Percy Jackson had never been especially great at dealing with emotions.
At least that seemed like the case as far as he could remember. Still, such difficulties were probably normal struggles for a hormonal teenager to be going through. That was back before, though. Before he turned from a naive child into something wholly different.
Since taking The Burden Percy hadn't really felt much of anything. Pain, loneliness, and anger were probably the most common. That definitely wasn't the healthiest cocktail of mentions, but even those became distant eventually. They came and went in flashes, roaring explosions of feeling that lasted a few seconds before being stolen by the void. Emoting consistently was hard when you were literally fighting for your life every single moment.
The woman had changed that, though.
Suddenly Percy was regularly experiencing several new feelings, few of which he could name. Sometimes he felt so much all at once it left him completely overwhelmed. The sky bearer vaguely remembered this experience. It was attached to a hazy blob of steel eyes and blond hair, though not much more than that.
And what was this novel thing he was grappling with? Percy wasn't sure exactly what it was called.
It was as if everything was more when it came to the woman. The long moments of silence seemed more silent. The empty void seemed more oppressive. But when she was there, speaking in her dulcet tones, Percy himself felt more. More joy, more humor, more anything and everything.
Things had been bad before the woman, certainly. That was the understatement of the century. But the son of Poseidon never knew how bad things really had been until she had shown him how much better they could be. Percy craved every interaction, every tease, every half-felt motion of the hands or lips. It only made the extended periods of solitude that much more unbearable. The sky bearer was a starving man being drip fed through a tube.
During one particular mind-bending fight with the sky, when Percy's brain turned to mush and his body melted like wax on a candle, he contemplated cursing her for opening his eyes. When Percy returned from nothingness and The Burden was settled again, it took but one word and he felt nothing but relief. Forgiving her was so easy.
After all, the woman always came back for him. Artemis never had.
She wasn't around often. When her voice was distinguishable from the whispers she apologized profusely. Each appearance was a roll of the dice - sometimes the woman was soft and barely discernible. Occasionally he could have sworn she was standing right outside the dais. It didn't take a genius to figure out that her volume was dependent on her physical distance from Mount Othrys, especially when she straight up told him as much.
"The war is far-reaching, my love." Percy remembered her saying once when her voice was clearer than usual. "Battles wage across the globe, but things progress. Not as well as hoped but better than expected. Chaque centimètre gagné est un pas de plus vers vous, Persues." The mysterious woman had giggled that she might get in trouble for letting that piece of information slip, even though her audience of one couldn't speak French. She didn't seem particularly apologetic.
That day Percy's chest felt like it was aching, but in a good way. He hadn't realized he was smiling so much until his cheeks nearly gave out in protest.
Such became the duality of Percy's long-suffering existence. The sky bearer's life became nothing but brief, reality-confirming highs interspersed between deep valleys of nothingness. It was like repeatedly tripping from the peak of Olympus to the depths of Tartarus, the journey so far down that 99% of the time all Percy felt was the falling.
The whispers, where he could once make out individual voices, were now so common that they had faded into a great background white noise. A couple of unique tones had graduated into a full chorus where each was indistinguishable from the next. Every once and a while the intensity would rise and bring that fortifying warmth with it. Sometimes, if Percy really tried, he could make out a few muffled words. It was never more than that.
In some ways, being aware of the passage of time was worse than when he simply ceased to be for long stretches. It meant that the son of Poseidon had to face The Burden, endure it, survive through it. You could only count the seconds for so long before the mind bent under the sheer number of empty minutes. On the other hand, it meant that the sky bearer was always present when the woman would appear again.
That made it all worth it.
Despite her long periods of absence, each conversation was like opening a great cornucopia for Percy. Subject was a non-factor. Every word was a treat, every sentence a meal. She explained to him things he never knew, like which fork to use at a fancy dinner party. She described things he had forgotten, like the smell of rain on the horizon or the feeling of a bubble bath. She taught him motions he thought he had lost, like how to roll his tongue.
Percy's favorite was when the woman told him about herself. It usually wasn't on purpose but that's what made it so endearing. It simply happened by listening, and the sky bearer had become nothing if not adept at that.
