Oh no, you're probably thinking, it's the last chapter! Exactly, that's what chapter titles are meant to do, giving you a brief overview of the content in this chapter. Some choose to avoid them like Rick Riordan in HoO or the lazy ones, others use them.
I'm currently on my sass meds so I shall offer some genuine advice before I inevitably relapse. If you wish to not spoil the fact that it is a last chapter, don't put "The End". You just gave away the fact to your readers that this is, apart from a potential epilogue, the final update and the plot will thus be resolved. Whatever you put above, your readers will gain that information, so don't put anything you don't wish to spoil. Simple.
Few exceptions to this: If you're trying for some fancy wordplay, then by all means. If you have something that has a double meaning then use it so your readers will be thrown off when you have the first obvious meaning revealed to them early but the second unexpected definition takes them by surprise.
Have fun with chapter titles. Just make sure they don't ruin your story. Except for this one because it is the last chapter.
Percy decided that avoiding any contact with the campers would be preferred since he has been abruptly marked as a fugitive for the past hour even though he is widely well-liked by the camp for leading them in the second Titanomachy as well as being an all-around good MC - uh I mean, guy.
But obviously no one, not even the gods-knows how old wise centaur Chiron would object to mark Percy as a target to capture on sight. Because Moshi was such a great, totally not an arrogant prick, 10/10 guy in the few minutes he showed up at camp that his death would have such a tragic impact on the campers.
Probably should have said this at the first or second chapter. Oh well.
Anyway, Percy dived into the water and swam around and using his super senses underwater that he apparently had before, he found the Tome, which looked like an ordinary book except it was faded and its cover was torn at a corner. Grabbing it, he swam back to land and opened it.
Rays of pure, blinding white light exploded from its pages as he did, and suddenly, he disappeared, his surroundings fading into darkness.
He found himself floating in a space-like place. He was breathing just fine, but he couldn't make anything out. He had no idea where he was. On instinct, his hand moved to his pocket to draw Riptide, but was shocked to feel nothing.
"Hello?" He tried saying. The word carried forward for a puny few seconds before it was lost to the silence.
"Greetings, Perseus." The same figure from before appeared before him. His eyes widened in recognition.
"It's you! What's going on? Where am I?" Percy shouted.
It smiled. "So many questions. Very well, for the sake of the plot and that some revelations must be imparted to you in this final chapter, I shall reveal everything to you and the reader because I am surprisingly not an antagonist. The latter should, in fact, not be revealing everything to the captured protagonist because that is stupid and I have no idea why that happens. I suppose I can only blame myself." It ended with a rueful sigh.
"Where to begin, where to begin...How about your half-brother...uh, Momo was his name right? No, Marty? Morrowind? Morgan? Mass Effect?"
"Matt."
"Close enough. Now where was I...right! He, in his last moments, suddenly became you. Or a copy."
Percy nodded slowly. "He said everything was a game."
"Indeed it is. You must by now realize this world of yours is entire fictional, the brainchild of a certain author by the name of Rick Riordan, or at least, that could be his psudonym. Regardless, your existence is the spawn of his ink on his manuscript that he sent to his publishers. Now, it would not take long for fans to take your character and make different versions of yourself, each with varying or constant attributes to your personality, as well as changes to the universe that you exist within. Is this making sense yet?"
"Not at all. You kind of just broke the fourth wall and make me, a fictional character have an existiential crisis."
"We're all breaking the fourth wall here. Well, it doesn't matter if you do not understand, because this whole conversation is simply a way to convey information to the reader, hence you are irrelevant to this story."
"That hurts."
It shrugged. "Anyway, seeing such a great character that Mr Riordan has developed, many of the fans have decided to write their own stories based on their own imagination. And for some reason, a trend has came about that I myself cannot explain. Now bear with me, this may be too much for you to handle."
"Oh great there's more?"
It pretended not to notice. "They wanted to see you become torn, betrayed, anguished. Hence they made an OC - an original character, if you do not speak the lingo. Your half-brother."
"But he was not a good one. See, to make you have a complete change of heart, your half-brother had to do something drastic, something horrific. So they made everyone in camp, apart from a few of your closest friends like Grover, Clarisse, Katie and the Stoll Twins, completely adore and worship your half-brother. Of course, this varies from telling to telling, but generally this is how it goes."
"And then they made Annabeth transform from an intelligent, logical, caring girlfriend to a dumb, selfish, betraying person by instantly falling in love with your half-brother. And to go on another tangent, this half - you know what, I'm too lazy to type half-brother every time, I'm just calling him brother now, but no offense."
"Go ahead."
"Right, so your bro isn't even like good-looking. I mean, some stories make him unexplainably hot, but some versions make him so ugly that your stepdad could be a supermodel."
Percy shuddered. "Yikes."
"I know right? But I guess that's how they work. So by stealing away everything you cared for - your home, your girlfriend, but at least you have your closest friends and the girl they ship you with next."
"Wait, what?"
"Yeah, sometimes it's Reyna, Thalia or Piper. But mostly it's Artemis."
"No thanks. I'd rather stay healthy and alive."
"No it's all fine, because you somehow win her over by showing your amazing, suave side, or whatever. But that's not the point! Point is, that's what your brother is for. To make you all dark and angsty so that you get the next girl, then come back and breath vengeance on all those who 'betrayed' you. Extreme cases would be that you become Tartarus or something."
