Nothing is mine.

An entirely allegorical cookie to anyone who can guess the next chapter title...

To Every Man Upon This Earth Death Cometh Soon or Late

The shadows scattered into weak afternoon sunshine and light drizzle as Percy stumbled over a thick curb onto a sidewalk. Hazy rain blurred the peaks of the skyscrapers into grey silhouettes, but gleaming Stymphalian birds swirled and flocked like starlings between them, sweeping past the hunched backs of perching harpies.

Nico sagged to one knee on the battered, scorched tarmac. 'That way,' he gasped, pointing down the street toward a broad bridge heaped with bent, burnt out cars. 'Thalia and Clarisse are on the Manhattan Bridge. Annabeth is further away, on Brooklyn.'

'Thanks, Nico.' Percy jogged down the street past empty windows, skirting craters in the road and sidewalk.

A scatter of Artemis's companions crouched atop abandoned vehicles, bows in their hands. Gold dust carpeted the ground between the mounds of scorched cars either side of Clarisse's battered phalanx, heaps of it sprawled across the bridge to the ranks of dracaena halfway along its length.

'Percy.' Iphi leapt from the roof of a car, landing on the balls of her feet before him; her brown eyes swept over him. 'You fell...'

'From red waters into darkness,' Percy murmured, drawing himself up with a grin. 'But I felt life in me again. I've been sent back, until my task is done. Only I didn't get any shiny new white clothes, I'm stuck in what's left of this t-shirt.'

Iphi blinked. 'What are you talking about?'

'Right. No cheap cultural references with little old ladies, they're too wrinkly to understand,' he said. 'Thy movie knowledge sucketh, Iphi.'

She laughed. 'You are a stupid boy, Percy.' Her smile softened. 'But I am most glad you have returned. We are spent. Many have fallen.' Iphi pointed past the hewn crest of Clarisse's helm at the massing horde halfway down the bridge. 'Your lieutenant and her brothers are exhausted from hanging on at the end of the bridge. Thalia can barely stand from forcing back the attacks from above. If they come again…'

Percy caught a flash of bronze amidst the slinking hellhounds and slim dracaena. Ethan. Or Luke.

'They won't reach you.' He drew Anaklusmos from his pocket and extended it into a blade. 'Or not very many will. I give you my word, you'll have time to rest for a little while.'

I can't lose. The handprint upon his back prickled and tingled like a thousand hot little needles pressing into his skin. Not yet.

Iphi reached around and pulled the drakon scale from her back. 'I added straps with a little aid.' She slid it onto his arm, patting the ridge of the scale running down the shield's centre. 'No ordinary blade can pierce this thyreos.'

'Thanks, Iphi.' Percy poked at his tattered orange t-shirt. 'If you have anything that works as a top, that would also be really helpful. The breeze is cold and this one has a lot of holes.'

A short laugh escaped her. 'Your fish pyjamas and tent are with ours in the park at the island's centre.'

'Imagine if I defeat Luke in those…' Percy snorted and stepped toward the phalanx. 'Achilles has armour forged by Hephaestus and I have fish pyjamas.' He cackled. 'Annabeth will have to design statues of me wearing them.'

'Good luck, Percy.' Iphi leapt back atop the car. 'We will thin out their numbers as best we can.'

He strode forward through the gold dust. Splatters of red marked the battered cars and the hunters glancing at him as he passed nursed arrow wounds, burns, and the slim, thin scratches of harpy talons.

The horde of monsters crept closer over the bridge; sleek shadows of hellhounds prowled along the tarmac and the lithe dracaena gathered into neat lines.

'Here they come,' Clarisse said, running a hand through the cleft red hair of her helm's crest. 'Don't give them another inch of this damn bridge! We fight here until the last of us falls! And for each of us that does, ten of them will die first!' She thrust her spear into the air. 'Who are we, my brothers?!'

'Children of Ares!' They thundered, stamping their feet and pounding their shields as Percy slipped through the ranks.

'Not one step backward!' Clarisse called.

'Not one step!' They yelled, hammering their fists on their hoplons. 'Honour and immortality!'

'A beautiful death,' Clarisse whispered beneath her breath. 'Father, witness our glory and be proud.'

Percy pushed her shield aside, stepping through between Clarisse and Thalia. 'You've been busy while I was gone.' He stepped out in front of the phalanx into the gap between the burnt-out wreckage of two SUVs.

'Perce,' Thalia muttered, her face haggard and pale. 'Good to see you, we're having a bit of trouble. Running out of bridge to hold onto, see?'

Clarisse stiffened and scowled, stretching the fresh raw pink scar on her cheek. 'Do you ever die for real, Percy? Or do you always just vanish to let everyone get worked up and then reappear at the last minute?'

Percy grinned. 'Did you miss me, Queen of War?'

'Shut up, Sea-boy.' She raised her scarred, dented hoplon. 'And get back here. You're on the wrong side of the phalanx again.'

He spun Anaklusmos in his hand and lifted it up, pressing his lips to the cool bronze blade. 'You take a breather, Clarisse. You too, Thals.' Percy pulled the sea deep within himself, drawing the tide back into a towering wave of black water; it smoked like the icy waters of the Styx as it hung in his mind's eye, rising up and up and up toward the stars. 'Ethan's not going to escape this time.'

