Extended Authors Note for Heart of Darkness

SkyRunn3r: Author

QwertyKev: Editor/Beta Reader
Yoganksri: Editor/Beta Reader
Meryfuckery: Editor/Beta Reader

**This is a sort of combined Authors Note/Review Reply/Round Table Discussion**

**unlike usual the comment replies are at the bottom of the chapter, felt adventurous this week**

Hey folks, Sky here.

I wanted to thank everyone for their interest in the story, and assure you that Chapter. 28 is only a few days away. Chapter 29 is not far behind it either, talk about making a sprint for the finish line. Keep an eye out around the 25th for those two chapters. The end of this Arc is so close I swear I can almost taste it.

This chapter was intended more as an extended authors note as when we were talking about the last chapter amongst ourselves several points came up that we wanted to share. But adding a few thousand words of Author's Notes to the end of the last chapter seemed… excessive.

So instead here is chapter 27.5, which is a super original idea, clearly no one else has ever done this.

Here you are going to get a chance to hear a bit from each of the editors without whom Shadows Rise wouldn't be nearly as good as it is. Each one of them reached out to me after I mentioned my last editor had quit due to the large size of the chapters I was writing. They do a LOT of editing completely for free and they deserve a shout out for their time and dedication. And after all, who better to give you their thoughts on the story thus far, and some of the decisions I made than the three people who I explained those decisions to in detail.

With so few chapters left, I really hope everyone is getting as excited for the conclusion of this Arc, and the journey forward. Arc 2 and the Tartarean War is coming soon folks, and I genuinely hope everyone is as excited to read it as I am to write it.

There are just a few other things I wanted to touch on:

Explicit Scenes.
Shadows will have some. Going forwards from this point on there will be a few sexually explicit scenes. If this isn't your cup of tea I 100% respect that and don't want to push it on you. However, it's part of the story I'm going to write, if that's a problem I wanted to warn you ahead of time.

Coliseum of Dreams
While I love writing Shadows Rise and still have a ways to go, I've had a desire to write an additional story for a while now, specifically a PJO Mortal AU. If that's something you're interested in be sure to keep your eye out in the discord for Teasers as well as my profile in the coming weeks for Chapter 1

As always a big thanks to everyone who takes the time to read the story and an even bigger thanks to all of you who have fav/followed the story, or dropped a review. It's an awesome feeling to know so many people enjoy reading my story and I love to hear from you. Discord Link is below if you want to jump in to ask me questions about Shadows Rise or any of the upcoming Arcs, check out some of the character art I put up, or get access to teasers.

Discord code: 5VWBsymDYG

So I guess without dragging this out any longer I'll hand you guys off to the editors. Enjoy!

Hi everyone, my name is QwertyKev on , I am one of Sky's editors for Legacy of the Tartarean. Sorry this isn't a real chapter. But we have decided to post this AN to explain some of the decisions we made regarding plot and character developments as we are approaching the end of Arc 1 of the story. We won't be going deep into explaining everything and we won't be breaking down every character, as we want to preserve plot points for Arc 2 as well as to keep you hungry for more chapter releases in the future, but hopefully it will address some of the concerns/reviews you guys have previously raised and the reasons why we chose to write characters the way they are presented in this story.

Canon and fanfiction divergence

So the first thing we want to address is canon materials and Legacy of the Tartarean. In Legacy of the Tartarean, we try to maintain the majority of character characteristics and identities from canon with minor changes to a selected few and then develop the plot logically from there. These minor changes will slowly snowball into something big in future chapters as you can already see in some of the events that happened in Arc 1. Keep in mind that in Legacy of the Tartarean, canon only reaches until the end of Statue of Athena.

On the topic of canon, we want to point out that neither Sky nor I agree with Rick's approach with the way some of the characters and plots are progressing in the original books. One of these major issues is consistency. For example, when the Big 3 swore an oath to not father any more children because they were getting too powerful, both Zeus and Poseidon broke it. In fact, Zeus broke it twice, because he went back to the same woman who gave birth to Thalia to father Jason. In neither instance did Styx enforce any punishments despite being classified as the "highest/most powerful" enforcer amongst . If you recall in canon, Thalia is hunted by Hades and Percy is to some degree hunted by both Zeus and Hades. Yet Styx's role in enforcing punishment on Zeus and Poseidon for violating their oaths is near non-existent, basically a "powerless" goddess, thus Sky introduced Eko and her sisters in the story.

Another example is Nico and his relationship progressions. The only indicator of his sexuality in the first few books is his obsession with Percy during his early years, likely out of respect and admiration/hero worship. But this was never properly expanded upon. Then suddenly in HoH Rick just drops the bomb and says, "well he is gay now". Relationship progressions, from our point of view, need to progress logically and there needs to be a logical build-up towards it, which you will eventually see in Arc 2 of this story when we inevitably get more into Percy's relationships.

