Disclaimer: I don't own Trials of Apollo
TOApril day eleven: "Storming"
"Don't leave the cabin. Whatever happens, none of you must leave the cabin."
This is far from the first time Apollo's visited Will's dreams, but it's the first time he's done it looking like this. Normally, Apollo's visits are laid back and chilled, often accompanied by some light-hearted poetry or music. If it's a warning, it's more serious, but still nothing like this.
Apollo is in full battle armour, clad in gold from head to toe and blindingly bright. Will's eyes automatically adjust to the sight, but it's awe-inspiring and also more than a little terrifying. There's none of the usual jovial expression on his face, not even dancing in the golden pools of his irises. He looks serious, intense in a way Will's only ever seen in ancient carvings.
"What's going on?" he finds the courage to ask – this is his dad, the Apollo he knows won't hurt him for asking a question and Will prays that this is still that same Apollo. He gets a tight look in answer.
"A storm is coming," his father says, and Will doesn't think he's trying to be dramatic but the way his words reverberate through the dreamscape is a little scary anyway. Apollo's never spoken like this in his dreams before. He feels more like a god than ever. "All of you must stay in the cabin, Will. Do you understand me?"
Golden eyes bore into him and Will feels stripped bare before them. No, he doesn't understand, he's confused and scared and in the back of his mind there's a million logistical nightmares vying for attention – how long, how is he supposed to convince his siblings, what about the other campers, what about food and drink – but he knows better than to disobey a direct command from a god.
He tries to say yes, but as it's technically a lie and Apollo is currently every inch the formidable god the stories recount, it dies in his throat. "I won't let anyone leave," he says instead, which is a truth because he will, even if he doesn't understand why it's so important that he has to.
"Good." It's not quite relief, but Apollo's intensity lowers a fraction. "I'll come for you when it's safe," he says. "The cabin will provide for you." He doesn't answer Will's other unspoken question, but the implication is clear: Will is only to worry about his half-siblings. Hopefully that means the other gods are dealing with their children – Will likes to think that Apollo would at least have let him fetch or warn Nico if that wasn't the case.
"Okay," he says out loud. "We'll wait for you, Dad." It's a promise that Apollo is going to visit them soon, and despite the concerning situation, that's never been a bad thing before. Hopefully it won't be a bad thing now.
"Stay in the cabin," Apollo repeats, "no matter what happens."
Will's yanked into wakefulness by a crash. The sky outside the windows is the darkness before the dawn, the faintest hint of colour starting to absorb the stars in preparation for the sun chariot's rising, and Apollo kids aren't supposed to be awake just yet but he's not the only one the noise woke.
"What was that?" Kayla demands, sharp and alert. On the bunk next to Will's, Austin is likewise poised in fight or flight mode. Alice is bristling, Sam is straight-backed, and Will wishes the five of them weren't so conditioned to jump at sudden, unexpected sounds but that was the price for surviving Manhattan.
Yan's closest to the door, and in the early-morning gloom Will almost doesn't notice them slipping over to open it in time.
"Don't!" he shouts, stumbling out from the restraining blanket and tripping his way to the door. Yan freezes and he takes the opportunity to press his hand against it firmly, making sure it doesn't open.
"What's going on?" Jerry asks, yawning. He's never seen war, just their so-called 'field trip' to Nero's tower last year and there's a part of Will that's glad to see some of his siblings aren't quite as on-edge as their eldest five. It's still a little too dark to see clearly, and he doesn't want to leave his post by the door in case one of them slips out while he's distracted, so he takes a deep breath and lets the faintest amount of light he can control ooze out from beneath his skin.
Most of his siblings haven't seen this trick of his before, he belatedly realises as wide eyes focus on him. He looks around at all of them – the double-war veterans of Alice, Sam, Austin and Kayla, the single-war veterans of Raphael and Emma, the ones who had fought last summer, Yan, Jerry, Gracie, and the new twins, Merida and Robin – and realises that he's solely responsible for all of them until Apollo comes. Realises that keeping eleven demigods cooped up inside the cabin for an indeterminate amount of time is going to be all but impossible, but that he doesn't have a choice.
