To Guest- (Chapter 1) You are most welcome! ^_^
To 8Ball3- Trump is the only person that I've wished death upon because of everything he has done and will do. When he got Covid, I was so freaking happy, but apparently he's the perfect physical specimen and says he's immune to rona now? Like, have you seen the bloke? He's like a mouldy satsuma set on fire and left to rot in a pit of acid with sunburnt shredded wheat for hair!
To readingbooksforlife- Meg is that bratty little sister everyone needs, she'll call anyone out on their BS, especially Lester ^_^ Apollo needed a reality check anyway, who best to give it to him than our lovely bunch of demigods? XD And thank you! I do enjoy writing with these idiots, so I'd like to represent them in the best way I can :D Did you get 'bye, bye, butterfly' from Miraculous Ladybug by any chance? O.o
Retrospect was a funny thing, something he had only learnt about as a mortal. Looking at the oncoming swarm of death and feathers, Apollo wished he had given them nice, soft squishy sponges for beaks and maybe some Nerf claws. What had he been thinking, giving them beaks like serrated knives and claws like meat hooks?
Meg yelled as one of the birds dived past her, raking her arm. Another flew at Reyna's legs. The praetor levelled a kick at it, but her heel missed the bird and crunched on Apollo's nose. He part-yelled, part-screeched in pain, his whole face throbbing.
"My bad!" Reyna tried to climb, but the birds swirled around them, stabbing and clawing and tearing away bits of their clothes. "Lester!" Reyna shouted, aiming another kick at a bird, wary of his head this time. "Who is Koronis?" She drew her sword. "Why are you apologising to the birds?"
"I created them!" His busted nose made him sound like he was gargling syrup. The ravens cawed in outrage. One swooped, it claws narrowly missing his left eye. Reyna swung wildly, trying to keep the flock at bay.
"Well, can't you un-create them?" Meg demanded. The ravens didn't like that idea. One dived at Meg. She tossed a seed. Being a raven, it instinctively snapped it out of the air, only to have a pumpkin explode fully grown in its beak. The raven, suddenly top-heavy with a mouth full of Halloween, plummeted towards the ground.
"OK, I didn't exactly create them." Apollo confessed. "I just changed them into what they are now. And, no, I can't undo it."
"You're going to have start being a bit more specific, Lester!" Reyna grunted, stabbing at the eye of a bird. Angry cries rose from the feathery fiends, though for the moment, they stayed away, away from the furious girl with the sword and the other one with the tasty exploding seeds.
Tarquin had chosen the perfect guards to keep him from the silent god. Ravens hated Apollo. He suspected the only reason they were still alive was that the birds were trying to decide who got the honour of the kill.
They could not count on the birds arguing over who got his liver and who got his kidney for long. Reyna took a swipe at one that was getting too close. She glanced at the catwalk on the crossbeam above them. Judging from her frustrated expression, her conclusion was no. "Lester." She said carefully, apparently no longer finding him funny. "I need intel. Tell me how we defeat these things."
"I don't know!" He wailed. "Look, back in the old days, ravens used to be gentle and white and that's my shoe!" He kicked the bird away, Meg threw a seed. The bird's neck was wrapped in a clematis. "They used to be like doves, OK?" Apollo continued desperately. "But they were terrible gossips. One time, I was dating this girl Koronis. The ravens found out she was cheating on me and they told me about it. I was so angry, I got Artemis to kill Koronis for me. Then I punished the ravens for being tattletales by turning them black." Reyna stared at him, as if contemplating another kick to his nose.
"That story is messed up on so many levels."
"Just wrong." Meg agreed. "You had your sister kill a girl who was cheating on you?"
"Well, I-"
"Then you punished the birds that told you about it." Reyna added. "By turning them black, as if black was bad and white was good?"
"When you put it that way, it doesn't sound right." Apollo protested. "It's just what happened when my curse scorched them. It, uh, also made them nasty-tempered flesh-eaters." Reyna bit her lower lip, giving a strangled, humourless laugh.
"I'm gonna hurt this boy." She said to herself.
"I'm sorry?" Apollo tried, wincing when he realised it had come out more as a question than the intent he was going for.
"If we let the birds eat you," Meg said carefully, "will they leave me and Reyna alone?"
