it with blades and spears, lodging them by the dozen into its scaly hide. With even more constantly shooting out of her mokeskin pouch and joining the swirling blender of death that surrounded her as she fought the serpentine monster.
All the while, Thalia continued her defense of her sort of friend. She was sure that Clarisse could handle an ambush or two, she had the weapons for it. But having to do so would be a distraction from the Drakon and even one slip up against a foe like that could be fatal and that was not something that Thalia could allow. So as another monster tried to sneak attack the preoccupied daughter of war, Thalia blasted it into gold dust with one of her bolts of lightning.
This seemed to scare away any opportunistic monsters that sought to interfere in Clarisse's duel with the Drakon. At least for the moment. So Thalia redirected her lightning towards the Drakon itself, earning its ire and distracting it enough to cause it to turn and direct its petrifying gaze at her. Something the daughter of Zeus countered by ducking under the protection of her Aegis, which incidentally had the effect of having the Drakon rearing back in fear. This gave Clarisse the opening she needed and with a roar, she drove her chariot straight at the serpent's suddenly exposed neck.
As her chariot rode past, Clarisse leapt off it, sword in hand. A blade that she proceeded to bury inside the monster's flesh and use as a handhold as it writhed in a bid to throw her off. All the while, the various weapons that the daughter of war had managed to stab into its body began to glow with a steadily building red light that reached a crescendo which was accompanied by them exploding and tearing out hefty chunks of the monster's scales and muscle.
"Die! Die in the name of my father, Ares, you fucking gecko!" The stocky girl roared, as she let go of the sword, the last of the weapons still embedded in the Drakon's flesh, and leapt at its head as it whipped past her position, grabbing hold of the writhing monster's eyelid seconds before the blade exploded.
Pulling hard on her new perch, she forced the monster's eye wide open so that the lance she'd just pulled out of her mokeskin pouch with her telumkinesis could plunge in with little resistance and make its way deep into the monster's skull.
Jumping off the beast as the lance began to glow with crimson light, Clarisse would have landed in the middle of a group of Empousai but Thalia cleared the way for her with a burst of lightning, so she landed gracefully in a patch of gold dust. Followed seconds afterwards by the lance in the Drakon's eye finally exploding and shattering the monster's skull, sending brain matter flying everywhere that thankfully soon disintegrated into gold dust and leaving the wrecked remains of its skull as a spoil.
Clarisse ignored it though and just leapt back onto her own flying chariot as its driver brought it in for a pickup, Thalia shocking the flock of harpies that tried to harass it into gold dust as it did.
"Let's go, I don't like our odds against Koios." Thalia shouted over to Clarisse, who was now glowing with the same reddish aura she'd used to explode her weapons earlier, as she directed her own driver to pull the two winged chariots alongside each other.
"Fuck that asshole, I feel like I could snap Kronos like a twig." Clarisse shouted back with a nod as she spurred her driver in the direction of the fight with the Titan of the North.
As she nodded at her driver to do the same, Thalia hoped that wasn't the battle high talking.
"I would honestly prefer to be fighting the daughter of Poseidon." Koios commented with a disappointed sigh that Su just wanted to wipe off his face even as she covered Ares Cabin as they split up their phalanx with a barrage of her Manticore quills and bullet seeds.
If they were facing the Titan army, the phalanx was the right formation to take. But against a single powerful opponent like Koios? It would just make them sitting ducks for one powerful area of effect attack. It was just safer to engage him in small groups or individually. Shifting in and out of a phalanx took time though. Not much, not with how well drilled Cabin Five were, but it was still time that Koios could've used to wipe them out.
The Titan of the North didn't though and as much as she hated to admit it, that had nothing to do with Su's efforts to keep him distracted with her barrage of projectiles. He barely even seemed to notice them to be honest, not with how he let most of it bounce off his Stygian Iron armor and casually batted the others out of the sky like they were little more than pesky bugs.
"Kronos is right," he continued rambling, stomping his feet and creating a wave of frost that forced the now scattered Ares Campers back as they tried to charge him with their dory spears. "She holds such potential. I can see why he wanted her as his Vessel. She would certainly have been a better fit than Castellan."
