Disclaimer: I only own the plot and my OCs. Anything you recognize as not mine belongs to Rick Riordan, Greco-Roman mythology, and/or their otherwise respective owners.
Author's Notes: Hi, all! Slight bad news: I might have to stop updating for a couple of weeks after next week's update. I was already behind on writing, but now I have COVID. Joy, right? Thankfully, my symptoms are mostly mild, but I've felt pretty shitty and I'm trying to rest so things don't get worse. Hope y'all understand. 3
As always, hope you enjoy and until next week,
~TGWSI/Selene Borealis
Ξενία – Hospitality, usually concerning the traditions between a guest and their host
~The Finding Home Saga~
~Finding Home~
~Chapter 21: I Meet My Maker & His Siblings~
You know, whenever I thought of how teleportation would feel as a kid, I always imagined it as feeling painless, like how Star Trek portrayed it to be.
So, you can bet your ass off about how surprised I was that being teleported – or, at least, side-along teleported – was nota pleasant feeling at all. Rather, it felt like I was being squeezed into a tube that was spinning around at a hundred miles per hour, only to be suddenly spat out like I was a cannonball that had crashed right in front of the Empire State Building, except the sidewalk underneath me refused to bow down to the pressure and instead both made my feet hurt and gave me the strong desire to puke.
"Oh," I said as I swayed on my feet, trying not to lose my balance or worse, my lunch, although the constant city noise all around us wasn't helping matters much on either of those fronts. "I don't think that was as cool as I thought it was going to be."
Next to me, Hades chuckled. "Yes, I'm told most mortals feel that way," he replied. "Don't worry, though, because this is probably the one and only time you will ever have to experience it."
"...Glad to hear it," I mumbled.
"Really? Are you sure about that, punk?" a familiar voice asked me.
I froze at the sound of it.
Hades didn't, thankfully – although, I guess that was to be expected, given how he was the Lord of the Dead and all, on top of being the uncle of...
"Ares," he greeted the other god with fake pleasantry, which I didn't blame him for. Ares had been a part of the plot to help overthrow Olympus, after all, no matter how direct or indirect his part had been. "How...interesting it is to see you here, given what I have just been told about how my helm of darkness and your father's master lightning bolt went missing."
Warily, I turned and eyed Ares, too interested to see how he would react to having the truth rubbed in his face to just ignore the guy. Unsurprisingly, the god of war seemed unfazed by it, as evidenced by how he shrugged from where he was leaning up against the Empire State Building and said in response, "I don't know what the punk told you, Uncle, but I had no part in stealing anything of yours, or Father's. The only reason why I'm here right now is to collect the kid, because Father wants him on Olympus right now."
Hades raised an eyebrow. "If that is so, then I imagine he will be fine with the boy coming along with me, seeing as how I have...crucial information about the theft of both his symbol of power and mine. Information which, young Perseus here," he gestured to me at his, causing Ares to glower down at me in a way which told me just how much he wanted to turn me into a prairie dog, or worse, "swore on the River Styx was true. Are you willing to do the same, nephew, to prove that his supposed lies are, in fact, false?"
Thunder boomed overhead at both mentions of the River Styx. It caused Ares' glower to worsen. And despite how much I knew that he wanted to kill me, I couldn't help but grin at the sight, which made him bark at me, "What are you smirking at, punk?"
"Oh, nothing, Lord Ares," I replied smugly. "Although...now that you mention it, I do want to thank you. For giving me the backpack, I mean. And for letting me and my friends stay at the Lotus Hotel & Casino. We really couldn't have solved this mystery without you, you know?"
Before the god of assholes could say anything else, I quickly walked into the lobby of the Empire State Building, with Hades trailing behind me – and yes, you read that correctly. A god was actually trailing behind me.
At the front desk, a guard was reading what looked to be a Harry Potter book, and was so engrossed in it that, when Hades asked for the key to the six-hundredth floor, he said, "There's no such thing, sir."
I tried my best not to snicker at his words, but it was kind of hard to do when Hades gave him a glare that looked like it could literally kill as he leaned forwards and said in a low voice, "Really? Because I happen to have it on good record that, not only is there such a floor, but as its gatekeeper, you have a duty to give me the key, since I am the Lord of the Dead, the very god who rules over you and all of the other mortals that come to my realm in the afterlife."
