AN: Sooo... how should the naming scheme be? I mean how should I name my chapters? I am thinking of sticking to the original scheme- the book's name is 'Dealing with Drama', so the name schemes can always be alliterating. Like... 'Tying Thalia', or 'Teaching the Twins', or 'A Nervous Nerd'.
Time: Five Years After the Dark Prophecy (ToA)
Life is fleeting.
One moment you are there, the other, you are not.
And we spend most of the precious little time that we have on this planet in strife.
Percy still stared at the spot in disbelief, not fully comprehending what had just transpired.
A war was raging around him, but he could not bring himself to care. The sky was burning, the dark clouds angry and foreboding. The strong breeze that buffeted him, ruffling his shirt and making his messy hair even messier, brought with it a stench of the dead. He could still smell the slight undertone of the fresh invigorating earth that had been there, before the war. The Field of Mars was a fun place, a fun place where you could hang out with the other legionnaires from the 12th Legion, play war games on Fridays, conducting drills on other days. Now it was a blood-soaked battlefield, the field which had been once covered with soft, green grass; soothing to the bare feet, now strewn with dead and dying soldiers of both sides.
Sparks flew up on all sides, the sounds of clashing metal and dying screams ringing out through the battlefield. The dark clouds that shadowed the sky, blocked out the sun, had a silver lining. Percy wanted to laugh at the idea, nothing could have a silver lining now. The bright blue patches of sky that peeked out behind the clouds burned with a ferocious intensity that had Percy shielding his eyes and turning away. His feet sank into the mud, the fertile soil of the Field of Mars running red with blood, seeping into the soil and making it a bloody, sticky sludge.
For once, Percy felt overwhelmed. He cowered behind the fortified wall, even as the fighting carried on around him, not looking the part of a heroic demigod.
It was just... too much for him.
The ringing in his ears, the stench in his nostrils, the burn in his muscles. He squeezed his eyes shut, embracing the dark sanctuary of his broken, shattered mind. The more he tried not to think of the chaotic world outside, the more he became conscious of the mud beneath his feet, the flecks of blood, cool and repulsive, on his face.
Percy wondered about death, what happened after one died. Being Greek, he thought that after death, one went to Hades to await judgement. He knew it better than most, having visited the Underworld himself. But he still thought... how did it feel to know you are not alive? To know you are just a memory, helpless to do anything to influence the world? Percy wasn't sure if he would like that.
Some mortals said God happened after death. God with a capital G, the omnipotent, benevolent being, not the immortal, morally retarded beings that passed for God to the Greeks. They said God watched over all, that God stood for love, and forgiveness. Personally, Percy wasn't so sure, after seeing the Greek goddess of Love.
Percy hadn't felt love until she came along. A beautiful blonde with stormy grey eyes that had judo flipped him over her shoulder. He had his mother sure, but whatever parental love she gave was outweighed by the abuse he suffered as a child at his step-father's hands. He knew he shouldn't blame his mother for that, and he didn't- she had been his beacon of light during the darkest times of his life- but he couldn't help but feel a bit neglected from her part. It wasn't really Sally's fault, between all the jobs that she worked to make ends meet, he supposed she couldn't really take time out for him.
But gradually, the blonde replaced Sally as his beacon of hope. His mother had never been happier than when he confessed.
Nihilists said all dead turned to bones, to ashes, to dust. After death, all, mothers, brothers, sisters, are nothing but a distant memory, and a burden. Percy agreed with them from personal experience, knowing that mourning never got anybody any good.
But now, after seeing her gone, he couldn't bring himself not to care.
She had been there one moment, and the next thing he remembered was staring hard at an empty patch of land. There was nothing that remained of her, no flesh or bones to cremate. Maybe some of the blood that pooled around his feet was hers, mixing with those of other loved ones to create a sick, twisted tribute to love and life.
The thought made him sick.
Pain, pleasure, all the bodily sensations that made him feel alive... glorified by Satanists, metalheads, and embraced by sadists and masochists alike.
Percy briefly wondered if that is why he was so into Bondage and BDSM, or why he liked heavy metal so much.
He remembered the two of them tentatively experimenting after Jason's untimely death. Alcohol had helped a lot.
Their first time had been... awkward.
It never felt... right, having loving, slow sex with her.
That is, until, he discovered her masochistic desires, and was only too eager to reciprocate. He still felt the pain and pleasure, the soft and the hard, all the mundane feelings assaulting his senses, overwhelming his mind.
Percy laughed to himself. He was sick. His mind was twisted. After her death, this is what he could think of.
How well her moans sounded to his ears as he worshipped her body with his lips, her stormy eyes behind a blindfold, her strong, mischievous hands and feet tied to the bedposts. How deliciously it hurt when she bit down hard on his neck, drunk on lust, high on pleasure.
