Chapter 15: Where Hunters come to Die
Atlanteans are an…interesting School. Extinct now for hundreds of years, the House of the Seas is the last representative of this school. While we have merged into Olympus, bringing Atlantis and its secrets into the fold, there are many more things to discover about the Atlantean pantheon than we ever thought. I have begun to study them, reviving their methods as the last of them, and I honestly believe that their way of doing things may be better than we thought. I will go more into them in further pages, as I believe that the mystery of Atlantis will be the key to our fight. Atlanteans have a motto that has begun to identify what I must do: For the Glory of the Forgotten.
Poseidon's Notes, Page 12 on Atlantean Hunters.
Nico led the group through one of the many back doors of Olympus Academy. Annabeth had said that Chiron would keep most people occupied and give them a chance to leave in secret, lest someone tip off Zeus and his group. Bianca carried the rear, and it wasn't too far into their escape that Percy let himself fall back and approached her.
"Hey." He said when she reached him.
"Hey." Bianca smiled.
"Any idea where we're going?"
"Underworld is not a place one can find easily, it is heavily warded and hidden by this thin layer that hides us from the mortal world. Mist we call it; it is the Enlightenment of the Lady Hecate."
"House of Magic?" Percy asked, "Interesting."
"Yup. Ever since the house rose to power, the Mist has existed. It helps us hide most of the time, and we can even control it slightly to make our missions easier when we're in the mortal world. It sometimes fails, however, which is why lately more and more mortals are discovering Enlightenment. I know that it hasn't become a big issue yet, but the day Lady Hecate dies…"
"Yeah…wouldn't want that to happen." Percy could only imagine the backlash. He had begun to see the impact of the Hunters and other Enlightened in the mortal world when he had lived in the streets. While most called them freaks, others envied them because they had an easy life, and those were just rumours of people in Europe. If they discovered about Olympus…
"Something's bothering you though." Percy said, "You've been quiet and thoughtful since this morning."
"It seems we didn't know as much as we thought about us." Bianca said, "I've been reading your father's book and I've found some interesting things."
"Oh?" Percy was now intrigued. If he was completely honest, he had sort of forgotten about the book with all that was going on the past few days. First Luke, then the situation in Underworld, and trying to stay clear from half of the hunters also did not help.
"I haven't gotten very far, since between pages there are lots of notes or diagrams about certain things. I managed to find a diagram about the Big Three's symbol of power, meaning Masterbolt, my father's Shadowhelm and your father's Trident. Makes things a bit easier for us I guess, but there's also something else I found. It seemed your father was not only studying the prophecy, but he was also studying the Hunters and Enlightenment as a whole." Bianca said, slightly in awe. "From what he says, apparently there are other different schools of hunters aside from Olympus."
"What do you mean schools?" Percy asked, intrigued.
"Well, there are several different approaches to Enlightenment." Bianca explained, "Olympus teaches one based on balancing your emotions and desires, to fuel Enlightenment with emotion and all that. There are others, however. I had only known about the Titans, who fuel their enlightenment with Passion and strength."
"That doesn't sound too good."
"It's not. The Titans and their way of using Enlightenment is more primal, animalistic if you will. It's rough, dangerous, and based on strength. You already know what happens when a Hunter gets too consumed by Enlightenment, and Titans call upon that power willingly and lets them control it because they think it to be the purest representation of strength."
Percy nodded, thinking back on how it had felt during his fight against Clarisse. He had never felt so…good. Never he had felt so powerful as he had felt when he was consumed by his power. He could see why the Titans would enjoy it, Percy certainly had, yet it scared him to think what would have happened if he had kept going, if he hadn't been stopped.
"You said my father found five different ways to learn Enlightenment?" Percy asked, "Aside from Olympus and the Titans…what else are they?"
"Well, he also mentions the Gigantes." Bianca said, "I only heard of them in passing from my father. They're supposed to be the predecessors of most hunters, and dead for several hundred years since the Great War. Not much is known about them, only that apparently, they were incredibly powerful. Your father seemed to have found something on them."
"Anything worth mentioning?"
"Nothing much, only that they may have found a secret to immortality."
Percy stopped dead, turning to Bianca with wide eyes.
"Oh, not much, I see." He said sarcastically, "Just…you know…the fucking secret of immortality!"
Bianca chuckled.
"It's most likely an exaggeration, no one can live forever." Bianca said, "But it's interesting why your father would think so. I'll look for more information about it in Underworld, along with the other two schools."
"What else is there though. Someone with the power to reshape the world or something?" Percy asked exasperated.
"No, those were the Firstborn."
"Oh, sure why not!" Percy raised his arms in exasperation.
"I had only heard once about the Firstborn, and it was from a book in my father's library which spoke of the beginnings of Enlightenment. I didn't even think that they were actually real…" Bianca shuddered, "Apparently they had enough power to create mountains and oceans."
"Is that even possible with Enlightenment?"
"We don't know enough about it to discover its limits. Everything before the Great Titan War is…foggy. The House of the Dead is the oldest of the Great Houses of the Olympian Hunters, and while I think I might be able to find more about Titans, Gigantes and Firstborn in our libraries, I don't know how much whatever we have might help."