"Dad visited my dream," he says, keeping his voice steady and together even as there's another crash from somewhere outside. Underneath his palm, he can feel the cabin door pulsing slightly with heat and energy. That's new, but he can't focus on it. Everyone's listening to him, because it's not unusual for Apollo to drop in on their dreams and they all know it, but they don't usually talk about it.
None of his siblings are dumb; they all know that his actions are directly related to his dream. He can see the fear in the twins' eyes as they look up at him from where Robin's crawled into Merida's bed so they can tangle together. The older the sibling, the longer they've been at camp, the more their eyes are filled with resignation over fear.
"We can't leave the cabin," he tells them all. "Dad was," – intense – "very firm about that."
"What if someone needs help?" Jerry asks. As if to accentuate his little brother's question, there's another crash outside and someone screams. The whole cabin surges forwards – they're not all healers first and foremost, but if there's one skill Apollo seems determined every single one of his children has at least a basic ability in, it's healing – and only the memory of Apollo's eyes, gold and terrifying, keep Will from leading the charge.
He swallows against the instinct to see what happened, to see who screamed – he thinks, hopes, it was a dryad, and not a mortal – and stands his ground against the advancing siblings, who stop in clear shock when they realise he's not letting them pass.
"We can't leave the cabin," he repeats, and he's not sure if they're listening to him or the lump in his throat that makes his voice a little strangled, a little desperate, but they back up.
"What did Dad say?" Alice, his eldest sister at only a few months his junior, prompts. She's fiddling with her hair, dividing the dyed purple strands exactly away from the natural black in a way he's seen her do so many times before. "Why can't we leave?"
Will gestures for them all to sit down, and only joins them in the hasty circle they make on the floor once he's sure none of them are about to bolt for the door. Even then, he makes sure he's the closest, although it doesn't surprise him that he finds the twins, still entangled together, on one side of him while Gracie curls up against the other. They're all siblings, all family, but time and trauma has left its mark on them all – Alice and Sam press against each other, with Kayla and Austin right beside them. Once upon a time, Will might have been part of that group, but being head counsellor means he has to be there for the younger ones, the ones who didn't see Michael swept off of a shattered bridge and hunted for hours for a body that was never found. Raphael and Emma likewise huddle together, bonded by their shared trauma of being in camp scant months before the final battle of the second gigantomachy, while Yan and Jerry have been inseparable ever since they arrived at camp together.
"He told me there's going to be a storm," he says, feeling Gracie shiver against him and resting a hand on Robin's shoulder when the young boy whimpers. "We can't leave the cabin until he comes for us, no matter what happens."
"Dad's coming?" Emma asks, her voice little louder than a whisper. There's a strand of hope in the air suddenly, even if it's tinged with a little bit of confusion. Apollo doesn't usually let them know in advance.
Will nods, and even manages to pull on a small smile for her. "He'll be here when the storm's over."
"Did he say what this storm is?" Kayla asks, leaning forwards a little. She's one that will hate the confinement the most – their cabin is well-equipped for most of Apollo's arts, but it's not big enough to have an indoor range and it's a bad day when Kayla can't get her hands on her bow and ruin a few bullseyes.
"No," he admits, then pauses, wondering how much more would be wise to say. He doesn't think any of them would benefit from hearing that Apollo was dressed for war, not when half of them had nightmares about the wars they've lived through and the other half are too young to be forced to face that reality, if Will has any say in the matter. "But I think it'll be a big one."
He's proven right a few hours later, after he's chivvied them back to bed to ostensibly get more sleep – not that any of them can, or will, with the occasional crashes and screams from outside their cabin – and they're back in their circle on the floor, picking at the breakfast that's materialised in the middle.
None of them had known the cabin could do that. Will wonders if it's an emergency feature.
No-one came banging on their door to summon them for breakfast, or ask why none of Apollo cabin were up despite the sun being well above the horizon, which Will decides to take as proof that the other cabins are under similar instructions from their own parents. That's a thought that's both comforting and terrifying – they're not being singled out, but why do the gods think it isn't safe for them to even leave their cabins?