Percy learned she liked flowers, springtime, and cocktail dresses. She considered herself of refined taste, but then immediately spent nearly half an hour describing her general dislike of expensive wines. She was witty and overly flirty. She was emotional, so remarkably so the son of Poseidon found it hard to wrap his head around sometimes. She lived in a bustling city, and some of Percy's favorite stories were the mundane ones - the kind where she went out to grab a drink, or bought some new trinket because she was bored, or just laid out to enjoy the sunshine.
The woman was kind yet struggled to be. She had demons to battle and skeletons in the closet, though she was trying to clean out the latter. She spoke with flair and drama but felt real underneath. Each splash of French was a velvet embrace to Percy's ears. The woman preferred pet names, especially for him. She was a powerful force on the battlefield, though Percy never learned the specific nature of her abilities.
In fact, he never learned much about her role in the wider conflict. Percy wouldn't accuse her of lying to him, certainly not, but every time the conversation strayed too close to the war she deftly steered it in another direction.
"I fight with the forces of Olympus, my love." She had told him once. The woman had been particularly chatty that day, in a weary sort of way. "That is not the same as fighting for them, you must understand. Make no mistake Perseus - I fight for you. I can only hope that it is enough." That was one of her more cryptic messages. Immediately afterward she had clammed up completely about the ongoing fighting. Percy quickly got the message and stopped asking.
It's not as if she would have had any information about his mother anyway.
Percy learned that he and the woman were so alike and yet so different. The woman held a mean grudge but she was working on it. She had a stubborn streak a mile wide that was tempered by a burning passion for life just as long. Whenever Percy could muster the breath for some sass she returned it back a hundredfold with bounding amusement. She liked talking, and liked that Percy liked to listen.
In fact, she liked him a lot. Maybe a little too much.
The woman would often get caught up in her emotions, usually when talking about her past or this 'monumental change' she had gone through. Whenever she used his actual name instead of some affectionate nickname it had real weight to it, almost as if she was afraid of being caught taking it in vain.
Percy wasn't especially religious - it was sort of hard to be when gods and magic were just normal everyday things - but he couldn't help but use the term for the woman. She was fervent, practically devout. There wasn't a single word from her mouth about him that could even be misunderstood as negative. Half of the woman's sentences sounded more like confessionals than normal conversion, and the other half were basically just veiled bedroom proposals. Percy couldn't escape the feeling that there was something much deeper going on.
Still, it was . . . nice to have someone think so highly of him. For someone whose self confidence had fallen so far down it practically laid in a shallow grave, the sky bearer found it easy to just let it go and enjoy the compliments. Percy was so starved for attention that even he was aware of it. If using this strange approximation of his character was helping the woman be a better person, who was the son of Poseidon to stop her? He wasn't sure he could have won an argument with her anyway.
Inevitably, Percy found himself thinking highly of the woman in return. She was just so genuine in her desire to change, so earnest when describing her past self that it was hard not to. It was just another thing about her that was so simple, so effortless.
When he spoke his first compliment, something about how pretty her voice was, the woman's squeal of joy had nearly deafened him. She immediately returned the favor by pouring on suggestive teasing so hard that Percy was left blushing for a whole day straight.
The woman told him about her world, her regrets, her family. Percy told her about his fears, his memories, his hatred. She listened, and so did he. Such was their push and pull. The dynamic worked.
The sky bearer steadily learned to cherish those tiny nuggets of her being that slipped into each conversation. It was like a game, using his somewhat limited attention to ferret out anything new. The one thing Percy never learned was her name. At some point he realized he didn't particularly care.
The most constant thing Percy heard from the woman were her stories about her family. And what the storyteller she was!
It wasn't long before Percy almost felt like these people were his family too, though of course no one could ever replace his blood mother. Still, the woman's dysfunctional 'father' and his jealous but calculated wife became like old acquaintances - the kind that you only tolerated because they were related by blood. The precocious pair of twins, along with the drunk and the angry step-brothers, seemed even more familiar than before. The woman held particular vehemence for that last one, combined with a wave of shame so strong it pricked at Percy's skin.
The sky bearer chose to press that particular issue. The woman's emotional wound was still so clearly raw it would have made him feel borderline sadistic. She had thanked him profusely for his 'understanding'. Percy couldn't shrug, so he had settled for a dismissive huff.