Unconsciously, his hand raised up to his collarbone, where he placed it almost reverently on a purple love bite peeking out from underneath his orange shirt. It had been last night, where they had fun for the last night, in case one of them did not return from the final battle. The last time he would ever tie her up and ravage her.
How much would Percy give to have himself in her place, if only she would breathe again.
She was still on his mind.
Her last moments of life.
She seemed so full of life and hope.
Now she was... just gone.
Her curly blonde hair shining bright even in the darkness, her grey eyes dancing with mirth as her soft, pink lips parted in the middle of a snide remark. Her Yankees cap askew on her head, her orange shirt identical to his, her shorts showing off her long, smooth legs.
The next moment, nothing was there. No shirt, no cap, no Annabeth. All that remained was blood and shrapnel from a cannonball.
Annabeth. Percy breathed out slowly, trying to control his raging emotions. She shouldn't have had to go through that. Nobody should have had to go through what they went through.
"Dude!" Someone cried out, rudely jolting him out of his serene thoughts.
Percy turned around, just in time to see a Roman dispatch another monster. All that remained was golden dust gently floating to the ground. He wore the standard purple SPQR shirt. His words were lost to him, mixing in with the ringing, the haunting sounds of the battle that raged around him. He was just another face he would forget the next day.
Piper's face floated to his mind. She was beautiful, Percy wouldn't deny it. If he had not have had Annabeth, he would have been jealous of Jason for getting her as a girlfriend. Her creamy, tanned skin, her soft, pink lips smiling softly at him. The way she always braided a single- always a single one- lock of her soft brown hair with a beautiful feather. The entrancing kaleidoscopic eyes of the half-Cherokee girl that burned with rage at her foes, and care for her friends.
Percy felt an uncontrollable, burning rage bubbling in his chest, threatening to tear a scream from his throat. Raw adrenaline pumped in his veins, numbing him to all the pain, the burn in his cramped muscles.
Now the leader of both the Roman and Greek demigods, Percy stretched up to his full height of over six feet, his eyes burning with unadulterated, monstrous fury. He would have his vengeance.
His Roman saviour's eyes widened at the sudden transformation, and he unconsciously took a step back. Percy noted his movement without conscious effort, his eyes following the contraction and relaxation of his every muscle like the apex predator that he was. He had never realised that he had never left.
The son of Poseidon's dark hair, darker than the clouds overhead, cascaded down in silky black locks to partially hide his forehead. His sea-green swirled with power, rage, hurt and an unquenchable hunger. The darkness in his heart reared its ugly head once again as he turned around to glare hatefully at the horrible abomination that was the Roman Triumvirate.
The three were engaged in fierce combat with Artemis and Apollo, as he was called now, Lester Papadopoulos.
Apollo was getting butchered out there. He would have been dead long ago if Artemis had not been there.
Artemis... Percy felt another pang of hurt. She had been close to Annabeth and Percy, and the three of them- Annabeth, Artemis, and Thalia- were always planning something behind his back, pranking him senseless during his prolonged stay with the Hunt after Orion's massacre. After the incident, only seven Hunters made it out alive. Artemis... if only she knew what had happened to her 'honorary Hunter'.
His dark sea-green eyes swept the battlefield, looking for other familiar faces. He briefly caught a glimpse of Reyna, her beautiful silky black hair framing her aristocratic face as she fought, before she was swallowed again by the chaos.
Towards the back of the Olympian army, relatively safe, he caught the Hunters.
His eyes quickly sought out the lone form of Thalia, before darting to the ones behind her. His two little sisters- Rose and Violet, were safe. They looked dangerously and cute, as they sniped at monsters from a distance at a rapid pace.
Thalia stood beside her little sister. Neo had identical electric blue highlights in her dark hair, that just screamed, 'daughter of Zeus'. She looked cute, too, the last of the 'Little Big Three', as Percy liked to call them. Neo, Rose, and Violet were inseparable, and Percy and Thalia had bonded over their equally mischievous little sisters.
He quailed again when he caught Thalia's forlorn expression. She had seen everything. Her spear head rested limply on the ground, Aegis loosely held in her other hand. Her black hair was sticking to her face with sweat, her electric blue highlights making her visible from a distance. Such a stealthy Hunter she was.
Her electric blue eyes were blank, her lips and face not giving away a thing. Silently, she raised a spear, skewering a lone hellhound that had tried to sneak up on Rose without even looking. Showing surprising strength, she lifted the hellhound clean off the ground with a little grunt, flinging it like a marshmallow to where it crashed into its fellow monsters, breaking a few bones as it slowly bled out.
Percy understood the gesture almost as well as if he would if Thalia had herself whispered it into his ear.
Kill.
Give in to instinct.
Percy tore his eyes away from her, again sweeping the battlefield.
He picked out a lone pegasus. Blackjack was with Rose and Violet, protecting his little sisters from monsters, so he was left without a steed.