The question comes when the heavens open. Alice had pushed a window open earlier, rolling her eyes at Will when he tensed ("I'm not going out, but I want some fresh air"), and they get no warning before the rain is lashing down and in. Sam lunges for it, slamming the windows shut and getting a face full of water in the process, drenching his hair in no time at all. All of them stare, open-mouthed, at the deluge.
Will has seen it rain at camp only rarely. There are the days set aside by Mr D. so that the strawberry fields get enough water, and he can remember the affair surrounding the stolen master bolt, but even then, the rain had never been this torrential. It's falling in sheets rather than drops, the water thick enough that it feels more like a tidal wave from the sky than simply rain.
He has to admit, when Apollo said storm, he hadn't thought he had meant a literal one, but it seems that that's the case. The crashes from before dawn are still a mystery – he can't see any damage out of the cabin's windows, but he can see that the Ares cabin is boarded up tightly as though they're expecting a siege and that there are so few signs of life in the Hephaestus cabin that the campers there must have literally gone underground. The rain is too thick to see across to the female cabins; even the silver sheen of cabin eight is little more than a muffled blur beyond the deluge. He can't make out cabin ten's pink curtains, and the no-nonsense grey of cabin six is perfectly camouflaged in the weather.
They get no warning before their cabin echoes with a thunderous crack that travels through the walls and rattles the windows. At the same instance, bright light, white in the way that white is every colour put together and turned up to a maximum that sears even the eyes of Apollo kids flashes for a split second.
Half the cabin screams. Will isn't one of them, but his heart is suddenly somewhere in his mouth and thudding viciously enough that he's almost certain it's about to explode despite the medical improbability. The twins start crying, maybe too young to understand exactly what it means but scared nonetheless. They're not the only ones; Raphael is shaking and Alice takes a sobbing Emma under her arm while Will once again finds himself with an armful of Gracie.
His eyes lock with Austin and Kayla, but it's Sam who says it.
"Did we just get struck by lightning?" Will's glad he keeps the god's name out of it, but for those of them who have been around camp long enough to know how storms work, especially when it comes to the weather at Camp Half-Blood, it's no comfort. Lightning doesn't just strike at random, and certainly not in an area Zeus keeps a close eye on.
This storm is more than a storm, and Will doesn't know exactly what's going on but lightning striking their cabin just after Apollo leaves him with strict orders whilst wearing his full armour paints an unmistakable image. The gods are at war, and it doesn't seem like Zeus and Apollo are on the same side.
If any of them take so much as a single step out of their cabin, a place that's always felt comfortable but now Will's starting to suspect there's more to the cabins than simply being places for demigod children to live – and in hindsight he thinks maybe he should have realised that earlier; the presence of Apollo's sacred flowers might as well be a glowing beacon of sacred land – they're going to die. Zeus never hesitated with Asclepius, he won't hesitate with them.
Alice doesn't mention wanting fresh air again.
Will coaxes Gracie into letting go of him and clinging to Jerry instead long enough to make a round of the cabin, checking that the door and windows are all sealed tight, even the small frosted one in the bathroom, before yanking rarely-used curtains closed to block out the weather.
There's another blinding crack of lightning as he closes the curtains by his bunk and he feels the walls of the cabin vibrate a little. It almost seems defiant, as though swearing that the lightning won't get through to the vulnerable mortals inside. Another hint that there's more to the cabin than Will had ever thought.
With their curtains all closed, the cabin is plunged into near-darkness again. To the surprise of most people, the Apollo cabin curtains are blackout ones, designed to keep light out. It's why they don't use them much – they're all children of the sun – but they come in very useful for recording videos or when overworked healers need to crash out during the day. Will turns on the lights before returning to the huddle of his siblings.