"He can have my wife over my dead body!" Su shouted, infuriated by the mere thought of the Crooked One and his ilk having any designs on Rhode.
"Well alright then, if you insist." The Titan chuckled as he reached behind his back where a swirling cloud of frozen winds had just formed and pulled from it a single massive sword whose blade looked like someone had taken a whole glacier and somehow compressed it into a vaguely blade-like shape.
Swinging his frozen weapon in a wide arc by its over long Stygian Iron hilt, Koios released a hailstorm's worth of frozen projectiles at her and the Campers from Ares Cabin.
"Hunker down!" Su shouted in warning even as she slammed the oversized fists of her Ent armor into the ground before her and forced into being a forest of thickly interwoven trees in between Koios' attack and its targets.
Her botanical barriers had proven themselves able to withstand some of the most powerful attacks thrown her way in the past. Even holding, if only for a short while, against some of the worst that the Devil of the Rhine could offer. But against the Titan of the North, it proved useless as the freezing winds that preceded his hail froze them solid, turning them brittle enough for his hail to smash straight through them like they were little more than tissue paper.
Thankfully, neither she nor the Ares Campers had put all their faith in them and had all hunkered down like she'd advised. The latter diving into any depressions in the ground they could find, using them as makeshift foxholes whilst she herself spun on her feet and apparated behind the Titan.
Su had hoped that she'd catch Koios unawares but reacting with speed that belied his size, the Titan of Farsight, Foresight, Intellect and Knowledge spun on his feet and shielding his body behind his oversized sword, protected himself from the the lance of twisted roots Su had used her powers to grow out of the ground of the park and tried to impale him with. She wasn't done though and even as the chill from his blade began to freeze her botanical construct solid, she had vines grow out of its sides that proceeded to arc around his weapon whose spear shaped tips sought to impale themselves in his flesh through the chinks in his armor.
"Admirable attempt." The Titan praised even as he unleashed a blast of cold from his body that killed her vines before with a powerful swing of his blade, he shattered them and the mass of roots from which she'd grown them. "But not good enough."
"Oh yeah!?" One of the Ares Campers shouted as he tossed a Molotov Cocktail at Koios, one which burned with the green flames of Greek fire. "Then how about this then?"
The lone incendiary was soon joined by dozens of others as Ares Cabin lobbed them en masse at the Titan. It seemed where her plants had failed to so much as make him flinch, the Greek fire flames did the trick and instead of facing them head on, Koios dodged the attack. Pivoting with a grace that was superhuman, as befit his status as a divinity, the Titan of the North spun out of the way.
"He's afraid of the fire!" Another of the Ares Campers noted with a hint of gleeful satisfaction. "Torch him!"
Though that glee was muted almost immediately when out of nowhere a massive battleship appeared in the neighbouring stretch of the Hudson and opened fire in Rhode's direction. Su, was startled and almost abandoned the fight with Koios to rush off to check on her wife, but she didn't get the chance as the Titan took the time that she, and most of the Ares Campers as well, were distracted to recover from almost being burned alive.
"You overestimate my aversion, mortals." Koios declared before he took a deep breath before breathing out a cone of freezing air that turned everything it touched, even the green flames of Greek fire, into ice and caused the Ares Campers to flee from its chilling touch.
This however left Koios' back open and Su wasn't about to let that opportunity go unanswered. Taking a cue from his aversion to Greek fire, she picked up a chunk of earth where a sizable patch of the green flames were still burning on and using the enhanced strength of her Ent armor, tossed it at the small gap between Koios' helmet and his breastplate. It was a tough throw and Su honestly thought she'd miss but it seemed Tyche was watching and she somehow hit her mark.
The blow caused Koios to flinch, forcing him to abandon the freezing breath he was blowing towards the Ares Campers to brush off the burning soil with such urgency that you'd have been mistaken to think it had been hot shit instead of a little fire and dirt. That he looked a bit like a fool must've infuriated him, for even as he blew on his burning fingers to put out the last of the flames, he turned to Su with a snarl.
