Epilogue

Chapter 4 – Why do the Fates hate me?

I couldn't tell you why, but this old lady was giving me serious psycho bitch vibes. "Help me across the river, dear boy." She said. I looked at the quickly flowing river. What the hell? I thought and leaning over, hoisted the suspected psycho bitch onto my shoulders. I could hear Medusa's sisters closing in on me. She muttered something beside me. "The last time a Greek Son of Poseidon was in Rome, he ruled it."

"What?" I asked. Poseidon? Rome? Last I checked, we're in America, lady.

"You must cross the river, if you wish to know who you are." I could feel the sea calling for me, which didn't make a lot of sense. I mean I like the beach, I like surfing, at least I think I do, but to feel it calling for you? That's some serious strange going on. "Retreat to the sea and live a long life or cross the river and find the one you were meant to." Well, hippie lady was moving up the crazy axis of the hot-crazy scale and the data point was not moving to the right. "Just know, all protections will cease when your foot touches the water."

I did not really care what protections she meant. My sword wouldn't kill the Gorgon bitches, so I'd take anything. A part of my mind believed the river could help me. The problem was, I did not remember much of anything before waking up at the Wolf House with the Wolf Lady. I kept seeing visions in my dreams of burning cities and funeral pyres. There was some blond dude I didn't recognize and then an old version of me, they were both trying to kill some blond girl. I knew her name was Annabeth, but I did not know why. She was just a name though. I could see fuzzy images of people before the Wolf House, but I couldn't name any of them. Except, the dead, the clear faces I knew their names, because I could hear myself reciting them in memorial. It was as if that life, as infuriating as it was that I couldn't see it or remember it, was not important to me except for the loss.

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"Who are you?" Reyna looked at the tall boy, the question more to hear his answer than for information. Afterall, Juno had already proclaimed him a Son of Neptune. Percy Jackson looked the part. He looked like a young Perseus, not that any known depictions of the man existed from his young and unimportant days as an auxiliary. But this boy… He possessed a wariness in his green eyes, despite the flippant manner in which he spoke. The reports from the river say that it answered his commands. There was power in his form that he attempted to hide with the loungey posture of a surfer. For despite the lack of upright posture, his shoulders were broad and his waist trim. As his arms crossed, his chest pushed outward and his ragged t-shirt was taut across his upper back, revealing a toned midsection when his arms raised. Her dark eyes studied him, recognizing the signs of someone trying to hide in plain sight. It made no sense to her, as he could not remember any part of himself. He remembered waking up at the Wolf House and nothing else, yet there was a haunted look that came over him when he believed no one was looking. This was not the boy she had met all those years ago.

"You've heard all I know. Percy Jackson, Son of Neptune." Reyna noticed that as he spoke of his parentage, his hand drifted to where his sword would sit, had Terminus not taken it.

"I find it difficult to believe that you know nothing else." His eyes flitted about the room.

"The only other thing I remember is a list of names, people that died because of me. But I couldn't tell you when, where, or how they did it." Reyna looked at her dogs, they did not respond at all. He was telling the truth.

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"Before you leave, there is something I must show you." I looked at Reyna, not fully understanding what she wanted. We had talked a lot lately, despite her position as Praetor and mine in the lowly Fifth Cohort. Weasel dick Octavian had kept me out of the other cohorts by essentially starting a riot. They all wanted the Son of Neptune and the seeming "second coming" of Perseus. Their words seemed an echo of something I had long heard, but here it did not bother me. Their wording was always strange too "It's like he's back again" or "Damn, I wonder if he was this good as a kid?" The shadowy echoes seemed to have a different tone and I think they said rebirth.

Reyna led me to the center of New Rome. I felt her hand on my arm for a fleeting moment and felt my heart beat a little faster. It calmed as I looked at the carvings on the wall. "Who are they all?" I asked, looking at the lists of names forever etched into the stone walls of the Senate Building.

"Those the legion has lost." Reyna's hand traced down the names. "Since the time of Belisarius, we of Roman heritage have remained hidden. By the order of the God of the Legion, we honor them." Each name had an emblem next to it, some also had the numerals XII, most did not. Nearly silently, as if she didn't want me to hear it, she added, "I do not wish to see your name there." Funny, she doesn't mention Hazel or Frank. I did not acknowledge it though; I could tell she was embarrassed by the words.

"What do the symbols mean?"