The last example of Rick's inconsistency will be The Fates. When Thalia and Luke got lured to a mansion that imprisoned Halcyon, a son of Apollo revealed himself to be cursed by his father for saving the life of a girl who is destined to die because he told the girl her future. As a result, he was stripped of his voice and locked inside his home. The Leucrotae, a monster, controls his voice and uses it as bait to lure other demigods to their deaths. This particular scene raised a lot of question marks, around the Fates in particular and their grip on destiny.

We often assume that the Fates are absolute, able to dictate what happens in the future. In canon you see this when the Titan monarchy fell, every prophecy that is issued, when Percy's birth determines the fate of Olympus etc. As a result, even immortals know to a high degree that it is pointless to fight against the predetermined future outcomes even if they are the unfortunate victims of a destiny/prophecy. But this particular event surrounding Halcyon, a demigod who defied the Fates so easily and prevented a girl's scheduled death, really raises the question of whether the Fates have absolute control of destiny. This again demonstrates some inconsistencies in the story, inconsistencies Sky wanted to do away with in Legacy of the Tartarean, which is why you saw how the seven's prophecy failed to stop Gaea. In Legacy of the Tartarean Fate appears more mutable, and it seems like the Fates are less omnipotent than Rick made them out to be.

Character developments

Artemis and Athena

Let's start with Artemis first. Artemis to us is a fundamentally flawed character. In harsher words, she is an Olympian goddess desperately clinging onto tradition so she can maintain relevance. If not for the existence of The Hunt and its continuous effort to consistently recruit new members, she probably would have faded because no one would have remembered her. The situation for Artemis somewhat improved upon Zoe's death and upon seeing Percy's whole-hearted commitment to Annabeth. But still, her character is fundamentally flawed. There is this quote I've read from another Percy Jackson fanfiction called The Betrayed One where Sally died early and Percy was adopted by Artemis. Things went well until the lightning bolt went missing and Zeus accused Percy of being the thief, where Artemis almost immediately gave up on Percy. While such an action is attributable to the fact that Artemis is natively ignorant of her father's personality and paranoia, I think it perfectly describes Artemis.

"It means you're insecure! I mean, honestly, your life should be called, Artemis: Lies, Pride and Insecurities. You lie and sneak around doing things you shouldn't. Then you get super uptight about it, and when everyone learns about your lie your pride gets in the way. Leaving some poor victim dead".

If you take a look at Artemis's history, her first lieutenant got raped by Zeus and was eventually turned into an animal to be hunted, her institutional discrimination against all males regardless of age, her perception of having to save every woman from these vile and disgusting men because the only thing they want to do is to take advantage of them, her actions and conversations in Legacy of the Tartarean, you will find that she basically nailed everything in the above quote. To summarize, Artemis' character really comes down to 2 things, arrogance and pride.

A clear example of this is during her fight with Percy. Before the fight even begins she is already calling for his surrender, and this comes after witnessing him fighting six of the Titans, some of them arguably an even match for her.. She calls for his surrender solely based on the fact that they know the Ardwyr, (Percy) is mortal while she is a God. On towards the fight, you can draw the analysis that she fights based on ego, she charges in recklessly without any thought simply aiming to trade blow for blow, fighting on the assumption that Percy will bleed out before she will and when she finally realized that in a three on one fight they still couldn't subdue Percy, pride kicks in and she just launches her abilities without any regard for her surroundings, losing herself to her rage and forgetting her ultimate purpose which is to defend/evacuate the camp. We all saw how it turned out when she and Ares were the last two standing, she again charged in alone and got obliterated by Percy who has spent his life fighting stronger creatures, only now he's fighting on equal footing. Whereas Artemis has for a long time, fought against weaker opponents as without the titans there were no creatures to challenge the Gods directly.

Athena is in many ways similar to Artemis except her symptoms are significantly less serious, but nonetheless a prideful Olympian. If you take a look at the fight between her and Percy, you can conclude that some of the things she did are completely unnecessary but is in many ways attributable to her pride as an Olympian goddess. For example, she lost Aegis really early on in the fight when she and Artemis ganged up on Percy. We often describe Athena as a mastermind, having backup plans upon backup plans if things didn't go accordingly. For her to lose such an important defensive shield this early against an opponent with unknown levels of strength is extremely uncharacteristic. In addition, she was warned prior to the engagement by the first-generation Gods not to engage the Ardwyr as they lack the combat experience to deal with their kind. Further, in that specific moment, Percy was going after Artemis before swinging his sword blindly backwards, there is absolutely no reason for her to attempt a blow for blow which resulted in her losing her grip on Aegis and therefore losing her shield.