There's not much they can all do together, and none of them want to be apart when it's clear the lord of the skies is trying to obliterate their cabin and them along with it, but sitting in silence isn't helping any of them. Austin's first to brave leaving their circle long enough to retrieve his saxophone from under his bed, and Alice quickly follows to get her oboe. Raphael drags his double bass out from the little nook in the corner that Will knows most cabins use as head counsellor space but Apollo cabin converted to instrument storage when Lee took over, and Gracie tugs Will to accompany her as she umms and aahs over which of her drums she wants to play. By the time she's chosen a djembe, Yan's collected their pipa and Emma's strumming chords on her harp. Sam tunes his acoustic guitar – the electric ones notably hidden a little further back – and Will's always been amazed at how well his siblings can pull together their favourite instruments to make an unorthodox but charming ensemble.
His own musical talents are firmly designated as inappropriate for pleasurable listening, and Jerry's not much for singing either although he and the twins don't mind tapping the beat on the floor. Most people forget that Kayla's got the voice of an angel because she doesn't use it much, but as Will's siblings shift from tuning into old campfire favourites she takes the vocal lead.
There's power in music. It isn't the same power that flows through Will when he heals, or allows Nico to slip through shadows. It's older, purer than those. Music ties directly to emotions, to the heart and mind, and skilled musicians can play emotions with every note. Will's seen Apollo do it, but he's also seen his siblings perform similar feats.
Not even they can drown out the thunderous storm above them, nor ignore the cracks as their cabin is periodically assaulted, but they can play upbeat tunes, sing songs of warmth and happy times, and stave off the worst of the fear each noise puts into their hearts.
The storm rages for seven days and seven nights. Even they can't keep up a stream of music so constantly, or even in shifts, but they dig deeper into the nook in the corner and find a dartboard. It's not quite as good as standing out on the range with bows, but the twins proudly trounce Kayla again and again and again until she concedes defeat that she is not the queen of all ranged weapons, although no-one disparages her claim to queen of archery. Sam and Yan fare better against the twins in a more even contest, and it quickly becomes apparent that Will's better off not trying unless he also wants to practice his healing.
He doesn't mind; there are books to read and younger siblings to distract and tell stories to, and whenever a sibling picks up an instrument he's always first in line to listen. Board games are discovered and alliances drawn. The cabin keeps them fed and watered and while Will knows that none of them like being cooped up near enough on top of each other, the ongoing storm outside quells any and all temptation to try and get some space by leaving the sanctuary – because there's no doubt that that's what it is – of their cabin.
Will is terrified at the implications of the godly war he knows is going on outside. Haven't they ben thought enough wars already? At least this time the demigods aren't being called to fight, but they're still far from uninvolved if the frequency with which Zeus is trying to blast them is concerned. He knows it's not just them – not every crack is right over their head, other cabins are clearly being blasted as well and Will hopes it's not just cabin seven that's withstanding the onslaught – but that doesn't make it any less terrifying.
Apollo is barely a year out from his latest punishment. This seems far too soon for him to be rocking the boat again, and that tells Will that something else is going on. He's not sure if he wants to know what, but he's holding Apollo to the promise that he'll come and get them when it's safe.
There's an earthquake on the dawn of the eighth day, shaking them around so vigorously that Raphael nearly falls out of his top bunk and Kayla curses as spare archery tabs spill from her bunk to the floor. The light fixtures in the ceiling swing about, casting ever-moving and disturbing shadows across the walls because they haven't dared turn the lights off even when they try to sleep – even the blackout curtains aren't enough to hide the lightning, but it's harder to see if the interior is well-lit.
Will waits until the tremors die down before picking his way through the mess of their cabin – luckily no instruments have fallen over, although Emma's harp is leaning against the wall in a way it wasn't earlier, but there are some darts rolling around and a board game with lots of pieces has managed to fall off the bookcase it had been perched on. His first priority are his siblings, but while both literally and figuratively shaken – the twins are close to tears again, and he knows from the white faces of his older siblings that the quake has brought back memories of a bridge that he, too, is desperately fighting against allowing to take over his mind – no-one is hurt so he redirects his energy into cleaning up.