"You will pay for that, daughter of Demeter." He threatened as he breathed in again, only to receive a bolt of lightning to the face as Thalia and Clarisse flew in on their flying chariots to join the fight against the Titan of the North seemingly having dealt with the Drakon.
"Yeah, how about no!?" Clarisse, surrounded by a red aura for some reason, shouted back as she sent a dozen different similarly glowing red weapons flying with her telumkinesis that slammed into Koios before detonating in surprisingly powerful explosions that caused the Titan to stagger back.
"You think this is enough to defeat me!?" Koios roared as he stabbed his sword into the ground and released a massive blast of deadly cold. Howling, chill winds had the two flying chariots reeling even as icicles as tall and wide as townhouses erupted out of the ground forcing everyone fighting the Titan on the ground fleeing away to avoid being impaled.
Leaping out of the blast of the chill blast, the Titan fell down towards Su intent to run her through with his sword. A fate that the daughter of Demeter avoided only by apparating away to safety at the last second.
Something that had Koios shouting in frustration as he ripped his sword out of the ground with a mighty tug that created an explosion of frozen soil and earth, as he spun to look for someone else to vent his anger on. Anger that grew as Thalia and Clarisse shot him up with lightning and explosive weapons once again, sending him staggering back. Misery that was added to as the Ares Campers hurled a barrage of Greek fire Molotov Cocktails at him, setting his body alight with green flames and causing him to howl in pain.
"My, my, aren't you in a pinch, Koios?" A beautifully, charming voice filled the park as a soft wind passed by and white feathers began to fall as a figure suddenly appeared out of nowhere on a street lamp dressed in a chiton that barely covered his lovely figure. A figure with glorious white wings attached to his back and who wore a laurel wreath that complemented his crown of perfect long black hair.
"Eros?" Koios said as he finished smothering the green flames raging across his body with another blast of cold that simultaneously forced everyone back. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm not one for combat, it's a touch unsightly. Sadly, I'm the only one close by. Hm, maybe I should have changed opponents with that overworked raven?" Eros, the god of love, mused as both sides looked befuddled by his entrance.
"Siding with the little mortals, Eros? I didn't think someone like you would stoop to belittle yourself like this!" Koios snarled and Su dared, for a moment, to think the Titan was nervous?
Then again, even Lord Zeus would have second guessed picking a fight against the god of love. His arrows were weapons to be feared.
"Ah, Koios, Titan of the North. For all your foresight, you still lack something." Eros smiled, it was nothing but handsome, yet it held a wicked edge that some would say was ugly. Yet on the god of love? It made him all the more handsome. "Allow me to lend you a hand and broaden your horizons."
At the declaration, his dove-like white wings flared out like a bird would do to intimidate a predator. To the Olympian forces' amazement, Koios took a fearful step back at the display.
"You dare!" The Titan roared as hoarfrost rose from his dark armor.
In a quick flourish, the feared bow of love was nocked and aimed. And before anyone could even register the threat, the arrow was fired. Koios though, perhaps acting on the foresight that was part of his domain, somehow still managed to dive out of the way.
"Oh, did I miss my mark? Come now, Koios, don't you wish to feel the warmth of love's embrace?" Eros taunted as he rained down a hail of arrows upon the area the Titan stood, forcing him to create walls of ice to shield himself, catching the arrows in mid-flight or blocking them.
Only, the arrows started to melt through the ice.
Su viewed this as an opportunity. Whilst Koios was preoccupied by trying to keep himself safe from Eros' arrows, he seemed to have completely forgotten the rest of them. And Su was not about to let the chance go, so reaching out to the plants around them and pouring her power into them, she had them all grow exponentially into massive botanical tendrils that proceeded to wrap themselves around the Titan of the North.
The binds didn't hold him for long. Koios broke free within seconds with another one of his blasts of cold and swung his sword through the air to deflect Eros' arrows that had tried to exploit his moment of incapacitation. But that was alright. The deflected arrows were just the ammo that Su needed.