Another example will be when she knocked Percy into the Demeter cabin, Sky described her movements in one scene where she spun her spear in a fancy move before hitting him like a bat and launching him into the demigods cabin. While most readers will have the initial perception of "Wow, look at Athena go, she can do fancy things mid-fight and still probably come out on top", but if you think for a little bit, what she did was incredibly stupid, as she not only could have done more damage if she didn't spend that time spinning her spear, her decision to launch him away from the fight gave the opportunity for Percy to recover, an action she never would have done if her opponent is an immortal, because they can recover faster. Everything Athena did in this particular scene screams "I am a Goddess, I don't need to fight conventionally to defeat you." It should not come as a surprise as to why Athena and friends lost in this fight, and it isn't because we artificially buffed Percy's powers to be stronger/on the same level or nerfed the strength of Artemis, Athena and Dionysus. They just fought extremely poorly due to their arrogance, pride and ego which ended with them getting obliterated, which should be well within expectations.

Interestingly enough, Ares, the God that is depicted as the physical manifestation of arrogance in canon, is the only person that fought on a level that is expected of him against a powerful opponent. But we won't be breaking down Ares in this AN, according to Sky there's a lot more coming in part II for our Greek God of war.

Zeus

Zeus is a somewhat complicated character for us to properly narrate. There is plenty of information from canon materials to other fanfiction that often paints Zeus only as a paranoid asshole. But what we tried to do in chapter 25 is to show that even though Zeus is a tyrant, he is King for a reason and it is not just because the public perceives him to be the strongest, but because he is a leader that is willing to make the hard decisions when it matters the most. Afterall, a tyrant can only remain in power for so long if he has little to no good qualities. An obvious example of this is when he led the Gods to war against the Titan monarchy.

So let's take a look at the throne room scene. The Big 3 battled it out over another one of Zeus's reckless decisions. Poseidon is furious at his brother for sacrificing his former great love, one on par with Amphitrite, Zeus' actions may very likely cause a permanent fallout between father and son. Hades on the other hand is enraged over the fact that his favorite nephew now sees them as an enemy and Olympus is now dragged into another unnecessary/preventable conflict. Zeus confesses that he gave up Sally Jackson for a temporary truce with Gaea, the remaining council members are divided but ultimately agree with Zeus's actions. Few Olympians stated that Zeus should face trial for his actions and Poseidon called for the ultimatum demanding Zeus's death.

If you hate Zeus's character you may think what he did is the peak of stupidity. But what Zeus did is actually correct given the circumstances and his lack of knowledge of Percy being an Ardwyr. Gaea only demanded Sally Jackson for a temporary truce but never specified the reason so from his perspective, Percy is dead in Tartarus and Sally Jackson is an expendable asset to buy time. It was only when he returned to Olympus upon seeing the destruction on the ground and 4 of his children half beaten to death that he realized the Ardwyr that finished off the Titans besieging the camps and battled the 4 Gods at Camp Half-Blood was actually Percy in disguise. This is when it finally dawned on him that he made a huge mistake by not only turning their champion against them, but he also gave over a person with a strong connection to the Ardwyrian heritage to Gaea which can be used against them.

But let's assume that Percy actually died to Nyx in Tartarus. Unless you are Poseidon, Zeus's decision to sacrifice Sally Jackson is actually really reasonable. From the perspective of the council, she is only a common mortal and she isn't that particularly useful. The Gods may argue a little over whether they should give her up to Gaea given Percy's monumental service to Olympus, but would ultimately concede the point that it is for the greater good which is the preservation of Olympus, their thrones of power and the lives of their children. And let's not act like if this person were anyone other than Sally Jackson, anyone would have given a shit, mortal or not. This also applies to the general reader if they have the power to make such a decision, why save 1 life when you can potentially save millions? So what Hera said near the end of chapter 25 is indisputable, to which she said "Zeus's actions were deplorable Poseidon, but the reasoning behind them is sound".

That isn't all. Zeus knows that sacrificing Sally Jackson will inevitably cause a fallout between him and Poseidon. Perhaps he expected Poseidon's reaction to be much less extreme since they have two crises unfolding before them and they all assumed that Percy is dead. Poseidon's first priority in Zeus's mind would most likely be the preservation of Olympus and by extension Atlantis instead of threatening to bail out on them over a single mortal woman. This shows the difference between the values Poseidon and Zeus both hold, with Poseidon valuing family, as you saw with his many interactions in the cannon material with Percy and his other godly relatives. Zeus however values power, position and the prestige that comes with such things. So from a certain perspective, even though the outcome of his decision went horribly wrong, for Zeus to make such a "clean cut" choice, weighing the odds on the demand to immediately forfeit Sally Jackson's life for a temporary truce. Knowing that there was potential for fallout with his brother and given the limited information he had at the time is what in our opinion differentiates him and other Olympians and showcasing why he has been King for so long. It isn't only because he is considered "the most powerful" or the fact that he led them to victory against the Titans, but because he is the only one within the council that can make the hard decisions immediately at critical moments regardless of the public opinion, while others may not be able to do so, especially not without consulting the remainder of the council for their inputs, which takes time. Something that isn't always on their side.