"I- what?" Apollo couldn't tell if she was kidding. Her facial expression did not say kidding. It said serious about the birds eating you. "Listen, I was angry! Yes, I took it out on the birds, but after a few centuries, I cooled down! I apologised. By then, they kind of liked being nasty-tempered flesh-eaters. As for Koronis, I mean… at least I saved the child she was pregnant with when Artemis killed her! He became Asclepius, god of medicine!"
"Oh my gods, stop talking!" Reyna hissed. "She was pregnant when you killed her?" She launched another kick at his face. He managed to duck, having had a lot of practise cowering, but it hurt to know she wasn't aiming for a bird this time.
"You suck." Meg agreed.
"Can we talk about this later?" He pleaded, keeping his head down. "Or perhaps never? I was a god then! I didn't know what I was doing!" A few months ago, a statement like that would have made no sense to him. Now, it seemed true.
Reyna exchanged glances with Meg. They seemed to reach a silent agreement that the most practical course of action would be to survive the ravens now, so they could kill him themselves later. Apollo just hoped they left Louisa out of the loop. She seemed the creative type and he did not need a creative death.
"We're dead if we stay here!" Reyna fumed, swinging her sword at another enthusiastic flesh-eater. "We can't fend them off and climb at the same time! Ideas?" The ravens had one. It was called all-out attack.
They swarmed, blinding them of the world in a mass of swirling, oily blackness, pecking and scratching and croaking with rage.
"I'm sorry!" Apollo screamed, swatting futilely at the birds. "I'm sorry!" The ravens did not accept. Claws ripped his trouser legs. A beak clamped on his quiver and almost yanked him from the ladder, leaving his feet dangling for a heart-stopping moment.
Reyna continued to slash away. Meg cursed and threw seeds like party favours from the worst parade float ever. A giant raven spiralled out of control, covered in daffodils. Another one fell like a stone, bulging in the shape of a butternut squash.
Apollo's grip weakened on the rungs. Blood dripped from his nose, but he could not spare a moment to wipe it away. Reyna was right. If they didn't move, they were dead. And they couldn't move.
He scanned the crossbeam overhead. If they could just reach it, they could stand and use their arms. They could fight.
At the far end of the catwalk, abutting the next support pylon, stood a large rectangular box like a shipping container. He was surprised he hadn't noticed it sooner, but compared to the scale of the tower, the container seemed small and insignificant, just another wedge of red material. He had no idea what such a box was doing up here, but if they could find a way inside, it could offer them shelter.
"Over there!" He yelled. Reyna looked.
"If we can reach it… we need to buy time! Apollo, what repels ravens? Isn't there something they hate?"
"Worse than me?"
"They don't like daffodils much." Meg remarked, watching another flower-festooned bird fall into a tailspin.
"We need something to drive them all away." Reyna swung her sword again. "Something they'll hate worse than- wait, Apollo, sing! Sing!" She might as well have kicked him in the face again.
"My voice isn't that bad!"
"Just pick a song these birds will hate!" Reyna ordered. Apollo was beginning to rethink his ideals on this girl- not only had she laughed at him, quite rigorously, and busted his nose- he was now her go-to guy for repulsiveness.
"Fine, fine, let me think." The ravens had no intention of letting him do that. They cawed and swarmed in a flurry of black feathers and killer talons. Reyna and Meg tried their best to drive them back, but they couldn't cover him completely. A beak stabbed him in the neck, narrowly missing an important artery. Claws raked the side of his face, blood gushing free.
He couldn't stop to think about the pain. He had to sing for Reyna, to prove that he had indeed changed. He was no longer the god who had had Koronis killed and created ravens, or cursed the Cumaean Sibyl, or done any of the other selfish things that had once given him no more pause than choosing what dessert toppings he wanted on his ambrosia.
He had millennia's worth of songs and performance memories to choose from, his brain skipping over them all as he forgot them under pressure and blind panic. He needed a song to stop the birds attacking, he needed-
Birds attacking.
His children, Austin and Kayla, had told him a story, back at Camp Half-Blood. They were sitting at the campfire and had been joking about Chiron's bad taste in music. They had laughed merrily at the retelling of an event several years earlier- Percy Jackson had managed to drive off a flock of killer Stymphalian birds simply by playing what Chiron had on his boombox.
The song came to him instantly.
"VOLARE!" He screamed. Meg looked up at him, a random geranium stuck in her hair.