Stretching her chlorokinesis to her limits, making complex structures out of plants was always more difficult than even reshaping their biology, she had the closest plants to where the arrows had fallen shape themselves into bows and fire them back at Koios. The Titan's eyes widened at the unexpected barrage and by the plunging temperatures was preparing another cold blast as a desperate defense, but sadly for him the closest of the deflected arrow was right beneath him. Fired from so close, it hit him before he could gather his power and finding its way through a chink of his armor at his groin, it found its mark.
The power of love as imbued into the arrow by Eros must have messed with the Titan's mind somehow, because his gathering power dissipated and he stumbled as if he was a drunk. This left him completely open as the other arrows, including a fresh batch from Eros himself, fell upon him. Only about half managed to slip through his armor to touch his flesh and deliver their lovely payload but that was more than enough.
"No! No!" Koios screamed as the arrows stabbed into him repeatedly, even as his face started to glow with what Su would have mistaken as a blush if it wasn't accompanied by his face literally melting.
He raged, fought and screamed, but he was being weakened by the arrows as seen by the melting spreading across his body with each arrow that found his flesh. With each stab, the Titan's voice grew weaker, feebler, meeker as his eyes clouded over as wild lust began to consume his mind and he began looking at everything with want. All whilst he looked vexed and confused. A result no doubt of his futile attempts to fight Eros' power over his mind. He began to stagger around and his breath grew ever more labored every passing second until after a painful looking few minutes, he stopped moving altogether.
"Ah, does the love of little Su burn too brightly for your cold heart, Koios?" Eros asked as the Titan shattered into chunks of ice that soon melted away into nothingness. Leaving the Olympian loyalists cheering victoriously. "What a shame."
"Little Su," Eros said as Su herself was breathing a sigh of relief at their victory, causing her to whip her head in the stunningly handsome god's direction. "The battle I'm afraid is not over. It seems we may need to help your wife and that raven out."
After accepting Despoina's challenge and ordering Su to take on Koios, Rhode marched towards the goddess of mystery. She'd expected her sister to intercept her with some kind of ranged attack, from what Rhode knew about her fighting style she seemed to favour those. So she was caught by surprise when the traitor leapt at her, the force of her jump triggering an explosion of dust where she'd been standing, and tried to cleave her in half with a powerful overhead slash using a wicked Celestial Bronze longsword that materialised in her hands. A slash that had enough force behind it to actually carve a groove into the ground where it impacted the earth.
A hit from that would have easily killed Rhode but thankfully she had managed to apparate out of the way. Rematerializing besides Despoina, she thrust Spellbound at her sister's side, but in a blur of motion that she couldn't keep track of, the goddess managed to bring her sword up and parry her trident.
"You're manipulating light to distort your movements," Rhode guessed even as she hastily leapt away from the punch that Despoina jabbed at her with her free hand whilst both their weapons were out of position.
"Wrong." Despoina spat as she blurred forward and began whaling into Rhode, forcing her to apparate away again as she quickly found herself overwhelmed. Not only was the goddess' strikes insanely powerful, they were also moving so fast that it was impossible to track.
"It's pure speed and power." Despoina explained with a smirk as Rhode materialized a short distance away, panting from the exertion of having had to defend herself against her sister for just a few minutes. "No mystery behind it at all."
"Which is more action than I'm sure you've not used for a long time." Rhode rebuked as she shattered the surrounding fire hydrants to summon tendrils of water to lash out at her opponent.
The goddess just shrugged before she blurred through the watery tendrils and appeared right in front of Rhode before the Half-blood could even fully process that she'd moved. In fact, it was acting on pure instinct that allowed her to barely manage to bring her trident up in time to block the overhead slash that Despoina once more tried to use to cleave her in two.
"It's still beating your sorry ass isn't it, bastard?" Despoina spat as she kneed Rhode in the gut.
A blow with such force that Rhode's Pallas Armor actually cracked. In light of that, the blow sending her stumbling back was almost an afterthought. What wasn't was how Despoina used this opening to once more start swinging her sword at her with abandon. Rhode struggled but mostly managed to bring Spellbound up to deflect Despoina's strikes, but she swore that sometimes the goddess' blade seemed to go left one second only to come in at her from right. Even then though, she barely, and only just, managed to avoid getting cut to pieces. But not without her armor earning a whole new set of scratch marks.