The son of Poseidon eventually had more knowledge about the mostly harmless yet womanizing step-brother and her lonely gardening aunt in his head than he knew of his past life. He could have sworn he had met the studious half-sister and the solitude-seeking half-brother before. Every time she described one of her strange eccentric uncles Percy felt like he was unlocking a puzzle piece for a new family member.
One uncle in particular was so recognizable, so just at the tip of his tongue that he spent ages in between visits trying to recall why. He could have sworn he knew them, each and every one, but it all remained just out of reach. The second of her aunts, usually the family's the voice of reason, was the woman's favorite. She became Percy's favorite too by extension.
The woman told him she would introduce them. "My love, she will adore you. In her own way, of course. Her feelings will inevitably pale in comparison to my own, though you can't fault her for that." The last part was delivered with a strange sense of pride that left Percy a bit bewildered.
At some point the lines between fact and fiction started to blur. It was not so different to how the edges of The Burden faded in and out of Percy's eyesight, where valleys and lakes and mountains all blended together. The view through the bend in space seemed to shift to reflect her words, showcasing great swaths of grass or the deep parts of the forest depending on the implied setting.
Sometimes he was stepping through crowded streets or sitting alone at an empty restaurant. The son of Poseidon could almost sense the cold kiss of the snow on the tip of his nose, or hear the rush of the winds as it passed by his ears. When the woman described one particularly disastrous tea party, he was laughing right there along with her. When she watched one half-brother get pushed into a fountain he felt the wet spray on his face. Endless gray was a flawless canvas - any vision Percy wanted to paint in the void, he found himself able.
With all his senses continuously flooded the man found it increasingly difficult to differentiate what was a real memory and what was one of her stories. Each day, now that he was aware of them again, it seemed that more knowledge was absent from his head despite his best attempts. Faces, names, dates, everything was slowly going missing.
The bond connecting him to reality, while fortified, was still no thicker than two lonely strings.
It concerned the woman, not that she told him. Percy could just tell. One time, the son of Poseidon caught her fretting out loud about telling the same story three times in the span of one conversation. Percy didn't have the heart to tell her he didn't remember any of it. Just as he could often read her, though, she could read him even easier. It was a good story when repeated, yet a thick cloud of tension had fallen over the dais.
Her voice never got further away after that. Each consecutive conversation was louder, though she often seemed half out of breath. Percy could tell she was driving herself harder trying to reach him before he could fade completely.
During one pause in conversation, Percy told her to take better care of her health. What was left of the old Percy Jackson really wasn't worth fretting over in his opinion. The last thing he wanted was more corpses at his feet, especially not hers. It took Percy a few minutes to spit it out with The Burden snipping every other word from his mouth.
She ignored him of course. The woman's silence that day had a decidedly furious tint. Percy didn't know why what he had said made her so mad. He just knew that she hadn't spoken to him since. He hoped she would, just so he could apologize.
Percy didn't know it, but he would soon get his wish.
The fateful day, just like every other day, found the bearer of the sky fighting to hold onto himself by combing through what memories of before remained. It was both helpful and a decent way to distract Percy from the crushing weight on his shoulders. His mother was always the clearest - her face, her voice, their trips to Montauk when he was a kid. Beyond that, not much else. Percy's cheeks and lips itched madly. It was like bugs had infested the ratty beard he had grown.
That day The Burden seemed particularly heavy and his thoughts tended to scatter like spooked deer. Corralling them was a smidge more difficult each time, and some always escaped. Percy was in the middle of one such occurrence when the void began to change.
It started with a rumble of the floor.
It was so tiny at first that the dust on Percy's pant legs barely even shifted. Still, his senses had been so used to absolute, unchanging nothingness that the miniscule movement threatened to throw Percy off his knees. The bearer of the sky found himself violently ejected from the depths of his musing with a great inhale.
Percy's throat was so dry he could have sworn ash flew from his lips. His mind chugged into life, slowly at first and picking up speed. Dim eyes consciously began the process of truly seeing again. For several moments Percy was convinced he had imagined it.
The sky bearer had just found his balance again when the rumble returned, this time for real.
It felt like an earthquake centered right beneath his knees. The void began to spin around him as Percy was once again nearly capsized. The black stone surface of the dais shuddered once, twice, a third time - each more violent than the last. Only Percy's immaculate and unflinching hold on The Burden kept him upright.