A shower of dark shafts rose from the dracaena.

'Shields!' Thalia snapped.

Percy stepped forward and raised the drakon scale thyreos over his head. Arrows pinged off its gleaming dark surface, bouncing away across the tarmac; a sharp gasp tore through the phalanx behind.

'Get him to the back,' Clarisse ordered. 'If we have anything left, take the shaft out and heal it. If we don't, snap it off, leave it in to plug the hole and fight on.'

A hellhound snarled beyond Percy's shield.

He lowered the thyreos as it leapt, letting the wave of smoking black water sweep forward through him, and drinking in the cold rush, Percy drove Anaklusmos through its skull. The others pounced, claws outstretched. He flowed past them, slicing through them in a swirl of bronze as arrows hissed past, skittering down the bridge, and levelling Anaklusmos at Ethan as the golden dust poured to the ground around him.

He offered Ethan a grin and brushed the gold off his shoulders, glancing at the bronze covering his ruined eye. 'Nice eyepatch. Very shiny. Reminds me of a pirate brother of mine I met once.'

'You didn't die.' Ethan's remaining eye narrowed as he drew his sword. 'I had a feeling you wouldn't. You're always ruining things. Making them harder than they have to be.'

The dracaena raised their bows.

'No.' Ethan thrust out his xiphos, the fingers of his free hand creeping to the bronze patch covering his left eye. 'I'll face him myself. Mother promised…'

Percy caught the wave of dark water, pulling its sharp, cold bite back with the slow wash of the tide. 'All you've brought is death, Ethan. Kronos isn't balance.'

Ethan circled him, kicking loose pieces of car and tarmac across the bridge at Percy's feet. 'It's wrong. Look at how we live. How we die.' He shook his head. 'But you don't care, do you? You're strong, you thrive; it's just us that die.'

Percy raised his thyreos and swept the ground clear with one foot. 'I do—'

Ethan lunged.

The tip of his blade struck the spine of the thyreos and screeched off. Percy shoved his arm away and swung Anaklusmos at his chest, but Ethan drove his shoulder into Percy's stomach and slammed him into the burnt-out SUV. The handprint between Percy's shoulder blades tingled and Percy pushed him back, springing forward as Ethan rolled back and bounced to his feet. Anaklusmos's tip whispered past Ethan's cheek and crunched into the scarred chassis of the car; the jarring impact ripped the blade from Percy's grip, leaving it quivering in the car door.

Ethan thrust the xiphos forward. 'Got you.'

Percy caught the blade in his right hand, a wave of prickling sweeping down his spine. 'No you don't.' He released the blade and held up his unmarked palm. 'See?'

Ethan stared. 'You…' Black fury rose in his remaining brown eye. 'You're so strong and you fight for them!' He bared his teeth and snarled. 'The world has to change! Just let us change it!'

'But this isn't how you change it,' Percy murmured. 'You can't burn it all down and build over the ashes. That's not how it works. You'd leave too many scars…'

'Then what would you do?' Ethan demanded. 'Luke tried! He tried to take an apple from the tree Ladon guards. To change things that way. But no mortal can take an apple and survive. And no mortal can change the nature of the world. It's this or nothing.'

'Every time we choose to be kind, we make the world better.' Percy held Ethan's gaze. 'Especially if we can do it even when we're angry and lost, and stop suffering from changing us for the worse.'

Ethan's blade lowered. 'But that's just wishful thinking. It… it's such small stuff! It doesn't change the world.' He clenched his fists. 'There needs to be justice for everyone. Balance. Not just more empty words—'

'There's a prophecy,' Percy said. 'A prophecy given to the Gods. That means the nature of the world will change. I try not to think about it, really, I just do the stuff that's small enough for me to change and leave the rest to the Fates.'

'Then we're going to win and Luke is going to change the world,' Ethan growled, raising his blade. 'Good.'

Percy shook his head. 'A child born of the greatest three…'

Ethan tensed. 'What's the rest?' he spat through gritted teeth. 'What does it say?'

'A child born of the greatest three, sworn to stars but ever free; shall reach sixteen despite great woe, and stand alone against their foe. A final choice will seal their fate, to stand or fall, beneath world's weight.' Percy grimaced. 'And I am reliably informed that it must be me, since I'm the only one of us who chose to hold up the sky.'

Ethan ripped the bronze patch from his face; the hollow shadowed socket pierced through Percy as it slid down to rest on his sternum.

A faint tingling rose in the handprint between Percy's shoulder blades. Not good. He knows.

'Thank you for your sight, mother,' Ethan whispered, drawing himself up. 'One of us will not leave this bridge, Percy. If you have the strength of will to change the world, you'll kill me. And if you don't, then you're wrong, and Luke will kill you and change the world instead.' He pressed the bronze patch back over his ruined eye. 'I have seen it.'

But you know I have the Blessing of the Styx. You know you can't win, don't you?

Anaklusmos sprang back into Percy's hand.