"Wow. I don't like these people."
"I know right? But that's what everyone likes."
"So in a way, Matt's just a plot device?"
"Yep."
"But how did he turn into me?"
It opened its mouth to answer, but suddenly the light it was emnating stuttered. Blinking.
"Oh no, it can't be…" It said in horror.
"What? Who?"
Percy's question was answered when another figure appeared. This one was seemingly the exact copy of the first strange figure, except it was almost complete black. If not for the light it was reflecting from its shiny surface, Percy couldn't see it.
"Greetings, Perseus Jackson!" It grinned cheerily. "I see you're all ready."
"Ready? Ready for what?" Percy didn't like the fearful expression that the light figure was having.
"Your spin on the…" A rope suddenly appeared next to it, dangling. It pulled it, and a circus wheel appeared.
"Wheel. Of. Shipping!"
Percy could sort of make out what the various sectors read. "Reyna, Artemis, Piper, Artemis, Thalia, Artemis, Athena, Artemis, Katie, Artemis, Hestia, Artemis…"
"Here we go!" The other figure spun it.
"Congratulations! It's Artemis! Again." It sighed. "Right, next round!"
It knocked the wheel over and brought out a second one that...somehow appeared. Percy assumed the two were omnipotent.
"Chaos blessed, Angel of death, son of Hades, son of long-lost Titan, son of Tartarus, ruler of Tartarus, Heir of Chaos, Guardian of the Hunt, Guardian of the Hunt, Guardian of the Hunt…" It was reading off the wheel in excitement. "WOW! GUARDIAN OF THE HUNT! WHO WOULD'VE THOUGHT!"
"What is all of this!" Percy shouted, finally getting the attention of the enthusiastic figure. It stared at him with soulless eyes.
"Well, I thought my friend here had explained everything. It's all a game! The lot of you Percys take turns becoming either the protagonist or the a-hole." He explained as though it was obvious. "You had your chance in your last story, but you kind of messed it up when your bro defected. But no matter! I'm happy to give you another shot!"
Percy was flabbergasted. "Wha - Wait. Who are you? Both of you."
The two looked at each other, before facing him. "You haven't figured it out?" Mr Enthusiastic said with a hint of surprise. "I'm the fandom. He's the author of this story."
"We don't get along." Author sighed.
"Nonsense! He loves seeing repeated fanfics about you X OC - uh I mean X Artemis. Sorry, thought this was Wattpad for a second."
"Anyway, do you understand everything now? Because I'd really like to end the story here." Author said.
"So...the gods are scared of you?" He looked at Fandom.
"Of course they are! I'm the god of gods! Well, technically, Rick is above me, but I think he's left this plane of existence when he saw what he had done. So for now, I'm the omnipotent one here. I mean, I have the power to ship anyone with anyone. Man, you should have seen Demeter when I made another Author write a Permeter fanfic. I mean, it's so rare. On the other hand, Artemis has practically given up."
"But...there's no escape from this?"
"Nope! As long as people write fanfics about you having an absolutely terrible experience with your brother and everything you love, this cycle will always repeat itself. For eternity."
Percy felt...well, what should he feel? Horrified, scared, angry. But also acceptance, because as the Author, no matter how illogical it is, I wield the power to make him feel whatever I want him to feel. So I say he has accepted his fate. That he is not the only Percy in the multiverse, and all of this are just puppets on strings, on a stage, in an uncaring world torn apart by unoriginal fanfics.
Good day.
Okay, real talk here, like Out of Story talk. So yes, this is the last chapter and everything. And jokes aside, I hope this story has done something to help you. If you want to write a Pertemis story of him becoming a Guardian of the Hunt, I don't exactly approve of it, but I can understand that feeling of reading an awesome story and wanting to add on, or put my own twist on it. And I'm aware that this fandom isn't exactly filled with adults, but teenagers, and we are still impressionable people. So that desire to copy, not fully plagiarise of course, the ideas of others, is understandable.
I originally set out to write this story as a satire way of poking fun at this fandom. It's not meant to hate or shame the people that do what I pointed out in this short story. But after coming back to this a few years later and seeing this, I've had a couple revelations and decided to make it more helpful, so I included some writing advice, not just fandom-specific, but in general.
I also know that I'm not a qualified writer. I'm still a teenager, so I'm still amateurish. But frankly speaking, I think I'm more qualified to talk about some basic things that some writers here still lack. Basic grammar and storylines are one thing.
There is obviously better advice out there from people not even in our league, but I wanted to include some of my own tips in here that if you look through the sarcasm, you can see what I meant to say.
You can tell that at the end I kind of left all that sass and broke the 4th wall completely to finish up the story and to be honest I enjoyed writing it. It was a rare piece where I had inspiration to finish this chapter within half an hour non-stop.
So this is the end, I guess. It was my first attempt at writing something humourous so I don't know if all the attempted jokes fell flat or not. If you got a laugh out of it, that's great. If you wish to hate on me or the fic (with constructive feedback and ideas), I would love to discuss the prevalence of all the tropes I've mentioned in here. If its blind hate I'll probably cry in a corner or something.
And if anyone who has done one of these overused cliches before is reading this, I feel the need to mention that it is not done to mock you, but if I have crossed the line between poking fun and cold mockery, I do apologise and I hope this won't discourage you from writing anymore, but will instead inspire you to do better.
Cheers.