"What's the last school?" Percy asked.
"Oh, this was really interesting. Apparently before Atlantis was the domain of the House of Seas, it was a Hunter Academy from even before the Great War!" Bianca said, "They were a powerhouse apparently, in direct competition with Olympus. Your father, as a descendant of the House of Seas, started to look into them. Lord Neptune was one of the few Atlanteans that survived during the great war, and in the end he joined forces with Jupiter, Juno, Ceres, Vesta, and Pluto, forming the first Olympian Pantheon and…well…the rest is history. The Olympians won, formed Olympus, and here we are."
"So Atlantis was, what, the beginning of Olympus?"
"Yes…no…I don't know…" Bianca sighed, "I haven't gotten that far into your fathers notes. All I know from sidenotes is that Atlantis has been forgotten ever since the Great War. It was created by the Firstborn, like all the other schools, but it had some main differences. As soon as I find more I will tell you about them."
"Hey you two, hurry up we only have one shot at this!" Nico said from the front of the group.
Bianca and Percy chuckled, and walked quickly to a room where Nico and Annabeth were waiting for them. It was a circular room, almost hidden within a corner of one of the many corridors of Olympus. A stone disk made up the floor, and the walls and roofs were carved with intricate patterns. Percy recognized waves, but he also saw lightning bolts, skulls, what appeared to be wheat, suns, moons, and even a few boars and owls. What was most interesting was that there were hundreds of rainbow-coloured crystals on the walls and roof.
"What is this?" Percy asked.
"Remember when I told you how we could sort of move through rainbows?" Annabeth said, "This is called an Iris chamber, and it will create a rainbow big enough for us to directly get to Underworld."
"I thought not everyone could get into Underworld?" Percy asked.
"To Iris-travel, the person who builds the rainbow must have in mind the destination. However, as a security measure, one can only travel to another Iris Chamber within the territory one wishes to go. It is a rather complex mechanism that is much easier to show than to do, all you need to know is that whoever builds the rainbow must direct the traveling, or else we will find ourselves dispersed all around the world, maybe even in more than one piece. So shut up and let me work." Nico said as he immediately turned and began to assemble the crystals.
Percy, on his hand, felt a strange feeling within his gut. Something in the room was calling to him, guiding him even. He probed his Enlightenment, flaring and dulling it in small intervals. It was subtle enough for nobody to realize, but Bianca was giving him a quizzical look. Percy then walked to one of the walls, and placed a hand on it. He gasped as he felt something on the other side. After a few seconds, he recognized it.
Water. Lots of water. It seemed to surround the chamber, moving through Olympus and its corridors. He could almost follow it through the pipes, he knew where every molecule was and how it moved, he could feel it calling to him. There was another strange thing, however, around the Iris chamber. It was almost as if—
"FUCK!" Nico yelled, and the crystals exploded in a shower of glass as an explosion echoed the room. Cracks began to form on the roof, and water began to drip on them. Whatever had happened had broken part of the wall of the chamber, which now blocked the entrance. Water was falling quickly, and he could see Annabeth, Nico and Bianca panicking.
"What the fuck Nico?!" Bianca yelled, "It's a simple Iris Channel!"
"I don't know what happened! I moved one of the crystals and it exploded!"
"Crystals don't explode, Nico!" Annabeth yelled in frustration.
"It's not Nico's fault." Percy said, surprising everyone, "Something was blocking the water flows, let me guess, you tried to move a crystal to let water in, right? To form a rainbow?"
"I…yes." Nico said.
"Something was blocking the water around the chamber; I suspect some sort of mechanism or bomb."
"But why would someone do this? How would someone do this?" Bianca asked.
"How many people use the Iris Chambers?"
"Almost nobody. Most hunters prefer to walk or take trains, it's easier, but since Underworld is one of the three great Olympian cities, it's impossible to access them through normal means." Annabeth said to Percy's question. Her eyes then suddenly narrowed, and a wolfish grin appeared on her face. "Athena."
"Someone knew we would try to use this, and now has trapped us, but it's strange. We're in a stone chamber covered with water, yes, but we aren't going to drown, and the roof falling on top of us is really unlikely, Olympus was built through Enlightenment."
"But we are trapped." Nico said, suddenly in a clear voice. "It was rigged not to kill us, to capture us. Moving in water is hard, and not to mention uncomfortable, it's a stupidly smart trap. Nothing will happen to us, the only way to get out if its someone helps us out, and even then, with our clothes wet it will be hard to fight."
"Who—"
"Oh my god it worked!" A cheery, bubbly voice said. From one of the corridors, a group of five Hunters were approaching the trapped Percy and his group. "Lord Zeus is going to be so happy! Do you think he will reward us?"
"Great." Bianca said as the Hunters came into view. "Lacy and Mitchell, Members of the House of Love, Bea Wise, Member of the House of Wisdom, Ellis Wakefield, Member of the House of War, and Isaac Schuster, Member of the House of Forges. A bit lost, are we?"
"Oh, do shut up you whore." Lacy said, throwing her blonde curls behind her shoulder. "We will be the ones doing the talking."