The pegasus he saw had a beautiful cream coat, though its beauty was marred by the blood drenching its forelocks, and the ugly blood splattered on its hind. One of her wings had been clipped off cruelly, hanging by a few tendons, and the stump bled profusely as she tried to take off, flapping her one good wing, and the stub that was left of the other, the broken part lying limp on the ground.
Percy's heart retched at the sight.
Her wings were gorgeous, despite the blood soaking her soft feathers, the beautiful fluffy, white feathers tipped with the same cream colour that was her coat, slowly turning pink as the blood soaked them.
Percy knew what had happened.
It happened too much.
Her rider had been shot off her seat. She was courageous, he had to give her that. Despite the pain from her almost severed wing, she was raring to go, neighing impatiently and trying to join the other pegasi as they rode by with their riders, but was beaten off by the Roman legionnaires for messing with their formation as they charged. The Roman pegasi, who stood taller than her, kicked at her chest with their hooves impatiently, making her back off and stay in the same spot, bearing her pain in silence, open to fire.
The mare without a rider met eyes with the warrior without a ride, almost as if feeling his intense power. No words were needed then.
Percy looked back at Thalia once for confirmation, only to receive an almost imperceptible nod in return.
He moved quickly, sheathing Anaklusmos on his back, leaving the relative safety of the fortified wall.
He did not run per se, but nobody had seen a man move so fluidly, I so purposefully. He was as suited to movement on land as he was in the sea, and he was the son of Poseidon.
With a few quick strides, he had reached the mare, who was standing still, apparently knowing what was to come.
Percy picked up a relatively heavy battleaxe from her feet, gently prying open the dead fingers that clutched at it possessively. The mare had stayed by her master's side even in death.
"Lizzy." She told him her name as he shook the axe to get the excessive blood off, revealing the beautiful twisted Damascus pattern on the Imperial Gold blade and handle. Gems were embedded in the handle, rubies gleaming as red as the blood beneath his feet, emeralds that shined as bright as his eyes.
Without a word- Percy was not sure if he was capable of speech- he chopped off Lizzy's mutilated wing, summoning the water in the air to crudely heal her bleeding stump.
He stepped over the severed wing, feeling the delicate bones crunching under his boots, seeping into the blood-soaked earth, her soft feathers losing all innocence as they were subjected to cruel perversion by the thick fluid.
Percy jumped into her saddle, shifting the heavy battleaxe into his right hand as his left weaved through her soft, silky smooth mane shifting her silver hair on to the other side, just as she was comfortable.
Lizzy spoke unusually less for a pegasus, Percy assumed she was in as much shock as he was.
The only thing left was what they had been doing for years then, a desperate charge to their deaths.
Rider and ride were one as they charged through the frontlines, not stopping as they broke through enemy lines into the heart of enemy territory, where Artemis and Lester were.
Percy appeared to be unusually good at wielding the enormous, heavy battleaxe, using its obscene reach to mow down enemies far and near. Lizzy almost seemed to know when he would do what, as she would throw her weight to one side as he shifted the battleaxe from right to left hand, switching hands like a god to kill monsters on both sides of the rampaging pegasus. For her part, Lizzy never stopped, never faltered as she charged, weaving in and out of enemies like a swan, her blood-splattered body slick and smooth, gleaming in the light. Blades passed within a hair's breadth of her muzzle, cannonballs whizzed over her head, but she did not feel afraid.
As long as she felt her rider firm on the saddle, there was nothing that could deter her. She was guided by the slightest touch of the reins, and Percy seemed to know what she was thinking, what she wanted, almost as well as she knew what he wanted.
Percy guided Lizzy expertly despite her handicap, her other wing tucked tightly into her flank as he charged. The golden axe that he held in his hand, almost as tall as he was, weaved through the monsters thick on either side of him, killing and bashing with abandon.
Percy did not care to look back at the absolute carnage that he had wrought. Demigod, monster, mortal, friend or foe, died alike by his axe that day as he lost all sense, all those who could not jump out of his way were cleaved in half.
One moment, he was riding at full speed, the next, he was flying through the air.
Lizzy had tripped over a dead Greek camper, sending him flying.
Percy, flying through the air, clutching his axe, looked back to confirm if she was indeed okay. And she was.
Lizzy was standing up again, though her front knees were rather badly cut and bleeding. She neighed out to him, before limping out of the way, chased off again by enemy fire.
Percy found that he did not care.
He gripped the battleaxe in his hand tighter, using it to vault over Nero, and lodged the blade deep into Commodus' shoulder, making the emperor scream in pain as his sword dropped from his useless arm.
Percy felt a deep pain in the right side of his chest, and looked down to see a sword buried to the hilt in his ribcage. His eyes widened with fury.
He no longer felt pain. He was high on adrenaline, and his blood boiled. His heart howled in fury.
