In the darkest hour of the night, beneath the heavy gaze of the stars, the tide clashed against the moon. Spun silver cut through waves like a trireme, as fast as the howling winds, sparking off bronze that rose to meet it. Artemis ducked underneath a sweeping slash and kicked up, spinning left, sending her foe flying back. The lake surged to catch him, setting him down gently, almost reverently. A sudden absence of the powerful gales left Artemis unbalanced for the briefest moment, and then she was once again as sure-footed as a doe. She stalked forward like a predator. Her prey was uncowed, gliding to meet her atop cresting seafoam. His form was dwarfed by hers, less than half her height.

Perseus looked untouched by rain and sea, but not by her, dry but for ruby drops that dripped from a hundred cuts. A crown rested across his brow atop ebony locks. The simple band was patterned with cresting alternating deep blue and sickly black running spirals. His armor looked like fish scales, glittering as silver as her hunting tunic in the moonlight.

There was a rush of indignation at crossing blades with a half-mortal to a standstill, though her first fight against him had gone worse: she'd already been wounded by Kymopoleia, and faint reluctance stayed her hand while arrogance lowered her guard. Their next battle belonged to their fathers, sun and moon and tides and waves overshadowed by sky and sea. Poseidon, Perseus, and Benthesikyme were all sent fleeing. Victory had been hers, as unsatisfying as an unfinished hunt.

"We don't have to do this," Perseus said, resigned.

"Lay your sword down and we need fight no more," Artemis replied. He'd made the same plea the previous fights as well, and once to her brother, even as storm spirits raged against cyclopes on a field laden with golden blood and dust. She believed that he'd tried with Hephaestus as well- but not with Athena. Even the boy wasn't that foolish.

"Does it count if I pick it up again right after?

Then again, perhaps he was. She was unmoved by his weary quip. "No."

"What if it picks itself up? That really shouldn't count as my fault."

Snarling, she flicked one of her knives at his heart, and the sword in question knocked it aside casually, almost mocking in its ease. "This whole war is your fault!" A handful more knives left her fingertips, quick enough to blur into a single stream of steel aimed at the demigod, who slid left and ducked right and deflected all but the last, which he caught. Her bow appeared in her hand in a glimmer of moonlight. "And you dare jest about it?"

Perseus grunted as an arrow sunk into his leg, but when another pierced his arm, it was the earth itself that groaned, trembling beneath her feet. She danced over the cracks in the ground with inhuman elegance, loosing another silver arrow with each breath. The silver shafts shook as the winds picked up, blowing them too far to the east like errant flies; even as she adjusted her aim, they turned west, as unpredictable as the storm-bringer who wielded them: the storm-bringer who had managed to close the distance. Perseus swung Anaklusmos at the hand wrapped around her bow, catching the back of the bow just below the nock as she tried to whip it away.

She let the blow carry the longbow out of her grip even as her other hand brought up a hunting knife, its wicked, curved tip aimed at the underside of the demigod's jaw. As she swung, the boy stepped back and tilted his head up, letting the blade pass by with a wound too small to be called a proper cut. It was enough to whet the knife's hunger, though, and while the other batted Riptide down, it flashed back down and to the left, rushing towards the boy's throat…

…and then it wasn't, and she was dropping to her knees as misery pulsed through her like a heartbeat, all-reaching and consuming. It took a moment for her to push out the alien force; it was weak, and without the element of surprise it was easily dealt with. Then she was on her feet again, bringing her knives up to block the oncoming slash.

She wasn't quick enough, and the boy's sword carved a clean path across her stomach.

Golden ichor flowed. The moon disappeared from the sky as each of her manifestations across the world vanished, reuniting as she took her true form and held it. It was not meant to be held for longer than the briefest instant and her divinity burned against her organs, which strained against her will to spill out onto the muddy field. The edges of her wound closed far too slowly, but her foe couldn't harm her, couldn't even look at her. Mortals trembled in the presence of a god's true form, and even demigods turned their faces away; not that it would matter. No petty celestial bronze or baying hurricane could stand against her when she was whole.

