Chapter 2: Regrets of the mighty.
I am not stupid, I see the way Athena looks at me. That sly owl pretends to know more than she actually does, but in this case there's not much I can do. She has been working on it for years now, and if the stares, glares and spiteful comments she gives me are anything to go by, I am quite certain that the Prophecy involves me somehow.
Poseidon's Notes, Page 1.
Annabeth Chase walked through the halls of Olympus Academy towards the office of the Headmaster. Chiron was a busy man, yet he always had a soft spot for Annabeth. It was him the person who had rescued her from that place, after all.
The hallway to the office held dozens of short pillars with weapons, trophies, and even other strange artifacts. Annabeth saw a sword that looked too big to be wielded by a human, a shield large enough to cover her, and even a strange helm that seemed to absorb the light around it. Yet her eyes lingered on the bronze trident that was right in the centre of the hallway, on the left side. It was a six-foot-tall weapon, three sharp triangle shaped prongs on the top, and a curved bladelike edge at the bottom. It was inside a glass case, and underneath it was a simple golden plaque.
Replica of Poseidon's Trident: The Weapon of the Heir of the House of Seas.
She had always been drawn to the house of Seas. Her mother had told her once, when she was young, that the House of Seas was not to be trusted under any circumstance. Of course, because it had only been the time the woman had ever approached her, she had ignored her advice. Yet after what Orion had done to Artemis, and what the One-eyed covenant had done in Manhattan…yes, she had Hated the House of Seas and began to plan for its destruction. Chiron, however, had chastised her for such thing, telling her that there was more to the House of Seas than she initially thought. She had placed her plans for the destruction of the house on hold and told her to research more about their story.
There was more to them, she had eventually decided. The House of Seas was one of the three Great Houses, yet the history of it was murky and almost secretive. Something had happened that had caused a deep rift between them and the other houses, and currently it sat without a true heir, only a distant relative to the seat being in charge of what little remained of the once great house.
She decided to put the Great Game out of her mind as she kept walking to Chiron's office, eventually reaching the great mahogany door and knocking three times as it was custom.
"Enter." She heard from the inside, and Annabeth opened it and entered quickly.
"Ah, Annabeth. I take it the mission was a success then?" Chiron asked from behind his desk. Chiron was a man aging, one could tell that his long greying hair had once been a lush brown, and the several wrinkles around his eyes and cheeks told the story of a man who seemed to smile quite a lot at one point.
"It was." Annabeth said, and she took a moment to look around the office as she usually did. The office was large, very large. She saw several shelves on a corner with hundreds of books, and an inner voice yelled at her to run towards them and devour their contents. Who knew what Chiron had in those tomes? Perhaps words that could shed some light on the many secrets of Olympus?
Other object littered the room, from weapons to pieces of Armor. She saw a record player, and a large TV in front of an old couch. She recognized a boom box too, and its horrible collection of music next to it. She even saw a pinochle game being left half played in a table on the other side of the office.
"I'm glad to hear that you and Mr. Di Angelo had no problems." Chiron said.
"It was rather quick, although I do not understand why we've been tracking him down for so long. It's been a few years since you've known about him, yet why only now did we go out to get him? He doesn't seem like much. He even passed out on me!"
"Young Perseus has had a hard life, but I owe too much to his father to abandon him to it."
"His father?" Annabeth asked.
"Yes, Perseus is the son of a very special man, and a very powerful one at that." Chiron said, "He was perhaps one of my greatest pupils…and also my one big failure."
Annabeth raised an eyebrow. Chiron never had admitted to failing at training someone, in fact, she doubted that was even true.
"Come." Chiron appeared from behind his desk in his wheelchair, a lasting reminder of his several battles that had weakened him. He approached the wall behind Annabeth, and she followed, stopping in front of a painting with Twelve people surrounding Chiron while he smiled proudly.
She recognized Dionysus, the Director of Olympus, and a young Artemis. She also recognized her mother, and she felt her heart clench at the sight.
She looked young, her dark blonde hair tied into a ponytail, her eyes filled with determination. It was also the first time Annabeth had seen her mother smile.
"That's my mother." Annabeth said.
"Yes." Chiron admitted, "Your mother, Dionysus, Artemis, they were all pupils of mine once, and they all rose to become some of the most powerful Hunters the world has ever seen. This was the Golden Generation of Olympian Hunters."
Hunters, what Annabeth had given her life to become.
Hunters in this world were that, people who were tasked with exterminating monsters. Monsters that hid amongst them, living and breathing the same air. Most of the time these monsters were just humans, people with sick and twisted minds that terrorized others. Sometimes, however, these monsters exceeded what was human, they became something more…something dark.