What in the gods' names was happening?
Whatever it was had become audible now, a great groaning deep beneath him. It was as if the whole of the mountain was moaning in agony, coming apart at the seams. The Burden itself began a high pitched keening, responding to some cosmic shift in the surrounding world.
Percy sensed it as well. The air felt thicker than normal. Each breath clung to the inside of his nose and throat. Had it grown a bit hotter? For one who had spent an eternity in the void, each tiny change was an assault on the senses.
There was a great muffled boom from his left, somewhere in the nothingness. The surrounding gray was now swirling at a tornado's pitch, suffused with streaks of black and white that sent spots across Percy's vision. It was like reality was clawing at the edges of his awareness, pushing back the oppressive screen surrounding him. The whispers were a great chorus of voices pounding on his ears. Each gap in the filter only increased the volume. For the first time in ages he caught glimpses of something rectangular reaching around on all sides through the whipping void.
Steps!
Percy gasped aloud, eyes wide as saucers. They were the steps of the theater in front of Kronos' throne! He had forgotten they existed. A memory splashed across his psyche, one of an army ringed on all sides and wetness dripping down his face. There was a body in the corner, or maybe just the ghost of one.
"Perseus!"
The woman's voice whipped him across the ears so hard he flinched. It had never been so loud or so clear.
"Mon cher, are you there?" For the first time, Percy distinctly saw the outline of the woman hovering in the air before him, only the impression of a slender neck and an elegant face. The sheer panic in her voice was not as obscured as her features.
"Yes!" Percy found the strength to answer even as The Burden twisted and bucked in his hands. Each breath was a monumental struggle. "What's happening?" The second row of seats was visible now. The dias hadn't stopped vibrating, the length of the eruptions increasing.
"La bataille finale. The last struggle." Her words had a physical density, like a hammer to the chest. Gone was the energetic sincerity Percy had come to expect. The woman was panting for air - Percy was momentarily spellbound by the half-sight of shapely collarbones heaving up and down. It took until her words sunk in for him to snap out of it.
"You're here?" It was almost too much to hope. His voice came out broken.
The void was howling, pained. A third set of stairs emerged into view. The woman's face drifted closer, still just as ethereal. A set of faded, delicate fingers appeared from below to reach towards his cheek. Percy's skin ached where it should have connected, though there was no real sensation.
"Yes, my love." She seemed fit to bursting with equal joy and stress, eyes little more than flashing white stars suspended in the air. "The time is nearly upon us. But you must do something for me, l'amour de ma vie." Her cheekbones faded from nothingness to half-real before his eyes, high like royalty.
"Anything." The word spat from Percy's mouth before he could even formulate his answer. The son of Poseidon couldn't tear his gaze from her face even as a fourth row of seats teased the edges of his vision.
"Kronos keeping you alive all this time has become his doom, my love." Her words were straightforward, more blunt than she had ever been with him. It seemed the time for secrets had passed. "In his hubris the enemy thought the war already won. Kronos' hasty march on Olympus left many loose ends dangling within our reach." One side of her lips quirked at that, but it was fleeting. "With the other children of The Great Prophecy and his true body stolen away, the Titan Lord was never able to shed his mortal mask. Merci aux dieux pour sa fierté."
A twisted face flashed across Percy's memory, a boy with golden hair and sunken eyes darker than the deepest pit.
"Luke." The name came from nowhere.
"Oui." The woman's answer was grim. "Though the boy has been effectively dead for years, I fear." Percy felt as though that statement should have affected him more than it did. The woman continued. "Kronos has finally realized his fatal error but now it is too late. His defeat is imminent. The forces of Olympus break through the walls of Othrys en ce moment précis."
"Atlas?" Percy found the strength to ask. He pulled it from the depths of furious fire in his stomach.
The woman sensed his anger, and her next words an attempt at soothing. "Out of reach for now, my love. A coward once is a coward toujours." Percy's answering growl set the floor rumbling further. "I know, mon cher. None are more frustrated than I." A grimace flashed across that celestial face. "We must focus on the head of the snake for the moment, while it is still within reach. Once cut, the rest of the body shrivels. Vous le feras, my love."
"Kronos." It wasn't much of a guess.
