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

Thanks to dhodges507 as a beta for this chapter

The First Demigod

Chapter: 5

The God of Strength

Alaska. Point Barrow. The northernmost point of the US. Next to a long abandoned cutter village, a desolate wasteland. Even during the nighttime summer days, snowstorms would blow over the icy rocks of the coastal region for hours. They all swept over the land with such force that they made his progress arduous, but they couldn't stop him. Nothing could.

It's call had guided him, the call he had followed.

His goal in mind, his head held high, he stared ahead through the masses of snow to a white marble temple towering on the horizon. Several large mosaic columns adorned the entrance to the temple, a block similar in size to the legendary Colosseum.

The man stopped and his feet slowly sank into the snow. His gaze wandered off, up to the night sky, up to the stars. They were barely visible because of the blizzard, but nothing could completely block the shining light of the radiating stars. They illuminated the otherwise dark night, as if they were floating torches.

A touch of nostalgia nearly overwhelmed him, as he, now, the only soul for miles around, stared up at the night sky and tried to rediscover the individual constellations. But something in him seemed to shatter, because as he gazed up, a pang of desolation and despair swept over him in an incomparable way. For he could no longer recognize them, the constellations and especially important, his constellation. Instead, he glimpsed only individual stars whose sparkle had mostly faded.

"What had happened to the world?" he asked himself silently. What had they done to his world?

He felt something wet ooze from his poison-green eyes. It slowly rolled down his cheek until it fell silently into the white snow. The man stared down in confusion, but when he realized what it was, his breathing stopped short.

His hands formed into fists and a tremor, not from the all-freezing cold, but from something else, rippled through his body. He turned his gaze away, back to the temple looming before him, and trudged on, through the snow, through the cold, just away from the red spot shining like a beacon in the white and desolate landscape...

Scene Break

Perseus, his chain slung around his shoulder, entered the all-white main hall of the temple. His slow and steady steps echoed throughout the hall on the smoothly polished marble floor. On either side of the hall towered statues several feet tall. He recognized some, at one in particular his face contorted into a hateful grimace, but to his amazement he had to realize that besides the six, numerous other statues were placed everywhere.

He shook his head as he looked at the statues made of white marble. Did they represent other, new gods? On one side, he saw statues with longswords and hammers, on the other, statues with large shields and bows and arrows.

They all seemed to stare at him disdainfully, as if he was not welcome, with looks that could not have been more hateful. They towered over the hall, almost radiating power that might have made a smaller man duck, kneel, or even run away.

But his attention was to be fully occupied by something else. For only a few meters away, at the other end of the hall, on a pedestal and illuminated by a light with no apparent source, a throne had been erected. A throne made entirely out of gold, which sparkled in the light.

And on this throne sat someone as tall as a giant, in appearance the epitome of a man.

Muscular legs, sturdier than rocks. Arms thicker than the oldest trunks of redwood trees. He looked like a bastard of a man, weighing several tons.

A voice. Deep, powerful and menacing shook the room. "What do we have here? Another unyielding contender, coveting glory, lusting for power. You had a long journey, now have a rest."

The man rose to his feet. His face behind the thick black-brown beard reflected no emotion. Frozen in complete neutrality. A long lion skin covered his chest and reached down to his thighs like a cloak. His right hand grasped an oversized wooden club, larger than some youth, which leaned beside his throne.

"Feel honored to be put to death by me, The Guardian of the Temple."

He, in all his glory, had now risen from the golden throne. Perseus, who was also already taller and broader than any other mortal and most immortal man, was still short in comparison to him. The stranger towered over him, as if he was just some child.

However, behind him at the throne, Perseus spied a sword wrapped in chains. A two-handed sword, forged from the hardest materials and heated in the hottest flames of this world. It had a sky-blue hilt, decorated with golden outlines and lines that formed shapes and symbols.

The wooden oversized club was dragged over the ground, tearing open the marble foundation until the guardian of the temple easily yanked it up, swinging it high above his head, and bringing it crashing down on Perseus.

The club hissed through the air, faster than such an oversized club should have been allowed. It narrowly missed Perseus in a two-handed downward slash, as he dodged it skillfully and swiftly. Instead, the club tore a gaping hole in the previously mirror-smooth marble floor. The stranger stolidly ripped his club out of the ground and swung it horizontally through the air. But Perseus again escaped the blow, this time by rolling under it. Having overcome the remaining distance between them, Perseus used all his strength to drive his fist-shaped right hand into the pit of the giant of a man's stomach.

The man, stunned that his opponent was still standing and not a bloody stain on the ground, was literally brought to his knees by the force of the punch. His previous astonished look now, as his brain had also realized the blow, resembled the first stirrings of a person waking up from a long sleep. A twitch of his beard could be seen.