Some of you may also bring up the point that Zeus's dialogue that showcased his fear of the resurgence of Ardwyrs and his repeated emphasis during the throne room fight that he is King or "this is my throne" is a testament that Zeus only wants to remain in power by forfeiting the life of Sally Jackson. Yes, Zeus's underlying character is to continue being the King of Olympus forever, but in this case specifically, continuing to remain in power is only a minor concern relative to staying alive and saving Olympus given the scale of threat he will be facing. After all, you can't rule if you are dead. So if after reading chapter 25 your main takeaway of Zeus is that he is just a power hungry tyrant that wants to be King forever, then hopefully this might help give you better insight into the character.

Jason

Did you remember that we mentioned minor charges to some characters? Well, Jason is one of them. We won't be digging too deep into Jason as there are many things that should be left for you to read in Arc 2 and so we will only be covering a few things.

There are two foundations upon which Jason's character is built. Firstly, he is a child of Jupiter, inheriting the principles/traditions of the Roman culture as both a son of Jupiter and praetor of the Roman camp, selfless and bound by duty. Secondly, he is a Greek, a child of Zeus. And it's during his time in camp half blood that he discovers this greek side, even in cannon Rick hinted at Jason being more 'Greek' after his time at camp halfblood. It's clear that in this story Sky decided Jason's time with the Greek has a larger effect on his character, as the Jason we see is slightly more flawed than the one from canon.

Let's start with the topic of leadership. When Percy and Annabeth both fell into Tartarus, the rest of the seven turned to Jason so they have a higher chance to succeed in their journey to race to the doors of death and in their prophecy to stop Gaea. Jason naturally became the leader under these circumstances because he has the most experience in leadership. At this point of the story, you readers have to ask, is Jason a natural leader that other demigods will follow faithfully without questions similar to Percy, or is he assumed leader because of what happened to Percy and Annabeth. There is an enormous difference between the two options. The first option is because he commands wholehearted respect from his followers similar to how the Romans respected him because he rose through the ranks to become praetor. The second option is because he is a power house, a son of the King of Olympus.

While Jason's prior position as praetor at the Roman camp does play a slight role in him assuming the leadership role of the quest, I strongly felt that Jason isn't a natural leader and he fills the void only because of Percy's absence. During a discussion I previously had with Sky, I used the Pokémon analogy which he agrees with.

"Jason is never the "leader" of the group. The group always assumed Percy is the de facto leader that makes the hard decisions given his history/experience and Jason is only the OP character that appears to clean up. It's like one of those Pokémon games where you have a legendary on your team of 6 only because of its stronger raw power output, but the Pokémon itself doesn't have much of a use other than to fight."

The situation is frighteningly similar here. The only reason why Jason was made "leader" after Percy's disappearance is because he is a son of Zeus, not because he has leadership qualities that are comparable to Percy nor does he demand the sort of reverent respect from the seven that Percy did.. After all, this isn't the Roman camp, this isn't to say that Jason is disliked. That is why, in Arc 1 of Legacy of the Tartarean, you can see in multiple chapters, where Jason's actions/words/thoughts betray him and indicate that he is not a leader that can command respect from his fellow members of the quest beyond the fact that he is a son of Zeus and the most powerful of the group. Further, you can see in several chapters where the rest of the seven and demigods from CHB always mentioned things along the lines of "If Percy is here, we would have…" So you can clearly see that even in Percy's absence to lead the demigods, they still refer to what he did and what he would have done as a metric for their decision making. Further demonstrating that while Jason may have been the 'leader' at the moment, it also showed that Jason is not a true leader, and certainly can't take Percy's place.

Another thing to discuss about Jason's character is his personality. When we mentioned him being slightly more 'Greek' than in cannon, after his time in CHB, we also implied that he inherited more of Zeus's faults, taking on a more 'Greek' character overall. In chapter 19 where Annabeth, Jason and Piper set out to talk to Sally about what happened to Percy, they had a big argument over whether to truly consider Percy dead to Nyx in Tartarus. Annabeth held onto the belief that Percy is still alive and fighting while Jason insisted that Percy is dead. This is not an unreasonable take, after all, even the council themselves thought Percy perished, trading his life for Annabeth. Things turned downhill when Annabeth voiced her decision to venture down to Tartarus again to recover his body even if Percy is dead so he can receive a proper burial and Piper decided to follow.

