Once I arrive back at my campsite, I step out of the car, only to find Hermes waiting there already.
"Before I go, the bicycle," Hermes says. "I forgot about it because of the shock of you winning, but now that I'm here again, I'll need to see it."
Nodding, I go to my trunk and unload the disassembled bicycle. Then, I reassemble the bike.
"This is indeed that same bicycle," Hermes says. "I gave this bike to Luke when he first ran away from home. At the time, he still had not met me. I was always busy, and his resentment for my absence caused the Second Titan War, which ended only five years ago. This was the most I could do for him at the time. Zeus eventually had him meet Thalia along the way, which I was very grateful for since they were able to protect each other. When Annabeth joined their group, they had the right number for a quest, which was a good sign to me. However, when they got to Camp Half-Blood, Thalia almost died, and Zeus turned her into that pine tree. Luke was never the same after that, and although I gave him a quest to prove to himself that he's a worthy demigod, he not only failed, but also had his first encounter with Kronos. That was Percy's first war, and to this day, I have not forgiven myself. Percy forced the gods to care more about their mortal kids, even turning down immortality to see that happen. By the looks of things, he got it right."
"What will you do with this bicycle?" I ask him.
"I intend to put it on display in Olympus as a reminder of what can happen when us gods disregard our ties to the mortal world," Hermes replies. "Too many demigods and legacies like you have been sacrificed for problems that should have never happened. I want to believe that prophecies are binding, but with more events like the ones in the past five years coming to pass, I now realize that some of these prophecies can be bent with our own self-determination. We gods have to do more to bend them to a favorable outcome, rather than letting children like you sort it out.
"And, we need to stop pretending that other masters of our dominions don't exist. The Egyptians and Vikings were as advanced as the Greeks and other Western countries in their day. All of us protect and rule the same domains for the same reasons: to protect our people from evils that wish to claim them. We often forget that at the end of the day, gods rule the source of our power and do not generate it, and forgetting that fact will be our downfall. A master who does not care for his subjects welcomes another to replace him. Kronos has already proven that twice. Now that pantheons are mixing once again as they did in the days of the British Empire, we need people like you to spread this message."
That reminds me of one burning question I have to ask him about now.
"Lord Hermes, what happened in the Great War for gods?" I ask. "Chiron mentioned that it was the worst war in history for gods of every pantheon."
"That is a very long story, so I'll have to give you the shortest version I can," Hermes begins.
"When Christopher Colombus, a son of Ares and legacy of me, sailed to the New World, he introduced Western Civilization to a completely new realm. We gods have always known about the lands beyond the horizon, but none of us had any way to reach them. When he first brought settlers to the lands, that's when we first met the Taino and Mayan gods. They didn't last very long. When their ambassador claimed his ruler is better than Zeus, Zeus ordered Apollo to unleash a plague upon the Native Americans, which eventually caused the gods to fade. With the entire continent wiped clean of people, Zeus ordered many sons of mine to bring settlers into these lands. At the same time, many African demigods were being enslaved as a result of their conflicts, and these slaves introduced African gods into the same realm as Europeans when they were sold to them. For centuries since then, tensions rose between different pantheons competing for influence in the New World. Because of direct intervention by Hephaestus and the work of many of my sons, Western nations held the dominance in technology, which was then used to mercilessly kill the followers of the African and Hindu gods on their native lands while oppressing them in North America. Fearing the same fate as what happened to the American pantheons, these gods and demigods fought back.
"First, they convinced their enslaved American compatriots to rebel against slavery. This inevitably led to conflict between Zeus, who wanted a strong America, and Apollo, who vehemently opposed slavery. Poseidon took Zeus's side, saying that they will need a future home if Britain falls, while Hades took Apollo's, as having millions of residents in the Fields of Asphodel who had their fates predetermined is disgusting to him. When Apollo got the prophecy about the war, it first caused the American Civil War, which allowed the African and Hindu pantheons to regain lost ground as we Greek gods were incapacitated. Meanwhile, the resurgence of Germany meant that the Norse gods were once again on the world stage. They were immediately dragged into a direct confrontation between our respective host countries.
"The Hindu gods used this period of disorientation to conceive many millions of demigods in Europe. In particular, they targeted the minorities of Austria and Russia. When the American Civil War ended, not to be outdone, the Big Three and their Norse counterparts began their own campaign of conscription. France, Britain, and Germany had multitudes of the most powerful of European demigods by the end of this arms race, while Russia and Austria had significant pluralities. When Gavrilo Princip, son of Hindu god Shiva, pulled the trigger on Franz Ferdinand, a legacy of Zeus and magician following the path of Osiris, all the world's major pantheons reacted. The mortals did their own thing, ignoring the borders set by the gods, and soon, everyone was mixed together as the world went to war.
"The gods first tried to just sit this war out. It's something we've done for centuries. However, when the stalemate on the Western Front began, the gods took action, seeing that all the demigods are all concentrated in that one small area of France and need something to turn the tide. Next thing I knew, I was fighting multitudes of my co-rulers all across the worlds. At one point, a fight ended up taking place across all nine Norse worlds at once. Many gods were cast down to their own oblivions, while others were attempting to cast each other down. It was just as much of a stalemate up there as down in France and other fronts.
"Eventually, the American demigods turned the tides for everyone. As millions of Greek, Roman, Norse, Hindu, and whatever else demigods were sent to Europe, as the war politically turned against the Germans, the gods called a cease-fire. There were no distinct sides, as the wanton gods had children on all sides of the war fighting each other by this point. When that fateful day in 1918 finally came, everyone was so exhausted that no one really tried to negotiate anything, and everyone just agreed to forget. World War II was actually not as bad for us since the war was not between different pantheons, but different factions within each pantheon, making the conflict smaller in godly terms. To this day, if you mention the Great War to Dionysus, Artemis, or Freya, each of them would kill you right that instant. It was also that war that caused the Egyptian gods to disappear until Julius Kane freed them from the Rosetta Stone."
I couldn't believe my ears. The gods had seen World War I coming for centuries, and all they did every step of the way was make things worse. How come these all-powerful beings are all so...human?
"Lord Hermes, is the war in the Underworld just as bad as I saw in my dreams?" I ask.
"You already have seen the front?" Hermes replies. "It's giving me flashbacks to the Somme all over again. Many millions of those poor souls were soldiers from that cursed battle. Millions of demigods, millions of mortals, and millions of weapons all callously expended later, nothing much changed for all the sides involved. It was needless bloodshed for a cause no one knew why they were fighting for at that point."
Hearing this sent chills up my spine. Like father, like son, they always say, but I never knew such a saying also had a transitive property.
"In any case now, I would like to take your bike," Hermes says. "Here's some supplies in exchange. I know how much of an appetite you have for godly food, but that's not all. Here's also a toolbox, a chainsaw, and a flashlight in your kit. I wish you the best of luck, Arthur, for if you really are what that hybrid called you, the worlds can be in serious trouble."
With that, Lord Hermes flashed out of view.