I'm back, yay.
No, really, this time i'm gonna try my best to stay with this story till the end so don't give up on me yet.I did some polishing and editing to this chapter and added some new content so this is not just a re-upload with nothing new.
Basic disclaimer: nothing mine, expect for my own OCs.
No more delays, happy reading.
Darkness.
For a moment, I thought that my death was going to be full of it; but then I woke up.
And when I did, I saw something unexpected. I was in an empty place purely white and then I heard a voice; a voice so deep and powerful that made me feels insignificant. "Welcome Perseus." I turned around to locate the source of the voice but I was alone in the big white void.
"You can't find me because I am all around you; I am Chaos, the creator of the whole universe and everything that resides within it, I am the sky, the seas, the earth, the galaxy; I Am Everything. And although I am the most powerful being in the whole universe, I have been forgotten and my domain is slowly being destroyed, and just like the gods my true power relies on worship and the protection of my realm, I am fading from existence but before I vanish, I need to be sure that my successors will be capable to lead the world to peace. Because I fear that the Gods are not worthy of ruling, at least not in the way they are handling things nowadays" He finished in a serious voice.
"Let me see if I got it right; you want me, the dumbest and most unlucky demi-god in this world, to become the ruler of the universe? Really?" I asked not even believing in this whole conversation.
"Yes, and I'm not choosing you because of your lows, I'm choosing you because your highs are much greater than your lows; you are selfless, caring, honored, strong, and on top of that you are inspiring, people follow you and trust you easily." He said in such a convicted voice, that it gave me hope and made me believe it too.
"Now you realize why I chose you?" When I weakly nodded he continued "Then first of all, come with me for a walk." And then an oval shaped dark portal materialized from nowhere. "C'mon, walk through the portal." And when I did it, the white background changed to a plain and green sunny field filled with low bushes, with a castle-like building in the middle of it, some snowcapped mountains in the east and a huge desert in the west, past the castle there was a dense forest that looked like a sea of trees and behind me, a big lake was standing so still that it looked almost like a mirror.
"What is this place?" I asked still amazed by my surroundings. "This can't exist in our Earth!"
"You are totally right, except that this flying island is actually in an alternate dimension, pretty much like Calypso's. It's a place especially designed and created by me in order for you to gather and train a little group of exceptionally powerful and good demigods that will be known as the Heroes; that was the main reason I used some of the little power I still had left to save you and trick the gods into believing that you are dead. I have already saved the second Hero but he has yet to wake and thus it will be your first job to explain to him what happened and what our purpose is."
"You really trust me to lead this new group of ''Heroes''? I mean, surely there are people better suited for this job." I asked feeling a little insecure.
"You are the one Perseus, and I have total trust and hope in you" He said in a calm and controlled tone. "Alright, I guess you already have an idea of what your little group is going to do, right?" He asked in an expecting tone.
"Overthrown the Gods just like what happened with the Titans and the Primordials before. Am I right?" I asked already knowing the answer.
"Yeah, that is the main purpose of this group; but before that can be done, you need to recruit the other thirteen Heroes and train them to the level of Gods, when you recruit and brief them about our group's goal I will give each one of them a portion of my powers, thus essentially transforming they in a Hero."
"After that you will train each one of them so that they can help you become the ruler of the world, when I believe that you are ready to face a God we will reveal ourselves to the world." After he said that I was stunned by the possibility of becoming a godlike entity and I almost didn't believe it.
"Now, let's give you the first and thus the most powerful portion of myself" When he finished that, an ocean-blue colored light came down from the sky directly on me and I felt myself becoming stronger, faster, more intelligent and most of all I felt something new inside me, something that resembled my demigod's desire to be near water only that I was much stronger, so I tried summoning a small portion of water from the nearby lake but what happened next dazed me.
Right behind me, where a small portion of water should be floating, instead there was a huge wave pairing in the air. When I stopped to think about it Chaos voice immediately emerged. "Do not panic now. This is only a fraction of the power you now possess over water. But that isn't your only domain; rise Percy Jackson, Hero of the Sea, the Earthquakes and the Horses; rise and assumes the leadership of the Heroes."
"I, Percy Jackson, Hero of the Sea, the Earthquakes and the Horses fully accept the responsibilities and duties of being the leader of such an important group and I promise not to fail on our objective to protect the world" I said as I kneeled in respect.
"Very good; now, follow me and I'll give you a little tour around." As I moved toward the castle, I noticed a little vibration like the heat ones on the air right in front of me and I realized it was Chaos' weak presence. "I don't have enough power to spend on materializing, so I'll just stay in this form." He explained.