Jason argues that there are bigger problems to deal with right now and he didn't want Annabeth and Piper to be misdirected. He is also worried that Piper may end up in an even worse condition than Annabeth and that Piper isn't a natural fighter. Both are valid arguments. Unfortunately, we saw in later chapters that this is not the primary reason, he has underlying reasons for not wanting Annabeth to go back to Tartarus. But let's assume for a moment, the roles were reversed, and any of the seven or even those that are outside the seven wanted to venture into Tartarus to recover Jason or Jason's body. I wouldn't doubt what Percy's decision would have been, and I think on this point alone, we can offer a clear picture of why the general public would/should have considered Percy to be a better leader than Jason.

We are going to end this particular discussion on Jason here and leave it up to your imagination on what will happen to Jason or what he will do when he wakes up or otherwise, if this keeps going we will end up giving you too many spoilers in Arc 2.

Relationships

Now onto the part most of you probably are most interested in, Percy's relationships. Originally, Sky's plan for Percy's relationship in this story is limited to 1 to 2. But I alongside the other editors convinced Sky to turn this into a harem story to raise the level of writing difficulty and because the setting/nature of this story allowed for such a change.

Harem stories, in my opinion, are significantly much harder to write when compared to only 1 or 2 relationships. You have to satisfy many conditions for it to be successful but I'll lay down some of my criteria here. The most important thing is to consider the suitability of the story/setting/each individual character, and then come up with a logical reason/plot for them to be properly integrated throughout, and finally, the story needs to be lengthy enough to properly flush out each relationship with the main character.

As we previously mentioned, relationship progressions need to be logical, forcing characters that don't mix well together is only going to complicate things, as not only will you find significant difficulty in writing those parts of the story, but also, character bonding will not be realistic as we are writing these characters using their canon personalities. I think realism is probably the most important component when writing relationships in any fiction, because it enhances relatability. No one really wants to read a story where a character X walks up to character Y and suddenly they are in a relationship, and all of a sudden, the next chapter is one with a sex scene.

There are many harem or fucks the universe stories here and in other fandoms on and few of them work out. In my opinion, it is very important to establish and know the difference between "plot with porn" and "porn with plot". Plot with porn means the major component of the fanfiction is story telling/having a planned storyline, with sex being complementary add on. The number of sex scenes available in a "plot with porn" story does not change the fact that the biggest component of the fanfiction is story telling. While porn with plot is, well porn with plot, with story progression being the complementary add on instead.

It is hard to consider most "porn with plot" as a well thought out story. It is more like a bunch of one-shots grouped together and now the main character has a bunch of people to fuck. Most of these stories at the beginning of chapter 1 start with a list of relationships at double digits. There are several problems with this in my opinion and I will just list some of the more obvious ones, they are as follows:

Character plot integration. One of the primary issues of these "porn with plot", "massive double digits harem" stories is that they simply cannot integrate these double digit characters beyond the initial 2-3 chapters. The first 1-2 or so chapters will most likely be one of the members making an appearance, the author will then establish character relationships, building up plot lines and the third chapter will most likely be the sex scene. After that, the aforementioned harem member will have extremely minimal appearances in the rest of the story, fading to irrelevancy, and that is a big problem from our point of view.

The word count: If the average word count doesn't reach an average of 10k words per chapter, you will run into the same issue that is previously mentioned in point 1.

The last thing to mention is the character relationship compatibility. Some of the members thrown into the harem don't really make much sense given their canon personalities. For example, Percy/Clarisse or Percy/Hera whatever. If the author can make it work by building it up to the final scene, then there is no issue. But many of them just skips this part entirely and just gets to the fucking, and that is also a big problem from our point of view.

Sky and I both agree that writing sex scenes just for the sake of writing it is an example of being lazy. In Legacy of the Tartarean, we want the story to be as impactful/realistic as possible, so we won't be throwing in characters left and right just so the major takeaway of the story is that Percy has a harem.

The final pairings for Percy's relationships are still not decided, but you can be certain that it will not reach double digits. Sky and I are still discussing who should be included and who shouldn't. We want this story to be as realistic as possible, there are already hints dropped around in Arc 1 that you can infer on which characters will come together and which characters will be breaking up. Hope you all find this discussion insightful as we will be releasing the remainder of Arc 1 soon.

Hello everyone, my name is Yoganksri on and I am one of Sky's editors. We're are sorry that this isn't a chapter but it'll come out soon. As Kev said we're just explaining some of our thoughts on the character development/ changes Sky has made as well as some decisions.

