You Can't Or You Won't

by Devon O'Reilly

The opinion of the Strongest is more often than not the most heeded. Strive for that position my dear boy; you carry the hopes and dreams of millions. Weak men can never hope to shoulder such a burden.

8. Chapter 7

"Hate is a bottomless cup. I will pour and pour."

– Euripides

My One-Night Stand Leaves Me A Bad Review (Sonny The Poodle 2: Electric Boogalo)

18 August 2010, The Mansion of Night, Tartarus

An Hour Into Percy's Dreams

THE SOURCE OF HIS NIGHTMARES WAS SIPPING ON A CALMING CHAMOMILE BREW

Staring at Percy's quivering astral form blankly over the rim of her Stygian glass china, her obnoxious slurps of the steaming hot leaf juice only adding further insult to injury. The goddess had lost a couple inches of height from the last he'd seen of her, she towered over him at about 7 and a half feet tall now as opposed to her previous 40.

The goddess had guided his soul(= read dragged kicking and screaming) to her abode in the Mansion of Night after she'd hijacked his dream, something Percy didn't even know was possible. She'd trapped in her kosher living room, a scaled down to size old Victorian complete with fabric patterned walls, tufted furniture, antique rugs and an ever swirling, violet fire-lit chandelier crafted in the motif of the...Lyra constellation?

She'd brewed a cup for Percy too if you could believe it, a steaming cuppa of Royal Milk tea with a swirling chain of interlocked hearts for latte art. He applauded himself in his head that he'd maintained the good table manners not to toss the hot beverage at the goddess' stupid face.

Back to the Primordial though.

She was dressed head to toe in black. Not too much of a shift in the status quo for her if he was being honest, but Percy was drawing attention more to the nature of her attire more than the form if that made sense.

The goddess' former dress had been more...regal. Dignified. The nature of her former clothing had been tailored and fashioned from the star-ridden infinity of space to give off the illusion of unattainable beauty and self-assurance. Every twinkling star and spiraling galaxy had been engraved onto her robes to show off her boundless power and limitless knowledge of the arcane, with each and every tightened knot and stitch of her form-fitting bodycon dress customized to proclaim and enhance her already divine femininity.

It had been an exquisite piece of apparel designed and fit for a queen - nay, a Goddess. A dress the Primordial of Night had donned in an effort to present the picture of a calm and collected omnipotent being with the foreknowledge of the beginning and the end of the known universe.

That once-confident deity was missing in action at the moment, her divine robes traded for a heavily-layered black dress concealing her figure, and a shimmering black headdress – what was it called again? A fascinator? – draped over her head and face.

The goddess looked to be dressed for a rainy funeral rather than tormenting Percy today.

Percy had heard of this manner of dress before from the Aphrodite cabin in passing during the aftermath of the Second Titan War. It was a mode of dress that'd been popular among women back in the 18th Century, a dress made for the mourning of a lost spouse.

A Widow's Weed.

What Percy did next couldn't have been blamed on his ADHD alone. No, this was that Jackson-patented craziness he'd been talking about earlier through and through.

He looked the towering sex offender right in the eye, his heart threatening to burst out of his throat from how hard it was drumming, and asked the Primordial of Night: "Who died?"

...

SMACK

That, dear readers was the sound of Gaea slapping her forehead and wiping it down her face at the sheer hopelessness of his impulsive stupidity.

The son of Poseidon didn't get a second to rib on the fallen goddess before Nyx had him in a firm chokehold 4 feet off the ground, her hat discarded revealing her ethereal beauty to the elements. Beautiful features looking very much like they'd like nothing more than to bash his skull in and use his brain matter for a slushie.

"You... You," The Primordial didn't quite hiss, but she didn't quite seem far from it, "You. Fucking. Bastard. Do you have any idea, any idea at all, WHAT YOU'VE COST ME?! HOW MUCH YOUR FOOLISH ACTIONS HAVE LAIN WASTE TO EONS OF MACHINATIONS?!"

Percy's heart was beating a mile a minute the longer the goddess held onto him, his knees playing a swift vivace medley from how fast they were knocking onto each other. An hour ago he'd been dead on his feet from exhaustion, barely able to even keep his eyes open, but now?

His mother and the Olympian gods themselves would have to bind him to a flat surface with Celestial Bronze and Imperial Gold, and then pump his veins full with enough god-grade anaesthesia to give an elephant heartburn before he'd ever feel the need to vocalize a yawn again.

Wishful thinking if he was being honest, he'd really screwed the pooch here. Forget seeing his mother, Percy doubted he was going to be able to see the sun again at this rate, the goddess was PISSED.

And yet?

Percy couldn't hold back this-this sadistic excitement from bubbling up right inside of him. Months upon months of driving himself stark-raving mad with terror at the merest hint darkness, of running his body ragged with a lack of food because everything he forced himself to eat tasted of the rotten, acidic sulfur of Tartarus, the long, sleepless nights he'd spent on the deck of the Argo II venting out his frustrations on any monster stupid enough to cross him.

He didn't give a shit how much Iris bitched about how much the death of her sisters was disrupting her feng shui, the scathing taunts he'd received from those fucking harpies had more than justified their deaths. That he hadn't ripped the spines from the bird ladies' necks was a mercy in and of itself.

What he was trying to get across though, was that his life so far had been one downhill dirt road after downhill dirt road and the root cause he could place all of that blame on was right before him. The source of his nightmares was holding Percy right here by the throat bitching to him about how he'd fucked up her life.

All was right in the universe, this was sensational.

This was the euphoria the fans had felt when Luke had turned Darth Vader to the Light.

No, this must have been what the French felt like with that 'Vive la révolution' bit.

This was justice.

Percy felt like he'd just made a breakthrough in the ever-expanding field of demigod insolence.

He'd always known he was the best at what he did when it came to pissing off immortals – Di immortales it came to him like a gut instinct – but damn, the way Nyx was looking at him now you'd think he killed her kids in front of her.

Oh wait, LOL.

Nyx's anger wasn't coming from his question exactly, it had been a factor no doubt, but it wasn't the reason for it. Percy had somehow managed to drive an Elder Primordial to mouth-frothing, head-banging rage by accident.

Who else did you know was doing it like big PJ?

Not even the threat of his 'body and soul' getting devoured by the raging goddess was enough to wipe off the big fat smile on his face, or maybe his drunken felicity was a result of the asphyxiation...meh the semantics were bullshit.

Percy was feeling good. His confidence at a high that was almost unnatural, excuse his lack of self-preservation for wanting rub some acid in the wound.

"My 'glorious' Lady Nyx ," He managed to get out through raspy chuckles, finally able to gather the courage to call Her by 'her' name, "I gotta ask ya here, how exactly could a no-good nothing like me affect someone as...as 'all-encompassing' as yourself." He questioned sweetly, lapping up every pulsing, golden vein that appeared on Nyx's stupid pale forehead, "I mean, last I recalled I was nothing to you, my words meant nothing to you, my victories meant-and your hands are tightening harder against my throat... ack...you're really... cough...giving it your... wheeze...all aren't ya?"

"Impertinent, conceited, insignificant CUR! STOP TALKING!" The Primordial roared...but it really came out as more of a quivering whine.

Percy's head was more purple – purpler? – than a Boozy Lavender at this point, and his vision was getting blurred by a field of darkening red. He had a feeling – just an inkling of a thought mind you – that he might have bitten a bit more than he could chew here, the goddess might actually jump the gun and kill him at this rate.

He had the makings of a 'plan' but the odds of it backfiring on him were about 10 to 1 against his favor here...how much of that really mattered when his choices here were between death by slow strangulation or death by slower strangulation was beyond him. Killing him wouldn't do much more than wake him up faster none the worse for wear, why not have some fun while he could?

He gestured for Nyx to come closer, his malicious grin only rising when he noticed she actually drifted closer to his face.

"...rder."

" What? "

"Do it... harder."

The goddess didn't waste a single second in flinging Percy away from her like he was a disgusting sewer rat. His body slammed into air nearby china cabinet with enough force to take away the breath from his metaphysical lungs, he didn't get a moment to congratulate himself for the ingenuity of his 'plan' before the goddess came down on him with the fury of a woman scorned, stamping on his solar plexus over and over again enough times to leave a 6 foot deep crater in the obsidian flooring.

"THAT WAS YOUR PLAN?!" Gaea screeched in his head. Which was...something he guessed?

Percy had forgotten she was even here.

"Are you satisfied?! Is this what you wanted? Was the temptation to gloat truly that unbearable?" Nyx screeched at his broken form, stamping on his face with her black boots when he tried reaching up to hold her foot back, " I WOULD HAVE HAD HIM BACK! YOU'VE RUINED EVERYTHING FOR ME! EVERYTHING!"

The goddess fell down to her knees in anguish at the last word, tears of gold streaming down her cheeks and sizzling like water on a hot iron whenever they splashed upon the rubble and detritus.

"Akhlys, my child, forgive me." She begged quietly, her voice no higher than a meek whisper. " Erebus, my- I failed you. I failed you. "

Percy found it hard to care for the madwoman's plight, let alone pity her. Where was this guilt when she'd pitted him against her daughter in a duel to the death? When she'd pushed him to go so far past his limits he'd almost burnt himself alive?

Where was this humanity when this monster had raped him?

No, he felt nothing at all for Nyx's wailing.

Nothing at all but a cold indifference. Let the withered hag choke on the consequences of her own actions for the rest of time, see if he cared.

His mind was deadset on more pressing matters: His horribly mangled body.

No joke, Percy would've spent the rest of his short life as a disfigured cripple if he'd gotten this much damage as anything but an astral projection, and even then he didn't doubt this much mangling to his dream avatar wouldn't leave him with a fair bit of brain damage. The obsidian and the goddess above him were caked in his lifeblood, he could feel his chest cavity touching down on his spine and his ribs taking refuge in his lungs with each choked breath. His internal organs were pushed so far up to his neck that he imagined he'd be able to cough up his liver.

Percy was in agonizing pain...but he would live. He'd be more than capable of recovery the mere moment he managed to wake himself up, he'd gotten one over on his tormentor and now all that was left for him to find a way to get out of this dream with what little remained of his dignity.

With no particular destination in mind Percy continued to crawl away from his captor, the goddess' subdued wails already an afterthought in his head.

But, Nyx wouldn't be Nyx if she wasn't the most difficult sore loser he'd ever had the displeasure of meeting.

"War it is then. There is nothing left for me to lose." The goddess croaked, the devastated acceptance in her tone able to stop Percy in his tracks before her words registered.

"Wait...what?"

He turned his head back to the goddess in urgency, his horror only intensifying upon finding her clad in black plate and mail with silver and gold accents, the piece and the flowing violet cape cloaking her dotted with stars and the iconography of the eldritch horrors of the night. On the center of her breastplate were the animated images of two distinct colored wolves hunting down the Sun and the Moon, chasing and chasing but never quite reaching the celestial bodies...but they were very close.

Far too close for comfort.

The goddess' face was bare, her pale aristocratic features and golden-moon orbs devoid of any sort of positive emotion towards Percy as she sniffed at his mutilated form in distaste. In one hand she held an open-faced helmet bearing the insignia of the House of Night and her chariot's barbed whip, in the other was a Stygian Iron longsword with sparking ancient runes along it's length.