Under her hood, Despoina grit her teeth in annoyance as she continued her assault and began ranting. "Damn those Telekhines, I just knew they couldn't come up with a weapon sharp enough to cut through that Cyclopes forged armor of yours. Should have gone with those Hyperborean Cyclopes' work instead."
"Well, lucky me that you cheaped out then, eh?" Rhode taunted as she kicked Despoina's leg in a bid to stagger her foe. The goddess was no fool though and shifted her footing, steadying herself and let Rhode's foot impact harshly against her armored greaves. Thus all Rhode gained from the attempt was a sore foot and the goddess cocking her eyebrow incredulously.
"Did you honestly expect me not to expect-" Despoina asked, only for Rhode to fire a non vocalised Blasting Curse point-blank at her face mid-lecture.
This finally bought Rhode the space she needed to apparate away. But as she rematerialised a safe distance away, she couldn't help but frown. Despoina was taking this fight seriously in a way she had never seen another god or even most monsters did and was leveraging her millennia of experience at fighting, even if she wasn't much of a warrior, against her. Trying to fight her at close quarters was suicide.
"You nasty little-! Do you think you're clever?" Her divine sister sneered. "That little tricks will win the day for you? I'm going to pluck your eyes and make earrings out of them, you little stain!"
"I'll like to see you try-" Rhode began only to be cut off when a bank of Mist descended over the nearby stretch of the Hudson and in its wake deposited the USS Iowa in full war trim and its massive guns pointed right at her.
"Did you forget that I am a daughter of Poseidon as well, bastard?" Despoina asked with a smirk even as the battleship's nine fifteen inch main guns roared, firing massive rounds that zeroed in on Rhode with supernatural accuracy.
Rhode apparated away just seconds before the shells impacted the ground where she had been standing, blasting it into oblivion. That wasn't all though as the shells had released a strange gas that filled the whole area. Or it would have if Despoina hadn't swung her sword with inhuman speed and generated a wind that sent the cloud hurtling towards Rhode at hurricane force speeds.
She apparated out of the way once more but not before some of the gas got to her. It stung her eyes and made it hard to breathe. As a result, she staggered and was only barely able to raise Spellbound in time to block Despoina's latest attempt to bisect her.
"What did you put in those shells?" Rhode asked as she struggled against the goddess' strength. "Poison gas?"
"Nothing of the sort. It's just plain ol' tear gas." Despoina said with a wicked grin. "You mortals are always so creative when coming up with ways to hurt others."
"And who taught us that, huh?" Rhode spat as she spun out of the blade lock she'd been caught in, apparating away at the same time and narrowly avoiding Despoina's follow up thrust.
"You blame the gods?" Despoina asked, pausing and sounding genuinely curious.
"Let's just say it's a little bit of A and a little bit of B." Rhode countered as she used the opportunity that Despoina gave her to fire off a brace of Sagitta Infernum (Arrow Hell) at the goddess. "We influenced you, you influenced us."
"I honestly didn't think a bastard like you would actually realise that." Despoina said, sounding impressed even as she casually swept Rhode's arcane arrows out of the sky with some of her insane swordsmanship.
"You'd be surprised by the wisdom of mortals, Despoina." The familiar voice of Lord Thanatos said from behind Rhode. His presence filled her with confidence that she could win this. After all, with the god of death on her side, how could she lose?
"I would call it more common sense than wisdom." Despoina scoffed. "Some of them had to have it."
"And you wonder why you're so diminished?"
"Not all of us have an everlasting domain, Thanatos!" The goddess roared with rage before blurring forward faster than she had in the fight so far and decked the winged god of death so hard that he was sent hurtling through a block's worth of buildings before crashing to the ground in a mushroom cloud of dust and debris.
"Sweet Olympus," Rhode couldn't help breathing in shock at the sight.
"Actually, I expected that." Thanatos said, appearing next to Rhode looking just a little ruffled. "I might be the god of death, but I'm not much of a fighter. Unlike the other gods, even the peace loving ones-"
"Of which I most certainly am not!" Despoina said as she kicked the ground and sent a large chunk of earth at Rhode and the death god.