He snarled at Caligula, wiping his smirk off his face as Percy effortlessly shattered the arm holding the sword with the Imperial Gold handle of his heavy axe, forcing the Roman to let go. The Roman howled in pain as Percy grabbed a firm hold of his throat, effortlessly flinging him into the mutilated Commodus. The two crashed, and went down in a tumble of blood and splinters of bone. The twin archers jumped out of the way just in time, ducking and scampering away as Percy swung his axe around to shift his grip again, switching into the defensive.
The last of the Triumvirate tried to jab at him with his spear, but Percy backhanded Nero's attempt without even looking at him, slamming the butt of his long-handled axe into the latter's skull, effectively knocking him out.
It was no competition. The son of Poseidon briefly wondered from where he had got so good at wielding the undoubtedly heavy battleaxe that he had just picked up from Lizzy's dead rider a few minutes ago.
He winced as he got a good hold of the sword in his chest, pulling it out with a low grunt. The pain erupted in a blazing volcano that set his nerves on fire, and he briefly wondered if this is what Annabeth felt at the point of her death. His mortal blood erupted in a thick spring of red fluid that bubbled forth from his open wound. Percy guessed that the sword had barely missed his heart, and had punctured his lung. He could feel his broken ribs sticking out of his back, puncturing the skin.
He heard a soft gasp coming from the moon goddess as she looked at his fatal wound.
Percy stared at the three mutilated bodies, thrusting the butt of his bloodsoaked axe into the soil. He was still bleeding, but he did not care. He felt cold, but his blood was warm. The right side of his body drenched in slick blood, was ignored.
Percy did not know what he wanted to do.
He just wanted them to hurt.
He broke the promise he had made to Annabeth in Tartarus. He boiled their blood as he had boiled Akhlys.
He cut out their tongues.
He castrated.
He made them eat each other's eyeballs.
He chopped off their fingers.
He scalped them.
He carved their bodies.
He did the 'Blood Eagle', and strung the three of them up on pikes, their lungs hanging out.
He punctured their stomachs, and let their stomach acid slowly dissolve their bodies.
He was covered in gruesome blood, flesh, caked with dirt, drenched in gore.
Percy did not care.
He just wanted them to hurt.
He defiled their bodies with knives even as they died.
Their screams was music to his ears.
Percy faintly remembered Artemis crying for him to stop.
Apollo pleading with him to get his wound checked. He would die in a few minutes.
Percy did not care. He wanted to die. He just wanted to die knowing the Triumvirate paid their due.
He remembered Thalia standing silently by his side as he tortured.
Rose and Violet trying to plead with their big brother.
Blackjack nuzzled his neck affectionately, reminding him that he had yet to get him the doughnuts he had promised.
Lizzy neighed from a distance, where she was being gently cared for by the twin daughters of Poseidon.
The other Hunters begging him to stop. Reasoning that they were dead already.
Percy did not know. He just wanted them to hurt. All his higher brain functions had devolved to this primitive state.
He did not know after how long, but he finally felt his body weakening, falling limp. The shadows in his eyes crawled up to him. The darkness in his heart roared.
Percy slid to the ground, lying in the mud and blood and puke.
Anaklusmos held tightly in his hand. His other hand was still tightly wrapped around the golden handle of his newly acquired battleaxe.
Percy only felt regret that he would not be able to fight with his excellent weapons again.
It was night at that time.
Percy laid on his back, staring up at the sky. The dark clouds had disappeared, and the purple night sky twinkled brightly with innumerable stars. There was a gentle breeze, carrying with it the faint smell of the sea. Percy could make out the constellation The Huntress, made in honour of Zoë. It twinkled brightly in the dark sky. He tried to reach up, trying to touch the untouchable.
Faces swam in and out of his vision. Crying faces, worried faces. A flash of auburn hair. Teary electric blue eyes. His little sisters pleading with him not to leave them.
Percy felt someone press on the wound in his chest, trying to stifle the bleeding, injecting something into his arm.
He felt himself being moved, but he resisted as well as he could, the grip on his weapons tightening.
Faces swam in his vision. He could no longer distinguish between any of them.
The only thing he could recognize was curly blonde hair shining bright even in the darkness, grey eyes dancing with mirth as soft, pink lips parted in the middle of a snide remark. A Yankees cap askew on the girl's head, her orange shirt identical to his, her shorts showing off her long, smooth legs.
Annabeth. His mind supplied a name to the visage of the goddess. His goddess.
Percy wondered if Valhalla existed.
Maybe he could reunite with all his lost friends at the Hall of Heroes.
Maybe the Norse would let a few Greeks into their ranks.
Maybe that was Odin's wing women coming for the son of Poseidon.
AN: How was it? Took me a few hours to write.Keep calm and CR7!! Keep calm and LM10!! (Messi)