Her armor was awesome if a tad bit overkill, but that was irrelevant to him right now. "What do you mean 'War it is then'? What kind of war are you talking about here. Nerf wars? Mud wars? Legal wars? Does your evil book club have War of the Worlds for this weeks reading or something, tell me what War Nyx?!"

This...this oxymoron of an eloquent basket-case looked him right in the eyes as she walked past him, her gait slow and measured as her armored footfalls echoed like crashing boulders in the empty, ruined living room.

"Hey! I'm talking to you! What war?!" Percy screamed, dragging himself through the gravel like a mangy dog. "Why is that your go-to? Can't we all just settle our differences over rainbows and weed or something? NYX! Stop rig-"

He managed to grab a hold of her polished iron boots, only to get sent soaring from a kick that damn near knocked out his jaw for his efforts. His body felt weightless flying in the air for several seconds before the goddess slammed his back to a wall with a palm on his crushed chest, the screeching sound of stone giving way to metal as Nyx stabbed her blade right next to his ears nearly deafening him.

"Did..." He started weakly, stalling for a few beats to catch his breath, "Did that make you feel better? You're welcome. Now tell me what I want to know!"

The goddess glared at him for several seconds before her perfect purple lips parted, he dared to hope for an answer...

Percy really needed to learn to stop getting suckered by this chick.

Nyx cocked back her sharpened gauntlet-clad fist and pounded him right on the face, his vision clouded with pain and blood as her vicious strike tore his nose apart. She pulled back her fist nice and slow, a sadistic smirk sullying her face as she watched his blood trail with it. She leveled another punch to his face as he tried to fight her off, this one taking out teeth and cratering the wall behind him in a spider-web fracture.

Another punch to his reeling skull split his left eye in two. One more shattered his shaky jaw, the blow nearly popping his skull like a ripe pimple, and the final one sent him flying a dozen yards through the wall.

He rolled along the obsidian flooring for several seconds before coming to a stop in the center of an ancient study, the faint crackling of a violet-colored hearth echoing through the chamber from the fireplace. Percy couldn't do much more than groan in pain at the moment so excuse him if he wasn't quite feeling like giving an artistic summary of the room, but his eyes - or eye as it were - were able to catch a glimpse of a towering portrait of what looked to be a...child?

A child cradling a corpse.

With the positioning of the portrait over the caged fireplace, it almost looked like the kid was sacrificing the body to the violet flames.

He didn't get much time to speculate on the identity of the painting model before the sound of Nyx's metallic footsteps echoed behind him, her signature haunting chortle announcing her arrival like a Hollywood red carpet.

"By Chaos, you have no idea how satisfying that was for me. I almost don't want to hang your mother and that wretched Owlspawn by their entrails anymore," She pondered jovially, "Hmm...no I want to. I really want to, especially the girl. Most definitely the girl. It comes as no surprise my failure of a sister would fail to kill off such a weakling. "

Percy could feel Gaea's indignation at the insult getting curbstomped by a devastating amount of fear, he was just now realizing how utterly silent the goddess had been since they'd encountered Nyx.

Although, why the Earth Mother was more terrified of the Night than Percy was remained anyone's guess.

"Wuhduhyuh... wuhduhyuh..." Percy mumbled through sheer willpower, his ravaged mouth barely holding onto his teeth at this point.

The goddess loomed over him with a mocking, sadistic smirk.

"Hm? What was that child? My apologies, I hardly doubt you can manage to articulate words what with your...everything so devastated. " She joked as she gestured a bloodied hand at his misfortune, " I'd heal you, but I'm quite sure I'd murder you if I had to force myself to listen to another minute of your incessant prattle."

Nyx grabbed a hold of his leg and pulled him over to the fireside chairs, his broken body draping over the crimson antique piece like a discarded jacket.

She clapped her armored hands together as she took a seat on the adjacent recliner, "So, we'll do it like this. I shall speak. You shall listen and not speak a word. And if your obedience so pleases me, I might do you a favor and fix you. Are my terms agreeable? Go 'murrr' once if that is acceptable. "

"... G...guh... fugguhsuf."

"I'll take it." Nyx conceded with an enthusiastic finger snap "Now, where shall we begin...ah yes, War. I cannot claim to not understand where your trepidation stems from child. When a Primordial worth their salt truly threatens something as serious as total warfare, not the half-baked reunion gathering my disgracefully departed sister organized for you neanderthals upstairs, it must not be taken in jest."

The Primordial of Night continued with an understanding nod, unaware of the growing conniption Gaea was experiencing inside his head at her glossed-over barb.

"And yet I fully intend on assembling the armies of my court to the surface and educating you hairless apes in a one-sided slaughter the likes of which you have never seen. The demigod forces of Olympus are soundly decimated. The Penumbran Spades can more than likely be handled for the right price, the House of Life shall bend or they shall break if they dare overstep, and the dimwitted imbeciles overseeing the Triumvirate are barely even a nuisance worth pondering upon."

Nyx ticked off her fingers absently. Like all of those accrued enemies were little more than squeaking chihuahuas in her eyes...come to think of it, thinking of Zeus as a lightning-patterned chihuahua did do wonders for his mood.

What was that saying?

'Laughter was the best medicine'?

Yeah, a yipping chihuahua named Zeus squeaking to no end about his lightning-shaped chew toy gone missing, that was a thought to get the dopamine rushing.

He could do with a Tylenol or 40 for his everything though.

"The denizens of Mount Meru and the Celestial Bureaucracy would not dare to step an inch outside of their own safe little bubble. Thrice-damned Ouranos made sure of that...the Monkey too to be honest,"

Percy noticed how the goddess' voice seemed to take on a more appreciative tone at the mention of this 'Monkey'. What was that about?

"...And Wodanaz is leashed far too tight by his own paranoia to take up arms against me. The most pressing concern lies in the forces of Takamagahara, theirs is a delicate state of affairs." She admitted with great reluctance.

Whoever these takama-whatta blokes were, Percy needed them on speed-dial expeditiously. Anyone dangerous enough to give Nyx of all gods pause was someone he wanted in his corner.

Naturally, Nyx had to shit all over his pedestal before he could so much as place his participation award on it.

"But, they would never take up arms with Olympus. Not after the fate of the Kotoamatsukami and Kagutsuchi, a fact you can thank Ouranos and your father for all things considered. An empty promise to not encroach on their territories will only have them wishing me the best in my vendetta." She let out a dark chuckle, "They'll use the surviving stragglers for target practice."

"So yes brat, this is the most opportune moment for me to strike. The odds are overwhelmingly in my favor and the fires of my wrath have never been more stoked to burn that bloated rock to ashes."

This was what he feared.

This was Nyx at her most terrifying, her omnipotence was an afterthought as far as Percy was concerned, that didn't scare him much. It was her entitlement to all of existence in its entirety that really kept him up at night.

Percy knew of narcissism, his friends had literally encountered the origin of the word on their adventure. It was a mental health condition in which its victims suffered from an over-inflated sense of their own importance. And while most people deemed the condition pretty harmless all things considered, Percy found himself hoping they never had the 'honor' of ever encountering a loud n proud narcissist like Nyx.

He wagered the Primordial of Night could out-narcissist Narcissus himself.

Nyx was an asshole, no doubt, but she was an all-powerful asshole. In her eyes everything and everyone belonged to her, dancing on and on everlasting for her pleasure...and words couldn't do enough justice to how terrifying such a mindset could be in the hands of such an omnipotent being.

There were no laws she'd ever willingly accede to, no lines she wouldn't cross at a moments notice if the feeling so pleased her. In her own words such was the right of the mighty, as far as she was concerned nobody beneath her should ever have the audacity to so much as breathe within her presence unless she gave them assent.

"And that's exactly what I'm going to do, after all who can stop me?"

Who indeed.

Percy wasn't stupid. He, more than anyone, knew he didn't quite have the power to match the Primordial on equal terms. He probably never would. It had taken a prophecy set in stone thousands of years before his inception and a series of perfectly scattered bullshit for him to only just pull off a win against Gaea and her gathered army. And even then, putting aside the fact Percy had almost died trying to kill the goddess, the cost had been far too high for his family to bear.

But...maybe they cou-

Gaea put a stop to that tomfoolery with a metaphorical snap of her fingers, an array of visions and introspective thoughts slammed into his head like an aerial barrage in the span of a second and Percy saw what a war with a battle-tested Primordial would truly look like.

Di immortales, a war against Nyx would be...gods it would be apocalyptic.

It was clear to Percy then and there that Gaea, for all her anger and megalomania, truly did love their planet. The Earth was her body and more importantly...her one true gift from her mother. The fallen goddess would never willingly bring any sort lasting harm to it, her goal was to wash away the pesky infractions and start things over from scratch not to destroy.

It was the complete opposite for Nyx.

The goddess for some reason or the other had some unexplainable beef with her dead sister that he wasn't quite willing to bother approaching with a ten foot pole, not that Gaea felt like sharing that information to begin with.

Nyx wanted to utterly violate the Earth.

Nyx wanted to take away and destroy everything worth loving on the planet.

Nyx would be more than willing to cull the most law-abiding, righteous mortals that could give the planet any sort of meaning to it and fill it to the brim with the most disgusting, the most evil and worthless banes to society the Fields of Punishment themselves would reject. For kicks.

Nyx hated her sister.

She wouldn't hesitate to cross any lines or violate any silly Ancient Laws so long as she could get her due.

The 'war' she was describing wouldn't be a war, it wouldn't be a series of one-on-one battles out in the middle of nowhere where innocent casualties could be kept to a controlled minimum. It would be a divine desolation on par with the Christian stories of the Rapture itself.

The 'indomitable will' and fighting skills of the mortals would be equivalent to bugs on a windshield when the very air was fire, poison and never-ending darkness.

From the gate, Nyx, Tartarus and every single dark god in her court would ascend out of the pit with the full divine force of their True Forms, announcing their arrival with biblical plagues, hellfire, brimstone, cinder, fallen stars and the destruction of the very sun and moon itself...as a start.

In the wake of a dark world, the warriors of her court would rampage through the lands unchecked atop fire-breathing mounts of shadow and metal, to dye earthen plains of emerald and gold red with the blood of any soul unfortunate enough to sample a taste of their Stygian Iron. The Gates of Hades would burst forth in rancor from the sudden influx of souls, their master long-since bedridden from the utter evisceration of his realm, and spark the powder keg for a never-ending age of fracture and cruelty. Law and Order long since tossed to the wayside.

It would be a battle for survival with every man and woman fighting for themselves alone, oceans of blood dotted with the bodies of trampled children caught in the way of fleeing mortals.

In response the gods of Olympus - and...the others? - would meet the now unavoidable challenge head-on with lightning, thunder and divine fury. Zeus himself, followed by the still remaining hosts of the heavens, would take to the fields with all the divine might he could muster, countries – perhaps entire continents – would fall to the waves in the wake of their first clash before everything fully went to shit.

Long-forgotten creatures of the depths would wake from their eternal slumber to get a piece of the action, old wards off of the planet would break entirely releasing their malevolent prisoners to the fray for blood-soaked vengeance. It wouldn't matter who was stronger than who at that point.

Who would win wouldn't even be a cause for debate, because everyone would lose.

The vision ended in an instant, barely a second having passed in the dream world for him, but Percy would be glad if he could go back to the boy he was but a second ago. This was all too much.

