A/N:
So… What's up, guys? How long's it been?
I am soo sorry, you guys! I don't know what happened! Well… I do know what happened, it's just a really lame excuse.
Oh my gods! I haven't updated since summer vacation! I'm a horrible person!
On a more positive note, this is the second last chapter! Yay! The next chapter I post should be the last chapter, if all goes to plan. I'll probably do an epilogue after that, just 'cause I wouldn't fell right just leaving it like that. Let me know what you want it to be. (Percabeth wedding? Even farther into the future? I don't know, it's totally up to you guys).
Again, I am so sorry! But rest assured, my faithful readers; this story has not been abandoned!
Okay, now that that's done… Enjoy the chapter! :3
Polybotes' body fell to the ground completely limp with glazed eyes.
He was dead. Anybody would be able to tell at least that much, but how that was possible was still yet to be determined.
Percy watched with similarly glazed eyes until he was sure that his adversary was well and truly dead before allowing himself to give in to the effects of what he had just done.
He hadn't noticed it during the fight, but his mouth, nose, and ears had all begun to leak blood. The energy required for him to have done what he did was simply too much for his body to handle. The taste of iron got stronger in his mouth, and groggily, he spat out a glob of blood onto the ground. As if he were in a trance, he reached up and wiped the corner of his mouth. He stared at the trail of red left on his hand without quite absorbing just what it was.
Everything around him was muffled, like he was underwater. As he looked around him at everybody left on the battlefield, he saw they were all staring at him. He frowned, wanting to know why nobody else could hear the quite frankly annoying buzzing all around him before he caught sight of Annabeth running across the battlefield towards him and he grinned. His teeth were stained red with his blood, and he could feel more of it dripping down the sides of his face from his ears.
Annabeth was crying, sobbing even, as she ran as fast as she could towards him.
'Oh', he thought, the sudden realization of what was happening hitting him, 'I'm dying'.
He tried to take a step towards her, but his legs gave out beneath him, and he suddenly found himself laying on the blood-soaked ground.
A sense of peace filled him, even as Annabeth's distraught face filled his vision. He didn't fear death. All journeys had an end, and the end always comes. He could run away from it all he liked, but if this was his time, there would be no point.
Annabeth's lips were moving, telling him to hold on and that help was coming, but he couldn't hear anything. Even now, with her golden hair bloodied from a cut on her temple and ugly tears streaming down her face, Annabeth was still the most beautiful thing he had ever seen.
Shakily, his hand reached up to cup her cheek, and his thumb swiped across her cheekbone, catching the tears before they could ever fall.
Dimly, he was aware of the rest of the cabin councillors and the gods crowding around them, but he didn't care.
Joy as pure as he had ever felt filled every inch of his body and he felt her heart beat beneath his fingertips.
Moros had been wrong. Annabeth, the one singular person who held his whole heart, was still alive.
She was alive.
A gentle smile lit up his face.
"You're safe", he whispered, even as spots of black began to dance along the edges of his vision. His hand fell from her cheek, his thumb lightly brushing against her bottom lip. "I love you".
Earnestly, he stared into her eyes one last time, drinking in the stormy grey color he had fallen completely in love with, before his eyes rolled into the back of his head, and he stilled.
She stared on in shock for a few precious moments before what had just happened sunk in. Her head, almost on it's own, began to shake back and forth.
"No", she whispered, almost as quietly as her Seaweed Brain's last words had been. "Come back. You can't leave me here, you hear me Seaweed Brain? You come back right now!". But even her best commanding voice had no effect on the limp body in front of her. "No!", she screamed, hugging him close to her. "You promised! You promised never again!".
In a fit of rage, Poseidon turned away from the body of his only mortal son and threw his trident as hard as he could at the body of the giant who had killed him. Polybotes, who was still as dead as the last time they checked, had no reaction to the sudden attack but to finally dissolve into dust.
Meanwhile, behind him, Annabeth fought a losing battle against Apollo who was trying to get her away from Percy's body.
"No! No, get off of me! I won't leave him!", she cried, a stray elbow flying back and breaking the sun god's nose with a loud crack.
He cursed loudly and took a few steps away from the distraught demigoddess as ichor flowed down his face.
"Annabeth", Nico said quietly, appearing from nowhere at her side. He placed a single hand on his cousin's too-pale forehead. "He's not dead yet. But he will be if you do not let us help him".
She whipped her head around to look at him, eyes burning with passion and fragile new hope.
"He's not?".
"No". He looked at her solemnly, his onyx-colored eyes like stone. But she could still see the deep sadness hidden in their shadowy pools.
Nico didn't know what Annabeth saw there when she looked so seriously into his eyes, but whatever it was was enough to convince her, and slowly, she pulled away and stood up on shaky legs.
"Help him". Her words seemed to echo much farther than they logically should have. An unnatural power filled them: power that wasn't hers.
Apollo and his son Will stepped forward, ready to help, but yet again, they were interrupted: this time, by the sound of trickling water.
