Summary: Everyone said that they betrayed the camp, but really, weren't they the ones who were betrayed first?
CHAPTER FIVE
It had all seemed so clean-cut, in the beginning.
Make our neglectful parents notice us, since they wouldn't pay any attention if left to their own devices. Create a new world, where no more demigods would have to fend for themselves with no idea what the monsters were, or why they singled them out to attack. Recognition, not just for the unclaimed, but also for those who were claimed, but whose parent was not one of the twelve Olympians, and therefore had no cabin for their children.
The Zeus Cabin was not only empty, but massive, and Zeus had fathered roughly half of the minor gods. Why couldn't he – or any of the other Olympians – take in a few of their grandchildren along with their children?
We allowed our hurt and anger to blind us to the other side of the coin.
We had everything to gain if Kronos won, but the Claimed Demigods, our siblings and in some cases friends, had everything to lose. Kronos would not show mercy, and the downside of being claimed – and seeing the number of unclaimed – was an intense desire to make your Godly parent proud of you. To prove that they had not been mistaken in acknowledging you as theirs.
More than one demigod had joined Kronos because they were simply tired of nothing they did ever being good enough.
And after we launched that attack on Camp Half-Blood last year… well, I'd lay good money on revenge being a factor here, too.
But it didn't take long before I pushed doubt and regret aside in favour of rage.
Did the demigods who defended Olympus fight because they felt obligated to protect the throne of the parent who thought that they were good enough to claim? Or did they truly believe that the gods were worth admiring, despite their failure with their unclaimed children?
What was so special about my half-siblings that they were claimed, while I was left to rot in the Hermes Cabin as an un-named bastard?
I remembered a friend, a child of Apollo, who told me that before they were claimed – the sun god took his own sweet time about it, too! – they had enjoyed trying to guess who their parent was, trying to match their own character traits with that of the other cabins.
With a personality as sunny as the chariot their father drove, we probably shouldn't have been as surprised as we were at the final answer.
Things were confusing, to put it lightly.
Keeping up with current weather wasn't really a huge priority for us, so we hadn't really thought about Typhon. Sure, he had nearly defeated the Olympians before, which put him in my good books, but none of us had really cared one way or the other. Now…
Now it was all going to pieces. Hades and Poseidon had shown up to help, and managed to chain Typhon. Kronos had gone batshit and removed the spell from most of Manhattan, resulting in mass chaos as thousands of mortals woke up and dried to figure out what was going on. The mist was really going to be getting a workout before all this was over.
Kronos disappeared inside the Empire State Building, followed by a few demigods, and a camper tried to rally the rest of them from where we were all standing around a bit stupidly, wondering what to do next. He was probably a son of Ares or Apollo. No one had that kind of voice projection unless you either performed, or spent most of your time shouting anyway. "Percy says that Kronos will regain his form again soon! New orders: try to get as many people as you can away. Focus on the monsters!"
I heard a loud gasp from nearby. Another unclaimed – though we were pretty sure he was a son of Athena, with the grey eyes, blond hair, and know-it-all attitude – had turned whiter than the Son of Hades. It took a slap from a daughter of Ares (that god had never got past the Ancient Greek mindset of girls not being worth as much of his already minimal attention) to get him functioning again, but he explained what the end result would be.
Looking at the true form of a God would get you incinerated, but Kronos wouldn't even need you to look. He would simply incinerate everything, without caring if they had fought for him, or against him, or were just innocent bystanders.
At first I couldn't believe it, but the Children of Athena never lie when it comes to knowledge. I said something that made a daughter of Aphrodite gasp, looking scandalized, then turned and plunged my spear into the nearest monster.
Kronos had lied to us!
He had played on our insecurity and used us! He had promised a new and better world, but had never intended for us to live long enough to see it!
Through the red haze, I could see the other demigods join me, coming to the same conclusion as I had, and if felt as though something was falling into place.
This was where we belonged: standing side by side with our siblings, our fellow demigods. United as one.
Don't get me wrong; I still think that the gods can go screw themselves (nothing new there) for the way they abandoned us, but demigods already have the world against them from the moment they draw breath, we should never have added each other to the long list of things that already want to kill us.
Maybe, if we all survive, we can work something out. A truce, while we decide where to go from here. If the Gods win, they might be in a good enough mood to be merciful, and hand out rewards to the campers. Surely someone in the Hermes Cabin would ask that the gods start claiming their kids, if only to be able to roll over in the night without flattening three other campers.
It's a thought.
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A/N: I spent a week trying to work out a good ending for this one, and I'm still not totally happy with it. Oh, well, I hope you like it anyway.
Also, some feedback on the Zoe and Athena chapters would be really awesome. I worked hard on those, but no-one seems to think them worth an opinion.
Thanks,
Nat.