"She can't do that can she? Chaos would have to step in at some point right? RIGHT?!"

"..."

"ANSWER ME GAIA!"

Nothing.

The fallen Primordial did nothing to reassure him.

Percy would have roared at the absurdity of it all if his body wasn't so fucked up.

This couldn't be happening. It couldn't be happening!

'War it is then' What the fuck was she talking about?!

Ares himself would feel appalled at the very thought of the comparison, the demigods had just gotten back from a war and their reward was to be sent to a slaughterhouse?!

Nyx continued uncaring of his mental disposition, "Short of Chaos, I am the single most powerful entity in this fractured plane of existence. Ananke is broken. Pontus and Thalassa slumber eternally. Aether, Hemera and Tartarus belong to me...and the rest of the Adjudicators travel onwards in the Great Beyond. By the time word of my actions reach them, it will be far too late." Nyx climbed out of her seat and prowled to Percy, disgust clouding her features as she leveled a mighty backhand to his face, "You would have been among them, those Adjudicators. A worthless weakling like yourself would have achieved an apotheosis to elevate you to the highest cadre of Divine Entities the realms have ever seen!"

Nyx pushed his head further into his seat and sent the aged furniture toppling with his body as she stormed about the room in a rage, spouting more and more non-intelligible babble for Percy to do... something with. He wasn't sure why the goddess seemed to think he should understand any of what she was saying.

"My mark had already been placed upon you, triumphing over Akhlys and her subsequent death had served as the perfect offering! In a few short months your divine authority would have been ripe enough to finally make headway with your destiny, to move forward with my ambitions!"

Nyx lifted him by his throat again and roared in his face, "Everything was set in place, how could you have ruined my plans so thoroughly?!"

"Perseus do something! Fight, kill yourself, do something!" Gaia chimed in unhelpfully.

"Do what? I'm missing a jaw and an eye you hag, don't talk to me."

Nyx poised her clawed gauntlets right above Percy's heart and stabbed right through him, pain and relief flowing through his body as her divine power repaired every single wound on his body she'd inflicted. Most of her healing was focused on his hanging jaw, the phantom pains of the loss turning into actual pain as Percy howled in agony.

Nyx gave him another bitch-slap as she shook him for an answer, "Use your words while you yet draw breath bastard, what did you-"

The goddess' words were cut short as she staggered away from him like she'd been shot, her golden orbs frozen and her mouth hanging in muted horror.

She was trembling.

Nyx was trembling in fear or something else, Percy didn't know or care.

His body was mostly healed now.

He had to get of here. Fast. He turned on his heel to run through the hole he'd been punched through, but found his arm trapped in a vice-like grip. He looked upwards in alarm, to Nyx's horrified golden eyes.

The goddess gripped at Percy's scalp and squeezed, her voice was hard as iron as she muttered, "...Gaia?"

"RUN PERSEUS!!"

Nyx winced in discomfort at the volume, her hand coming to massage her temples, "I can...I can hear your thoughts now. Why did I never question the absence? No. Why is my dead sister's Animus trapped inside of your body Perseus?!"

Percy had the feeling the Primordial wasn't just talking about ghosts with the way she intoned the word Animus, like it had a deeper meaning attached to it he couldn't yet see. But, his introspective passed when the goddess started to cackle in triumph, her golden eyes blown to wide, manic saucers as her midnight locks grew disheveled and deranged.

"...He still lives." Nyx muttered with palpable awe, "The Blessed One yet continues to live inside of you! My plans may-No! This doesn't make any sense! How did...who would dare to-"

The goddess fazed her hand through Percy's bound chest and searched through his soul, her hand coming to a stop right on a shining crystal ball patterned with spider-web fractures right where his navel would be. Nyx merely tapped on the ball before she was sent flying, her breastplate and mail rent in two with her arm sliced off at the base of her elbow.

It was still a better lot than the torment both Percy and Gaia received.

Both of their collective souls warped upon each other along a sinusoidal curve before getting sliced in twos? Tens? Hundreds? Thousands? And realigning in the span of a picosecond. Percy's soul was burning him alive from the inside out, the pairs bloodcurdling screams reaching a morbid crescendo as Percy's brain and pulsing heart protruded from his flesh, the vital organs fighting to remove themselves from his body.

The ground surrounding Percy just didn't exist anymore, a shell of pure ocean-green energy laced with gold engulfing his body and stretching outwards of the study without a care. As quick as the shell appeared, it faded completely to reveal a room devastated to it's foundations, burning with acid-green flames, and a lone pillar of obsidian holding up a screaming boy.

Percy was practically catatonic by the time Nyx came around again, his muttered whimpers of Pater...Pater filling the ruins as Nyx regenerated her lost limb with a scowl. She flew up to Percy's pillar and laid a hand onto his shoulder, the air crackling with dark, eldritch energy as she murmured a lost incantation into the aether and reversed the damage to his mind and body as well as her mansion.

"...Message received. Your soul is off-limits it seems." Nyx stood up and dusted her hands clean of the blood, letting out a long-suffering sigh as she said: "You live to suffer another day Gaia, and make no mistake, that is the only feasible path this fate presents to you. A thousand curses upon you Mother, you steered clear of our affairs all these eons, why now?"

She paced about the restored floor, mumbling about something or the other as Percy shook and trembled on the floor, his eyes blown wide in terror even as his arms came to wrap around his body.

What on Earth had he seen?

"That battle...I do not know what transpired underneath the waves, but the sheer layers of old magic attached to the spell...could it be...but that shouldn't be possible, Zeus would have made sure to..." She trailed off unsteadily, before calling out to Percy, "Oi! Brat! Look at me!"

Percy didn't budge. His mind far too swamped with the images he saw and the pain his own soul had wrought upon him to care about the Primordials needs. A fact Nyx really didn't appreciate. The goddess pounced on him like a pack of hungry wolves, his head fitting in her massive hands like a glove. She tilted his face to her shining eyes and looked.

In an instant, misty wards and mental barriers were pushed to the side as the goddess tore through every memory she could find of his battle with Gaia. The weird tree roots that had connected their souls upon Gaia's death, the power he'd expended in manipulating her ichor, Annabeth's pleas for him to leave her, and his poor showing against Gaia in their first bout before coming to a stop at the crux of the problem.

The ascending comet.

Percy thought back to the oddity. How strange it had appeared to him that the ascending comet had missed the goddess. How it had looked, for a tenth of a second, like the fireball had been nudged to the side.

He'd assumed it to be the whims of Nyx given the fact it had happened in her domain, but if it wasn't...if it was...

His musings were cut short when the memory collapsed in on itself, Nyx's astral projection ejected out of his body with a ringing boom by a bright burst of golden energy. The action occurred in an hour of a second, yet the gleaming holographic image of the massive blood-red spindle of golden thread may as well have been burned into Percy retinas.

"So that's what it was..." She voiced with strangled puffs, beads of sweat dribbling from her forehead in exertion, "Chaos, Poseidon even the Owlspawn had a hand to play in it...that is to be expected I suppose..." Nyx rose to her feet and clawed at her chest as she seethed, "Mother throwing Gaia to the wolves has long since become a welcome constant, yes I'm aware, but you sister...how dare you betray me Ananke?"

Y*C*O*Y*W

18 August 2010, The Crypt, The Citadel of the Old Ones, Light years Beyond The Milky Way Galaxy

PRIMORDIAL'S WERE BULLSHIT

Percy had said it before and it was looking like he'd be saying it till the day he died at this rate.

Nyx had merely snapped her fingers and it was if reality had collapsed in on itself. Gone was the ancient study, in an instant the both of them of had teleported farther than any mortal had ever gone in the history of ever.

Percy wasn't the brightest tool in the shed, and it might have been the vertigo screwing with him, but he was pretty sure Tartarus didn't have a chewed off blood moon...or a dead black hole for that matter.

Nyx had dropped them off at the entrance of a vast endless cavern criss-crossed high and low with weighty, Stygian Iron anchor chains and warding talismans glowing purple with eldritch energy. The chains converged at the center of the cavern, the taut links burning white-hot as they wrapped around a roaring column of ghost-white flames. Starting from the ground up and going further beyond the roof of the cavern, the flames seemed to act as the sole core of the planet, with phantom wails howling out in the negative the closer the mismatched party tried to get it.

Nyx gripped Percy by the hand and dragged him to the edge of the flame pillar, uncaring of the phantom warnings, a sphere of holographic runes arcing around her wrist as she murmured a strange incantation to herself.

"What is this place Nyx..."

The goddess ignored him. Shocker.

She placed a clawed hand on the flames and ripped the towering conflagration away like one would a bride's veil, the inferno fizzled out to reveal a mutilated corpse of an armored giant bound by it's hands and torso. The visible parts of it's body were covered in third degree burns and scorch marks, a massive laceration on it's chest revealing a beating heart still pumping with golden ichor.

"Erebus and Chronos..." Gaia murmured with a hint of horror, "Nyx, you didn't..."

"Shut up."

Nyx went to work, clawing out the pumping heart from the corpse's chest and dousing her hands with it's ichor, her hands became frenetic blurs as she began to inscribe ancient glyphs around the scorched earth.

"It was never my intention to use them this way...to-to desecrate their memories so, but I was desperate! I still am to this day." She confessed with a mote of regret, before gritting her teeth in anger, "Perseus was never meant to fight you Gaia! The ignorant fool expended so much energy prematurely Chaos of all Gods had to step in to prevent him killing himself! Don't you see it?! Ananke has gone too far in her meddling, long since tarnished the esteem of her station. I cannot allow her any more leeway to wreck my plans."

"And if those plans are better off never seeing the light of day?! This is blasphemy sister! A violation upon the-"

The fallen goddess was cut off by a violent explosion of malevolent power, a swirling torrent of violet flames lighting up the glyphs like falling dominoes. With the addition of the flames Percy could see the structure of the symbol all too clearly.

The glyphs were arranged together in the pattern of a wavy pentagram with an eye in the center, with a pillar of flame where the pupil should be.

"Ananke believes herself infallible, untouchable in her own gilded cage," Nyx voiced the word 'untouchable' with so much contrariety Percy actually felt he understood the meaning of the word contrary, "She forgets just who I am. What I had to overcome to thrive in that War."

Nyx placed a clawed hand right above her face and stabbed, a grunt of pain sounding out as she ripped out her own eyeball from it's socket and offered it to the flames. A foreboding bell tolled loud and true all around them in acceptance of the offering.

"An eye for an eye. I share with you the Misfortune of the Promised Day Ananke Adrasteia, the aspect of Inevitability, let our ends forever be shared and engraved in the ethos of the cosmos now and evermore." The Primordial of Night declared, spiderweb fractures forming in the air and all around the cavern as something integral to the universe was forcibly altered by the curse.

She tossed the still beating heart into the eldritch flames as she chanted "The heart of Chronos, the One Favored Above All. I disbar you from the Authority of Order Ananke Tecmor, the aspect of Purpose and Ordinance, let the realms remain plagued by rancor and bedlam till the Promised Day."

Another set of reality-shattering fractures closed in on them, this time followed by a blood-curdling wail that sounded all across space and time. It was a cry of pain and sorrow.

It was the grief of a lover.

The grief of Ananke.

