It had been three weeks since I had met Zoe, and inadvertently become immortal. You might think that becoming immortal would be pretty exiting, but in fact it was rather anti-climatic. No knew abilities, no notable increase in stamina, not even the golden blood of the gods.
Well the latter could be explained away due to the fact that the apple didn't make me a god, just ageless. I was pretty thankful for that to be honest, I mean can you imagine being immortal and not being allowed to have any significant relationship with anyone other than your godly peers, most of whom tend to be rather "eccentric". The thought alone made me shiver, and no wonder Zeus was trying to make Heracles immortal, most of his Olympian family was rather difficult to be around. My father Poseidon was rather fortunate in that respect, since most of the denizens of Atlantis were immortal themselves, hence he was free to mingle as he wished. That also probably explained why my father didn't have as nearly as many demigod children as Zeus, he didn't really need the distraction.
Anyways, I was enjoying a nice stroll through the city of Athens taking in the views when I saw him. God dammit, I should've expected them to make an appearance.
"Lord Hermes, what brings you to Athens?" I asked, getting straight to the point, as usual.
"Nothing good I assure you." He said in a grave voice. "Olympus demands your presence."
"…That's bad because?" I asked, it wasn't as if I hadn't been there before. In fact, Zeus tended to summon me there every once in a while to chat, and insure my loyalty to Olympus. So, naturally I was curious about why the gods were so worked up on this particular occasion.
"You'll find out." With that he snapped his fingers and we appeared on the throne room in Olympus.
I immediately noticed that all the thrones were occupied, with the notable exception of Hera, weird. Looking around, I found that I wasn't the only one who had been summoned, as I immediately recognized Heracles, Chiron—my old trainer, Dionysus- son of Zeus, Theseus- some guy my father blessed, and the Hunters of Artemis to name a few. Speaking of the Hunters of Artemis, looked like they found a new member in one Zoe. Good for her.
Back to the point however, it was definitely peculiar that the gods had summoned this many demi-gods to Olympus. As far as I knew they hadn't ever done something like this in the past. Well, couldn't really do anything about that, so I proceeded to my usual spot in front of my father's throne. My actions having broken the ice, the rest of the summoned people did so as well, and I soon found my self standing next to Theseus.
Theseus was a weird one to me, you see some people seem to think that Poseidon possessed Theseus's father while he was getting it on with Theseus mother, making him my brother. Note, if you haven't guessed yet, I forgot the names of Theseus's parents. Anyway, he's really not my brother, you see my father is much too prideful to possesses a mortal in order to lay with a woman, that's more Triton's style. Mind you I'd imagine doing it yourself would be a problem if like Triton you had two fish-tails instead of legs. Personally, I still think its really messed up but you know, what can I do about it. The truth of the matter was that Theseus's father had an encounter with an oracle, learning that his soon to be born son would face many trials, he prayed to the most benevolent god he could think of. Which turned out to be Poseidon. Now, you may be thinking what Poseidon isn't the most benevolent god. Well, all I have to is that he is, and if you carefully analyzed the competition you would agree. If you're not seeing it, let me explain, out of the Big Three, no one really liked Hades as he was well known for holding grudges. Zeus regularly lost his temper, and conjured up storms that tended to kill quite a few people. Now let's move on to the rest of the Olympian's, Ares was the god of War, enough said. Athena had just turned Arachnid into a spider. Artemis had the habit of turning males in to jackelopes. Apollo while friendly had nasty streak a mile long, and he liked spreading diseases for fun too. Hera hated us heroes on principal. Demeter regularly destroyed crops, which led to many villages starving. People who got involved with Aphrodite tended to get love sick and kill themselves, or sire children with an assorted variety of animals and then kill themselves. Hestia while nice, was more women friendly, and no one was really looking to upset the status quo. Finally, Hephaestus's dislike or general bitter-ness towards all living things was well known. With all that stacked against all the other gods, what was an earthquake every couple hundred years.