But as he paused, Perseus rushed forward, his gaze trained on the sword above the throne, only to suddenly hear a whoosh in the air behind him. He dropped to the ground just in time, narrowly avoiding the wooden club hurtling towards him, which flew overhead and pulverized the golden throne instead of him, causing a deafening crash.

"Sweat, pain and blood. Have I not known this?" The man stomped towards Perseus, unarmed, but in the sight of his hands bigger than trunks, this was no reason to breathe a sigh of relief.

He wildly surged forward with his right fist, which Perseus skillfully blocked, only to be met head on by his left. The blow felt as if he had been hit in the face not by a fist, but by an entire tree. He, dazed by the blow, staggered back a step. A mistake, as he was now to be hit by the right, a left, another right and again a left.

Each blow made stars appear before Perseus' eyes as he was gradually pushed further and further back, towards one of the many white marble columns that stretched to the ceiling. Another blow, fiercer than the last, which would have broken the neck of any normal mortal, sent him groaning against the huge column. Not a moment later, a hand clenched around his head and thrust him against the column one after another with almost incomparable force. Cracks began to form in it and the ground trembled from the tremendous force as his head was slammed against the pillar again and again causing a blood curdling sound.

"Wasn't I a hero? Strong - Stronger than all others, as strong as the gods!" the giant of a man pompously shouted out as he smashed Perseus' head with force greater than imaginable one more time.

"Was I not the vanquisher of monsters, the champion of Olympus. I was - , No, - I am the immortal Heracles!" The so-called Heracles thundered as he lashed out one last time with force even greater than before, smashing Perseus not against but through the marble column, which collapsed deafeningly, burying Heracles' opponent in rubble on the ground.

Heracles, towering over the mountain of rubble in all his glory, now flashed a wide smile of schadenfreude as his eyes sparkled with life again and he looked down dismissively at Perseus' buried figure. "I finally remember after all these years. You can't imagine how dull it is to have to guard an abandoned hut like this for millennia."

An incomprehensible groan escaped Perseus' throat. Heracles, though caught up in his little monologue, nevertheless heard that one sound and his grin widened a tiny bit.

"Still a little life left in you? Hah, we'll change that."

A hand reached for Perseus and clasped his throat as hard as steel, yet it pulled him out of the rubble. Heracles lifted him up to his feet and looked into the poison-green eyes in which a red stain was slowly forming.

When he caught sight of this small spreading red spot, Heracles froze for a moment. His eyebrows rose as he stared incredulously and almost slightly fearfully into Perseus' eyes. But he was snapped out of his stupor as a voice spoke, softly, quietly and impassively.

"My turn."

A hard blow struck Heracles in the throat. He let go of the half-blood in his hands and grabbed his throat, crying out in pain, the feeling of agony so completely new to him. But he was to become even more familiar with this sensation suddenly filling him, when a hard kick hit him in the pit of his stomach, which was already aching from the initial blow, and snatched all air from him. He gasped for breath and started to stagger a few steps backwards before stumbling over a piece of debris lying around on the ground, causing him to fall thunderingly to the ground with his arms flailing wildly.

Heracles, still lying on the ground, stretched out his hands to the club, which followed his call and flew into his hand. However, the shape of the club changed while it was still in flight. The wood lost its clumsy shape and became more elegant, more delicate, until Heracles held a huge bow strung with a sharp shining arrow in his hands.

He fired the arrow without waiting a single second, and it was shot precisely at Perseus. But the latter ignored the flying projectile, whereupon it bored itself deep into his left shoulder. A second arrow was fired. A second hit. A third, fired faster than any mortal eye could see, but it was to hit him in the face. Perseus, forced to intervene before he was mortally wounded, caught the arrow out of the air with his right hand as if he had never done anything else.

Another arrow materialized cocked on the bow, but it was too late. Heracles had run out of time to fire another arrow.

For Perseus came charging with his fists raised high, and was finally close enough to deliver a gigantic blow to Heracles' chest, literally hurling the latter across the room and slamming him against one of the many statues of the gods. The force of the blow not only caused Heracles' bow to fall from his hand, but shook the entire room and caused the statue to come crashing down on top of him.

"You talk too much," Perseus spoke as his voice echoed through the hall in the sudden silence and his eyes took in the statue that had fallen on Heracles. On the once gleaming white pedestal, untouched by filth, had once stood a pompous statue, looking venerably down upon the hall. But it now lay destroyed on the floor, the cuckoo on its shoulder broken off, the golden pomegranate rolling in a random direction on the marble floor.

A strained groan pierced the hall as all at once the chunks of stone on the floor trembled before they began to move. It grew louder and louder, sounding more exerted, until suddenly, with a scream of effort, the huge stone, larger than several horses, was hurtled lethally through the air at Perseus.