"Didn't know your mouth could be used for anything else. Either talking or sucking." Bianca spat.
"Enough." Bea said in a commanding voice. "Annabeth, I'm surprised to find you here with the traitor and his ilk, but I believe we can spin this into a way that won't upset Lady Athena. Apprehend them now."
"I suppose this little trick was yours, Isaac?" Annabeth asked the boy, who seemed to look down at her questioning. "And here I thought the House of Forges was noble. Does Beckendorf know you're in bed with a boy from the house of Love? And for you, Bea, Lady Athena would be incredibly disappointed when she hears of your failure to capture the son of Poseidon."
"The way I see it, Annabeth, is that I have the traitor exactly where I need him. All I need to do is wait for Chiron and the rest to arrive, spin a tale about how he was trying to escape with the son and daughter of Hades as hostages, but we managed to foil him, and they will have his head within the hour. Athena always has a plan, Annabeth, you seem to forget that too often."
Bianca's eyes glowed dark silver at the implications, and even Nico seemed to tense in anger. Yet none was angrier than Percy himself.
"Bold of you to assume you've won, girl." Percy said, his voice angry. He had been accused of crimes before, of doing things merely because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time. Gabe had enjoyed torturing him with the knowledge that at any moment, his actions could be used against him. He had vowed to never let it happen again. "The way I see it? You've tried to capture three sleeping lions, but now they're awake and have marked you as prey."
"You don't scare me, sea spawn! Your bastard of a father made his final mistake when he impregnated your whore mother!" Bea yelled, "I will hand you to lord Zeus myself, you and the traitor Annabeth. I will become favoured by the Pantheon, leader of the House of Wisdom, and I will make it my personal mission to destroy the legacy of the House of Seas!"
"What the fuck is wrong with this girl?" Percy thought, yet Annabeth seemed to be slightly shaken by what she was seeing, and even Bianca seemed uncomfortable. The girls anger…no…loathing spoke of something more than just pure dislike.
"Nico." Percy asked the boy, who turned to him, "How long will it take you to make the rainbow?"
"Twenty seconds, I know what crystals I need, the problem is the water—oh."
"Do what you have to do." Percy then reached for the feeling he had felt before, the Enlightenment and the water. He didn't know how exactly he did it, but he somehow grasped it, and with a powerful feeling he lunged it towards the girl and her group. A huge hand made of water exploded from the roof, aiming directly at the girl from the house of Wisdom. Something seemed to click within Percy, something inside him…fitting. The group of Hunters screamed as the water seemed to hold them back, tendrils of water slapping them and tying their hands. The boy from the house of War tried to push his way through, but several dozen strands of water seemed to hold him in place.
Everything seemed too easy to Percy, which shocked him. He could, with a single thought, direct the water however he willed. He could feel it in his control, like an extra limb he could move. He even felt more water calling to him, almost begging to be used, released. He felt heat rising, his muscles tensing, and for a single moment he swore he felt the air around him thickening.
"Percy, we need to go." Nico said, "Hold my hand!"
Percy did so, stretching his hand and holding onto Nico. One moment, he was surrounded by the sounds of water flowing around him, by the feeling of power, the sensation of peace and freedom, the next, everything around him seemed to be suddenly cut off as he felt himself landing onto a marble disk somewhere.
He immediately smelt flowers, and noticed that the air was dry. He looked around, noticing that they were inside a similarly built circular room. Instead of the previous patterns and colours, however, this one was pitch black, with symbols of skulls and bones around it, and golden letters above the arc that seemed to open up into a great grassy field.
The Certainty of Death is the Truest form of Prophecy.
Bianca sighed next to him, as did Nico and Annabeth. She then turned to Percy.
"How did you do that?" she asked him, "Controlling the water?"
"It's not the hydrokinesis that is impressive." Annabeth said, her eyes wide in awe, "It's the finesse, the control…Percy, have you ever used your Enlightenment like that?"
"Uh, no not really." He admitted, "I've just been feeling this tugging in my gut lately, and just now I decided to give in and…extend it? Probe it? I don't know how to explain it, but the moment I did I felt water around the chamber, much like I feel now. It's much less, but its there. From then…I don't know…it just clicked."
Bianca stared at him for a moment, a quizzical look on her face. She muttered something under her breath, but it didn't seem important as she merely shook her head and smiled at him.
"Thank you." She said, pecking him in the cheek.
"As adorable as this is, we need to get a move on. It seemed we arrived just at the right time." Nico said from the entrance. Slowly, Annabeth, Bianca and Percy followed into the outside.
The moment Percy stepped outside the circular room, he found himself gasping.
All around him, fields of grass seemed to extend for eternity. There were several closed off sections, surrounded by high dark metal fences, and small marble pedestals with something atop them. There was no sunlight, but it was not dark either. Instead, the sky seemed to be glowing almost as if it was constant dusk, a purple-red colour that could only be achieved the moment the sun was setting behind the sea. In the distance, tall dark walls could be seen surrounding what appeared to be a city, and at the centre of said city, was a huge spire that reached high into the clouds.
"Welcome to Underworld, Percy." Nico said, looking at the city, "The place where Hunters come to die."