Back to Theseus, so my father blessed him as a child because the guys father asked him to. With my fathers blessing he managed to trick every monster into dying buy its own preferred method of killing. For example, he made Procrustes fit into his own bed, kicked the guy who kicked people off cliffs off of a cliff, and so forth. Now you're probably wondering how my fathers blessing came in handy when dealing with all of these monsters. The answer is rather cryptic, you see my father didn't bless Theseus with powers, nope, he blessed Theseus with a personality that was reminiscent of the sea. The trait being something along the line of water drowning a boat, which essentially meant that if you weren't careful, the sea will turn what you used to survive namely the boat, in to the thing that you die in, namely the boat. Yeah, its rather shady, but that's the sea for you, unpredictable.
"Silence!" Thundered Zeus, quieting that one son of Hermes who chatting rather amicably with his presumed brother. "We have called you all to Olympus to warn you of a new menace. They call themselves the Giants, sons of Gaia and Tartarus. Bred specifically to by the Earth Mother to topple Olympus, one Giant meant to replace each one of us. Yesterday the King of the Giants, Porphyrion kidnapped Hera, and by doing so declared war on Olympus. This morning Apollo's oracle released a new prophecy. Apparently the Giants can only be defeated by a mortal and immortal working in conjunction."
"Damn!" I thought to myself, the gods must have hate that.
"In order to triumph over this new threat we Olympians have devised a strategy. Continued Zeus. "Our sources show that the giants are currently gathering their respective armies and marching to Olympus. Generally speaking, the Giants are individually weaker than the gods, approximately on the level of an exceptionally strong demigod child of either Poseidon or myself, as Hades doesn't have any children. The difficulty lies in the fact that they cannot be defeated singularly by either a god or a mortal. To remedy this, a week before the Giants attack, you will all be summoned here to fight alongside us so that together we can ensure victory. The purpose of bringing you here today was to warn you that there is a high chance that the forces of the Giants will seek to eliminate you on their way to Olympus. Are there any questions?"
"Wouldn't it be better wiser to attack their armies while there on the way here?" asked some dude standing in front of Athena's throne.
"No, Gaia would have little trouble reviving any of her children and replenishing her army, something we cannot do. Even so, if there were pre-emptive measures taken, they would not be carried out by demigod children too weak to actually fight against the giants." Answered Athena.
"What about Hera?" Demanded Heracles.
"As of right now we don't know where she is or what purpose the Giants had for kidnapping her, hence we cannot as of yet take any action. That being said, once more information is available a quest will be issued to rescue her." Responded Zeus.
Heracles didn't look to pleased about that response, but who could blame him after what Hera did to him.
"When will the Giant army begin their march on Olympus?" I asked.
"Our sources indicate that they will arrive on the day of the summer solstice, 3 months from now." Responded my own father.
I nodded in acceptance of the information.
With that, we were all dismissed and I found my self back in Athens where Hermes had picked me up.
"What to do?" I thought to my self. You may be thinking that being a demigod son of the big three would be very interesting, and it was, but only when I was on a quest. Outside of that it was just aimless wandering and fending ourselves from the hexa-weekly monster attack. How I wished my demigod scent was weaker, like one of those Athena kids, they had it easy. For them, a monster would attack every once in a couple of years, and even then it would be rather weak, something along the line of a dracaenae, as a child of the big-three however, the weakest monsters that attacked were 15-foot-tall cyclops. Not to say that we weren't attacked by things like dracaenae, its just that you when you faced monsters on the level of a mid-sized drackon at least twice a week, a dracanae seems rather pathetic, hence we don't count them as monsters anymore. Hades, at this point in my demigod career the only one that could challenge me on equal footing was Heracles, and even he had been busy with those damn labours, therefore too busy for a spar. Alas, there's no use crying over that right now.
With that I decided to head to my own personal island training ground, and maybe on the way there I would run in to some sea monster or something. Man o' man, sea monsters were my favorite kind of monster, I guess its something about fighting in the sea that does it, or maybe its about defeating a monster as an equal out on the ocean, I don't know, but its amazing every time.