The security guard stiffened. With wide eyes, he looked up from his book and stammered out, "R – right, sir."
"Lord Hades," he corrected with a scowl.
"L – Lord Hades," the guard repeated. He put down his book and fumbled around the desk for a key card, and then handed it over to the god. "H – here you go. Although, I should warn you, there's still another day until the summer solstice, s – so – "
"Allow me to worry about that," Hades purred with a grim smile, before he turned to look at me and gestured for me to follow him. "Come, nephew. Let's get this over with."
The two of us walked into the elevator without much further ado. As soon as the doors to them closed, my uncle slipped the key card into a slot, which caused both the card and slot to disappear and be replaced with a bright, red button which said 600. He pressed it easily enough, and not even a second later the elevator began going upwards as muzak softly played over the speakers.
Inconspicuously (or rather, as inconspicuously as I could manage, and I had a feeling it wasn't that great of a job), I quickly looked over at Hades, trying to figure out why were going up through the Empire State Building to Olympus instead of...you know...just straight-up teleporting there? He was the god of the Underworld, wasn't he? Surely he could manage that?
But a small voice in the back of my mind told me, "no, no he probably can't. Remember, Zeus pretty much banned Hades from Olympus except for the summer and winter solstices, so it figures he would be petty and only let him come through this entrance, too."
Despite how I obviously had no no proof that this assumption was true, my stomach still clenched at the thought, because damn, wouldn't that be a shitty thing to do to your own brother? Especially after he had already gotten "the short stick"with everything else?
The gods really were assholes, weren't they?
Before I could spend any more time seething on that thought, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open. Both Hades and I stepped out, but unlike him, when I did I almost had a heart attack.
I was standing on a narrow walkway in the middle of the air. Below me, below us, was Manhattan, except it was Manhattan from the height of an airplane. In front of us, white marble steps wound up the spine of a cloud, straight into the sky. My eyes followed the stairway to its end, where my brain just could not accept what I was seeing.
"Try looking again," that small voice suggested.
I blinked.
I am, I replied to it. It's all just...really there.
From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of a mountain, its summit covered with snow. Clinging to the mountainside were dozens of multileveled palaces, a city of mansions, all with white-columned porticos, gilded terraces, and bronze braziers glowing with a thousand fires. Roads went up and down the peak crazily and misshapenly, where the largest palace was, gleaming magnificently against the white banks of snow. Precariously perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rosebushes, and I could just make out an open air market filled with colorful tents and a stone amphitheater built on one side of the mountain, while a hippo-dome and a coliseum were built on the other.
All in all, Olympus was the picture-perfect image of an Ancient Greek city, except it wasn't in ruins. It was new, and clean, and colorful – the way I imagined Athens must've looked twenty-five-hundred years ago.
Next to me, Hades chuckled. "Impressive, isn't it?" he asked rhetorically. Or so I hoped, because I was too dumbfounded to reply. "Welcome to Olympus, nephew. Now, come along."
Dazedly, I followed after Hades through the city. We passed some giggling wood nymphs, a marketplace packed with all sorts of sellers and businessmen, a small crowd of a bunch of good-looking teenagers who I realized were all probably minor gods and goddesses, and even the nine muses. All of them were talking and laughing, and overall having a good time, as if they weren't even worried about the impending war...
...That all quickly changed, however, when they saw Hades. Wherever he went, people stopped, and stared, and whispered to each other about him, their eyes widening and their faces paling. They obviously knew how big of a deal of it was for the god of the Underworld to show up to Olympus unannounced, and on a day that he wasn't even supposed to be here.
As for me...well, no one really looked at me. They were all too busy looking at him. But I didn't mind the lack of attention, because it allowed me to continue looking at everything in complete, gobsmacked awe as I followed Hades up the main road and towards the big palace up at the top of the peak, which was a reverse copy – as in it, along with everything else here, was white and silver, compared to the Underworld's black and bronze – of Hades' palace in the Underworld.
Mildly, I wondered, did that mean Hades had built his palace to resemble this one?
My gut clenched again at the thought.
Together, the two of us walked up the steps that led up to a central courtyard, before walking into the room that was just past that.