"What do you know of the Pantheon and the War of Titans?"
Annabeth was surprised for a moment, yet she smiled inwardly at her opportunity to use her research. It was a forbidden thing, to research about the Titans. In fact, most people didn't even know about them, however Annabeth was not most people.
"The Pantheon is the council formed by the twelve most powerful hunter families in the continent, but many say that there should be fourteen." Annabeth said.
"Good, now, why was it formed?" Chiron pressed her.
"There was a war. Before Olympus was founded, a group of people called The Titans terrorized the world with their inhuman power. Their leader, Saturn, was king in all but name. He was a tyrant, a man of true evil like few had been seen before. He enslaved most of the normal humans and tried to create a world where the Enlightened were seen as Gods. A group of people, however, stopped them. Vesta, Ceres, Juno, Pluto, Neptune and Jupiter, the first Hunters.
They rallied armies of Enlightened who disagreed with Kronos, and eventually defeated him in the now abandoned region of Othrys. After that, they founded Olympus and passed down their knowledge and formed the Hunters, whom they gave the task of stopping monsters like Kronos so that his mistake cannot be repeated."
"Very good. I see your research has been well handled." Chiron said knowingly, and Annabeth blushed. "What you see here is the current Pantheon, the Twelve leaders of the Hunters. That," he pointed to a man with black hair, "is Poseidon. The true head of The House of Seas, and the father of Perseus Jackson."
Annabeth turned to Chiron hard, staring at him in surprise.
"What?" she asked.
"Many years ago, three men entered into the halls of Olympus. Few times I've seen hunters of such power, yet here they were, waiting patiently to be trained. The three heirs of the Great Houses. Zeus of the House of Skies, Hades of the House of Death…and Poseidon of the House of Seas, stood there too, open to the knowledge that has been passed down from generations." Chiron seemed to deflate on his chair.
"Annabeth, I've trained several proficient hunters in my life, but these three…God, they were powerful. Look at Thalia and Jason, or Nico and Bianca, they are sons and daughters of two of them, tell me that they're not powerful."
Annabeth thought for a moment, and she had to admit that Chiron was right. Thalia was impulsive, but no one could deny she had raw power. Her aim with throwing knives, bows, and even sniper rifles was terrifying, and poor soul who found themselves facing her on hand to hand combat. Jason, on the other hand, was not as physically strong as his sister, but he had such a finesse and raw strength with his powers that he doubted even Thalia could defeat him when he put his mind to it.
Nico was quick. Too quick. That added to his abilities made him the perfect spy in any situation, and he was also a very skilled swordsman. Even Bianca, the sweetest of them all, was one of the few people that could terrify Annabeth. She had only been on the receiving end of her wrath one time, and it had been one time too many. Had Bianca decided to harm her, she doubted she would've come out unscathed, or even alive.
Yes, if the children of Zeus and Hades were this powerful, she wondered what strength their parents had.
"I see…what happened then?" Annabeth asked.
"Ah, so you've heard about the Fallout." Chiron said. "Well…even I'm not entirely sure. All I know is that when Poseidon was about to graduate from Olympus, he fell in love with a woman. Mind you, not an Enlightened one. As an heir of a Great House, Poseidon was destined to marry Amphitrite, a rather powerful hunter from the House of Tides, a vassal of the House of Seas. Poseidon, however, refused to be married off by his father. This angered his father and told him that if he chose to not fulfil his duty, he would marry the woman himself and place their son in front of him in the succession.
"I was well respected in the Pantheon back then, and Lord Pontus held me in high regard. Poseidon came to me and asked me to convince his father to allow him to marry the woman he loved."
Chiron fell silent for a moment, and Annabeth waited with a tense breath his next words.
"I eventually refused, that was my first mistake. Yet what will haunt me for the rest of my life was what I did next." Chiron took a deep breath. "Lord Pontus came to me one day, asking me to change Poseidon's mind. You see, the House of Seas is an ancient house, tracing back to Neptune himself. Lord Pontus was brought up by those standards, so he was a hard, conservative man. When he came to me, I admitted that Poseidon had already asked me to change his father's mind. This sent Pontus into a rage, and with the help of the House of Skies and the House of the Dead, he found out that Poseidon planned to escape Olympus, meet up with the woman, and run away.
"The fight that followed was something that I wish never have to witness again amongst these halls." Chiron said sadly, "Zeus and Hades tried cornering Poseidon, and when they revealed that his father had asked them to do it, their friendship wasn't enough to stop Poseidon's rage. They fought and fought hard."