"Yes." Ghostly eyes flared. "He is near and more desperate than ever. His fear clouds his judgment. A rat caught in a trap." The woman didn't break their locked gazes, connected by something stronger than steel. "But Kronos will not go quietly, mon coeur. He cannot win, but he can still make us lose. If you are forced to drop the sky with the armies of Olympus so close, our forces and all mortal kind below will perish."
A second hand, this one no less graceful, manifested to lay the gentlest of touches on his bowed chest - a tease of air across his skin.
"I meant to be there, but I am not strong enough, my love. I was not allowed." She was suddenly on the verge of tears. "You are our last hope just as you were our first. When he arrives, you must endure. Overcome the impossible once again, dearest Perseus. Sois fort, comme je sais que vous l'ayez."
Their faces were only a breath apart now. Percy could see through her translucent skin to where a seventh set of stairs was laid bare by the retreating void. The bearer of the sky steadied himself, even as the floor below bucked under his knees.
"I can do it." He meant the words with every remaining fiber of his being. More than that, he wanted to do it. The fiery storm in his core refused anything else.
"I will come for you." Her face was as beautiful as the words she spoke, even only half-formed. The strange movement in space behind the woman's head had condensed to great floating sheets of hair.
Percy remembered being told something similar a lifetime ago. No one had ever come for him then.
"Promise?" Something wet trailed down his cheek. Percy's eyes burned almost as much as his back.
"I swear it." Her tone left no doubt. "Sur mon âme. I leave you with all I can spare. Just a little longer, mon idée fixe." Quick as lightning, her face skated close enough to leave the ghost of a kiss on one corner of his mouth.
She was gone.
Percy inhaled in surprise, his nose filling with the scent of roses and chocolate. Deadened limbs, long numb to his perception, surged with renewed vigor. The Burden lifted upward for the first time in ages. Percy's circle of awareness expanded a hundred-fold - he could almost make out the bottom of Kronos' throne of bones at the top of the amphitheater pit.
The shrieking sky tried every trick to throw Percy off, but he would not be deterred. The pain in his limbs could not compare to the strength of the woman's promise. What was a little more effort, a little more of himself to give away?
With a horrendous sound, a scream that tore through both skin and bone and stone, the trembling void around the dais finally gave way. For the first time in years, Percy could once again make out full the majesty of Kronos' stronghold around him.
Percy vaguely recalled the scale boggling the mind even before the Burden, but now it was truly perception warping. The great domed room and hundred-foot columns seemed unreal to someone who hadn't seen anything outside of a few square feet for a practical eternity. Percy was struck silent and immobile at how much of reality he had forgotten was even possible. The great canvas of stars, visible through the stone overhead, was nearly enough to reduce him to fresh tears. Everywhere he looked ignited painful pangs of familiarity.
Still, the Titan's castle had clearly seen better days. Much better.
The spaced black columns seemed to sag under the weight of the bricks above. Some were laying on their sides, great chunks of stone fallen to the floor. Holes in the walls, torn through by something of immense power, revealed a shining blue sky so saturated Percy struggled to comprehend it. There wasn't a single window with any glass left in the pane. Instead their shards littered the floor, reflecting the stars above a thousand times over.
The throne room seemed to breathe, condensing in and out with each earth-shaking groan beneath Percy's knees. The very fortress itself was collapsing, breaking down like a living thing on the verge of death. After drinking in as much of the room as his eyes could handle, Percy's eyes settled at the base of the Titans' seat of power.
A lone figure had appeared.
This far away from the center of the theater and contrasted against the majesty of the collapsing fortress, the misshaped body of Kronos seemed so ironically small. Across the space, Percy and the boy locked eyes.
There was nothing remotely human about the being standing at the edge of the pit. As the form of the titan's prison began to step down each row of seats, the horror of its features was laid bare. It was a wonder Luke's skin was even attached at this point - it slumped in flabby waves over every dip in the boy's skill, partially hiding the eyes and mouth from view. His arms were too long, legs too short.
The ancient enemy of Olympus looked like a misshapen doll in the set of celestial bronze armor he wore. It dwarfed some parts of Kronos' frame yet bulged at the seams at others, wholly grotesque at every angle. There were pits, gaps in the metal torn through by blades or something similar. The over-stuffed doll leaked no blood. Each footfall cracked the ground beneath, disturbing the very fabric of reality as the Titan's power fought to be free. This cacophony of voices in Percy's head grew with each step.