But, now that I think about it, "room" really isn't the right word, because the place made Grand Central Station look like a broom closet. Massive columns rose to a domed ceiling, which was gilded with moving constellations. Twelve thrones, built for beings the size of Hades, if not larger, were arranged in an inverted U, just like the cabins at Camp Half-Blood. An enormous fire crackled in the central hearth pit, and it was being tended to by a little girl who I recognized as the girl that had been doing the same to the camp's fire on my first day at Camp Half-Blood...a little girl with loosely-curled chocolate brown hair who was wearing a brown, moleskin cloak.
This must be Hestia, my mind supplied helpfully, the goddess of the hearth and the eldest of Kronos and Rhea's children. The way that the four inmost thrones were all occupied above her only cemented the feeling in my brain.
Like Hades, all four of these gods were in giant human form, but I could barely look at them without feeling a tingle, as if my body was starting to burn. Zeus, the Lord of the Gods, wore a dark blue pinstriped suit. He sat on a throne of solid platinum. He had a well-trimmed beard, marbled grey and black like a storm cloud. His face was proud and handsome and grim, his eyes a deep, electric blue.
As Hades and I got closer to him, the air crackled like the fire before us and smelled of ozone.
Sitting to the left of Zeus was Hera, the goddess of marriage and the second youngest of Kronos and Rhea's children, sitting on a throne which was pure white and had various etchings carved into it like her cabin did. Like Hades, she looked like she was straight out of the days of the ancient heroes, as she was wearing a white silk chiton with a golden girdle, along with golden sandals. Her skin was perfect, her nails manicured, and her face was gorgeous. Her honey blonde hair was done up in some sort of elaborate twist, while her dark brown eyes – the same color as Hades', Nico's, and Bianca's eyes – were both warm and welcoming and cold and calculating at the same time.
I instantly knew then I never wanted to get on her bad side.
To the left of Hera was Demeter, the goddess of agriculture and one of my stepmothers. I gulped at the thought. Yet, strangely enough, I wasn't scared of her at all, like I had just been with Zeus and Hera, because where Hera was both warm and cold, Demeter was just pure warmth. Everything about her, from her loosely-curled chocolate brown hair (not blonde like the myths), to her golden-green eyes, to her dark green summer's dress and brown sandals, and even to her wicker chair-shaped throne, was warm and comforting, like an early summer's day...or my mom.
Yeah, you read that right. Demeter reminded me of my mom.
But I didn't look at her for too long, as I quickly turned to gaze at the god who was sitting to the right of Zeus, the god that was my father. Like Demeter and Zeus, he was dressed more modernly for the occasion: leather sandals, khaki Bermuda shorts, and a Tommy Bahama shirt with coconuts and parrots all over it. His skin was deeply tanned, and his hands were scarred like an old-time fisherman's. His hair was black, like mine. His face had that same brooding look which had always gotten me branded as a rebel. But his eyes, which were the same sea green color as my own, were surrounded by sun crinkles. Those told me he smiled a lot, too.
Against my will, my throat closed shut. My eyes watered. No matter how angry I was with him, this was my dad. The one person who I had wanted to meet more than anything in the world.
...Although, I have to admit, I was a little surprised that his throne was a deep-sea fisherman's chair, even if it was a relatively cool-looking one with a black leather seat and a built-in holster for a fishing pole, which held a bronze trident that had emeralds embedded into it and a green light of the same color flickering along its tips.
Next to my dad, Zeus straightened in his chair, a glare forming on his face. "Brother," he greeted Hades, with a tone clearly lacking in anything remotely resembling hospitality, let alone kindness. So much for ξενία, right? "May I remind you the summer solstice is still a day away?"
"You may, brother," Hades said, smirking. "But I do not come here out of bad will. Rather, I come here out of good faith, because our nephew here just returned to me my helm of darkness after proving his own innocence, and telling me who the real perpetrator of the theft that took both of our symbols of power is. Perseus, if you may?"
At once, Zeus, Hera, my dad, and Hestia, with her golden flames for eyes, turned to look at me. But not Demeter. No, her eyes had been on me since the moment I had stepped into the room, watching me with both interest and, dare I say it...love?