"- I never really had much chance to actually learn how to fight. My duty keeps me too busy." Thanatos continued as if he'd not been interrupted even as he used his wings to bat the earthen projectile aside.
"So how can you help?" Rhode asked, already half wishing she hadn't asked even before the words left her lips.
"...Moral support?" The questioning tone he used didn't help the sinking feeling in Rhode's stomach. "Magic? Though I can only really do that if Despoina uses hers and I doubt she will."
"Ha! The god of death, a glorified cheerleader!" The goddess of mystery cackled even as she blurred toward Thanatos once again. "Oh, oh I haven't laughed like this in ages!"
"You won't be laughing once we're through with you." Rhode countered with all the bravery she could manage, interposing herself between her sister and her former boss? Kind of friend? Work associate? It was somewhat confusing what with their last encounter.
"Oh dearest bastard, don't you worry. You'll be with Thanatos soon enough in a far more professional sense." Despoina crowed as moving with a speed and strength that she'd never shown when she'd been trying to kill her, she handily disarmed Rhode and casually tossed her aside with her free arm.
"You really shouldn't count your chickens before they hatch, Despoina." Thanatos said almost conversationally as he took the precious few seconds that the goddess of mysteries was manhandling Rhode to shoot his wings forward, slamming them hard into her upper body and sending her flying.
Thus it was to the satisfying sight of Despoina crash landing that Rhode staggered back to her feet after her own impromptu flight through the air.
"She won't fall for that a second time." Thanatos said with a frown as he materialised next to Rhode. "She'll take me more seriously going forward as well. This fight just got a lot harder."
"Do we have a plan then?" Rhode asked as she felt her wounds healing courtesy of the waters exuded by her Pallas Armor.
"If what I'm sensing is right, we just need to buy some time." Thanatos said with a pensive frown. "Eros and your wife will be done with Koios soon enough. Once they are, they can assist us."
"You're saying we can't win this on our own?" Rhode asked, grounding her teeth together in frustration.
"No," Thanatos said bluntly and nodded to where Despoina had summoned a second Celestial Bronze longsword, so that she was now dual wielding a pair of identical blades. "Take heart. At least she couldn't get enough shells on short notice so the USS Iowa can't fire again. If it could, we'd have already lost."
"Here she comes." Rhode warned as Despoina sprinted towards them in a blur, her feet lighting the ground on fire in her wake and the air heating up from how fast she was moving. It was thus within a blink of an eye that she was upon them.
With that little time, there was no way Rhode could even react. Thanatos though could and he teleported them out of the way just as Despoina snapped her twin swords together like they were blades of a scissors in a bid to cut them in half. If she was put off by her failure, the goddess of mystery didn't show it and in yet another insanely fast charge she was upon them almost immediately. Again Thanatos teleported them away seconds from disaster, thus beginning a twisted and deadly game of tag across the battered ruins of Hudson Park.
One that Rhode couldn't help but fear they were losing. It seemed with each teleport away from Despoina, the goddess moved faster and their escape ever more narrow. Maybe it was just her imagination but she was sure it was the case and it filled her with dread. She was under no illusions about what would happen to her should her sister finally catch her.
Thankfully though before she could actually lose the game and her life with it, help arrived in the form of an arrow that almost stabbed itself into Despoina's heart from behind milliseconds before she could've turned Rhode and Thanatos into swiss cheese. An unexpected strike that forced the goddess to spin around to deflect it.
"What-! Did they slay that lout?!" The goddess of mysteries exclaimed in disbelief as they looked behind her to see Eros and Su had arrived and looked ready to join the fight.
"Tch, just you wait, bastard. You won't have aid next time." She swore and transformed into star-like motes of light that streamed skyward before disappearing entirely.
"Well done, Eros." Thanatos complimented his fellow god. "Good shot."
The god of love shrugged. "My aim isn't the best at times, but I manage when it counts."
"Lord Thanatos, Lord Eros, the monsters-" Rhode began, only to be cut off by Su.
"Are routing." Her wife said, gesturing to the remaining monsters around the George Washington Bridge who with the loss of Koios and Despoina's retreat were either fleeing for their lives or fighting futile last stands against Thalia and the Ares Campers.