The air pulsed with a surge of energy, the cracks in reality already breaking apart to reveal the pitch-black void on the other side. Thousands of massive, gnarled hands the color of bone gripped onto the breaks and threatened to pull apart the fabric of reality by force before Nyx could get the chance.

"The wards are already failing eh? Time to finish this."

Nyx grabbed Percy by his hand, her bloodied face the picture of resignation as she sliced a gash in the center of his palm right on the scar Annabeth had given him. He struggled against the goddess' ironclad hold for a few seconds before she backhanded him with a huff.

"I must say, I underestimated that girl severely." She grumbled with menace, her voice as rough as sandpaper even whilst his lifeblood leaked into the flames, "Had she shown even an inkling of the cunning she and your father had applied in placing that seal upon you during our encounter, I would have never allowed her to leave that Pit alive. Even now she remains clouded from my vision, how infuriating!"

That threw Percy for a loop, his messy wound forgotten as dozens of questions threatened to burst from him the longer the goddess continued to gripe about his ex.

At the forefront: "What do you mean 'she remains clouded from my vision'?"

Alas, the goddess chose not to dignify that question with a response.

"The blood of the aggrieved. I bring down the Curse of Volatility upon you Ananke Anacaea, the aspect of Inexorability, let the path of Perseus Meredith Jackson...let the destiny of the Final Shepherd, continue to tarry on eternally in phantasmal limbo from now till the end of times!"

A cataclysmic roar sounded out from all around them at the final curse, before a dramatic click snapped everything into place. Nyx shielded Percy with her body as a final explosion of power demolished the last of the remaining wards and sent the lost planet into a sea of all-devouring azure-blue flames.

The mutilated corpse of Erebus burning to ashes right before them.

The world twisted and bent around them for an instant before the pair of them stumbled into the familiar ancient study, like the excursion they had just made had never even happened.

It was over, yet it had only just begun.

Even now, in the darkest recesses of his mind, Percy could feel something threatening to burst all around them. Someone – a lot of someones – weren't happy with the events that had just transpired, whether or not there would be a reckoning wasn't in question.

It was when.

"Rest assured, war will not grace the Bones of Gaia from now henceforth...at least not by my hands," The Primordial let out a dark, foreboding chuckle, her half-lidded eyes clouded with exhaustion and a hint of satisfaction, "But you boy?"

She turned that accursed golden orb his way one more time, and Percy had never wanted to be an inanimate object so badly in his life, at least then he could expect the goddess throw him out once he'd outlived his usefulness.

The teary-eyed look Nyx gave him was one you could only expect from an enemy you had taken everything from.

It was a look of utter hatred.

Malevolent hatred that could never hope to be sated or amended with time or apologies.

A desperate hatred birthed from a monster with nothing left to lose.

Deep violet flames the size of bonfires erupted from all around the study entrapping the two of them. Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide, Percy couldn't ignore the vivid images the flames painted and erased second by second.

Images of...him.

Versions of Percy so genuine yet so...different he was lost for words.

"Perseus Meredith Jackson." The goddess intoned his name like it was magical, like it had a hidden power to it she couldn't wait any longer to eviscerate. She turned a hand to caress an image, "The Liberating Conqueror."

This Percy looked about his age, his white hair was cut short and mixed in with thick streaks of black, his mouth bloody and his eyes blazing. Dressed in a maroon leather jacket and a firm looking set of body armor, a weighty pair of gauntlets, a utility belt and combat boots. He had his hand raised in the air, Riptide's Celestial Bronze caked in ichor and blood, as he roared at an armored crowd of warriors, wolves and monsters in triumph.

"The Enduring Warrior."

False-Percy #2 had his back to them, his body covered in bloody bandages, even as he stood in the middle of a screaming blizzard, with the few open spots dotted with strange markings and tattoos. His hands were scrunched into angry fists as he looked to be praying over a sea of graves, stray teardrops sent flying to the wind.

"The Protector of the Innocent."

This version of him was...weird. Very weird and so unlike him. For one he was older than he was, physically in his late twenties if Percy's guess was any worth, but that's where the weirdness came from. This Percy looked 20-something, but the weight and lifelessness in his eyes made him feel so much older.

He was dressed in exquisite pitch-black armor and robes with royal blue accents, his posture betrayed an assured confidence original Percy didn't quite have as he smiled at the crowds . Flanking his sides were powerful looking men and women dressed in brightly-colored spandex, a powerful-looking man dressed in blue spandex and red boots with a red and yellow S on his chest and a beautiful Mediterranean woman in a comically revealing set of clothes.

The heroes and civilians all looked at weird-Percy with smiles of adoration and fanatical awe, yet the guy couldn't do more than stare at them like they were worth less than nothing to him. The arrogance was so foreign to him, so not who he was, that Percy almost couldn't process the fact that this guy was supposed to be the good guy. This was supposed to be the 'Protector of the Innocent'.

"The Arbiter of Creation's Will."

Percy #4 was more or less the same as Weird-Percy right down to the aged eyes, eternal 20-something and confident-douchey demeanor, but with a much brighter color palette and disposition. This Percy was styled exclusively in white and gold, the only deviation from his get-up being a set of worn, black arm sleeves. Why the guy bothered with the battle-beaten clothing was beyond Percy.

Angel-Percy looked calm and at peace with himself as his amused golden eyes roved over an eclectic bunch of individuals, one of them being a walking talking human-sized monkey with a cool-looking set of gold, lamellar armor and a thick staff topped with solid gold at the ends. Right next to the monkey was a smug-looking blonde warrior with golden plate armor topped with a Celtic knot sigil and a glowing golden spear, and the last of the group was a massive mountain of muscle with fiery red hair and soft hazel eyes, even from his sitting position he still towered over the group by a few feet.

Just as the mountain man let out a belting laugh at something the talking monkey had said, Angel-Percy looked right at Percy from beyond the veil with a hint of surprise, his lips parted for a bit before he gave Percy a soft, somber smile as if it to say:

It's hard. I get it, but hang in there. It'll all work out someday.

How the guy had managed to convey all that with a single gesture was all the evidence needed for Percy to decide he kinda liked this guy.

At the very least, a hundred times more than the douche from before. Whereas Weird-Percy had gotten immortality and gone full on Mr. D, with the whole nine yards of bitterness and douchebaggery, this guy had gotten all that - and probably more - and yet he could still live and enjoy the simple times with genuine fondness among friends.

He could still be human.

The thought put a faint smile on Percy's face. At least until Nyx wiped away the image.

"And my personal favorite, the Destroyer of Destroyers."

False-Percy #5 was terrifying.

Weird-Percy and Angel-Percy looked alien to him no doubt, but Slasher-Percy was going to keep him up at night.

A malevolent-looking entity, covered head-to-toe in blood, ichor and poison, none too dissimilar from the monsters that plagued the darkest depths of Tartarus. From his head protruded wicked-sharp bull-horns with pieces of flesh still gushing blood hooked onto them, his eyes shone like mismatched suns in the dark-gray abyss he found himself in, one orb acid green and the other a deep lilac with the symbol of a swirling Star of David right where it's pupil should've been.

Slasher-Percy had his hand wrapped around the hilt of a massive curved, single-edged cleaver, hollowed out in the middle, bigger and wider than his body, the entirety of the blade shrouded in blazing, uncontrolled flames the color of deep violet, with runes and hieroglyphs etched onto the length of the blade. He was thousands of feet above the ground, looking down on the world from a platform of ice, his glowing eyes were locked onto...

Annabeth.

No, not just Annabeth. Poseidon was there too, and Jason, and Clarisse and and...everyone. His whole family was looking at him with more than a little bit of fear, their grips on their weapons tightening as Slasher-Percy started to laugh uncontrollably.

Above him were a set of massive violet fireballs the size of castles arranged in a swirling, concentric circle, the miniature suns poised to plunge the lands below him in an eternity of never-ending flames. Slasher-Percy let out a booming roar before tearing down his cleaver in finality, the suns taking up the call and striking down on the land with the speed of rockets. Percy could have sworn he heard Annabeth's cry of agony from here.

He backed away from the vision on instinct till his back touched the cold black wall, his rushing heartbeat sending pulses through the stone. His terror was already at a rolling boil before the Primordial decided that the concept of Light served no further purpose to her, visibility plummeted down to zero then proceeded to file for bankruptcy in a matter of seconds. The darkness melded with the gravity so naturally Percy couldn't be sure any parts below his eyeballs were still connected to his body.

"Co-control yourself Perseus. She wouldn't kill you, not now. She wouldn't dare." Gaea promised, though how much weight he could assign to it was negligible with that stutter.

"Tell me why I don't believe you!"

"~I. Can. Hear. You~"

Nyx's form had shifted during his short conversation with the voice in his head, her avatar tearing apart from the inside out with a bone-chilling squelch.

Gone was the 7 foot tall goddess clad in light-devouring armor, in was a towering mass of void-black tentacles and gaping maws. The eldritch monstrosity covered the distance between them and then some, her titanic bulk engulfing him in black before her mucus-like body fluids pushed him upwards to her uppermost maw.

"Colluding with my dearest sister right before me? Was I not enough Primordial for you Perseus?" She cooed, "I'm hurt, mortally wounded even. "

Percy's eyes were blown back in terror, his voice no louder than a peep as his hands palmed the onyx wall for any sort of weapon he could use to defend himself.

"No cheeky comeback? Excellent! Now, this may come as a shock to you, but I'm only just realizing today is your 17th birthday Perseus. How could you not tell me? I truly believed we had something special between us, what with you giving me your first so easily after all. "

Percy's eyes lit up in anger at that last sentence, his fingers itching to squash this crawling sludge of bacteria under a petri dish.

Nyx howled in uproarious laughter, "Even at the prospect of utter annihilation, your hurt feelings and naive sensibilities grant you the mental fortitude to think to challenge me? It was sex brat. Get over it already! By Chaos, if you had as much of a spine outwards as you do in your thoughts maybe I wouldn't have forgotten about the experience so quickly."

"SHUT UP!"

The goddess slammed Percy into the obsidian like a buzzing fly for his efforts, his tilting vision swimming with black and yellow dots with all the constant head trauma.

"Hmm, no. I don't think I will." Nyx drawled, "Now where was I... ahh yes. Your birthday present. I hope you don't mind, but I hardly doubt I can acquire a hallmark card that perfectly encapsulates the... feelings you stir up inside me with every wretched inhale you take. Seriously, I advise you get that checked, you breathe like a fish out of water."

"I'll...I'll take...your advice into consideration, as for the gift? Just get me a card that says 'To my favorite dream-killer, You took away my husband and daughter when you were barely even trying' and I'd call us even."

"Are you mad?! STOP ANTAGONIZING HER!"

"No no, Gaea. Let him continue, it's only going to make his present so much more satisfying to deliver."

"Perseus...Perseus if our ensured existence so pleases you, you shall remain quiet or I promise you. I PROMISE YOU! I'll feed you your own bloody tongue."

And that was what pushed Percy over the edge: that godly audacity.

That after all Nyx had done to him and put him through, after all the beatings and insults he'd had to endure from the goddess for little to no reason, Nyx was still portrayed as the aggrieved party in this mess. That he was supposed to sit there and put up with more of her nonsense like an obedient, little dog.