"Come on!" Escaped the latter, more than annoyed, as his muscles tensed in reaction and he rolled away from the stone coming crashing down, which impacted behind him, causing the floor to tremble and rumble. The whole hall seemed to shake under it, as statues fell to the ground, columns shook, and even the ceiling threatened to collapse and bury them all. Dust and dirt were swirled high into the air, not allowing much to be seen.

"It's been years since I last fought like this." Heracles' voice echoed pompously through the great hall, while he himself was obscured by the cloud of dust, so Perseus had no choice but to stoop, ready to react at any time, and look in any direction of the hall. "I must thank you for this refreshing fight, stranger. But your strength will not be great enough to triumph over Heracles, the god of strength!"

"I don't know if you've been beaten to mush too many times or if it's inborn, but I only know one god of strength and I know damn well it's not you," Perseus countered him with a more than annoyed undertone in his voice.

A movement he perceived at the edge of his field of vision made him suddenly turn around, just in time to intercept a fist as big as rocks that would have otherwise smashed his face to bits. Not a second later, the second fist followed, a left one now. But he intercepted it too, this time with his own right. What now followed was a brutal stalemate, in which both tried to force the other away with incomparable brute strength.

They swayed slightly forward and backward, but neither managed to budge the other even a millimeter despite the gigantic force they were exerting, while the room itself seemed to groan under the pressure of their efforts. Both men's feet were pushed deeper into the floor, digging it up as the marble slabs cracked beneath their feet.

Perseus groaned loudly as his muscles burned as though they were on fire. His strength seemed to leave him faster with each passing second. He was not trained for such battles, and Heracles' strength more than surpassed Krios'. Yet he was no ordinary man, not just another half-blood. No, he was fucking Perseus, slayer of Titans. For millennia he had rotted in a cell in the depths of Tartarus. He would not be defeated now, not by a minor nuisance.

He gritted his teeth and redoubled his efforts, which finally seemed to elicit a reaction from Heracles, whose muscles began to tense from the enormous effort and drops of sweat ran down his forehead as if he was standing in heavy rain. He grunted under great effort; "Who are you talking about? There is no god of strength, other than me!"

"He is talking about me, you piece of shit!" a voice abruptly emerged next to Heracles, before he was suddenly and without warning struck by a fist the size of a tree trunk, which was at least as huge, if not larger, than Heracles'. It unleashed such sheer brute force that any normal demigod would have died instantly from the shattering of bones. The supposed god of strength, on the other hand, was merely swept off his feet and sailed backward until he slammed into the marble slabs, shaking the ground.

Perseus, yanked to the floor by the sudden lack of counterweight, propped himself up off the ground with one knee as he turned his head and caught sight of the figure of someone he could vaguely remember even after all this time.

"Kratos?"

For before him stood the muscular figure of the true god of strength, the son of Pallas and Styx. He was tall, towering over him by a good half meter, and a grim smile was hidden behind a thick dark beard.

"Perseus, you son of a bitch. Never thought I would see you of all people again."

Kratos reached out with his right hand, which Perseus grabbed after a moment, effortlessly pulling him up off the ground.

"What, what are you doing here?" Perseus asked with disbelief in his voice at seeing the old god again, with whom he had smashed Titan skulls together back in the days.

"Really long and boring story you know. I-" but he got no further as Perseus' fist suddenly slammed hard into his face.

"Where the hell were you when I needed you? When I was thrown into Tartarus. I believed our friendship had some kind of value to you," Perseus spoke in such a cold voice that it could have extinguished even the warmest fires on Olympus.

"Things happened," Kratos, on the other hand, replied back frantically as he stumbled back from the rage-filled Perseus and spat Ichor from his mouth.

"And these were more important than me?" demanded Perseus in a voice that promised blood, suffering and death.

"Just understand that you weren't the only one to have a knife plunged into your back," Kratos tried to argue as he raised his hands placatingly.

"What do you mean?" Perseus questioned as he abruptly halted.

"We were all betrayed. Not just you."

Perseus' expression turned disbelieving. He couldn't be serious about this, he thought wildly. He slowly, fearing the answer, opened his mouth. "What happened?"

And when he heard the answer, every movement seemed to suddenly freeze, matching the icy and frozen landscape. The whole world appeared to grind to a halt as, for the first time since forever, fear gradually crept into Perseus' limbs until it filled his entire being.

"The Great Purge happened."

AN:

So..., it's me again and as promised, one huge fight which soon goes into round 2.

I will again emphasise that yes, updates are slow, but will continue as long as the story gets some attention. I have some things planned, and yeah, you will hopefully see them soon. Already got some foreshadowing out of the window, and I hope to hear your thoughts about what "The Great Purge" is. A hint, it is the reason why no god can use his/her power in Alaska...

Next chapter will see an end to a fight, emphasise on the meaning of Perseus eyes for all those who didnt get it, introduce Kratos a bit more and follow Percy and Luke on their... You will see.

Thanks for all the reviews, they really help me to keep writing!