She was a goddess, divine, immortal and wrathful. She was going to crush that boy beneath her heel like a bug, savor him writhing beneath her, pinned by her foot though his stomach and spine and out the other side, firm against the mud. She was-

No, she thought, dread slithering up her spine.

A surge of power rose with her dread, like a wellspring of poison, emanating from somewhere behind her and deep, deep beneath the earth. It hung suspended, as if to crawl down her throat, drowning and burning her all at once from the inside. She should have known wily Poseidon would be too cunning to let his favored son challenge a goddess unprepared. The crown, she realized faintly.

It seemed Athena had been right to worry over the cyclopes' forges, but what action could the council have taken, hidden as the monsters were beneath the waves? They had already faced Triton's net, Kymopoleia's whip, and Benthesikyme's ten rings: when the waves passed by one of their goddess's bejeweled hands, they boiled, and when they passed by her other hand, they froze and sharpened. Amphritite, Poseidon, and their son all still wielded their tridents.

None of them expected the demigod at the center of the conflict to be capable of wielding a symbol of power, let alone bearing the weight of its creation. None of them had even given voice to the thought.

All of them were wrong, and now Poseidon was about to seize control over the longest leyline in America. Apollo, she prayed silently, grudgingly, I need you.

As she let loose her manifestations once more, returning the moon to the sky, the power around her felt so much worse… but she couldn't lose to a demigod, not here, this place that was laden with more energy than most minor gods, this place that served as a floodgate against the ocean. I won't¸ she thought grimly, turning towards the son of the sea god.

He was kneeling, further from the beach than he'd gone during their fight, and he was glowing. The aura had a depth to it, and his form was faintly distorted, as though he were underwater. The boy stood to face her, the arrows embedded in his right leg and left arm flickering into nothingness as she felt her brother arrive.

Warmth embraced her as the sun god strode to stand on her right, then light flashed behind her, dimmer than her brothers, and rage stabbed through her. Ares had arrived, carrying a gun in one hand and a claymore in the other. He marched over to the other side of Apollo wearing gladiator's armor save a helm, tinted red, a pattern like swirling blood inlaid. Apollo's armor was gold atop the modern garb of a hunter, patterned leaf-green and dirt-brown.

Three Olympians stood as one against Perseus Jackson. Perseus grinned at her; it was a crooked and cocky thing that filled her with rage. She was going tear him apart.

"I'd make a crack about you siccing your older brothers on me, but I've got a better idea." She was going to tear him apart into a hundred pieces with her bare hands and feed the scraps of him to her hounds.

"Oh, I'm going to enjoy this. It's been a long time coming," Ares said with a dark smile, bringing his gun up and taking aim. In response, the boy tapped his sword against the ground and the ground cracked open, widening like an earthen maw, its gullet dark and deep, reaching towards the trio.

They vanished in tandem, gone and then behind the boy before the light from their disappearance reached that of their appearance, landing far enough back to avoid a low blow as they manifested. Apollo and Artemis raised their bows and drew their arrows while Ares pulled the trigger and charged. Water swirled around the demigod's form, a hurricane attending its master, catching bullets and drowning arrows before lashing out at the war god. Three tendrils he cut, but a fourth pulled his ankle as a hundred-foot-high tidal wave manifested and crashed upon him.

It trickled away as the twins stopped firing. Ares was struggling to his feet, shaky but raging. There was fear in Artemis's heart like there hadn't been all night, even when she felt Perseus seize control of the leyline's cornerstone, where Ouranos's barren seed fell upon Gaea. That waterspout had carried too much power, too focused for the demigod, and as it cleared, she could see the boy's half-sisters standing behind him. To the boy's right stood his divine half-brother, and between him and Perseus stood the demigod's father.

The god of the sea had arrived, sneaking up through the fractured earth past the boundaries the council had commissioned of Hecate. Poseidon had arrived, and he brought the ocean with him.

The heavens rumbled, and in a flash of lightning Zeus was there to meet his brother. Thunder walked in the god-king's footsteps, and the winds bowed before him.