I followed him through the castle's gates and past the garden, which was awesome by the way, with angel-shaped fountains and bush statues and entered the main hall of the castle. Inside, there was a circle of fourteen thrones, each one marked with a different symbol and painted in a different color than the other and I immediately guessed it was the Heroes throne room; behind the thrones there was a double set of stairs, one heading to the left and the other to the right.
"The left wing of the castle is totally reserved to our Heroines so follow me to the Heroes wing." When we entered the right wing the first thing I noticed was Its size, pretty much bigger than all of the cabins together, decorated with all kinds of old statues and candleholders and right in the middle of it there was an amazing pool with a bar in the middle of it, filled with all kinds of beverage and barman's tools. Next to the pool there was a big sports area, with all kinds of options to play and in right in next to the entrance door there was another door leading to a corridor which was the one we entered next, inside it there was a set of eight doors, four on each side of the corridor and each one had the same symbol and color of a respective throne. "I guess these are our dormitories, right?" I asked him. "Yes and the second Hero is already here resting; just like you, he recently got hunted by the gods and had to vanish from the Earth, so when you explain everything to him try to be careful and calm." Saying that he simply vanished and left me alone with this other unknown guy; turning around to look at the second Hero's door I saw that it was a rust red color and the symbol was a hammer engulfed in a flame so I opened the door and walked in. The moment I stepped inside his room I saw that his bed was empty and I heard some noises coming from behind a door, which was the bathroom I guess; I decided to wait for him so I sat down in his bed because there wasn't any other place to seat.
After waiting for 5 minutes I heard a click and the door opened. The guy walking out of it was very tall and had heavily muscled arms and torso but had a smaller lower body and I wondered why it was like that; after he walked out of the bathroom he saw me and got a confused look on his face to which I quickly said "Uhm hello, I'm Perseus Jackson, nice to meet you. "To which he replied, "Hi, my name's Alistair Kenneth and nice to meet you too; now if you don't mind, can I put on some clothes?" He awkwardly asked me "Oh sure sorry, I'm just going to wait outside." I quickly walked out of his bedroom and stood there waiting.
After two minutes the door was opened and he called me inside, when I entered he was already dressed in a basic red shirt and a pair of jeans. "Soooo, care to explain where are and why I'm not dead?" I told him "I'm a bit confused about the whole 'where we are' thing because Chaos didn't explain a lot to me and he only said that we are on Earth but in a parallel dimension an..."
"Wait, are you talking about Chaos, the freaking creator of the universe?" He asked almost not believing it.
"Yep"
"Why Chaos would bring us here?"
"That's the other thing I had to tell you; Chaos wants us to be part of a group he calls the "Heroes" that will be created in order to overthrown the Olympians." That made his mouth drop." Whoa, wait a second; he wants us, normal demigods, to go to war AND defeat ultra-powerful gods? Is he crazy?" He asked in a careful manner.
"I think he is totally crazy, I mean why the hell would someone create a world like Earth? And yes, he really expects us to defeat the gods but no, he isn't being crazy about it because apparently he still has power enough to transfer some of it to each of the fourteen of us and thus making us Heroes of something based on our immortal parents, resuming, we become godlike entities." I explained in a calm tone.
"WTF, for real?" He questioned almost not believing it."Will I have my own domain, like the gods?"
"Apparently yes; I'm already a full Hero and Chaos was supposed to give your powers when you woke but he said that I was the one that should do it because he was very weak and I had to fully assume the role of leader of our little group." The last part I totally made up but I think it is a half-truth, I guess Chaos wanted us to become friends.
"So, you ready?" I asked anxiously because that was my first time doing something like that.
"Well man if this is going to let me kick some gods' butts then I am totally ready, let's roll." He finished, very excited.
After that I cleaned my mind and focused on what Chaos did to me and did the same to Alistair; Chaos had temporarily given me the second Hero's powers and he told me that when I approached the guy and concentrate on the powers they would flow naturally to the rightful owner; and then a ray of red light came down from the sky upon his head and I felt like a part of me was leaving and made me a little less powerful but I knew he was the right guy to use those powers.
"Rise now Alistair Kenneth, Hero of the Fire, the Smiths, the Volcanoes and the Metals. Rise and let's start a new era, The Era of the Heroes!"
"The Heroes!" Both of us shouted to the air.
After that we had a little chat and we both told about our life stories, how we ended up here and who we had left behind. Then we went looking for a place to test our new godly powers when we found a training field right in the back of the castle.
As we approached it I saw that there was a huge forge in the right side of the castle's garden, and seeing that we had a smithing pro already we would really need new freaking awesome weapons, suited for real Heroes.