"Who won?" Annabeth asked shily. This was something that she never knew, and she was starting to understand why the House of Seas was not viewed in high regard.
"Poseidon did. By a landslide." Chiron said. "I arrived to find Hades unconscious, his sword halfway through his gut and blood pooling around him. Yet Zeus…" Chiron hesitated, "The scar that the man carries now, from eyebrow to cheek…that was given to him by Poseidon with Zeus' own spear. He was furious at being defeated, and even tried to fight us to locate Poseidon. He swore revenge then, that no one from the House of Seas will ever be a friend of the House of Skies. After seeing the devastation left behind the rest of the members of the Pantheon quickly agreed, and ever since then, the seat that belongs rightfully to Poseidon was filled with a fake."
"Triton…" Annabeth said, conjuring images of the kind, and rather sickly young man.
"Lord Pontus did exactly what he had threatened to do. He married Lady Amphitrite himself, even if there was more than forty years between them, and she gave him a son a year into their marriage. Yet that son was weak compared to Poseidon. Don't get me wrong, Triton is still a powerful Hunter…but nowhere near what Poseidon is."
A short silence passed between Chiron and Annabeth. She broke it, however, by asking a question that had been burning in her mouth.
"What happened next?"
"Next?" Chiron sighed, "Well, I do not know much. Poseidon disappeared from the grid, the seat of The House of Seas was filled by Triton, although the only reason the seat remains is because he is of a Great House. They are technically irremovable from the Pantheon. Only Hades has chosen to remain off, as his house has...other responsibilities. Although I suspect that Poseidon scarred him badly, and either he is too weak to be actively involved, or he simply does not wish to face Zeus lest he's reminded of what happened that day."
"How does Perseus factor into this?" Annabeth eventually asked.
"Ah, we arrive at the crux of the matter." Chiron said as he began to move towards his desk once more.
"Poseidon came to me three months ago." Chiron said, "He and I spoke, and I apologized for my part in his hardships. He forgave me, but he does not forget. He was deeply hurt by Hades and Zeus' betrayal, and he knows that if he faces them then war is inevitable. He also mentioned that he had to take care of something overseas and offered me a choice to redeem myself from my mistakes.
"Perseus Jackson. His son. He wanted him to be trained like he was, as a Hunter of Olympus and as the Heir of the House of Seas. He wishes for him to be ready for when the time comes, that he will be a key figure in the future of the Hunters." Chiron grabbed a bottle of wine from his desk and poured himself a glass. All that talking had made his throat sore.
"Do you understand the Pandora's box that you've opened by asking me to bring him here?" Annabeth asked him, she approached the desk and hit hardly with her hands. "Chiron…he has the potential to start a civil war within the Hunters! Not only that, if he's half as powerful as Jason or Nico…"
"I understand." Chiron said, "But he is my responsibility now. I failed Poseidon twice, once when I betrayed him to his father, and once when I let her die."
"what?" Annabeth asked.
"I killed Sally Jackson, Annabeth." Chiron's hand shook, and wine droplets fell over his desk, "Not by my hand, but I might as well have. Gabe Ugliano was on our target list for years, yet I kept delaying his assignment as I believed him to be a low-level threat, and now I realized I was too afraid to get involved with Perseus."
Annabeth sighed. She knew who Gabe Ugliano was, a true monster in human skin. She had heard his name once when she was younger, and then on the news when they discovered his and several other dead bodies in his house. Amongst them was a woman, with clear signs of abuse inflicted onto her. They had also found smaller clothes belonging to a boy, but no child was found. She had found him now.
"Perseus Jackson must be trained Annabeth, and he must be protected. He will face challenges unlike any other hunter here. He will be targeted by the Houses, attacked in the night, and maybe kidnapped. Many will want to know where Poseidon is, and not all of them are from our side…"
Annabeth shivered at the implication of what Chiron was saying.
"That is why I must task you with this: Protect, Train and turn Perseus Jackson into a Hunter of Olympus." Chiron gave her the look and she knew that it had to be done. No one defied Chiron and lived. No one.
"I accept this mission." Annabeth said, turning around and walking out of the room.
On one hand, she felt that it would be easy. How hard was it to train a new recruit? She did it on the daily with the several kids that came their way. Some were trouble, sure, but after a few beatings they calmed down. Yes, her mission would be easy. Yet another side of her warned her. In that alley, when Annabeth had mentioned the name of Gabe Ugliano, something had flashed in Perseus' eyes, something dangerous. For a moment, she had felt like prey, like a tiny owl drowning and struggling as she failed to fly in the middle of the sea. She hoped it had been her imagination, for if it was not…may the Pantheon help them.