"...You really have a lot to learn, don't you Gaea? You're an unwelcome visitor in this house, why don't sit back and stay quiet? This is my life! Not yours!"

"Perseus, I forbid you to-"

But, Percy wasn't listening.

"Do your worst to me Nyx, I'm nothing special. Just another lucky demigod in a long line of heroes that'll continue to win over you mustache-twirling cliches long after I'm dead and buried. We beat Kronos. We won against the Earth herself. Kill me at your own risk, I dare you to think you'll get away with it," Percy laughed long and hard in her face, making sure to add in a pig-like snort for good measure, "We'll get a new hero destined to send you to your dearly departed husband before breakfast."

He was bluffing.

Percy was lying out of his ass so hard even Hermes would be scandalized at such bullshit. He didn't know what he was doing anymore, not really, didn't know whether he wanted Nyx to get angry or cry again.

He just felt he had to get one over on the goddess. That he had to have the last laugh in this encounter or he'd always live under the goddess' thumb.

"...You are a bigger fool than I ever thought feasible if you truly believe yourself to be the average demigod, if you believe yourself so easily replaceable."

The goddess eased up a good deal of her hold on him, her tentacles keeping him aloft by the back of his collar. She brought him level to the gaping abyss of her maw, the endless black giving him vertigo the longer he was forced to stew in silence.

"Did you believe I declared those Titles in jest? What sort of fool is willing to risk tearing apart the fabric of the universe itself to unbind the fate of one useless mortal? Do you think me a worthless street whore willing to open her legs for any mouth-breathing neanderthal who so happens to stumble upon my territory?"

"Well, if the boot fi-"

The Primordial released him from her hold as she reverted back to her base state, a head in her hand as she had to count to 10 to ensure she didn't just step on the ignorant nuisance and be done with it all.

"Make no mistake Perseus, short of my husband and yourself, as unfortunate as that is for the both of us," She added with a disgusted shudder, "Nobody has, or ever will share my bed. The conception of our child is already well and underway a foregone conclusion, the odds of it achieving untainted immortality along with it's own respectable slew of conceptual domains at 85%. Can you grasp the implications of such news?"

He wanted to tell her he'd have rather never had to experience the implications in the first place, yet he found himself as...not quite mesmerized as the goddess, but intrigued all the same.

"It is miraculous honestly, that your gods have managed to keep you hidden for so long. The powers of this world will be tripping over themselves for your seed or your allegiance much sooner than you think. I haven't borne witness to divinity so concentrated since the days of the Tang monk. Your gods have tried time and time again to perfect the interbreeding between us Primordials, yet it always results in failure. The bumbling baboon your father and Gaia created comes to mind."

Antaeus.

Percy hadn't really thought about the guy in a long time, but if the guy really was meant to be a fun little inbred experiment for his old man and the goddess in his head (ew) then it's no wonder he'd turned out so fucked up.

"You are a claimant to the Gilded Throne boy, the Final Shepherd," Nyx continued, "Your inborn Authority as a demigod child of Poseidon, your mother's renounced bloodline acting as a physical adapter through you and the Boon promised to you as an incarnation of the Blessed One? The possibilities are infinite. Your potential for greatness as limitless as you so choose to allow it."

"Are you talking about godhood?"

Nyx let out an amused chuckle "Mere 'godhood' this short-minded imbecile says...enlighten him Gaia, even you must have an inkling to the powers at play here at this point. "

"What's she talking about Gaia?"

"I thought you wanted me to-"

"TELL HIM!" Nyx roared, 150% done with the childish headaches bickering in front of her.

"...The godhood the Olympians can impart upon you is a possible path for you to walk, but if the paths are not truly set in stone for you then...it is a possibility that-that..."

"That what?"

"Godhood. What she is trying and failing to tell you is that Godhood is a possible future for you. True Godhood." Nyx finished with an eyeroll, "What is promised to you is an ascension as an Absolute Being, not the half-assed nature-manipulating nonsense your father's compatriots have been trying to foist upon you. I foretell a seat by the right-hand of Chaos herself in your future."

...

The silence following that proclamation was loud and it was all Percy could do to keep himself standing at this point.

A seat by the side of Chaos.

This was...this was huge.

Percy didn't need to be a genius to realize how groundbreaking this information was, Chaos may as well have been a Jane Doe for how little was made known of her – it? – everyone else still believed the Goddess to be a mindless soup of energy, just pumping out Primordials there and about. Hades, most people seemed deadset on the idea that she was a dude. He knew he'd thought so till he saw her.

Yet, here he was getting told he could be well on his way to working as the Hand of God itself?

It wasn't possible.

It didn't make any sense why he'd been chosen of all people, and it made even less sense why Nyx would choose to make a mortal enemy of him if he was ever supposed to end up that powerful.

"You remain silent. Good it means you're thinking. "

"You're lying. You have to be! It's not-" Percy was cut off by the Primordial's shrill cackle.

"I can be called many things boy. The Ephemeral Miracle of Creation. The Source of Sweet Repose. The Veil of the Dark Sky and more boy, so much more than you could ever hope to fathom." Nyx's voice grew husky as the high of her own power got to her head. It was weird. "But, I have never borne proprietorship to the title of Deceiver. The very act disgusts me, to utter a lie is to give admittance of one's own inept weakness. I fear nothing. Least of all the consequences of my own actions. No, Perseus I am not lying to you, you realize this, you just choose to be difficult. A complication I fully intend to rectify."

He was probably going to regret asking, but: "What do you mean by that."

The goddess turned back to him at the question, a blinding smile on her star-lit gnashers.

"3 months. That is all the time I will give you, if you haven't gotten your act together by then to my satisfaction I will shift my plans on to our child and discard you. You will get 3 months and 3 trials in which my brood shall hunt you down tirelessly until either your lifeblood slakes their whetted appetites or you manage to prevail over them."

Okay, yeah. Fuck no.

He wasn't going to put up with being a show pony for the goddess' sadistic whims any longer.

"And if I say no? If I decide death to be the better option than being pushed around by you forever, then what? I'm the Hero of Olympus. As crappy as the job is in general, the all-expenses paid trip to Elysium more than makes up for it's mortality rate."

Nyx laughed in his face, "Always with the jokes, aren't you brat? Very well, I know you won't defy me because for every opponent you fail to dispatch to my liking is a strike on the life of your beloved. Your eternity upon death may be set in stone..."

The goddess drifted to his side in an instant, smoking black tendrils encapsulating his form from the neck down as she whispered into his ear: "But, can the same be said for your insignificant, mortal mother?"

"...My mom's a saint. Elysium would be lucky to ever have a Goddess of her caliber in it's fields."

"Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.~" The goddess singsonged softly, " Her status as Poseidon's thousandth mistress may be able to grant her more autonomy than most, who knows. However...how quick you are to forget, Death itself accedes fealty to me first and foremost, it would be pitifully easy to convince him to grant me first pickings of the crop should I require it. The brat hasn't offered me a Mother's Day present for quite some time now come to think of it."

Percy hated this goddess so fucking much it had to have been a cardinal sin.

His mother!

This monster was using his mother's soul as a bride for a mother's day gift?!

"You're pure evil," Percy managed to croak.

"You experience, yet you do not learn." Nyx sighed with palpable disappointment, "Good and Evil. Right and Wrong. The Righteous and Sinful. All of those fancy terms carry their own lofty morality-questioning definitions, yet the weight of their application could only ever find credence in the heart of the beholder."

The goddess twirled a finger in the air idly, reality bending to her will with every swish before the room around them evaporated to reveal the beauty of the universe. The view was magnificent. An endless polychrome of ever swirling blue, red and purple miasma cradling a nigh-endless system of planets, asteroid belts and shining constellations.

And at the center of it all?

At the very top of a flight of star-spattered stairs towered the Stygian Iron throne of Nyx, the occupant's mass more than a vertical match for the Burj Khalifa as she stared at the wonder of creation with an apathetic frown, her hand a cushion for her cheek while the other idled itself with twirling a stray constellation.

"I am a God you dull creature, the same way you feel nothing for the butchered cattle you and your kin feast upon, for the monsters you continue to send down to Tartarus with nary a thought, or the insects you crush underfoot whenever the callous feeling so pleases you is the exact same sentiment I've shared for all of Creation since time immemorial."

The goddess tossed the constellation to the void as she fashioned an entire planet out of nothing, the terrified screams of billions of minuscule lifeforms reaching him from all the way down there.

"I am not evil Perseus, cunning yes. Spiteful? Most definitely, but not evil. To be truly evil is to acknowledge my adversaries as more than the dust my robes kick up as I tread over their corpse's. To be truly evil is to admit that the concerns of lesser beings affect me enough to consider a retaliatory action to them."

"I am not evil Perseus." The Night punctuated her final statement by crushing the planet to dust, "I am Strong."

...

"Do you understand that?"

Percy ignored the question in favor of glaring at the goddess, he wouldn't give her satisfaction of beating him to a pulp once again.

"Not quite yet eh? No matter, in time you will. Awaken Perseus Epimenos, I no longer have an interest in your presence."

No.

No, she didn't get to that. She didn't get to terrorize him to this extent then dismiss him like a common servant.

She didn't get to get away with this.

"...I'll get even. I swear it, on the Voice of Creation here and now. Somehow, someway, I'll make you pay in blood and more for everything you've done to me and my family."

Nyx's answering grin was lethal.

Her lone golden eye blazing like a divine lighthouse as she cackled at his audacity in amusement.

"That's the spirit 'Godkiller'. Live with pride. Fight with zeal and authority evermore. Continue to endure everlasting for my pleasure."

The void began to tunnel underneath Percy, narrowing to a pinprick as it created a one-way shaft to Percy's unconscious body. Percy's astral projection liquefied from his legs and continued to melt upwards, yet he managed one last hate-filled glare at the monster laughing at his misery.

"NYX!"

"~Happy Birthday to you,happy birthday to you~"

The goddess' nebulous voice continued to echo through the tunnel with him as he fell through, even as the world went black all around him he could still hear the mocking final verse.

"~Happy Birthday my dear Perseus. Happy Birthday to you.~"

Percy woke up from his mother's embrace in a cold sweat, to a roar that shook the world.

Y*C*O*Y*W

19 August 2010, East River, Manhattan, New York, USA

Half An Hour Since Percy's Talk With Nyx

PERCY COULDN'T HELP BUT FEEL DISAPPOINTED

And more than a little annoyed to be honest.

He was sure that first roar had been enough to shave off a few years of his lifespan, yet he'd managed to push through that terror coupled with his shellshock from his talk with Nyx to meet the challenge head on.

A quick I love you to his delirious mother and a much needed wardrobe change had found him tearing through the flooded, lamp-lit streets of the Upper East Side, with a grip on his ballpoint pen strong enough to ground marble to dust.

Jostling easy-going pedestrians, running traffic lights and all in all being an absolute metropolitan nuisance, Percy didn't think he'd ever been cussed out as badly by the average road rager in his life than today, yet he could live with the insults so long as he could live to see the next sunrise.

The sounds of window-shattering roars and the tremors from earth-cratering strides had had his mind racing even faster than his drumming heartbeat. Whatever was hunting him had to be massive, add that to the patronage of a cold-blooded douchebag like Nyx, likely ancient and powerful too.