Now as Kev has mentioned about what describes the personality of Artemis and Athena. Taking a further look on them, if you look at their history in the actual myths:

Artemis:

Artemis claims to protect women and children ( female especially). But when Niobe, a princess of a state in Ancient Greece, claims that she's a better mother than Leto, the titaness of motherhood and mother of Apollo and Artemis, she along with her brother, go on a rampage. Killing Niobe's female children (leaving the youngest, who was a toddler alive according to some variations in myths). This is nothing but hypocritical of her as she is killing the very same people she swore to protect to punish the hubris of their mother. If you draw a parallel to her fight with Percy, she claimed to go there so she could save her hunters and the demigods but when she was losing and her ego and pride was hurt, she used her divine powers in order to kill Percy to sate her hurt ego, irrespective of the demigods and hunters she killed hypocritically. This act of her made even her most loyal and oldest hunters Phoebe and Atlanta doubt and question her amongst themselves. This act just goes on to show that she is nothing but hypocritic, egoistic and prideful.

Athena:

Coming on to Athena, if you remember the myth of Arachne, she was a mortal woman who was a very talented weaver who thought herself better than Athena and challenged her to a competition. During the competition Athena wove a tapestry describing Gods in full majesty while Arachne wove them being involved in amorous activities. While this was an upfront to the Gods, her tapestry was allegedly more beautiful than Athena herself. Enraged at that, Athena shamed and beat her, following which Arachne hanged herself. But Athena didn't stop there and turned her into a monstrous spider, further showing her pettiness. This incident shows that despite being a wisdom goddess, she acts out of pettiness, ego and pride.

While the acts of both Niobe and Arachne could be viewed as insulting to the Gods, the reaction that the concerned Olympians have just shows that they are fundamentally flawed entities who are absorbed in the feeling of power and superiority and do not concern themselves with mortals, neither do they tolerate being questioned on their acts by them. Most of them care about themselves first and foremost. This will be much more clear in the upcoming chapters as Sky develops the story further.

Piper:

As said, there will be certain characters whose personality will differ. Piper is one of them. Sky wasnt the biggest fan of the way her character was handled in the canon. Piper Mclean was one of the few demigods who did not have good combat experience and abilities. She wielded a dagger named Katropis and in terms of combat skills was nowhere near the capabilities of Annabeth, but in the last book she magically becomes a master combatant in knife and picks up sword fighting in the span of a few days. She then proceeds to go toe to toe along with her mother against the giants in the final battle, even slaying monsters as easily as other more combat focused demigods like Percy, Jason and Frank. Her power of charmspeak is the only useful thing she possesses but that has also been over hyped by Rick. In the first books, she struggled to get the hang of it. Now she could definitely become better in the use of her power with time, but c'mon, she charmspeaks Festus, a non living thing? And then charmspeaks a literal primordial goddess who is awake? That's some serious bullshitting. Demigods never match their parents in the concerned domain. If it was Aphrodite, it'd have been believable but Piper doing it just ruins the whole setup of a big bad villain. How can you charmspeak a Primordial? You just don't possess the raw power to do so. You should remember that Percy struggled to control the poison of Akhlys, who was just a minor goddess, despite being daughter of Nyx, and he is much more powerful than Piper which has been established in the canon already. Gaea on the other hand is one of the most powerful beings in the cosmos, like the top 3 or 5 powerful beings in canon. The way Rick ended Gaea just seems implausible. All that hype building was ruined.

Piper's fatal flaw is low self-esteem, as children of 'useless' Aphrodite are always viewed 'useless' in the grand scheme of things. Conquering your fatal flaw is very difficult and is almost impossible as shown in canon. Percy falls in Tartarus due to his fatal flaw of excessive personal loyalty. Annabeth falls to hubris, her flaw, and lets herself be dragged to Tartarus as she is overcome by the fact that she did what no other child of Athena could do. Basically, almost everyone falls for it and yet, Piper somehow magically becomes more confident and powerful, just because she had a chat with Aphrodite where she tells her that She is the eldest among the Olympians and is very powerful? And all that in a span of a few days? Percy and Annabeth's journey took years while Piper became a badass all of a sudden. That is why fans love the duo as their story seems more realistic rather than Piper.

All of this shows Rick's inconsistency as Kev has pointed out. That's why, in the story, Piper won't become a powerhouse or master combatant all of a sudden but it'll be a slow and gradual progress as it should be. Even then her charmspeaking power won't work on everyone as already demonstrated by Percy.

Leo:

Now, he is a character who had more potential which Rick could have explored and Sky is clearly trying to develop. Which is why you see Hestia adopt him as her champion and Kolasi take an interest in him. Now he has always viewed himself as a third wheel and feels low of himself. I feel like his fatal flaw is a feeling of inferiority which often shows in the canon and even in this book. He is socially awkward like his father and prefers tools to humans and tries to overcome it by use of sarcasm and jokes. All this results in others getting irritated by him. His powers are extremely useful but he's afraid of it in the canon due to his past.