Unfortunately, I didn't run in to a sea monster on the way to my island, but it was okay. My father as a favor/payment for quests, kept this thing stocked with monsters, any where from C-class threats like the Minotaur, to B class like Chimeras (sons/daughters of the original who's an A-class) and Hydras (same as Chimera). In case your wondering, an S-class monster would include stuff like the Cracken, or any Cyclops older than 2000, which there was only one (my father kept him locked up in the sea, so he wouldn't be reborn in Tartarus and escape). In case your wondering about that, a monster stops increasing in power after the first time its sent to the pit because the price it has to pay for leaving is its soul. That was actually why the gods didn't kill any of the stronger monsters and kept them in prison instead, sure the monster may get a little stronger the longer it lived, but that way they only really had to deal with it once. If they killed it the monster would come back in approximately a week or two in its prime, and they would have to do it once again, and again, until they got tired of doing so and imprisoned it. This was also the reason behind there being a lot of not so powerful monsters out there, the ones that constantly attacked us demigods.
I was at the island for a grand total of two weeks before the gods summoned me to Olympus once again. For the sake of saving time I'll spare you the details, as all you really need to know is that the gods discovered the approximate location of Hera, and were assigning a quest to find her. The quest would have three members, a son of Hermes, a daughter of Hephaestus, and of course me, Heracles wasn't on the quest for obvious reasons.
Overall the quest wasn't that difficult, we departed from Athens, got on my very own ship The Ocean's Dagger, which we took to Argos, where Hera was being held.
Finding Hera wasn't all that hard either, and given that Zeus himself blessed this quest it wasn't quite unexpected. When we found her she looked to be in pretty bad condition, her hair was grey, her clothes ragged and ripped, with golden ichor oozing from cuts all over her body. Yeah not good.
We immediately leapt into action, and by we, I only really meant me. Sure the son of Hermes was crafty, quick, and by mortal standards a really good fighter, but by big three demigod standards, he was a wimp. All half-bloods knew how to fight instinctually, but the gulf between our abilities was absolutely massive. Now I hadn't had much contact with Chiron's mountain for demigods since I had left when I was eleven, which was four years ago, and even then I had more power than any one there, and that me couldn't even hold a candle to my power now. Think of it this way, a mortal unless he was exceptionally strong couldn't stand up to even the weakest of monsters, let alone defeat one. An average demigod child of let's say Ares wouldn't have much trouble defeating a D-class opponent, an extremely strong one would be able to fight maybe an upper C-class, with some difficulties possibly even defeat it without dying. Mind you this is Ares we're talking about, the strongest god outside of the big three, the strongest child of Athena on the other hand would be hard pressed to defeat a lower C-classed threat, and would most likely die trying. Those two were the only two combat oriented gods, children of Hephaestus, Demeter, Aphrodite, or even Apollo couldn't even hold a candle to them, likewise Ares and Athena couldn't hold a candle to the big three, at least when it came to combat. After all, there was a reason the big three were rulers of their own kingdoms, and the rest of the gods only really had domain over abstract concepts.
Now, I could go into detail about how I summoned my own person hurricane, went it to beast mode, and slayed a small army of monsters, but I'm pretty sure your more interested in my fight with Porphyrion, so let's skip a head.
As I was battling my way through a hoard of monsters, they all suddenly retreated. As I watched a giant 50-foot-tall snake for legs humanoid being erupted from the ground.
"Who dares to lay siege on one of my strongholds!" Bellowed the giant.
"It is I, Perseus son of Poseidon. Slayer of a Thousand Cyclops, Bane of Sea Monsters, Vanquisher of Drakons, Guardian of the Sea, and my favorite Lover of Women."
"You boast in the face of your defeat. How quaint." Muttered the Giant King. "I suppose its only fair that I respond in kind. I am Porphyrion son of Gaia and Tartarus, King of the Giants, and Bane of Zeus." Boomed the Giant.
"That's it?" I asked, honestly expecting more.
AN: What do you guys think? Should I fast forward to the Percy Jackson timeline, or go through all major events in history before that. Things like the Gigantomachy, the Trojan War, World War 1, World War 2, and the American Civil war. If I do that, I'll probably create a chapter for every major conflict, with three chapters for the Trojan war because that's pretty darn awesome.
If you think that I'm making a huge difference in power, all I have to say about that is that its fairly accurate as far as I'm concerned. In Percy Jackson and the Olympians, Percy was stronger than most everyone almost immediately without any training, hell he defeated Ares no problem, so I think its reasonable that my character to be as strong, if not stronger.
One last thing, I sort of borrowed the rank system from Naruto in case you haven't noticed.
PS: If you liked what you read, or didn't like what you read, don't hesitate to let me know.