The others are quick to help, which is a sign of the apocalypse in its own right because Will has never been able to corral his siblings into tidying for cabin inspection without multiple complaints and too many stray clothes being stuffed under bunks rather than put away neatly, and it isn't long before the cabin is put to rights again. Emma's harp is rescued and she immediately abandons the rest of them to their cleaning as she checks it for damage. Will can't complain when she starts to play, testing the tuning and giving them some background noise to chase away the silence.
It's only once they're done that the silence registers properly. It hasn't been silent for a week, not for seven days and seven nights. Not with the rain sheeting down and lightning persistently trying to explode their cabin to pieces. There's been no rain and no lightning since the earthquake, and Will cautiously ducks his head the other side of the blackout fabric to look out of one of the windows, aware of all eleven siblings watching him in terror.
Camp is flooded. That shouldn't be a surprise considering how much rain has fallen, but it's still a shock to see. The waters are flowing towards the Sound in a way that doesn't entirely look natural, leaving Will with the impression that they're an island in the middle of a river, and part of him wonders just how close the water level got to reaching the bottom of the cabin door – or if it did, and that keeping the door closed was the only thing that saved them from being flooded out.
The rain truly has stopped, though. The skies are clear – blue and cloudless the way Camp's skies almost always should be – and aside from the receding flood there's no sign of the storm they've been hiding from for seven days and seven nights.
He'd picked the window at random – it was just the closest one to where he'd been standing – which happens to be one that faces away from the green, so he's as startled as the rest when there's the distinctive yet missed sound of their door opening. Twelve on-edge demigods immediately snap into action, the youngest chivvied to the back of the cabin while Will plants himself firmly at the head of the pack. He's not the best warrior amongst them, but he's their big brother and that carries far more weight.
It's difficult not to get his hopes up, though. The storm has clearly passed, and with how much of a protective sanctuary the cabin has proven to be it seems unlikely that just anyone is going to wander in. He can feel similar sentiments from his siblings behind him. After all, Apollo did say he'd come when it was over.
The figure revealed by the open door is bright. Gold armour splattered with more gold greets them, but they're Apollo kids and they can handle a little bit of bright.
It's their father. Even if the golden armour wasn't instantly recognisable, there's no way Will could ever mistake the equally-gold hair tied back in a manbun that was probably perfect before whatever fight he's just fought but is half-falling down now and aura of warmth that instantly floods the inside of their cabin.
There are signs that things aren't quite right; the ichor splattered across Apollo, both his armour and visible body might not be his but equally could be. The armour itself is singed and dented, with some areas of plating completely missing, and there's a bit of a slump to his stance that wasn't in Will's dream.
But it's Apollo, and Will's crossing the distance to him before he really has a chance to think about what he's doing. Apollo's eyes – still molten gold rather than the blue Will's most used to – deliberately land on him and then eleven other targets behind him, and the ghost of a smile passes over his face.
"You're all alright," he says, and it's clearly relief that his body language is broadcasting as he pulls Will in for a hug. The ichor stings his skin but Will doesn't care and clearly Apollo's forgotten about it.
"Dad!" It's a chorus from behind him and then Will's part of a group huddle. Normally he'd pull back and let the younger, smaller ones be sandwiched in the middle, but he's still got enough presence of mind to not want to expose them to more ichor than necessary so he stays in the centre as a human shield and notices Alice and Sam positioning themselves to catch most of the ichor on Apollo's arms.
If the younger ones realise what they're doing, they don't mention it.
Apollo doesn't let them go for several minutes, and none of them wriggle to escape earlier. It's only when Kayla asks, "what happened?" that their father reluctantly steps back.
"It'll be easier to show you," he says. "Come on out." He turns and leads the way out of the cabin, and Will's hot on his heels with his siblings close behind. There are noises of amazement at the sight of the water running through Camp, but Apollo doesn't comment. Instead he steps to one side, and Will's jaw drops.
When Will first arrived at camp, nine years ago, there had been twelve cabins. That number had swollen to twenty after the second titanomachy and he knows there are contingency plans in place to add more as children from more and more gods trickle into camp.