The sudden silence, only broken by distant rumbles above, was unnerving- the eye of storm was impatient and volatile, not like to rest for long. Where is Athena? Hephaestus? Hera? Perhaps their absence could be explained by Amphitrite's, but regardless, it boded ill, especially Athena's. Then again, the present situation did not speak kindly of the wisdom goddess's abilities. Harsh, perhaps, but Artemis was not in a particularly forgiving mood. Poseidon's shrewdness was as clear as it must have been thousands of years ago, when the gods first rebelled against the Titans.

Her father and uncle broke the standoff and approached each other, meeting halfway. Both were unarmored, the arrogance of the elder gods proudly displayed. Zeus was wearing a white toga, belted in gold and helmed with a laurel crown, while her uncle was clothed in a tunic that held the waves, deep blue cresting and crashing into white foam with a tricorn atop his head, emblazoned with a trident on each side. She had to strain to catch their words.

"Olympus would have you back," said her father.

"Would Olympus have my son?" asked her uncle.

"It would not."

"Then Olympus will not have me." Poseidon's tone was angry but resigned.

"The boy is unnatural. Cursed. A danger. Elysium would welcome him with open arms."

"My son is what nature made him, and the curses he bears were received while in our service."

Apollo shifted uneasily to her right. A prophecy would have been helpful an hour ago, she thought with asperity. Then again, it might have just been nerves, or hope that Zeus and Poseidon would finally agree to terms. She doubted it.

"Yet you do not deny that he is a danger. Yes, he has served us well, and deserves a reward- but he cannot be allowed to live." The king of the gods paused for a moment. "Hades has agreed to grant him entrance to the Isles in pursuit of an end to this."

The ruler of the seas growled. "Hades will not take him."

"He will, eventually. The boy is not a god; he will die sooner or later. Are a few decades difference truly worth this?" Zeus asked but soldiered on without waiting for an answer. "The Olympic Charter has stood to this day for a reason. 'Divinity left unbound is too dangerous to be tolerated,' I believe you said."

"You would compare my son to the demigod of Kronos?" Poseidon snarled. Artemis narrowed her eyes; there'd been none during the Second Titan War, but she would have appreciated being told that it had been a possibility. "Perseus fought for the gods. He deserves to be one of us, and even failing that, he is bound by blood. Do you doubt his loyalty?"

Zeus smiled grimly. "Not at all. I am certain of his loyalty- and it is not to Olympus. Did you think you could hide your schemes? Your treason was not so secret as to escape me. Be grateful that I am willing to forgive your treachery; this is the last time I will do so."

"I did not break faith with Olympus until Olympus broke faith with me," Poseidon declared, knuckles white against his trident. It pulsed a deep blue green, as though the trident itself was made of water rather than metal.

"I name you liar, Poseidon. Oathbreaker. If we cannot have peace, then you will be destroyed," Zeus said.

She had an arrow drawn before the master bolt manifested in her father's hand. As it flew it was joined by a golden brother and followed by a horde of screaming boars. A perfect fit for Ares, she thought, as she always did when she saw a boar, though that was unkind to boars. She heard a tidal wave encroaching from behind, and she turned to face it. At its crest rode Benthesikyme; to her left the water steamed in the cool October air, and to her right it churned with ice blades, painted white with frost.

Artemis launched upward, shifting into a pale falcon as her feet left the ground. As she flew, thunder rumbled like a drum, quick and steady. She met the other goddess before the wave could cross halfway from the lake to the battlefield, transforming as she dived, her silver knives outstretched like talons. Together they fell, the tidal wave crashing early enough to avoid any significant damage.

She ducked below a stream of boiling water and drew an arrow and loosed in one smooth motion, quick as a breath, and in the next dashed to the goddess of the waves, twin blades slicing high and low at once. Benthesikyme managed to block the arrow and slash to her chest, but a line of gold opened up across her thighs. Ichor mixed with lake water and hardened into a line of spears at the sea goddess's feet. Leaping over them, Artemis flicked a knife down at her opponent and caught her in the shoulder, only to land in a small, boiling wave that surged past her knees. She gritted her teeth at the pain and leapt at the other goddess, catching a glimpse of the battle beyond.