"Come again?"
"It's a song Dean Martin covered! It- it might be unacceptable to birds. I'm not sure."
"Well, be sure!" Reyna demanded. Ravens furiously scratched and pecked at her cloak, unable to tear the magical fabric, but her front was unprotected. Every time she swung her blade, a bird swooped in, stabbing at her exposed arms and chest.
"VOOO-LAR-RAAAY!" He cried, modulating his voice to add about twenty syllables to the word. "WHOA! OH!" The response from the ravens was immediate. They recoiled as if they had suddenly become vegetarian. Some threw themselves bodily against the metal girders, making the whole towers shudder.
"Keep going!" The girls shouted.
With apologies to Domenico Modugno, who wrote the song, he gave 'Volare' the full Dean Martin treatment. His newly busted nose added to the awfulness. He bellowed and warbled, screwing his eyes shut and clinging to the ladders as ravens flapped around him, croaking in horror at his travesty of a performance. Far below, Reyna's greyhounds crooned and howled, as if they had lost their mother.
He became so engrossed in murdering 'Volare', that he didn't notice the ravens had gone silent until Meg bellowed at him to shut up. He faltered halfway through a chorus. Opening his eyes, there were no ravens in sight. From somewhere in the fog, their indignant caws grew fainter and fainter as the flock moved off in search of quieter, less revolting prey.
"My eeeeaaarrsss." Reyna complained. "Oh gods, my ears will never heal."
"My nnnooossseee." Apollo countered. She glared and he ducked dutifully. "The ravens will be back." He warned. His throat felt like the chute of a cement mixer. "So climb! I don't have another Dean Martin song in me!"
"Good!"
As soon as Apollo hauled himself up onto the catwalk, all he could do was grip the rail. He couldn't tell if his legs were wobbling or if the entire tower was swaying.
Below, San Francisco stretched out in a rumpled quilt of green and grey, the edges frayed with fog. The ravens were nowhere in sight, but that didn't mean anything. A blanket of fog still obscured the top of the tower. The killers could swoop from it at any minute.
At the far end of the catwalk sat the shipping container. The scent of roses was so strong now that even he could smell it, busted nose and all. It seemed to be coming from the box. He took a step towards it and immediately stumbled.
"Careful." Reyna advised belatedly, grabbing his arm. A jolt of energy snapped through him, steadying his legs. Perhaps he had imagined it. Or maybe he was just shocked that she had made physical contact with him that did not involve a boot on his face.
"I'm OK." He lied.
"You need medical attention. Your face is a horror show."
"I wonder why."
"Excuse me?"
"Uh…"
"I have supplies." Meg announced, saving his face from more pain. She rummaged through her pouches of her gardening belt. Apollo had images of her patching his face with flowering bougainvillea, but she pulled out tape, gauze and alcohol wipes. She fussed over his face and then checked him and Reyna over for any especially deep cuts and punctures. They had plenty. Soon, all three of them looked like refugees from George Washington's camp at Valley Forge. They could have easily lost the whole afternoon to bandaging each other.
Meg turned to regard the shipping container. She still had a stubborn geranium in her hair. Her tattered dress rippled around her like shreds of seaweed. "What is that thing?" She wondered. "What's it doing up here and why does it smell like roses?"
Judging scale and distance on the tower was difficult. Tucked against the girders, the shipping container looked close and small, but in reality, it was probably a full city block away and much, much larger. Installing it on Sutro Tower would have been a massive undertaking. Then again, the Triumvirate could afford fifty luxury yachts, so they could probably afford a few cargo helicopters.
From the sides of the container, glimmering bronze and gold cables snaked outward, weaving around the pylon and crossbeams like grounding wires, connecting to satellite dishes, cellular arrays and power boxes. The closest end of the box was fitted with cargo doors, the vertical locking rods laced with rows of heavy chains.
"Any ideas?" Reyna asked.
"Try to get inside that container." Apollo suggested, getting a no duh look from them both. "It's a terrible idea." He persisted. Reyna scanned the fog bank.
"Let's move before the ravens come back." She said, motioning for them to move. Meg drew her swords. She led the way across the catwalk. Twenty feet or so, she stopped abruptly, as though she had smacked into an invisible wall. She turned slowly, cautiously, to face them, brow furrowed.