There are nineteen, now.
Hera's cabin stands proud at the head of the horseshoe in alabaster, looking like the shrine it really is. That's nothing unusual; it's been the same for as long as Will can remember, and no doubt centuries if not millennia before he was born.
Next to it is a pile of rubble.
Cabin one, the greatest and grandest of them all, is no more. It's been shattered beyond all reasonable repair, and that seems impossible when cabin seven's withstood more lightning strikes than Will could count. Struck by a thought, he turns to look back at his own cabin, but the gold still gleams as brightly as Apollo's armour. Untarnished, the way gold unapologetically never does, and it feels like defiance. You couldn't break me, the cabin boasts, and Will tears his eyes away to look at the remains of cabin one again.
"What happened?" Alice is the one to ask the question, and her voice shakes. Will wonders if she's seeing the same destruction of Olympus that's threatening to overlay his vision. Behind him, Austin and Kayla are huddled with Sam, who's got a hand on Alice's arm.
If Will wasn't at the front of the pack, he'd join them.
"Revolution." Apollo says it simply, like that single word doesn't shatter everything Will knows about the pantheon, about Zeus being the undisputed ruler of Olympus. "This is only the beginning," the god continues. His eyes, Will sees, are as focused on the rubble as his siblings'. Will would rather look at his father than the destruction that's too much like the nightmare of three years ago. "The entire system needs to be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. It'll probably take decades, if not centuries, before it's finished." He sighs. "But the first step is done."
Will glances at the rubble again, but his attention is caught by movement as other campers start emerging from their own cabins. Some have godly parents with them – he sees Hermes, talking with Connor at the head of the gaggle of cabin eleven kids, and Athena leading Malcolm and her other children like obedient ducklings – and some don't, but all of them are gawking at the impossible sight.
"What happened to him?" he asks, returning his attention to Apollo's face in time to see his jaw clench.
"History repeated itself," the god says heavily. "He refused to listen, refused to stand down, refused to see. We were not eager to have a repeat of the past two wars in a few millennia, and elected to cast him down into Chaos." Apollo doesn't seem happy about it, Will thinks, even though he knows Zeus was hardly a good father. Still, if there's something he learnt from the Lester fiasco, it's that Apollo forms tight bonds, regardless of whether they're good or ill.
"What does it mean for us?" is his next question, because he can't imagine that they'll be unaffected by the changes.
Apollo looks away from the rubble and meets his eyes. A ghost of a smile flickers across his face again, something genuine beneath the turmoil of whatever he's seen and done. "It means no more limits on how often I can visit you," he says as though that's the most important thing that could possibly come out of this. Will can't dispute the claim, because that… that's huge, and Apollo isn't even done talking. "It means I can help you when you need me. It means I have more agency when it comes to keeping you safe. Some of the Ancient Laws are important," he admits, "but several of us have chafed against the restrictions surrounding our own children for millennia. The Laws surrounding our interference with other demigods… those will likely stay, but the Laws about our own…" He smiles, but it's the smile of a warrior, a hunter, a predator. "I'd like to see someone try and tell me I can't."
He looks terrifying, Will decides. It's not often that they see Apollo the God in all his fierce glory – that's not a facet he likes to show them when he can be the laid-back and kinda cool dad instead – and moments like this drive home just how powerful his father is. It's almost beyond comprehension, and it's terrifying, but it's also comforting, because that terrifying god is on their side, openly and unapologetically.
And now there's no law to hold him back.
Will looks at the rubble again; there's no power left in those stones now, they're just blocks of marble with no special meaning that the water is slowly carrying away. Then he looks at his siblings behind him, all still with wide eyes and open mouths. Finally, he looks at his dad again, a little battered because Zeus clearly didn't go down without a hell of a fight but standing taller than Will has ever seen him, and realises he's never felt safer.
I had a real headache writing present tense yesterday, so naturally I did the same again today because I'm smart like that. I also spent entirely too long coming up with some more Apollo kids to flesh out the numbers in this fic.
Thanks for reading!
Tsari