But he is also an extremely optimistic person and that is the reason why he becomes Hestia's champion. You've already seen him try to fight Gaea with his fire power. He overcame the fear of his power to save her. He is trying to overcome his shortcomings and is dead set on being better. This sets up for a growth in his character. In the fight between Percy and titans, he inspires the two factions of demigods to unite to battle against their common enemies, showing his ability to inspire, further providing proof as to why he's chosen as Hestia's champion. This is the area of Leo's character where this story will expand on. For those of you who are fans of the little Latino Elf, you'll see lots more of him in the second arc.

The Setting

Now, let us be frank with you all regarding a few things. This world is going to be a lot darker and is 100% an AU to the original series. It is a dark adult fantasy fiction and will contain its fair share of pain, anguish and betrayal. It will also have mature scenes. If it is not your cup of tea, we respect that and ask that you enjoy other FanFics out there but please do not spread hate because it wasn't what you wanted from the story. I have seen lots of FanFics where readers insult or badmouth the author or the story just because they don't like it. Please don't be like that. We love and welcome constructive criticism but we won't tolerate hate comments towards the author because you are unable to go through mature and dark stuff, even after the early warning.

Going forward, this is the point in the story where things start to turn darker. At this point, the demigods ( the prophecy ones) have learned about the deeds of Zeus and have begun to realize that Olympus is looking to protect itself, at the cost of demigods. They know that Percy is alive and is the one who came to fight titans and then fought Olympians. But will they share this with other demigods?

Will they follow the Olympians even after learning all the truth? Do they now see Percy as their enemy or do they still side with him? How will the Olympians react to this? There are lots of changes coming to Shadows Rise compared to the core series.

You can clearly see there is a divide growing between Zeus, Poseidon & Hades. Will they resolve it or will there be further split and how all that will affect the events to come and the war against Gaea? What about Percy? He obviously thinks that every Olympian betrayed him and is after him. Does he seek to destroy them? Will he still think that demigods are his family and seek to protect them despite not being sure if Annabeth and others are with Olympians or not? All this and more will be answered sooner or later. Some of you might disagree with our decisions or the direction we took, about these concerns and more, remember that everything is happening for a reason. Sky is trying his level best to give us a masterpiece. He has spent a lot of time thinking out and working the plot, to ensure he gives you a great story.

Keep in mind that this story is going to have 3-4 arcs. The first arc is just coming to an end and this is most likely the shortest, Sky spent a lot of time setting up this AU fantasy world so if you have questions try to be patient, it's likely the answer will come in a later chapter.. If you have read carefully, you'll see that all of these events have happened within 5 days of the seven escaping Eripus (it's notable longer for Percy in Tartarus, roughly 35 days). If you have paid attention to the story till now, you'll know that there is a long war coming up, both for Percy and the Demigods on the surface. A war which will end with Gaea, so don't worry there's lots more story to come. Keep showering the story with your love and ask about any doubts you have. Sky will try his best to clear them up for you, either in Author's Notes or Comment Responses.

Wish you all a very happy festive season in advance and hope you all have a nice day.

Sup, name's Meryfcuckery and I'm also one of Sky's editors for Shadows, don't really have a lot to say cuz my fellow editors summed it up pretty nicely, just wanted to reiterate, when Sky says this is a darker version of the PJO world, he isn't saying it lightly, Percy's personality is gonna take an absolute turn to a more jaded and altogether darker side.

This fic is basically a what if, as in what if Rick wrote the HOO series with a more mature audience in mind? What if Percy doesn't get his happy ending? What if the enemies of Olympus don't have an IQ in the single digits? (Kronos was okay, Gaea not so much.)

What if the Gods and Goddesses actually felt like Gods and Goddesses. One of mine and Sky's major peeves with the OG series is the absolutely terrible power scaling, the Demi-god, Gods etc. all have such wonky power levels that it's not even funny, BOO itself upset me, Percy goes from one of his most powerful showings yet, to absolutely pathetic. So much so that Jason has to save him…. In the water. A Son of Poseidon having to be saved in the WATER.

It was disgraceful, the clear nerf to his abilities is even more in your face than the initial nerf in SON, where Hera for some reason has Percy cross a river where he loses the Styx curse, despite the fact that they needed strong warriors in this upcoming war, that can't have been the only entrance to the Roman camp and I'm pretty sure that one or two others were even mentioned in the books!

It just baffles me on why Hera would throw away such a valuable asset, it's just not smart. There's a war coming, a war that's bound to be much worse than the Titan war and what does the all-powerful and super intelligent Queen of Olympus do? Gets rid of one of the only reasons they even won, the Titan war. And to the people who would argue and say that Percy's not the only reason they won the titan War, I disagree. The man practically carried, the Battle of Manhattan on his back, he destroyed the bulk of the monster forces alone, fought the most powerful opponents, conscripted the River Gods to help him, while Percy is quite clearly still very strong, even without the curse and more than capable of still taking on Gods, Titans and Giants, as he clearly does in HOO, considering what the man did to Polybotes, the other Giants and his showing in Tartarus. That doesn't change the fact that if he still had, the Curse. The Giant War would've been a cakewalk.