There wasn't a doubt in his mind that he'd have to pull out all the stops and more if he wanted to walk out of this battle with all of his insides inside, which was why he'd made his stand by the East river. The closest body of water he could find on such short notice.

Putting aside the coming confrontation, the usual hum of the city was muted, replaced by the steady drumming of stray droplets of water from rusted roofing sheets against the concrete. Shadows stretched long and dark around him from storied buildings, only further deepening the sense of isolation that hung in the air. The city seemed to have sagged just a touch under the weight of the earlier freak storm, it's energy drained, leaving only the wailing sounds of the frigid winds echoing through the empty streets.

New York was as empty and bereft of activity as he could hope for it to be at this hour, and he had it on good authority that whatever active cameras that caught sight of his abilities would be scrambled by the mist.

Percy was as ready for this battle as he would ever be.

His aforementioned disappointment and annoyance however, came from his opponent's unexplainable tardiness. He'd made camp here fifteen minutes ago, Riptide's gleaming bronze resting primly on his shoulder as he leaned on a rickety old balustrade with his back to the choppy waters.

His enemy was still bumbling it's way through the streets of Manhattan searching for him, the faint tremors were all the proof he needed for the fact, but by all means something so powerful and so close should have sniffed him out before he'd even made it home in the first place. Either the creature was a closet sadist, reveling in Percy's terror-filled anticipation or the overgrown buffoon was woefully incompetent, there was no in-between.

He idled himself with a bit of stargazing as his fingers drummed incomprehensible out-of-tune beats on the metal.

Inwardly however, he allowed his to wander untethered. His discussion with Nyx leaving his head more than a little flummoxed with all the exposition she'd dumped on him so casually.

In the span of an hour or several he'd somehow averted a genocide and had his view of the world swept out from right under his feet, he'd been pushed right to the brink of brain death and witnessed the utter evisceration of a Primordial's domain.

And for the cherry on top?

He'd gone and gotten himself blackmailed by a self-righteous sociopath like an absolute punk.

Percy's fingers created hollow indents in the steel as he gnashed at his teeth in annoyance, said annoyance only continuing to stew as memories and sensations chose to replay themselves frame by frame in his head, the sound of Nyx's mocking laughter playing out in his mind's eye like nails on a chalkboard.

How could he have been so stupid?

He'd already allowed the goddess to capitalize on the weakness he held for his loved ones before, yet here he was repeating history with the same goddess once again!

Percy's solace lied in the mere fact that the goddess hated his guts enough to not even want to consider taking him again...besides the fact she'd already gotten most of what she wanted from him.

His child.

Taking the goddess' words about never lying as fact...Percy had a kid on the way.

Him.

A kid.

The very thought made him feel sick to his stomach. Percy didn't care how callous or heartless it made him seem, he couldn't muster up the nerve to feel anything resembling positive for the little tyke. Not with the context behind its conception.

He wasn't quite cruel enough to wish for the poor brat to be stillborn – even he could understand the concept of placing the blame upon the offender – but he really wouldn't lose any sleep if he never saw the kid a day in his life.

"The powers of this world will be tripping over themselves for your seed or your allegiance much sooner than you think."

Percy let out a savage growl at the thought.

He dared the fools to try.

They'd have to settle for his cold dead corpse before he ever allowed himself to go through with that again.

A flash of orange light from his far right was all the warning Percy got before the riverbank erupted in flesh-peeling steam and flames.

...

He'd survived the blast, his natural reflexes and years of battle experience his only saving grace as he busied himself with fanning out the stray flames on his t-shirt.

"Stupid monster with their stupid flame breath, this LZ was vintage!"

Times like this, Percy really wished he'd chosen to petition Chiron for demigod-grade thermal vision goggles, visibility should be a priority given how much night-time fighting the demigods often found themselves in. His enemy prowled around him through the fog, it's claws scraping deep troughs through the asphalt with every earthshaking step.

Percy had to get out of this smokescreen.

He was too out in the open here for his enemy to work with, but any wrong move this caged in would see him ripped to shreds.

He grinned in delight as he made an epiphany...he didn't much need to move anymore to flood entire cities.

The son of Poseidon focused on all the water around him. He ordered the river to froth and crest, to rage and to bring down havoc upon his enemies. He felt the familiar tugging sensation in his gut from whenever he commanded liquids, his smile growing unhinged with anticipation for-

That sensation turned into a soul-splitting agony when the water refused to obey him.

A wave of pain reverberated through him with his heart as the epicenter, his gut felt like it'd been dumped in a moshpit of radioactive pit scorpions and been told to dance for it's life.

His legs lost balance and his hands flew to his throat as he heaved his guts out, Riptide tossed somewhere far behind him, to his horror he was greeted with a deluge of writhing black maggots and corrosive brownish-yellow acid.

His vision became clouded with red, yet he could feel the ground rupturing all around him with every passing second of his bloodcurdling screams.

His enemy, sensing an opening, wasted no time capitalizing on Percy's weakness, its massive bulk bulldozing him head on with the force of a charging school bus. Percy sailed end over end for yards before smashing through the window of a dilapidated building in an unceremonious heap on his side, a stab of pain pulling him out of his funk long enough for him to see his blood-soaked rib protruding out of his sternum.

Putting aside all the glass latching onto his body like a swarm of intoxicated mosquitoes.

His body was lit up with the stuff like an ornamented Christmas tree, with a stray shard lodged a foot deep into his collarbone and a deep open wound in his throat. Already he could feel his back soaked from a pool of his own blood, but that was pushed to the back of his mind because what the fuck?!

What was up with the water?!

Even pitted against divine beings such as Polybotes or Akhlys or the spirit of the East River itself, he'd never gotten such a visceral objection from a water body in his life, but here he was getting his soul split in two from trying to form a single tidal wave?

Was there something on the horoscope out for his neck today?!

Percy blacked out for a second or several and he swore he could see the waters of the River Styx splashing on the riverbank right before him. He was teetering on the edge of death from blood loss.

The how and why of the East River's apparent betrayal could be pondered upon later, he had to find a way to salvage the remaining blood he still had in his body. In the back of his mind he heard Gaia's muted cries of distress, he pushed back a bloody cough as his mind raced for answers before coming to a stop on a single conclusion.

He might still be able use that technique, but what if-

NO.

The 'buts' of the circumstances didn't matter, he had to try either way. Percy was looking at the lamest death in the history of Greek tragedies, he hadn't even seen the enemy yet, he couldn't let things end so easily without even getting to know what had killed him.

And even then, when the odds were between him dying from the failure of the technique or dying from blood loss, what did he have to lose in trying?

He let out a croaked exhale, closed his eyes and focused inwards of himself . Percy thought back to his trials in Tartarus, he drew power from his feelings of inadequacy in the fight against the Arai, his feelings of hopelessness against the journey and the subsequent battles that followed.

His insatiable rage at the endless hordes of immortals and monsters that believed themselves qualified to control him.

It took a second longer than he'd liked, but he soon found his astral self swimming in the depths of his soul, the massive, sea-green avatar of his pure essence bound head to toe in chains a horrifying welcome to him.

Percy felt his blood boil in indignation at the sight of the weighty chain locked to his neck with 6 different links, the very thought that whatever fool had done this to him had felt it prudent enough to leash him like a rabid dog had him frothing at the mouth, but there was nothing for it at the moment. He wasn't getting that off any time soon.

And besides, that wasn't the ability he needed for now.

He swam around his body as he searched for a particular power before coming to a stop at the small of his avatar's back, this spot having the weakest set of bonds all but confirming his suspicions. He reached out a hand to the chain and tugged on it fiercely, his strength waning with every second the black at the edges of his vision crept closer. The chain held fast however, pushing back against him, but Percy couldn't take no for an answer.

Not for this.

He'd lost enough already.

He'd suffered enough already, he would not lose the power he'd earned over his own body.

His vision glitched for an instant before the hooded face of a beautiful red-haired woman with eyes the color of sapphires engulfed his sight, in her hands was a weighty blood-red spear with thorns and Celtic runes adorning the shaft.

He'd...Percy had seen her before, he just didn't know where or when.

"Ye'll find yer way to me again some day, won't ye lad?" The woman's voice was firm and uncompromising, drowned with the lilting brogue of a strong Irish drawl, "Yer mammy won't hear a peep of it, but I know. I know deep in my bones yer of the Blood. Poseidon and Sorcha be damned Meredith, yer my kin too. Live free."

Percy let out a livid roar and it was as if a bomb had gone off inside him. His astral projection lit up with a burning blood-red hue as he gripped on the stifling chains and rent.

Simply destroying the shackles wasn't enough however, with the metaphysical bonds already reforming around his soul and barring him entry, but he didn't waste a second, he latched on the little that he could and devoured. Swallowing like his life depended on it, he sucked in the spilled and gushing blood back to his body in a matter of seconds.

His soul was smacked back into consciousness in an instant as his eyes shot open with an audible inhale, he shot to a sitting position even as his wounds continued to congeal with the glass shards inside of him. They hurt like hell, but Percy couldn't remove them without losing his control from the pain.

"-RSEUS! PERSEUS! Oh thank the fates. Thank the fucking fates! Do you have any i-"

Percy ignored Gaia's rambling as he took a cautionary inhale and tried to think for a plausible solution. A dip in a river or the ocean would have dealt with the wounds in seconds...but relying on the water had gotten him into this state to begin with, he didn't believe for a second it would do him the common decency of fixing him.

"Stand at attention brat! You brought this upon yourself, take this battle seriously!" Gaea roared like a grizzled drill sergeant.

Her advice wasn't one without merit, though she could take a couple of lessons in her presentation. He'd made his bed now he had to-

"...Oh fuck I'm in danger."

The first thing Percy saw was the imposing silhouette of a towering monster with devil horns and a writhing tail from the smoke, it's body easily as wide as a one-way street and tall as a house. Three sets of glowing blood-red eyes glared at his form like Percy was a juicy-looking rat.

The beast let out a fiery growl before a beefy paw, grafted in glowing fracture-like patterns, shot out from the fog and shattered the pavement, it's sharp serrated claws kicking up sparks as they scraped over the asphalt.

A hairy maroon, blood-caked mane broke through the fog, attached to a bulging body of corded muscles underneath a glimmering coat the color of gold with streaks of ash.

Another step brought out it's body fully, a high-pitched bleat announcing the monster's goats head. The clopping of it's taut back hooves drew Percy's attention to the poison-spewing diamondback hissing right out of its shaggy behind.

The beast had probably ditched it's rhinestone dog collar somewhere in Tartarus, but Percy would recognize the foam-dripping chops of Sonny the Poodle even in his fondest daydreams.

Nyx had sicced the fucking Chimera of all monsters on him.

An amped up version of it too if the size was any indication.

Which was-fuck, just why?

This went beyond simple pettiness, this was just fucking stupid!

How the Hades was he supposed to pull off a win as injured as he was here with most of his powers on the fritz?

That was the question wasn't it?

He wasn't.

Even if Percy managed to beat this monster today, he'd get another by the next month and another.

Then another.

And another.

And another till he just wasn't quick enough anymore, till his enemy was just too strong for him.

Till he stopped getting lucky.

...Till he stopped getting lucky.

Percy hacked out a strangled laugh, the answer was so simple.

He wasn't supposed to be able to beat this monster...it didn't mean he couldn't.