It wasn't going well.

Great streams of water were shivering and flashing, as though they'd feasted on lightning, while more bolts yet flew from Zeus's hand and from the sky. Her father and uncle appeared to be at an impasse, but her twin and Ares were faring poorly. The war god's legs were entangled in a celestial bronze fishing net and struggling to fend off both Triton's spear and overlapping, towering waves. The boy is aiding Triton, she thought grimly as she landed on Benthesikyme. Silver blades burrowed under the other goddess's skin, and then Artemis pulled the knives backwards, opening gashes on either side from shoulder to shoulder to abdomen.

Fear flashed in Benthesikyme's eyes even as Artemis felt a scalding drift slam her off the wounded goddess and onto a stretch of ice, jagged and covered with sharpened edges. She gritted her teeth as she felt a dozen catch and tear at her. Twisting around to her side, she felt a dozen more lines open up on her arm and leg before she stabbed down, bringing a sudden halt to her tortuous slide. In a flash, Benthesikyme vanished to seek aid, the coward- no matter, she'd hunt the other goddess down eventually. No one escaped her.

She turned back to the battlefield and charged due west, assuming the form of a black panther. Swift leaps carried her to where her brother was shooting golden arrows into winds, aiming for a figure in a dress as green as algae with marble skin. Kymopoleia's glowing hair whipped back and forth, and she wore a manic smile as she willed concentrated storms into existence, flicking them at Apollo gleefully. As she drew closer she saw that her brother had landed a few shots, but not enough to slow the other goddess down. She saw Kymopoleia's whip wrap around Apollo's arm and flay the skin around his left bicep. The twin spikes at the end looked like a stingray's tail and dripped ichor.

She stood on two legs once more before pulling an arrow back and aiming at the edge of a cyclone- it would blow the arrow past a gap into the strongest gales, adjusting for a steady northern breeze. The moment she released it she ducked underneath a spout of water. She rolled to her right, coming up facing the opposite way, and leapt above another wave. The boy was midway between Ares and Apollo, occasionally darting closer to one fight or the other, sending sally attacks in defense of both Triton and Kymopoleia, ensuring they remained the aggressors.

It was working. Apollo was struggling to land a finishing blow while gusts pummeled at him hard enough to bruise even a god's divine skin. Ares's armor was more gold than its original red, stained with the same gold that dripped from the tip of Triton's spear and the weave of his net. Even as she watched, a crack opened up in the ground beneath the god of war, who barely managed to jump away while parrying a vicious thrust. They were lucky Benthesikyme had been so incautious, Artemis thought. Apollo and Ares didn't look like they'd last much longer.

Artemis jumped and dove into a smooth roll, coming up crouched with her bow out and an arrow drawn. It slipped past her cheek like a kiss and arced upwards. When it landed, it pierced the same hole in the boy's arm that she had bored earlier. His grunt of pain and frustrated cursing was music to her ears. The rumbling earth behind him quieted, and she could see Ares open fire on Triton in the distance. A few bullets crashed through the wall of water the sea god had thrown up and into his torso, letting gold weakly fountain out. Triton cast his net and caught Ares's left arm, but the damage was already done.

A charging tidal wave curved the path of her arrow enough to barely graze Perseus's cheek. Just as the wave would have crashed upon her, she flashed to where the boy had been behind the water, silver knives drawn and swinging. They sliced through empty air, and she caught sight of Perseus where she had just vanished from. He was riding a small, quick surge towards Apollo, whose aim slipped as the ground underneath him shook. Light blazed behind her, marking Triton's flight. Two down, three to go.

She reappeared midway between her brother and Kymopoleia, but out of range of the conjured storms. Best not to give the other goddess an opening as Artemis appeared. Even as she dashed forward, silver blades baying for blood as they leapt from her fingers, she knew it was lost. Perseus had pushed Apollo too close to Kymopoleia, whose whip snapped forward to wrap around her twin's throat. He grimaced before disappearing in a flash that was blindingly bright, even to her. It left a faint afterimage for a moment, and she noticed that the boy appeared to blinking away spots as well, as though he'd seen her brother flash away. He couldn't have, though. Could he?