"Perseus Jackson." The words that dripped from Kronos misshapen lips grated like sandpaper. "What a surprise to see you here." Percy couldn't call the expression that melted face made any sort of smile. "We meet again for the last time. How goes holding the sky, I wonder? I hope you are enjoying the life I graciously spared for you." Kronos almost floated onto the last set of stairs before the dais, merely a broken puppet on invisible strings.
Percy's entire being filled with rage. "Fuck you." It took less effort than expected to spit out the response. Kronos' horrific visage was unaffected.
"It's fitting." The Titan hummed, almost as if Percy hadn't said anything at all. "The only thing that could defeat me was my own mercy. Not mortals, not demigods, and not even your Olympians." It was strange, hearing Kronos speak as if he was already writing his own obituary. "My grace extended far enough to even cover my gutless brother. It's unfortunate that at the first sign of hardship he is nowhere to be found. I suppose even the possibility of returning to take up the mantle had him vanishing like a ghost."
The Titan chuckled darkly, the sound more of a wet gurgle through a shredded throat. "My mistake was assuming his defeat of Zeus' brat was anything other than a fluke. I should have killed the pest myself." Kronos' shell bulged from the inside, skin distending and stretching grotesquely. "I never intended to wear such weak flesh for so long. The 'curse of Achilles' indeed. Oh well. The body bloats but it will last long enough for this."
From behind his back, the Titan produced a weapon from thin air. It was a great curved blade held on the end of a long golden staff taller than Kronos' form. The scythe finished materializing in one lumpy hand as the Titan stepped onto the dais. "I suppose I overestimated your intelligence, child. It burns to know your stupidity, your blind faithfulness to Olympus, is what dooms me this day."
Percy couldn't help a chuckle. Faithfulness? What a joke.
Despite his momentary humor, the sight of Kronos' weapon made something in Percy's gut clench. There was a strange power emanating from the long blade. Swirls of gold and dark steel warped and twisted around each other in the metal, each tempting to the eye. Kronos held it as loosely as one might hold a pencil. He was barely even using three fingers.
The chorus of whispers were nervous. Percy could feel they were warning him to be wary. The sky bearer's eyes flashed around the top of the crumbling amphitheater. No help had appeared. He was out of time. The very basics of a desperate plan took root in the sky bearer's brain.
"You were never going to win." Percy tried to sound absolutely sure. It was the longest sentence he had gotten out to date. His weak voice echoed between the great columns of the throne room. The son of Poseidon adjusted the weight of the bottom of the sky on his back, his entire being tense as the Titan drifted ever closer.
"You know nothing." Kronos dismissed Percy's retort neutrally.
Percy's left shoulder was one fire, his fingers nothing but white hot rods of pain. He had to keep Kronos talking.
"I do." The sky bearer grunted, face twisting. "You lost."
"Perhaps so." Kronos slowly twirled his weapon, stepping closer. "But that doesn't mean you shall be victorious. I told you I would kill you, child." The Titan dropped the words casually. "This was back when the pitiful demigod boy was in control, but the words were mine."
The blade of the scythe dropped down to the floor, sparks erupting from where the metal met stone. The unnatural mortal/immortal hybrid stopped just in front of Percy's kneeling form. Sunken, inhuman eyes met his defiant gaze. They were probing. "It seems you don't remember. That's a shame. Ending you now will be so much less satisfying."
Percy couldn't help but bark out a laugh. "Good." His mouth tasted of iron, but he swallowed down the agony.
The weight of the Burden shifted on Percy's back, its licking tendrils brushing close to Kronos' face. Through the Titan's unaffected façade, the sky bearer caught the way the skin flaps on his cheeks twitched backward in fear. Percy found an immense amount of vindictive satisfaction in that. The sky bearer grit his jaw to hold in his own screams.
Kronos' eyes flashed angrily. The hand holding the scythe flexed so hard the knuckles almost bulged out of the skin.
"Goodbye, Perseus." Kronos snarled, all traces of civility dispelled. "I hope that twisted whore is watching this, so that your demise will be the last thing she sees." The words hit a sore spot Percy didn't even know he possessed. "May you meet your gods in Tartarus, filth." The scythe, faster than mortal eyes could comprehend, went to bury itself into his chest.