He wasn't supposed to be able to beat the Minotaur at 12, he hadn't been expected to hold up the Sky or triumph over Kronos and it shouldn't have been at all possible for him to escape Tartarus let alone kill Gaea...yet he'd managed to pull it off all the same.

Percy was an awful tester and an even worse gambler if that were even possible...but more than his life was on the line here. Nyx had brought his Mother into this...and oh how it alarmed him he'd never even considered until now that such threats could be used against him until now.

It didn't matter.

It didn't matter.

Percy got up to his feet slowly, the simple action jostling his severe wounds even further. His shaking hands fumbled for his pen, a silent prayer going out to whatever higher power had thought to teach the mangy beast before him common fighting decency.

He stepped out of the run down building and gave the beast his most charming blood-stained smile, "Sonny! Buddy! How've you been man? How's the wife? The kids? The Anteater?"

The Chimera prowled towards him with casual – borderline arrogant – ease, the only visible reaction given to his taunts a low rumbling from it's lions throat sending shockwaves to the already ruined pavement.

And the monster laughing at him was only the second to last thing Percy had been expecting from it.

"...Your false bravado would be a bit more believable if you weren't half dead and bleeding before me."

"Holy shit, you talk?!"

The Chimera's voice echoed from it's lion's head with a deep, croaky pitch. It sounded more like the crazed raving of a scavenger like Gollum than it's other more noble contemporaries, like Aslan or Mufasa.

"Did you think I communicated with growls, bleats and hisses brat? Come now, that makes for terrible conversation even among Cyclopes."

Okay. Okay. It was kind of freaky to hear the beast talk in complete sentences he wasn't even going to lie, but the Chimera had been alive for what had to be thousands of years at this point. It wasn't too out of the realm of possibility it could learn to put thoughts into words, Percy had talked to dumber neanderthals with a decent hold on the English language.

Besides, this worked pretty well in his favor here, half of his arsenal relied on his wit and snark. The Chimera would only fall victim to Percy's taunts all the better if it could understand what Percy was insulting it with.

This could work well for Percy.

He hoped.

"Ya know, you're pretty smug for a walking taxidermy piece. You couldn't finish the job when I was 12 and starving. Times have changed buddy and your five minutes of fame are up, get out of my sight and go back to whatever hole you've been hiding in."

The Chimera guffawed like a hyena, "And dismiss myself of the honor of vanquishing the famed 'Hero of Olympus'? Inconceivable! The sheer aroma of your blood even from here is...exquisite." The monster stood on it's hind legs, it's paws clasped in a pious pose, and roared to the night, "Glory be to the Dark Mother for this opportunity. Breakfast, glory and closure all wrapped in one simple task!"

"Simple?!" Percy gasped in mock offense, "Sonny, I'll have you know I'm at least a 'Smite now, ask questions never' in Zeus' nightmares."

The Chimera slammed back down on the ground mere inches from Percy's face, a disturbing look of sadistic mania coloring all three sets of its eyes as he took a generous inhale of Percy's blood.

It almost made the monster look... human.

No, the look was human. Percy had seen that vicious smirk somewhere before, but...where?

"Boy, the best you could do to the most incompetent of hellhounds as you are now is to kill them with laughter, and I'm not just talking about your injuries. Your shattered divinity...it only speaks to your credit as a warrior you can even draw breath as it is, lesser halflings would have combusted upon themselves for daring to flex their patron's domain with such a violated Core. Do you have any sense in your head boy?! You almost cost me a meal!"

Percy put out the tail-end of that sentence as he lost himself in his thoughts again.

A violated Core? Was that what the reaction he'd gotten from the river was?

"...How on Earth do you know that?"

'And who else knew' was the unvoiced question, the Chimera seemed to gather the subtext if it's full blown human grin was any indication.

"How did I know? Boy, any monster worth their reputation could gather such information at a glance if they so much as tried to, your scent is practically nonexistent...it's the sheer disbelief at such a fall from grace that would leave them stricken with inaction," The Chimera was positively salivating at the sight of Percy now, it's desperate pants creating warm, smelly mists in the air, "I know I was surprised when I caught wind of it. I truly believed I'd lost my chance back in those woods, but the presence that accursed spawn of the Messenger...the risk far outweighed the reward."

"What the Hades are you talking about, when did you meet me? What messenger spawn? I haven't seen you in years, you think I wouldn't recognize your ugly mug a mile away?"

"Touchy-touchy Perseus. No need for insults, you have seen me. Earlier in the evening in fact. You just didn't see me."

Right before Percy's eyes, each and every single one of the Chimera's monstrous heads shifted to more human faces starting from the goat and the snake's head, the two taking on the faces of two college age girls, a brunette and a blonde, and the last head...morphed into the familiar face of a handsome young man with close-cropped brown hair and a vicious smirk.

"...Crew Cut Brown." Percy murmured, horror marring his voice and face.

The monster had been so close.

Di Immortales the monster had literally been right behind him at some point.

How had he not noticed? How had it fooled Mrs O'Leary?

How many kids had died to such a trick?

How many monsters had this same trick in their pockets?

"... How?" was all he could ask however, his mind to frayed to put much more to the question than that.

The Chimera reverted back to it's original form in an instant, it's jagged lion's teeth bared for murder and it's snake and goat head's hissing and bleating with laughter.

"Trade secret boy. I couldn't afford to blow my cover with 'Autolycus' so close to me, accursed bastard had been hunting me for weeks at that point. Your arrival couldn't have been more fortuitous, I have no doubt he would have tried to kill me tonight. When the Mistress called for your head I knew for certain our encounter could only be destined, but I am not without gratitude. A debt is owed Perseus, I live free once more because of you. Surrender now and I swear on my honor to make your demise quick and painless."

...

Percy opened his mouth slowly to respond, the disgusting straggler's crimson orbs already lighting up in anticipation before-

"ARRRGGGHHHH!"

The monster roared as it's paws flailed about for his lacerated eye, a torrent of orange flames shot out of it's mouth to baste Percy, but he was already a good 100 meters away from the beast as it thrashed about. The visible steam trail chuffing from his glowing, bloodied body and his blood-soaked sword the only indication he'd been at all close to the monster.

The wounded beast gnashed it's teeth in fury at the boy, the lion head's lone eye fueled with enough pure vitriol to slice through cement.

Sonny hadn't even see him. It'd underestimated the boy but how could you blame it?

The bastard was half-dead, yet the Chimera hadn't even been able to perceive him drawing his sword. How on Earth was it possible for the child to move so fast?!

"You can't even put that promise on the Styx can you. You want a fight? Be my guest Sonny, but listen and listen well you fucking vulture because I'm not going to repeat myself."

Percy pointed Riptides bloodied blade forward as he spat at the monster, his eyes blazing with swirling maelstroms, "I don't care how strong you are. I could give a damn about how fast you are. I dealt with Kronos, I personally destroyed the Earth Mother. I can see the future, you don't live to see the next sunrise."

He adjusted his grip on Riptide, a confident ease flooding his stance as he entered more familiar territory. It was an act. An obvious one if he was being honest, the Chimera was one of the few monsters Percy had never been able to beat.

The son of Poseidon hadn't even laid a scratch on it's hide as inexperienced as he'd been when a different god had first sicced the fleebag on him, but Percy was different now. He was older, stronger and so much more experienced in combat, it would be different this time.

It had to be.

Injuries or no, powers or no he was going to kill this monster if it was the last thing he ever did.

The last thing he ever did.

Percy let out a rueful chuckle, how many demigods had he heard repeat that same sentence to themselves?

Was this really all they could ever hope to amount to?

To keep staring down the barrel of a gun till they just couldn't hope to finesse their way out of the never-ending standoff?

Was this the fate Ananke had seen as just to force upon his family?

That couldn't be right could it? No, there had to be another way for them. There had to be a path they weren't seeing that wasn't bend the knee and hide in the camps or die.

And if not...maybe Nyx was right. Maybe Fate was a concept the world just didn't have much of a need for anymore.

Percy allowed his blood to flow freely within his body and out of it – open wounds and all – without a sound, every ounce of concentration put into pumping and vibrating the latent lactic acid in his body at a mile a minute as he prepared for one last suicide charge.

His trump card.

Manipulating his own blood and the other liquids inside of his body. He had no idea where the power had originated from, but it sure as shit wasn't Poseidon.

It required him vibrating and heating the chemicals for adrenaline and lactic acid inside of him at a frequency fast enough to invigorate and support his body moving at a speed just above subsonic. It was a technique he'd have never even considered using if he hadn't been pushed to the very end of his rope in that battle with Akhlys.

Hades, how much of his proficiency with his powers had come as a result of his bout with the long-dead Primordial?

"You are a walking abomination Perseus." The goddess had croaked out, "A Harbinger of chaos Mother would be better off killing now rather than later. Your own blood? You would use your own blood as a means to an end...you might as well not even leave this den of horrors."

...

The words Thank You Akhlys were something he'd never be caught dead saying, but he couldn't deny the fruits of their battle hadn't saved his hide more than a few times.

The move wasn't without it's drawbacks though. Handy as it was, using his body in such an unnatural way left his bones as mushy as Playdoh afterwards, and with it's ever-changing time limit he often had no idea whether he'd wake up in a warm, fluffy bed after he collapsed or before the Judges of the Underworld after he took a catnap in the middle of a battle.

Yet, the fear and the possibility of death was inconsequential to him at the moment, his end was looking right in the eye with a slobbering set of jaws. Nyx had told him verbatim she wanted 'entertainment' from him...it was only appropriate he responded to such open disrespect the only way knew he'd ever known how to.

He gave the beast a come hither gesture as his eyes grew half-lidded, "Come get some Sonny, I'll be sending you down home to your mommy and mistress with something to remember me by."

The Chimera roared in fury, it's voice booming at a disorienting pitch loud enough to shatter windows entire city blocks away from them.

Percy met the challenge head on, the ground cracking and shattering underneath him with every thunderous stride he took at the monster. The Chimera didn't disappoint, it's speed more than a match for Percy's as it tore past the landscape and closed the gap between them in seconds. The beast leapt high into the air at the very last second in an effort to baste him with a torrent of flames, but Percy had been damn near praying for it to employ the tactic. He slid across the slick, wet asphalt like a base runner, Riptide arcing over him by instinct and slicing a satisfying gash on the monsters front foreleg.

A roar of anger was all the son of Poseidon received for the wound, but it might as well have been a rallying cry for him. Percy didn't waste even a second to give the monster a chance to regain his bearings, with the monster's frontal mobility and half it's sight all but crippled he switched his focus to putting an end to the most annoying part of the monster: The snake head.

Unfortunately, his enemy had been expecting the play, Percy was greeted to the fleshy, pink maw of the serpent head and a spray of acid-green poison the instant he pivoted on his heel. His enhanced speed served as a boon to his reflexes however, as he twisted and allowed his body to roll along the wet, slimy scales of the serpent while simultaneously shifting his hold on Riptide to an icepick grip.

A slash wouldn't do much more than annoy the beast at this angle, but a stab from the Celestial Bronze on the monster's colossal rump?

That could work.

The high-pitched scream of the monster as he plunged Riptide to the hilt was like music to Percy's ears, the dexterous boy leapt into the air, planting both of his feet on opposite sides of the sword hilt with a sadistic smile before tearing Riptide out of the Chimera's hide roughly, the savage motion dragging out a considerable length of the monster's intestines.

