The tone in the War Room could only be described as somber. At best. At worst it was bleak, depressed, and downright desolate. Following the departure of Tartarus's forces the heads of both camps and the major gods had assembled to discuss the problems they now faced. Thus far the only product of their convergence had been arguments on what to do. "No matter how you look at it we are outnumbered." Frank said, grinding his teeth. "We need to call in more reserves. We have at least a thousand other Romans who are honor-bound to help us."
"Yeah, but those thousand Romans are parents, grandparents, and people who are too old to fight!" Percy snapped back, slamming his hand onto the table and making the figurines fall over. "We can't ask them to abandon their families!"
"Going in battle is the best way to go!" Ares declared loudly, thumping on his breastplate. "Honorable! Fun even!"
"Shut it, Ares." Percy snarled, glowering at the god. "You immortals don't get a say."
"That is a bold thing to say." Venus observed from where she floated on her cloud above the map stretched out over the table. "Particularly since we will be a large help in this upcoming war."
"Only because you can't afford for Tartarus to wipe us out." Percy shot back, switching his glare to the goddess of love. "If you call in those reserves you are going to have a bunch of kids being raised without parents. At the very least, one. And that's if they are lucky."
"You are acting like we don't have a chance!" Hazel said, coming to Frank's aid. "Romans stand as one! That's the way it is! If you Greeks don't want to call in your own reserves-."
"What reserves?" Piper demanded. "You mean the nymphs, dryads, and the satyrs? Oh yes, we are calling them in. They are already on the way actually. BUT we made sure that the ones who had children or were old weren't included! Because we have something called a conscience."
"A whole lot of good a conscience does you if you are dead." Frank reminded them venomously.
"What's your deal man?" Leo asked cordially. "You aren't acting like yourself."
"What because I want to bring in the rest of the reserves?" Frank asked. When Leo nodded he barked out a laugh and shook his head. "You think that I like having to bring in all those people? I don't. Not even a little bit. But it is a whole lot better to have more numbers and actually stand a chance rather than just being overrun and slaughtered. Even if I call in the reserves, even if you get as many satyrs and that bunch as you think you will, even if Tartarus doesn't have as many monsters at his side as we think he does, we still have to deal with the Corrupted ones." The name had spread like wildfire through the camp mere minutes after the tense faceoff had ended and it stuck. Rather than referring to the demigods fighting alongside Tartarus as demigods it made it a whole lot easier to refer to them as something else.
Percy had no argument for that. It had been one of the many other issues that no solution had presented itself. Artemis's arrow had been stopped, with one hand no less, with contemptuous ease by Ryker. They had discussed the possibility that Ryker was stronger by the rest and thus had been chosen as the emissary, but they had thrown out that line of thinking. They couldn't assume that they all weren't equally as possible based on a mere hope. That would easily lead to their slaughter.
"It took Ryker losing it to beat Gina." Leo said softly, tinkering with something in his hands. "We can handle a couple of them, but they had a small army of em. And if they are all strong enough to take on a god's weapon and come out without a scratch, we got a problem. A big one."
"They can't be killed as far as we know." Hermes added, leaning on his staff. "We attempted several different ways of doing so on Gina, but nothing succeeded. At the very most they can be incapacitated if their vital organs are damaged enough."
"Why can't they be killed?" Percy demanded, crossing his arms tightly. "It doesn't make sense. What makes them different than us?"
"They were created by Tartarus himself," Athena said gravely. Percy nodded but he couldn't bring himself to look into the goddess's eyes. The gray color was still painful, too painful for him to bear. He would mourn Annabeth properly if he survived this fight, but for now he needed to focus as much as his ADHD brain would allow him to. His friends, the ones still living, still needed him. "They were brought into being with the sole purpose of killing the gods. It stands to reason that they would fall outside of Thanatos's control as he is one of the gods."
The War Room fell silent once more as each participant racked their brains in search of a solution to their dilemma. The tent flap opened and a Roman quickly stepped in, covered in sweat and with a grim expression on his face. He saluted quickly just as Frank said, "Report."
"The scout came back." He said clearly.
"Scout?" Artemis inquired. "Don't you mean scouts? We sent out half a dozen of them."
"No, my lady, scout." The legionnaire said, "She was the only one to make it back. The others were killed, from what we understand. She is…. She is not in good shape. The medical personnel are attending to her but they have no idea yet as to whether or not she will survive."
"Her injuries?" Artemis inquired, her voice slightly harsh. The scouting party had been her idea. Half of them had been her Hunters and the other half had been a combination of Greeks and Romans who had a propensity for stealth and silence. The fact that the only survivor was female meant that it was one of her Hunters as the Greeks and Romans had been all male.