"Guys, is… me or… feel weird?"
"What?"
"I said… wrong, like… cold and…"
"Did you hear that?" Apollo asked Reyna.
"Only half her words are coming through. Why aren't our voices affected?" Reyna puzzled. Apollo studied the short expanse of catwalk separating them from Meg. An unpleasant suspicion wriggled into his head.
"Meg, take a step back towards me please."
"Why… want…?"
"Just humour me." She did.
"So, are you guys feeling weird too? Like, kinda cold?" She frowned, touching her mouth. "Wait, it's better now."
"You were dropping words." Reyna said.
"I was?" Meg and Reyna turned to Apollo for an explanation. Sadly, he thought he might have one- odds were he would one day- or at least the beginnings of one.
"You two wait here for a second." He said. "I want to try something." He took a few steps towards the shipping container. When he reached the spot where Meg had been standing, he felt the difference- like he had crossed the threshold of a walk-in freezer.
Another ten feet and he couldn't hear the wind anymore, or the pinging of metal cables against the sides of the towers, or the blood rushing in his ears. He snapped his fingers. No sound. Panic rose in his chest. Complete silence- a music god's worst nightmare.
He looked back at the girls, tried to shout to them. Can you hear me now? Nothing. He could feel his vocal chords vibrate, but the sound waves seemed to die before they left his mouth. Meg said something he couldn't hear. Reyna spread her arms. He gestured to them to wait. Then he took a deep breath and forced himself to keep going towards the box. He stopped within an arm's length of the cargo doors.
The rose-bouquet smell was definitely coming from inside. The chains across the locking rods were heavy Imperial gold. Even in his mortal form, he could feel the power radiating from inside the container- not just the heavy silence, but the cold, needling aura of wards and curses placed on the metal doors and walls. To keep them out. To keep something in.
On the left-hand door, stencilled in white paint, was a single word in Arabic. Apollo squinted at it, his Arabic even rustier than his Dean Martin, but he was fairly sure it was the name of a city. Alexandria, as in Alexandria, Egypt.
His knees almost buckled, vision swimming. He might have sobbed, though he could not hear it. Slowly, gripping the rail for support, he staggered back to the others. He noticed when he left the silent zone when he could hear himself whimpering, "No, no, no, no."
Meg caught him before he fell over.
"What? What's wrong? What happened?"
"I- I think I understand." He mumbled. "The soundless god."
"Who is it?" Reyna asked.
"I don't know."
"But you just said-"
"I think I understand." He stressed. "Remembering who it is exactly, that's harder. I'm pretty sure we're dealing with a Ptolemaic god, from back in the days when the Greeks ruled Egypt." Meg looked past him at the container.
"So, there's a god in the box."
"Yes, Meg. A very minor Egyptian-Greek hybrid god, I think, which is most likely why he couldn't be found in the Camp Jupiter archives." Reyna touched her chin in thought, eyes burning.
"So… Lou really didn't know. Wow. I think we've found someone she hasn't pissed off."
"Huzzah." Apollo tried for a dead-pan, but his heart was fluttering too much to keep his voice level. Reyna frowned at him, examining his face carefully.
"If he's so minor, why do you look so scared?"
"Ptolemaic gods are awful." He squeaked. "They're unpredictable, temperamental, dangerous, insecure-"
"Like a normal god then." Meg clarified.
"I hate you."
"Nah-uh, you said you loved me."
"I'm multitasking. Roses were this god's symbol. I- I don't remember why. A connection to Venus? He was in charge of secrets. In the old days, if leaders hung a rose from the ceiling of a conference room, it meant everybody in that conversation was sworn to secrecy. They called it a sub rosa, under the rose."
"So you know all that," Reyna's tone held too much judgement for his liking, "but you don't know his name?"
"I… he's…" A frustrated growl rose in his throat. "I almost have it, I should have it. But I haven't thought about him in millennia. He's very obscure. Perhaps if you hadn't kicked me in the head-"
"After what you did to Koronis?" She snorted. "You deserved it."
"You did." Meg agreed.
"You two are horrible influences on each other." Without looking away from him, the girls gave each other a high-five. Apollo sighed. "Fine." He grumbled. "Maybe the Arrow of Dodona can help jog my memory. At least he insults me in flowery Shakespearean language."
I finally have Tower of Nero :O