When we arrived in the training field we saw that it had everything possible to be used in a training; dummies, training weapons and armors, arrow targets, climbing walls, a blackboard, probably meant to be used to plan the practices and there was a small building very close to the wall that had a big sign with the words ARMORY written on it and I guessed that our original weapons were there.
"Hey Ali, let's take a look in that building." I pointed towards the armory." I'm guessing that our weapons are there."
"Sure and even though I'll be forging new weaponry for us, I think we can use our old ones for a quick duel." He said grinning madly.
"…Ok then, let's get ready for it." When we entered the small building I first noticed that it was full of lockers and that each one had a name written on it; it had a numerical sequence where I was the first, Ali was the second and the third one was a guy named Renn, followed by Nicole, Zec, Marc, Theo, Heike, Julie, Emma, Mera, Yueda, Noah and last Lily.
"I wonder if those are the rest of the Heroes…" Ali said very interested "Well, we should find out soon enough." I was very interested in those lockers too because each one had a figure of a weapon and a color, representing their parent; there was a spear, a saber, a scythe, a pair of hidden blades, staves, daggers, scepters, my sword and Ali's hammer and axe, and some that I couldn't identify.
Opening my locker, I grabbed my old friend Anaklusmos and removed its cover, while I did that Ali got his hammer and removed his blade cover from his axe.
"Ready man?" I asked him
"I was born ready." He answered in an excited way "Let's go!"
Alistair's POV
From what I could discover I guess that Percy is a nice guy; he saved the Olympus, made sure that the gods would claim their children and asked cabins for every god in the camp half-blood, which makes him pretty much a Hero already, and I started to think that maybe this whole thing about the Heroes wasn't going to be as easy for him as it will be for me, because I had no love for any of the Gods, and I pretty much hated my father, making my job that much easier than Percy's.
After we armed ourselves, we walked in the direction of the field and when we were positioned right in the middle of it we stopped and faced each other.
"Rules?" I suggested it to him "We better make sure that no one gets hurt too badly."
"Sure… let me think about it," He wondered about it for a few seconds and answered me "I wonder if we could somehow shield our blades to make them harmless…"
"Wait, let me try something…" I grabbed my axe's blade with my hands and started to direct fire from my body to my fingertips, running it through my blade until the amount of fire on it was enough to slightly burn the target instead of cutting it. "I can keep the fire in this shield-like state as long as I have energy enough to spend on shaping it and I believe you can do the same with your new water control; try redirecting the water in your body towards your fingertips and then molding it around your blade." When I finished explaining, he did the same as me and easily performed it which made me believe that our powers had been incrusted to our essence and we already had some kind of mastery over it.
"Nice, now I believe we can fight without holding back." He said as he got in a battle stance "Ready?"
"Sure." Right after finishing my sentence I rushed to him and immediately threw a slash towards his head which he easily blocked with his sword, seeing an opening I slammed my hammer at his left arm but he conjured an water shield with his left hand, absorbed my attack and froze my hammer's head with water from the shield. I tried to remove my hammer but the ice was too strong to be destroyed by normal means, so I stopped trying; Percy saw this and taking advantage from my moment of hesitation he pulled his ice shield backwards, removing my hammer from my hand, throwing it far away and using his momentum to kick my stomach sending me flying away.
"Oh, very nice" I commented as I got up ", I wasn't expecting that much strength from you…"
"Wow, me neither…" He said in a startled voice "I guess that our powers are really huge now"
"I guess we should try them on something not-human…" I suggested to him and he quickly nodded "Yes, I think it is better."
As I said that I started to walk back to the training area to get the dummies we had seen before Percy said something that made me very restless "Will we really be able to fight a god? I mean they easily 'killed' us one time, I don't think it would be that hard to do it again…"
We remained silent through the way and after grabbing some wood dummies I positioned them in the field and Percy got back, watching me from afar.
I focused on the powers that I felt before when Percy gave it to me and I started to feel my body heating up and my inner fire's desire to be free and to burn everything on its way so I channeled it through my hand and released a huge torrent of fire that left only a burned trail where the dummies had been standing.
"WOW, nice one Ali." Percy shouted from where he was "Now let me try some." He picked up a dozen dummies and put them in place.
I stayed back and saw him stepping forward and focusing in the same way I did, only that the air around me seemed to get colder and colder to the point that he opened his palms and a thick mist of freezing air appeared which instantly made the dummies and pretty much all of the field turn into ice.
"Holy shit Percy that was…" He didn't let me finish my sentence because he immediately closed his fists, I heard a huge crash and suddenly everything frozen was smashed into tiny pieces of falling snowflakes.