"Several lacerations along her right shoulder and her wrists showed evidence of being bound." The Roman said grimly, his voice firm and unwavering. "Will Solace believes that she may have been tortured."
"Tortured?" Leo repeated, his voice drawn in horror. "What gives, why would they do that?"
"That's not all." The Roman said, reaching into his pocket and pulling out a blood-stained piece of paper. He slowly unfolded it and handed it to Artemis as the goddess reached for it. Her eyes scanned the paper and a terrible fury clouded her face. She slammed the piece of paper onto the table and vanished in a flash of silver light, temporarily blinding the assembled demigods for several seconds.
Frank ordered the Roman to get some rest and to bring him updates on the Hunter every two hours as Percy and the others crowded around to read the note.
Good Afternoon, The note began in elegant flowing handwriting. The blood seemed to be primarily on the outside of the paper, leaving the message unsullied. I hope that this note finds you both happy and healthy, at least for this young lady's sake. Because she, as you are no doubt aware, is not. Terribly rude of you, sending scouts in to spy on us. You act as if we would not anticipate this and take countermeasures. Truly, you wound my pride. That is to say, me as an individual. I hope that the state your friend is in will be something in the way of an eye-opening experience. I took my time in making her scream. If it is any consolation at all, she was silent for quite some time. But, fear not, persistence is something I have been gifted with. Combine that with a truly wonderful imagination and her screams soon echoed through the woods. I made sure that she suffered just enough to put her on the brink of death. I could have killed her I suppose, but then I would not have a way to give you this message. If you do manage to save her, and it is rather unlikely that you will (hydra acid injected directly into the bloodstream is rather bad for the heart I have been told), but if you do please do give her my thanks. She was an excellent test subject to practice my skills on. Very resilient. But there I go, rambling again. I suppose I should get to the point of this message. Please refrain from sending any other scouts to spy on us or I will show them things worse than death. Of which, as I am sure your little Hunter friend can now attest, there are many. And quite varied as well! I will have her deposited at the very edge of your territory right on the borders of your guards' patrols. I do hope you find her before she dies. That would be a waste after I went to such lengths to perfectly gauge how much time would pass before the acid eats away her arteries and dissolves her heart. Also, while I am thinking of it, do not try to escape if you would be so kind. I am not sure that the idea had presented itself to you, but I would like to discourage it now if I may be so bold. We will slaughter anyone that attempts to run. Women, children, older folks, it matters not. I would prefer to have all of you in one place for one grand bloodbath. Oh! As for those satyrs and fauns that you called to your side, I do thank you. It was a lovely little warm up fight. Don't count on their aid if that was not clear enough. They have all been killed.
Best Regards and Hoping that you are well,
Ryker
The collective horror as to what they had read was a prodigious amount as each one of the demigods, and even the gods, attempted to understand just how twisted their opponents truly were. "Hydra acid?" Piper croaked, "That sicko injected her with hydra acid?! What kind of monster would even think of something like that, let alone actually do it?"
As much as Percy agreed, his thought were on the last sentence. "They're dead." He said, his voice surprisingly steady. "The satyrs… the dryads… the nymphs… all of our reinforcements… they're dead."
"And we can't call for more." Frank said grimly, rubbing his eyes. "They'll be killed too apparently. It's too risky. We have to make do with what we have now."
"Which isn't much." Nico said, speaking up for the first time since the meeting had been called. "We have a couple hundred more that are going to college in New Rome and who have chosen to live around here. But it's not enough. We need more numbers."
"What we need and what we actually get are two different things." Percy reminded him. "Unless you have something in mind?"
"I'll speak to my father." Nico told them. "I may be able to convince him to allow me to control his skeleton army. And I will speak to him about getting some assistance in shadow-traveling all those unfit to fight away from the combat area."
"Thanks Nico." Frank said as Nico stepped back into the shadows of the tent and disappeared. Frank sat down at one of the chairs arranged around the table and put his head into his hands. "We have to do something." He said wearily.
Percy agreed, as did everyone else in the room, but as to what that something was he had no idea at all. They had arranged for their defenses to be as strong as they possibly could in every possible way but they wouldn't last indefinitely. Even with the gods' continued assistance. According to what Ryker had said, the goal of the army of Tartarus was to eradicate every soul on the planet. If they found that New Rome was unreachable it was very likely that they would turn their attention to the nearest city and completely destroy it. At the very least the War Room had agreed that they could not let that happen. They had to be the first, and last, line of defense against the army. But the more Percy looked over their problem, the quicker it became clear that they would not survive this. It was the first time in his life that he truly realized what it meant to face impossible odds.