As the astonished gods and demigods watched on, water from the nearby sea climbed up the cliffs and across the battlefield to reach Percy, who still lay limp on the ground. The water, which by all rights should have been murky with dust and blood from the battlefield it had just crossed, was just as clean as the sea below them. A fact, which only served to confuse those watching even further.
"Poseidon? What is the meaning of this, brother?", Zeus asked.
Poseidon stood slightly apart from the rest of the group. He leaned on his trident tiredly, and just by looking at his similarly confused face, his family could tell that he had nothing to do with what was happening.
Slowly, realization began to dawn on the sea God's face, and he began muttering a prayer under his breath in the Old Tongue that caused the four of his siblings who were with him in their father's stomach to turn to look at him sharply.
"What are you doing?", Hera hissed. He ignored her.
"What is it? What's happening?", Annabeth asked, a bit of hysteria leaking back into her voice.
He softened at the distress of the girl his son had loved so much, and explained, if only for her benefit.
"The sea comes to heal its prince", he said simply, watching with solemn eyes as his son was lifted up into the air by the water.
It formed a sphere around him, twisting and churning as though it were its own miniature ocean.
"What?", his little brother asked in a bored tone of voice. Poseidon glared at him for seemingly not caring at all whether their hero lived or died, but elaborated nonetheless.
"Did you really think that I controlled the seas, Zeus. I don't control them, I rule them. I am their king, but they are not mine. They are their own force, their own being if you will, and they have accepted Percy as their prince just as they accepted me as their king all those centuries ago".
Athena and her daughter's eyes widened.
"So you mean in that prayer just then, you were talking to...".
"Pontus", Annabeth breathed, finishing for her mother.
Poseidon nodded solemnly.
"The old primordial gods, the originals born of chaos are incredibly old. They have no care for the way of mortals and lesser immortals. They could care less if we lived or died. For them, there is only power and the respect warranted by that power. Just as with me, Pontus has accepted Percy to be worthy as a son of the sea".
Tears continued to gather at the corner of Annabeth's eyes, but she fiercely wiped them away as she, along with everybody else, turned to look at the violent churning sphere of water that contained Percy.
She could just barely make him out through the movement of the water, but when she did she wished she didn't.
Even through the barrier of the water she could tell his face was much too pale to be healthy. A thin stream of blood flowed from his nose and floated, suspended in the water around his head. His hair floated like a dark halo, and his body was completely limp.
He looked dead. That thought sent a shock of pain through her heart so intense, she could almost believe that a hot knife had been driven straight through her.
She looked away, unable to cope with the images and thoughts that poisoned her mind when she looked at him.
Slowly, as the rest of the Olympian party watched, the sphere of water began to glow a dark blue, the color of the deepest oceans. Even though it was a dark color, the light eventually grew too bright for even the Olympians to look on anymore, and they were forced to close their eyes lest they be incinerated.
When the light had finally disappeared from the back of their eyelids, they opened their eyes again to see the water completely gone, and Percy laying on the ground looking as though he was simply sleeping.
Apollo rushed forward his hands glowing golden as he muttered under his breath.
"But how? It shouldn't be possible. Massive internal hemorrhaging throughout his entire body... and it's just gone".
Annabeth didn't care why or how it had happened, all she cared about was that her Seaweed Brain was okay.
Percy's alive.
Her entire body seemed to sag with relief, and for the first time since the battle had ended, she allowed herself to feel just how tired she really was. Her head felt like it was being split in half like Zeus when her mother was being born. The glancing cut on her cheek stung from the salt of her tears, and she was pretty sure she had broken at least three ribs.
The next few hours passed in a blur. She was treated by some Apollo camper (Greek or Roman she didn't really care) and told to rest to help with the concussion she had somehow managed to acquire. All the while, she refused to leave Percy's side. He had been completely cured of any injuries, and technically, there was nothing left to treat.
He was in a coma, plain and simple. There was nothing to be done until he woke up. If he woke up.
The battle had been devastating. They'd lost 30 percent of their army. 30 percent. That was 60 demigods just... gone. Not to mention the wounded. Any and all demigods who were even slightly talented at healing were running around the hastily constructed infirmary tent like chickens with their heads cut off. Apollo himself floated around, providing help and strength to his children wherever needed. But besides him, the gods found themselves to be frustratingly useless.
Eventually, they decided to flash back to camp with the collected bodies of the deceased. Their presence among the suffering of so many of their children just served to feed the bitterness that already grew in their hearts.
Annabeth passed a hand through her boyfriend's hair and sighed when there was no reaction. He was still out cold, and something told her that he would stay that way for a while. That left the demigods leaderless, as both Reyna and the rest of the Seven were off getting their own injuries treated. Frantic and grieving demigods with no real leader or direction was a chaotic tragedy that no one should have to see much less organise. She knew she had to go before Apollo was overrun. Sun god or no, he simply wasn't equipped to deal with the aftermath of war.