In the span of a single breath Percy's plan unfolded.
One millimeter before the blade entered flesh, after it had already passed through the fabric of Percy's tattered blue hoodie, it froze. Impossibly, unexpectedly. The blade still vibrated with the friction of parting air, yet it was completely trapped in space.
Percy watched as Kronos' eyes widened, unable to believe the view of a pale hand gripping the handle just at the base of the blade. The Titan's gaze followed up the forearm to the shoulders that held up the sky itself.
For a single moment, time stood still as Percy and the Titan locked eyes. The floor stopped mid-shudder. One great stone column was frozen in the middle of collapsing sideways, the stones themselves simply hung motionless in space. Even the drifting motes of dust around them were locked into place.
Kronos' flabby lips twitched upward for a single breath. The titan redoubled his force on his weapon, as if expecting no resistance. Percy met the expression with his own determined snarl. The fire in his core had risen, fueled into an all consuming blaze that scorched through his veins.
The stillness shattered with an audible crack. Time resumed as the remains of Kronos' power fell to pieces around the sunken amphitheater, rending the very fabric of reality like broken glass. An explosion of released power that had Percy's long ashen hair whipping around his face.
The sky bearer watched as the world suddenly spun back into motion around the dais. The column fell, sending an explosion of dust and crushed stone fragments into the air. The dais resumed its rattling beneath his knees. Where there once was a building smile, there was now nothing on the titan's face but pale disbelief. Instead of moving into the sky bearer's flesh, the blade of the scythe was pushed away inch by inch.
"Impossible." Kronos barely seemed aware he had spoken.
Percy smiled.
With a mighty heave of his free right arm the sky bearer shoved the blade into the gap between his armpit and torso, shooting the thing as far behind him as he could manage. Kronos, attached by his enraged grip - the one tightened by Percy's unexpected resistance - couldn't stop his mortal shell from following.
The two met chest to chest. Percy gazed into the shocked face of the Titan lord and tasted the sweet, sweet flavor of revenge. The sky bearer's teeth were coated with his own blood, wetness dripping down his chin. He ignored it.
With a simple tuck of his stomach, the son of Poseidon crumpled to the ground and ungracefully rolled off the dais. Kronos collapsed to the floor on his stomach, unable to keep his misshapen prison's balance.
The Burden suspended in mid air for another eternal moment.
"No!" The Titan's jaw gaped open unnaturally wide, like a snake unhinging its jaw. "Perseus!" Kronos' desperate cry shook the room, and the first brick from the dome overhead gave way to crash down less than a foot away.
The sky dropped onto Kronos' prone form with a sound like the hammer of the gods striking the earth.
The pit that was Percy's cage for what felt like eons was pulverized instantly. The sunken dais cratered deep into the ground, upsetting the entire foundation of the room. Dust and debris erupted from the impact site, spitting shrapnel high enough to touch the ceiling. The sky continued to burrow through rock and stone, endlessly pressing downwards until it had disappeared from view.
The only thing between The Burden and the earth below was the flesh cage of a Titan lord who would never be granted the dignity to bear it on his hands and knees. The impervious body of Luke, finally in death, found its retribution. The curse of Achilles had once been Kronos' trump card. It would now be his eternal damnation.
With one final earth-shaking groan, the throne room began to succumb to its own weight. It seemed that Othrys followed the way of its master.
Percy's limp form was thrown from the amphitheater by the force of the explosion. His mind was blank with unrelenting agony - shifting the entire weight of The Burden to one shoulder had been the most painful thing he had ever done. Every muscle fiber, every bone fragment, every inch of skin was nothing but boiling lava.
It felt like he was dying.
Percy barely even recognized when his body crashed back to earth near the top ring of steps. He bounced a couple of times, skipping across the stone before coming to rest yards away. Dim, fading eyes watched as the dark throne of the Titans tipped forward, falling slowly over the edge of the pit. Not long after great chunks of the ceiling followed.
It was as if the universe itself was intent on burying Kronos and The Burden that was now his. Each thunderous impact went unheard through his ringing ears. Percy Jackson, finally free, was able to muster a fleeting smile.
"I got him, mom."
The last thing he saw before succumbing to the darkness was a great wave of auburn hair and a pair of eyes that burned brighter than the stars above.