"That was amazing." I said while raising my jaw "Well, I'm starting to feel a bit more confident about the whole "overthrowing" thing, because if all the other heroes become as powerful as us we definitely have a shot at winning it.
"We definitely have the powers to do it, but we need to get used to them thus we will have to do a practice routine every day until the time comes for us to face the Gods."
"I think we should spar whenever possible, try to discover the full potential of our powers and I think that it means we should study about our domains and do some field research."
"Soooo, wanna spar some more?" He asked excited about it.
"Sure, let's become experienced enough to mentor the other heroes." I suggested to him and started walking towards the empty field already in a battle stance.
"Ready?" He yelled from the other side.
"Ready" I yelled back and lunged forward.
Percy's POV (6 hours later)
When I entered my room I felt like I had been trampled by thousands of centaurs, my body was so sore that I couldn't even move properly, I still couldn't believe that we had actually been sparring for 7 hours non-stop when our stamina finally started to run low.
It was then that I noticed what my dorm looked like, It had three rooms: the bathroom, which had a shower and bathtub and was already filled with towels, shampoos and soaps; the bedroom, which had a king-size bed and a huge closet; and the "living room", which had some water-themed decorations, some sea paintings and beach wallpaper on the wall.
It wasn't the biggest room ever but it was more than enough. I was heading to the bathroom to take a long and replenishing bath when I heard Alistair calling me.
"Hey Perce?" I heard his voice through the dorm's door "I think you should come check this out…" His voice sounded anxious, so I opened my door and followed him.
"What happened?" I asked a bit worried.
"I think we have a new partner" He answered.
While we were walking in the right wing corridor I noticed that the once bright sunlight was starting to fade into the sunset, leaving a very beautiful orange glow running through the windows.
Ali, seeing the dark starting to fill the place started to light up all the candles in the room using small fireballs directly from the tip of his fingers
When we started to climb down the stairs of the main hall of the castle, I saw who he was talking about;
First thing that I noticed was his imposing figure, he was very tall, over 7 feet; second thing was his body, he wore nothing but a pair of black trousers and while he had a very defined body he was leaner than Alistair with scars covering all over his body leaving only his head clean which by the way was almost fully shaven with a small patch of black hair on it, he had pretty handsome features on his face and his dark brown eyes had a hint of seriousness yet when you looked deep into them you would be enveloped in a unusual kind of serenity that went all the way to your soul.
When he saw me his once hard expression softened a little bit and he said in a deep voice,
"Hello there guys. Nice to meet you, my name is Renn and I've been told to come here looking for you."
As he said both me and Alistair walked up to him and shook his hand and I asked,
"Nice to meet you too Renn, I'm Percy," I said and nodded towards Alistair as he said,
"Name's Alistair, nice to meet you too bro." Alistair said in his usual happy tone. "Soooo, tell me more about how you ended up in our happy little private world."
"Oh you know the drill, happy dreams with weirdoes, a little portal here and a few kilometers of running there, with cute little monsters as a bonus; I mean, don't you guys loooove this demigod live?" After he finished his story we all started to laugh like idiots.
After five minutes of laughing we started to calm down and I asked him, "So, you don't know who we are here and what our purpose is right?
"Well actually Chaos told me a little about it but he didn't fully explain what I should do once I found you…" He frowned in confusion.
"Okay let me clear it up for you bro, Chaos decided that the our world needed some changes but he wasn't strong enough for that anymore so he chose to give his powers to Perce here turning him in a Deity and demanding that a new group of individuals be brought together to fight against the Gods."
Ali giving that quick explanation made it sound so easy and simple that it didn't even look like we were going to take on almighty beings. Well, after all we are supposed to be as strong as them now so no problem, right?
"C'mon Renn, I'll show you around our new home" Ali called him going towards the right wing of the castle "I think you should go take that bath now Percy, seeing as you are almost falling down from exhaustion after losing to me so much" He said in a mischievous voice.
"Losing to you? I completely destroyed your sorry ass bro" I told them while waving in front of their faces some pictures that I had taken during the fight, with Ali being knocked out several times. "Manipulating water to use the camera wasn't that hard at all."
While I and Renn were laughing I opened up an oval shaped ocean blue portal and when I walked out of it I was already in my room. These portal were surely useful once you got the hang of it.
Entering the bathroom I prepared to get in a hot bath and just relax all night long.
Happy new year everyone! I have the next chapter already done so simply wait for it and i should be posting it soon.
Hope you guys enjoyed it and review if you liked it or not, criticism is always good.
OpS out.