'Besides', she thought, steadying herself from a sudden dizzy spell on a nearby bedpost, 'Percy would do the same if it were me'.
—
In Percy's Dreamscape:
Darkness. It was all there was around him: like he was floating in space. His eyes strained, but despite their effort, he could see nothing beyond the impenetrable blackness. And yet… he was not alone. He could sense that much. Something, or rather someone had called him here.
Two swirls of energy suddenly appeared in front of him, and his brain amended that statement.
Make that: two someone's
The flurry of shadows and stars was the first to dissipate. It expanded outwards -like an explosion with no destructive force- and threw small lights like entire galaxies into the darkness all around them. The next one appeared as more of a whirlpool: a dark colour, only barely discernible as blue. Still, it felt somehow familiar to him. And when it, too, disappeared, he found out why. It melted, like an icicle above a fire, and fell into the abyss below him, forming a rough and wild body of water that he recognised as the ocean: his home.
It was only after he had taken all of this in that he remembered the two very powerful beings standing in front of him.
He dropped to a knee and bowed his head. "My Lord. My Lady".
The man to his right cocked his head. "What's this? A subservient son of the sea?". His voice was low and ancient, yet it still took on a certain… teasing tone that confused him and sent his mind spinning.
The next voice he recognised all too well. "A behaviour learned in the pit. The boy is much more observant and intelligent than those Olympians seem to realise".
"Indeed".
The two beings began to pace around him, and Percy got the district impression that he was being inspected like a cattle for slaughter.
He didn't very much appreciate that, and before he could stop it, his rebellious nature made an appearance.
"And this 'son of the sea' is still here. So if you would like to explain exactly what is going on, that would be great".
There were a few tense moments of silence in which he realised exactly what he had just said, and to what kind of being he had just said it to. He was preparing himself for death when his thoughts were interrupted by deep laughter.
The man to his right, 'Pontus', his mind supplied, was laughing, and the ocean below him seemed to laugh right along with him. Nyx, as per usual, showed no outward signs of amusement, but the night around them did seem to get just a little brighter.
"Ah, there it is", the Primordial god said once he had finished laughing, "I knew I wasn't wrong in healing you".
Percy was stunned. "You healed me? I'm not dead?!".
Pontus chuckled again and shook his head. "No, you're not dead. Though you were trying very hard to be. You're body is completely healed. This is your dream; once you wake up, you will be perfectly fine and with your friends once again".
Emotions clashed inside of him like a storm. He was alive. That was one thing he had not expected. He had not feared death- he still didn't- but life? That was a different game altogether. How could he be allowed to live when he had killed so many? Why was he still alive? What was the point?
If Pontus was expecting thankfulness, that was not what he received.
"Why?". Percy's sea-green eyes narrowed and fixed Pontus with a glare that, given the power difference between them, shouldn't have intimidated him at all. Yet somehow, it still did, and he old god found himself stunned.
"Why? I saved your life. Is that something you mortals always want: to live longer?".
"Y-Yeah. I mean, I guess so. But I'm not a mortal, I'm a demigod. And most of the time, for demigods, living is more painful than dying".
Pontus looked shocked. "So you didn't want me to save you?".
"I mean, I'm glad you did. Now I know that Annabeth won't be so sad and alone because I died. But… after everything I've done, I figured it was about time I made a more permanent trip to the Underworld", he said with a shrug.
Pontus looked stunned.
Nyx scoffed, startling Percy, as he'd just about forgotten that she was there. "Oh come now, baby brother. You can't honestly be that surprised. We're all depressed here". She rolled her eyes and muttered under her breath, "Sea deities, always so emotional".
She continued speaking before he could respond to the jab. "Your survival is not the only thing we have appeared to discuss with you, Perseus".
Just like that, the mood of the conversation took a more somber tone, and the slight grin melted off his face.
"We have come to talk to you about our youngest sister, Gaea. She is… in pain". Any arguments that Percy had come up with died in his throat.
"In pain?", he asked, confused.
"Yes. You have to understand, she has been sleeping for millennia. When she fell asleep, her domain was beautiful and green and healthy. But now, she finally wakes up only to find that the mortals have destroyed everything. The Earth is her body. Every drill, every mine shaft pains her. She is angry, and frustrated and resentful towards the gods for allowing the world they rule to become like this".
"She killed Hazel! She manipulated Leo into killing his own mother! She chained Death, and forced me to fall into Tartarus!".
Neither primordial showed any outward signs of caring.
"She must be stopped, that is true. She cannot be allowed to destroy what has taken millennia to create. And you will be the one to stop her".
Percy gaped. "Wh- What?". The world all around him began to flicker and lighten, and he felt his consciousness being pulled away. "Wait! I don't understand!".
"Think, Perseus! A primordial being has only ever been defeated by lesser beings once in known history! My younger brother—".
Percy's sea-green eyes shot open, startling an Apollo camper who had been checking on him.
"Ouranos!".