Percy stumbled for a bit on the monsters back before leveling a weighty jab to the goat's head for kicks, he brought his blade up for an overhead chop on the snake head before his senses were thrown into a panicked frenzy by a brain-blasting, hypersonic goat bleat right next to his ears.

"AGGRAVATING WORM!" The beast roared with a breath of flames, slamming it's paws to the pavement and bucking Percy off of it before dropkicking him in the chest with it's goat hocks.

Percy's ribcage may as well have been transfigured to a 1 to 1 copy of a jumbled jigsaw puzzle with the way that attack shattered it, his body swam through the air like a Curry free throw before his spine arced over the bracket of a stray light post. He fell to the ground from 6 meters on his punctured side, Riptide lost somewhere in the chaos.

Percy hacked out a strangled cough as the blowback from his technique electrocuted him, his breaths coming out in short, desperate pants at the sight of his blood mixed in with tiny pieces of bone.

That wasn't good.

He tried to rise to his feet, but they'd long since tapped out on him from the overuse of his blood manipulation, his vision was relaying images to his brain in triplicate now. He was finished.

Gaia chose this 'opportune' moment to give out her 2 cents, "Stand and fight Perseus! What sort of warrior bows his head before their enemy? GET UP!"

"Are you nuts lady? You think I'm sucking face with the gravel because I love the taste of cement?!"

"For once in your wretched life listen to me! This is not the time for your snark and jokes boy! Don't you get it? If you do not fight, we will die."

The sheer desperation in the goddess' voice had his brain buffering, memories of her spiteful cheek from earlier clashing with the terror that seemed to echo through their mindlink.

What would happen to Gaia if he died here?

Would she go with him to the Elysian fields? Or would her mind become trapped in the same catatonic state as her long-dead husband?

Percy didn't know...and he was ashamed to say he didn't much care. He was at the end of his rope here, there wasn't much he could do now. Nyx had only threatened his mother's life on the threat of him chosing not to follow her orders which he'd technically done right?

"...I'm sorry Gaea, I can't. I'm too...Nyx was wrong. There's no grand destiny for me. It ends here."

"Perseus! Perseus listen to me, I am begging. I am begging you, you must live. Please I-"

Gaia's request and sniffles were cut short with a mangled paw slamming down on the gravel right next to his face, shards of gravel and dust pelting him like sharp little raindrops yet Percy couldn't do much more than groan in weak protest.

He was done.

Percy had failed his test. He just didn't have the strength to go further anymore.

The Chimera lifted Percy by the collar of his shirt to it's mangled face, "Defeating you is an honor I will not soon forget Great Hero. Die with pride, you have earned your rest."

It's mouth widened to a comical degree before it's bowel glowed with a blinding orange light as the beast prepared to charbroil Percy alive. Percy didn't bother fighting back, simply closing his eyes and awaiting the end.

He'd done his best with what he had, he'd-

No.

No, he really hadn't.

From the start he'd been treating this battle like a silly game. He'd allowed his mind to wander like an idiot when he'd known an enemy was hunting for him, he'd let the enemy get into his head and beat him at his own game...

He'd been arrogant.

Somewhere along the way he'd let himself fall for his own hype.

Was it after what Nyx did to him or before that he really didn't know, but at some point it had become easier for him to fall back on his exaggerated achievements rather than deal with the reality of how much of a failure he was.

He'd lost his innocence.

He'd lost the love of his life.

He'd lost most of his identity as a son of Poseidon now with the loss of his powers.

His feats and victories all but amounted to a fat pile of nothing now with the existence of the Penumbran Spades.

He was about to lose his life like all the other fabled heroes before him.

The heat of the Chimera's fire burned hotter, going all the way to 240F and whirring like a jet engine before lift off mere inches from his face, yet Percy couldn't do more than grit his teeth at the implications.

He'd failed his mother.

Sally Jackson.

The woman who had birthed him.

The mother who raised and nurtured him to the best of her abilities.

The Goddess who had continued to love him in spite of the pathetic monster he'd allowed himself to become.

Percy had failed her so utterly at every turn it was almost tragic, and yet she'd loved him and called him her son with all the genuine pride her frail heart could muster.

For the longest time now it had been just the two of them against the world, a boy with no one to turn to but his mother and a woman with nothing to hold true claim to but her son. How would she take his death? Would she ever be able to move on from it with time?

He knew he wouldn't.

Percy should have never been born.

If all he was good for was to bring pain to the ones he loved, Percy would have rather he'd never been born.

A stray tear trailed down from Percy's cheek involuntarily, he didn't want to die.

He didn't want to die now and leave things so unfinished, he wanted to live and make sure the campers – his family - were prepared for the times to come. He wanted to live as a man free of his trauma and problems, around a campfire surrounded by his loved ones.

He wanted to see his mother and give her a good strong hug, to go through one more round of Uno and Monopoly against her and Paul on game night, he wanted to go to Montauk with her again and roast a couple of smores by the seaside, he wanted to bake a set of blue cookies and a blue birthday cake with her for her coming birthday, he wanted...he wanted-

Percy wanted to tell his mother how much he loved her one last time.

The Chimeras flames engulfed Percy's torso first, whatever remaining resistance to flames he'd inherited as a son of Poseidon quickly losing the fight as the monster upped the heat threefold.

Percy couldn't even muster the will to scream at the surging pain, his mind was much to clouded with self-loathing.

"I'm sorry mom. I'm so sorry."

The heat became far too overwhelming for his divine protection to withstand, the nerve endings in his arms constricted on themselves like snail shells and if his chest hadn't already been so brutalized maybe the scent of medium rare wagyu wafting through his nostrils would have horrified him. His throat and tongue felt drier than he'd ever thought possible, his vision was torn between the mortal world around him and the empty eyeholes of Charon the Ferryman, the aged immortal's skeletal hand already poised in anticipation for a drach-

"OI! FLEABAG! GET YOUR STINKING PAWS OFF MY KID!"

Percy had just about given up the ghost when the ringing bang of buckshot silenced the empty street like a judge's gavel. The Chimera let go of it's hold on Percy as an external force sent it's massive body flying.

The son of Poseidon's emaciated husk collided with the pavement roughly, but Percy couldn't feel much of anything at the moment to voice out a protest.

His soul felt like it was hanging onto his body by a thread...but it would be a cold day in hell before Percy Jackson ever chose not to reach out for his mother when she was so close to him.

Percy could see her face so clearly, his mother was still dressed in her tie-dyed sundress and beaten leather birkenstocks, her hair had been pulled back to a messy bun showing off her worry lines and blood-shot eyes, her hands were bone-white on the shaft and pommel of a double-barreled shotgun with it's business end still smoking with a...bronze hue.

His 'helpless' old mom had managed to get her hands on Celestial Bronze ammo, the choked little snort he let out may as well have been an uproarious guffaw, he was so proud.

Sally tossed the valuable weapon to the side like a soggy handrag in favor of cradling her dying son.

She looked horrified.

Her bloodshot eyes were pouring out tears in unending buckets and her ragged breaths came out in uncomfortable hiccups, she reached a shaky hand to brush out a few stray strands of hair from his face to place a kiss to his forehead while her other hand circled around his form protectively.

"My boy...my baby boy. Per-" His mother couldn't finish the sentence before she devolved into a round of uncontrollable sobs, her hold on him grew tighter even as the shards of glass tore into her own body.

Percy wanted to hug her back, he wanted to try to reassure her that he'd somehow pull through this, he wanted to make a silly joke just to hear her tinkling laugh once more.

They'd been bantering over cocoa just a few hours ago, where had the time gone?

He wanted to do so much more cool stuff with his mother on his 'vacation', but he just didn't have that option anymore.

...

So he told her something he would always manage to scrounge up the will for.

"I...I love you mom...I love you...and I'm so proud to be your kid."

That was it.

The presentation had been hoarse and sloppy, but he'd fulfilled what he'd deemed most important and that was more than enough for him.

Percy Jackson's last memory would be of cherishing his mother, he could die in peace.

...

So of course the furry buzzkill wouldn't be content to let him take his closing bow with a smile on his face, the useless monster already at the zenith of a leap that was certain to crush his mother and his corpse into mush, vengeance written across it's apoplectic features with it's brutalized goat head hanging onto it's body by a floppy sinew.

Percy hadn't planned it.

He swore up and down he never intended for it to happen that way, he'd only tried to shield his mother.

He couldn't explain it.

Percy's body should have been paralyzed, he was certain of that, but the thought of his mother losing her life so pointlessly before she even got the time to mourn him made his blood boil. To bear with the knowledge that she hadn't even gotten a day to herself before Nyx could nab her grubby mitts on her soul had his body moving on its own.

Time seemed to slow before his eyes as his charred left hand swept at the air right where the Chimera's lions head had slotted itself into, a ghostly childlike hand trailing right behind his. His mother's body was frozen mid-turn to the monster behind them as the capillaries on his seared limb glowed with a boiling pink hue and the air around it seemed to vibrate and spark with shock waves and electricity. Percy's hand smashed itself a foot into the monsters face before time resumed its flow with a deafening clap of thunder.

There wasn't a cloud in the night sky as far as the eye could see.

The Chimera rocketed away from the Jackson's immediate air space with the speed of a ballistic missile, it's massive body punching holes through entire buildings further than Percy's vision could allow him to see and going beyond the Upper East Side's district limits. Percy counted to 10 before the sound of a colossal explosion shook the city of Manhattan to it's foundations. The shock waves and tremors of the blast could be felt all the way from his location, he didn't want to imagine what had happened to the immediate area.

Percy nodded in acceptance even as he took in the state of his destroyed arm, his bones were sticking out of his flesh in about 4 different places and he could see his veins snagged on the edges of a few stray fractures, but he didn't care.

His mother was safe for now.

He'd pay whatever price, suffer any humiliation - physical or mental - a thousand times over for the people he loved if it ever came down to it.

That was just who he was.

And so it was recorded:

On the 19th of August 2010, at around 2:46am in the morning Perseus Meredith Jackson, survived by his mother Mrs. Sally Jackson-Blofis and his stepfather, a Mr. Paul Blofis away at a conference at the time of the incident, met his untimely end on the bed of the Lenox Hill Hospital as a result of cardiac arrest following a series of devastating injuries, believed to have been caused by the explosion that struck terror over the streets of East Harlem.

The city's thoughts and prayers go out towards the Jackson family, the young man had turned 17 just the day before. He was only a boy.

Y*C*O*Y*W

Jesus H. Christ, this one was a nightmare to write much less edit. I apologize for what might feel like a huge slog of text, but it's an important slog of text all the same. A lot of plot points for Arc 1 going forward will be centered on the events of the earlier chapters, but this chapter may as well be the most important for the whole story with all the lore and exposition Nyx half-assed to our boy.

Quick one, I'm going to have to take a break in writing what with school kicking off back to full gear. Chapter 9 should come out next week or the week after that (nowhere near as long as this I hope) and conclude Part 1 of this arc, but that's going to be it for a while. I'll mostly be spending the break editing the earlier chapters with Luq707's reviews as a guide, but any of you can let me know if there's anything that needs fixing or further explanation.

If you have any questions or criticisms, I'll be answering in PMs. And...yeah.

See you later.