Rhode couldn't help but give a tired smile to her wife. It had been a long, long day for them both. They had fought first a possessed Cedric, then Tanya, then got in this battle, all with little rest. They needed a break. But that didn't mean that they could just sit down and rest.
"Lord Thanatos," Rhode said as respectfully as her building exhaustion allowed and turned to the death god. "I want to return your cloak to yo-"
She cut herself off as her tired brain finally caught up to her and she realised that the Invisibility Cloak was back in her suite back in Cabin Two! And she thought she had such a great idea too! She didn't really need the cloak anymore. She had kept it so that her divine family could visit her without the other gods noticing but since she was formally adopted into the House of Atlantis now they no longer needed to be discreet in visiting her. Plus she lives in Atlantis with them nowadays.
Thanatos though just chuckled at her lapse and without a word, teleported the cloak straight onto his person.
"Showoff," Eros said with a roll of his eyes.
The god of death ignored him though and addressed Rhode.
"Honestly Rhode, considering your circumstances and how you have not used it for years, I expected you to have returned it to me ages ago."
"Humans are rather forgetful creatures, old friend." Lord Eros chuckled with a tired smile of his own.
With her blush reaching her ears, Rhode simply shrugged. "Yeah, pretty much. Anyway, I was hoping to ask for your blessing for the remainder of the war, Lord Thanatos."
"That I can happily grant." The death god said, snapping his fingers and filling Rhode with a sense of tirelessness that seemed like something only the dead would possess. "Have the endurance of the grave, Rhode."
"That's all?" Eros asked, cocking an eyebrow.
"I would grant more, make her my champion even as was originally my plan for when she finally returned my cloak but Lord Dionysus sadly laid claim first and it is a rather major faux pas to poach, as it were, from one of the Twelve. So I'll have to settle for a blessing for the battle instead."
"That's more than enough, Lord Thanatos. Thank you." Rhode said, offering him a grateful bow. "The phone you gifted me is reward enough."
Thanatos chuckled and offered her a small smile before replying. "You have learned humility. Good. Continue to do so and you will go far until we meet at the end of your road. It will be my pleasure to bring you to Elysium."
"Lord Eros, Lord Thanatos, Rhode," Clarisse greeted politely, or as politely as the brash daughter of war could manage, as she walked over. "We've finished mopping the area up. What now?"
The two winged gods exchanged a look before Thanatos nodded at the god of love who sighed but replied for both of them. "Thanatos and I will hold the bridge as long as we can and will destroy it should it look like it will fall."
Thanatos nodded before continuing. "In the meantime, you Campers need to head to the Empire State Building to join up with the defenders."
As he finished, Flóga and a flock of Thestrals flew down for a landing.
"You may ride my herd into battle. Though you must hurry, the building is nearly encircled. Your window to slip past the Titans' lines and link up with the rest of the loyalists is small."
"You heard him!" Rhode shouted to Ares Cabin. "Hurry up and mount up! We have an encirclement to breach!"
Done and done! Thanks to Nameless as always!
Whoa, things are getting hectic! From one big battle to the next, the ladies join in the war for New York. You can see some of the differences from canon which we hoped seemed to be a plausible result of all the interactions and such we've added in.
Nameless: Some folks might be wondering how the hell Theo could speak so clearly for a ~one year baby, well it's simple. He's been raised by goddesses and he has a lot of divinity in his veins. That means his development is doubly accelerated. It's honestly surprising he isn't speaking like an Oxford professor and killing monsters already. That's a joke mind you. But yeah, his development is faster than the average infant.
The fights were a lot more interesting this time around. It's been a while since Rhode's been pushed this far and so close to death. It surprised me to remember such a thing. Thanks for that Nameless. The last time had been Scamander. So, so long ago and before canon even started.
Nameless: Yeah. Even against her most powerful opponents who give her a hard time, we have a tendency for Rhode to fight at an even level. But the fact is that against some opponents, that shouldn't be the case. And a goddess in serious mode and fully leveraging her much, much superior experience is one such case.
You know what to do! Smash that review button and tell us what you love! No flames and peace off my peeps!