Ignoring that thought for now, I anxiously took a step forwards and bowed to all of them. "Lord Zeus, Lady Hera, Lord Poseidon, Lady Demeter, and Lady Hestia," I said, before I began to tell all of them almost everything that had happened, just as it had happened. I carefully made sure to leave out all of my dreams except for the last one with Kronos, for reasons which I was only just beginning to realize. As I spoke, I shrugged off Ares' backpack from my shoulders once more and, taking out Zeus' master lightning bolt as it began to crackle in his presence, laid it at his feet.
After I had finished, there was a long silence, broken only by the crepitating of the hearth fire.
Zeus opened his palm. The lightning bolt flew into it. As he closed his fist, the metallic points flared with electricity, until he was holding what looked more like the classic thunderbolt: a twenty-foot javelin of arcing, hissing energy which made the hairs on my scalp rise and the ones on the back of my neck stand on end.
"The boy must be telling the truth," he said. "Otherwise, Styx would have taken him into her depths. But that Ares would do such a thing...it is most unlike him."
"He is proud and impulsive, brother," Demeter replied, a light smile dancing across her face. "It runs in the family. But, I'm afraid that he isn't the matter we should be focusing on."
Hera nodded primly, saying, "She's right. Husband, if our Father truly is rising – "
Zeus raised a hand, silencing her. "We will speak of this no more," he said. When all of his siblings, even Hestia, however, glared at him, he hurriedly added, "For now. I must go personally to purify my thunderbolt in the waters of Lemnos as quickly as possible, in order to remove the human taint from this metal."
He rose and looked at me. For a second, I thought I saw his expression soften by a fraction of a degree. "You have done me and Hades a service, boy," he said. "Few heroes could have accomplished as much."
"I had help, sir," I told him honestly. "Silena Beauregard and Katie Gardner – "
But he continued on speaking, as if he hadn't heard me. "To show you my thanks, I shall spare your life. I do not trust you, Perseus Jackson. I do not like what your arrival – or the reappearance of your cousins," here, he looked at Hades with a dangerous look, "means for the future of Olympus. But, for the sake of peace in the family, I shall let you live, under the stipulation that you never enter my realm, and that you do not let me find you here when I return. Otherwise, you shall taste this bolt. And it shall be your last sensation, regardless of what is to be offered you."
"Uh...thank you, sir," I said.
"Regardless of what is to be offered to you?"
What does that mean?
Zeus turned to face Hades again, with yet another hard look. "As for you...brother," he said. "Do not leave Olympus yet. We still have much to...discuss yet, about the reappearances of the children you previously told us had been killed by your own hand."
With a huge clash of thunder which shook the palace and a blinding flash of lightning which illuminated it and caused me to momentarily close my eyes, both he and Hera were gone.
From her place by the hearth, Hestia stood. She gazed at me, with those strange, golden fireballs of her that served as eyes, and gave me a gentle smile. "Your uncle has always had a flair for dramatic exits," she said. "I think he would've done well as the god of theater."
There was an uncomfortable silence.
Finally, Hestia sighed and turned to look at Hades. "Come, brother," she said. "It's been so long since you and I talked last, I think it would only be proper for you and I to have a chat outside in the garden. Do you agree?"
"...I do," Hades replied after a beat, and nodded towards me. "I believe this is our farewell, Perseus. For now, at least. I will not forget the idea you and your friends came up with, though, because I do think it will be...beneficial to the conversation I am to have with Zeus and the other Olympians later."
"Uh...okay," I replied. "Thank you again, Lord – "
But he and Hestia were already gone, too, having walked out of the throne room through its doors.
With nothing else to delay the inevitable, I turned around and stared up at Poseidon and Demeter, my father and stepmother, the second power couple of Olympus, and two people who I had never even spoken to...and only knew the voice of one of them, and that was only because she had not-so-subtly tried to redirect the conversation with Zeus a few minutes before.
There was so much that I wanted to say to them. There was so much that I knew I should say to them. And yet, when I opened my mouth, all that came out was a, "So...hi, I guess? Nice to meet you?"
...Jeesh, no wonder so many people thought I was an idiot.
Word Count: 3,530
Next Chapter Title: I'm Given An Offer I Can't Refuse