Don't even get me started on Gaea, we see this big bad primordial being hyped up so much. For the whole series only to see her being taken out in a few pages was such a boring way to do it, not to mention Piper talked her to sleep?! Like, really Rick? Could you have picked a more boring way to do it? PJO was a masterpiece, despite its flaws like power scaling etc. it was a book that satisfied you in the end, truly showed you why Kronos was such a big threat and TLO was a wonderful finale to the series. It was a truly satisfying conclusion. HOO? Not so much, Giants are literal morons, Gaea's also brain dead.

I could go on, but you've gotten my point. In this fic, Expect much darker themes, competent villains, a very rigid and well thought out power scale, and Percy being progressively more and more badass, while he matures, he's already starting to see the Gods for what they truly are, and this Percy is far less forgiving than the cannon one. I wouldn't say this is an OP Percy fic exactly, clearly Percy is powerful now, but without giving away any spoilers and knowing what I do about the plot, you guys haven't seen anything yet. (And I know I'm saying this after he killed six titans, that should give you a hint at the level of enemies he might face in this story)

All in all, if the things touched on aren't to your liking and you think HOO is a masterpiece that shouldn't be touched and the characters should stay the same as they always were and rely on the power of friendship to get through the day like they do in canon, then this story is likely not for you. If you want awesome fights, a mature world, realistic progression of characters, drama and high stakes, not to mention a hefty amount of backstabbing, then buckle in, it's gonna be a wild ride.

Comment Replies:

I just wanted to answer these two particular reviews, as i felt they were great questions to ask.

Hughjasz:

I saw the comment where you asked why Percy brought back Annabeth despite the consequences. Well let me clear that up But first let me say this is a really good review though and thanks for bringing it up! As well as taking the time to read shadows and actually ask me a question lol. I love to hear from readers. 😀! Onto the reply.

The consequences aren't for her, they're for him. I would recommend re-reading that particular chapter. It doesn't say Annabeth's soul is doomed (it is kind of implied that her soul is doomed because it would fade away if it was taken out of the underworld, which is where it belongs) Thanatos, (the one who implied it) had no idea what Percy was doing, or capable of doing, so when he warned him he was ill informed. That's why Nyx told him to "be quiet" and threatened him, because she knew what Percy was trying to do, and knew that it took absolute concentration. What he did was risky, sure, he could've messed up, which would have had terrible consequences, but since when has the fear of failure ever stopped him? So that's not OOC at all.

And Percy will be OOC compared to cannon going forwards; the circumstances are too different from canon for him to stay the same. What Nyx said about him questioning his choice before the end has nothing to do with Annabeth, it's to do with Percy. (Again implied that he will regret making the choice to save her in the end.)

As for the comment about Orpheus. Orpheus did try and was successful in convincing Hades and Persephone, but did he succeed in doing what he wanted? He didn't. There's always some kind of trick that Olympians would pull to ensure that things that violate the fates, don't happen. As for the idea that he doesn't care for her, he quite clearly does. There's an entire inner monologue he has in that chapter where he weighs the idea of Annabeth moving on, and comes to the conclusion that he can't let her go knowing that she still had so much she wanted to achieve. So the drama is very much justified. Trust me when I say most of what I write has reasons, I'm just not gonna give you answers straight. That's not good storytelling, in my opinion. Everything in due time.

Thanks for the awesome review and happy holidays!

BlackChappie

You are 100% correct. Aphrodite never says she doesn't know. And there is a place in the story for the oldest of the Olympians. However it's not quite time to get into what she did prior to and during the first Titanomachy. As for her knowledge of the whole Ardwyrian affair I don't think I ever said anywhere that she didn't know, she does make a comment about Hestia but that's about it. She wasn't a big talker during any of the revelations chapters as far as I can remember. (dont judge me too harshly its a long story already haha)

All I'll say on the matter right now is that Aphrodite, unlike most of the Olympians, had very strange circumstances surrounding her 'birth' as you mentioned above. I wanted to expand on that and have taken the time to work that into the story, however it won't be discussed just yet.

But rest assured Arc 2 will cover more of the historical stuff that happened during the war between the Gods and the Ardwyr, (as well as Aphrodite and her role in the events) as Annabeth and Co delve deeper and deeper, trying to root out who is manipulating everyone from behind the scenes. As she mentioned in chapter 25, she wants to track down whoever is manipulating the Gods and in doing so all of the Nine members of the Prophecy will learn more about the events that transpired.