"What god or goddess was their parent," she pointed to a sword, "my mother, Bellona." The lightning bolt and hammer were easy enough to guess. The trident of Neptune appeared only a handful of times. "The numerals mean they fell in direct support of the legion." There was a cluster of XIIs and an unknown flag looking symbol in the 1860s; Stonewall Jackson and Albert Sidney Johnston stood out to me. If there was any subject that required reading that I enjoyed, it was a history of war. I've never understood it, but here I am. I looked across the wall. I recognized many of the names with the strange flag, which was weird considering I didn't even know what god it belonged to, but I did because they all had died in battle. Horatio Nelson, James Wolfe, some Italian sounding dude from 1453, several Navy admirals in the Pacific during World War II, and then George Patton at the end of World War II. And some dude named Picton who died in 1815. I pointed to flag thingy.

"Who's that?"

"The Aquila of the Legion, it means their father was the God of the Legion, my mother's consort. His children bear a curse," sadness filled Reyna's voice, which was strange considering he wasn't her father. "Because of their father, they understand fully the price of war. They thrive in war, producing victory after victory, but they feel compelled to lead from the front, all too often they die. His mortal descendants long ago were the same. They died younger and younger because they thought they needed to live up to his name. Six of the first thirteen emperors died in battle. Until Trajan was adopted, they were all his blood descendant. The adopted line continued for five more emperors, but line ended with Commodus. They feel the compulsion to lead fighting men, regardless of it is for New Rome or their country."

"I don't think the Greeks have a version of him." I was still kind of shocking that I seemed to know the Greek gods so much better than the Roman ones.

"That is not surprising," she sounded a bit sure of herself.

"I didn't see a temple to him earlier."

"You wouldn't, he prefers a simple shrine in the legion's camp."

"That old-ass tent?" She laughed and I realized I liked making her laugh.

"Yes, that old-ass tent."

"Have you ever met him?

"I speak with him more than my mother honestly."

"What is he like?"

"An old man in a profession where men died young. He was soldier from the time he was eighteen until he died basically, then the legions made him a god. He was the second Roman emperor." She spoke with such pride, but I could feel my face falling, up until now this guy sounded awesome. But now he sounded familiar. I could tell Reyna was studying my reaction. I don't know why I hated him, but I could feel fury building within me. "He conquered Britain, suppressed the Illyrians and Cantabri, defeated Gauls, Germans, and Parthians, and …"

"Fucking burned Athens down." I spat, shaking in anger as a flood of memories overtook me. Most of them were doused in pain and suffering. I spoke through gritted teeth. "And you motherfuckers made him into a god for it." Reyna took a step back from me, but that could have been because the floor seemed to be shaking. Her words were defensive.

"Perseo Legionis, Perseus of the Legion, deified by the legions after his death."

I hissed an answer back at her and she flinched as if I had struck her. A small part of me knew she was not to blame, but the rest of me didn't fucking care. "Take me to him."

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"Your name, your fucking soul, they made my life suck. I was you reborn! I suffered because of you!" To Percy's complete fury, the god began to laugh. "It's not fucking funny."

"Dear, dear, boy, my soul? If the soul of Perseus of Corinth existed in the world, how am I here?" Percy stared at the god of the legion. "The Fates gave me no choice. An eternal throne, never to see those I love again; the legion would not cease its prayers to my name. My son did not discourage it, for it solidified his position and he was never quite the warrior I was. There is no soul to pass onto you, boy, merely the prejudice and hate of an owl-headed goddess."

"All the pain, all the abuse…" Percy's voice trailed off.

"Merely the exercise of their own insecurities upon you. Something was hinted at, and they latched onto it in ignorant fury." Percy slumped against the wall beside him and for a moment, Perseus believed him to be broken.

"Just because I shared your name and father?"

"Fear causes one to do many things, Percy, and rarely does it lead to noble choices. But yes, they fear you because of our similarities without examining how we differ. But perhaps that is because the so-called Greek Goddess of Wisdom prefers to hide truths that would upend her prejudicial narrative," The god continued, "Besides, if they never knew the true source of your soul, they would never know the truth. That the damned Hunters of Artemis killed Athens when they killed you. It would have been brutal, yes, what siege was not back then, but he would have restrained me. He believed in honor and goodness, he was brutal because I ordered it, not because he could be. Yet, he understood it could become necessary for the greater good. He was the best of us in that army. He could have been great man and a better emperor than I ever was, but a Hunter cut him down. It was the first time I lost a son and my wrath led to destruction and rape not seen in many years. Once, you could have forever been the best of us and despite all you have endured, I think you still can, Tiberius Claudius Drusus."

Percy merely stared at the Perseus Legionis, God of the Legion and destroyer of Greece, and began to cry.

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