Any concern was quickly forgotten as Artemis charge brought her within range to slash her knife at Kymopoleia's wrist, driving the other into the goddess's side. Kymopoleia shrieked with rage as she hurled a cyclone at Artemis, who faded back and dodged to the right. The dual-pronged whip lashed out at her, and she caught it with one of her blades, throwing the other at Kymopoleia's shoulder. A wave slammed into the moon goddess sending her sailing back over thirty feet. What fool gives an archer space? Artemis accepted the opportunity eagerly, peppering the sea goddess with silver arrows.

Even through the gales a few found their mark. For a moment, Artemis felt relieved, confident in their victory. Percy had been heading off Ares last she'd seen him, coming between the war god and Kymopoleia. Ares was wounded, but so was Perseus; surely Ares would make quick work of the boy.

Then she heard Ares choking to her left, near the drained crater that had once been a lake. Fish flopped frantically and lay still at the bottom. On the shore, the kneeling god of war was covered in a liquid black as the space between stars. Ares's hands clutched his throat while a stream of the substance slithered into his mouth. The god vanished as Perseus brought Riptide down where the back of his head would have been; instead, the bronze tip stabbed into ground, coming up covered in mud instead of ichor. That was twice tonight the boy had displayed unknown and hitherto unseen abilities- too many times for it to be a coincidence.

Snarling, she dashed at the boy, keeping keenly aware of Kymopoleia's location behind her, but then her father's hand was on her shoulder and there was light, the smell of ozone, and they were in her brother's temple. They were greeted by the sight of a stiff, bleeding Apollo leaning over Ares's thrashing body. Black ink dripped down his chin and the sides of his face, and stained the pedestal he was resting on along with the floor around him. Apollo poured a sickly yellow potion into the war god's mouth and held it shut, forcing Ares to swallow. Almost immediately the god stilled, before rolling to his side and throwing up gallons of the substance onto the marble below him.

Apollo patted the god's back as he coughed out the last of it, murmuring faintly to him before Ares slumped bonelessly onto the god of healing's sickbed. Artemis felt her father's hand release her shoulder, dropping to his side. Arcs of electricity ran along his skin, up his arms and down his nose and across his brow.

"The sea has shown itself to be dark and treacherous. It will reap what it has sown." Zeus's toga reformed into a sharp, black suit as he spoke. He turned away from the sight of his unconscious son shivering on the once-pristine pedestal. "Rest, daughter. The council will meet when Ares can manage to stand on his own two feet." The god-king strode away from his soldier without a second glance.

She looked up at her brother as he approached. Apollo looked like he'd weathered every storm under the sun. There was a red ring his throat where Kymopoleia's whip had circled it and squeezed; there were sickly bruises that had skipped straight past dark blue and settled on a yellow green; there was an ominous look in eyes that unnerved her. Her brother stopped abruptly, about five feet away from her, his golden eyes serious and foreboding.

"You know something about Perseus." It wasn't a question. Prophecy did not request, nor did it demand. It declared how things were and how they would be, confident in and content with itself.

Artemis nodded. "He injured me," she said, gritting her teeth as she admitted it.

"Yes, I noticed the moon. Actually, for a while there, I didn't, which is the important part."

"He… distracted me," she said, scowling.

"How?" Apollo asked curtly.

She hesitated. "It was unexpected, and easily dealt with, but for a moment I felt misery, pure and divine."

"Misery and poison," her brother mused, shooting a quick look over his shoulder at Ares's still form. "Make sure you don't leave your cup unattended. This stuff is no joke- it'll give you a wicked hangover."

For a moment they stood there, not speaking. She appreciated it; his warm presence was a soothing balm that she welcomed. If only he could keep his mouth shut more often, but he never could.

"He asked me again," Apollo said softly.

Artemis carefully didn't react, hiding the conflicting rage and offense and disquiet roiling within her. "Likewise. Surely, he can't believe we would turn against Olympus," she paused briefly, "or our father."

No response came was forthcoming. The sun and moon lapsed into silence as war slept, its inevitable waking creeping ever closer.