'Ethan,' he murmured. 'I cannot be killed, not until I forsake what binds me to the mortal world. If you choose to force one of us to die here, it will be you.'

'Then I will die bravely to bring balance,' Ethan replied, charging across the bridge.

Percy bent around his blade and let the sea free, shifting back and forth with the swirl of cold dark waves, twisting and turning his wrists with the tug of the tide; he spun Ethan in circles, pressing him back as the warm bronze blade sung in his hand, driving him back against the railing and cutting Ethan's xiphos from his fingers. The blade bounced off the railing and flew over the edge into the river.

A strange little smile curved Ethan's lips. 'Mother,' he whispered. 'Let my life tip the scales the right way.'

'You're defeated,' Percy said, resting the tip of his xiphos over Ethan's heart. 'Surrender.'

'Balance has a price.' Ethan stepped forward.

Anaklusmos slid into his chest like a stick into water and blood poured down his front, spilling over Percy's hands in a hot red gush.

'But, you know… I'm glad… it's finally… done.' Ethan slumped off the blade, crumpling to the ground with a quiet sigh.

He chose. Percy stared at the crimson-drenched bronze in his hands; little rivulets of red ran down to his fingers, trickling along the underside of his hands and dripping down onto Ethan's faint smile. He knew.

The storm knows no pity, my son. His dad's whisper rose from the river below, bubbling up past Ethan's blade. Those that sow its wind, reap its fury.

But I do. And I didn't want to kill him. Not even like this.

All mortals must die some day. With regret or without. His dad's words faded away like the thin white foam of a gentle wave subsiding into the sea. I must return to the war beneath the waves, Percy.

The dracaena fled back down the bridge into the city and he turned away, drifting back through the broken burnt cars. Scratched, bruised scarred faces grinned at him from beneath battered helms and they pounded their dented hoplons, chanting his name with each thunder of fists on bronze.

Clarisse flashed him a sharp smile. 'What now, Sea-boy?'

'Burn Ethan,' Percy said. 'He chose to die well.'

Choice. And Fate.

'What?' She glowered. 'I've burnt brothers. Thalia's lot have burnt sisters. He—'

'Chose to die for the same reasons they did in the end,' Percy murmured. 'He could have run back to Luke and told him what he knew, but he chose to be brave.' He rested a hand on her shoulder. 'A beautiful death…'

Clarisse's lips twisted. 'Yes, strategos,' she whispered.

'I don't think they'll be back,' Percy replied. 'Not today.' He glanced down at the crimson dying his hands. 'I'll be at the camp if you need me, finding a new t-shirt.'

I hope you're not disappointed or offended. Percy wiped the red off Anaklusmos onto his wrist with trembling hands as he followed the signs through the empty streets toward brief glimpses of green. I'm sorry if you are. I did my best. He chose. And it was his choice to make, right Zoë?

Harpies watched Percy walk along the lines at the road's centre, fluttering after him from traffic lights to signs and billboards and into the branches of the trees ringing the camp as he reached its edge.

Faint white woodsmoke curled through the silver tents, a familiar comforting tang as he breathed in. Alexandra slept in blood-soaked bandages, tossing and turning and muttering, her feet sticking through the door of her tent.

Percy tiptoed past and dropped down beside the smoking fire pit, staring up into the rustling green leaves and tugging the thyreos from his arm. The blood dried on his hands, clinging to his skin and prickling as the hairs stuck fast.

'You are troubled.' Hestia sat cross-legged on her white cushion beside him, a thin stick in her hand. 'What ails you, Percy?'

'You don't know?' He glanced down at his stained hands. 'I killed him. I had to. And soon it will be Luke…'

She tucked her stick into the embers of the fire pit and reached out and took his hands in her small one, tipping a cool palmful of water over them and rubbing the blood from his fingers. 'He had a choice. And you were the consequence he chose.'

'But…'

'But you wish it hadn't been that way.' Hestia clasped his fingers in her warm hands; little wisps of steam curled off them as his skin dried. 'Yet that is how it is. You gave him a choice. A chance to die without regret. Perhaps if you had not, he would have died in far worse a fashion.'

'Luke won't make the right choice. He'll make me kill him. Annabeth's right. There's no other way to stop him.'

And I'll die too. A final choice is a final choice. His heart slipped, dwindling down into that dark place, crushed beneath all the weight of the waves and ground to less than a grain of sand. Stand or fall…

'Prophecies aren't always what they seem,' Hestia murmured; the fire burst up into small flames where her stick jutted from the embers, bathing him in gentle warmth.

'Oh I know.' Percy mustered a grin. 'I'm not actually sixteen for nearly another year, so when I die on floor sixteen of the Empire State Building or something like that, it'll be a horrible surprise for everyone else. Annabeth will be very cross when I leave her those fish pyjamas and ask her to wear them to my funeral ceremony.' A faint smile ghosted across his face. 'I should really write it down in a will. She'd be so mad with me, but I'll be dead so she can't even kick me or huff at me.'

'You are so very brave,' Hestia whispered, wrapping her small arms around his head and drawing him down onto her lap. 'Rest, Percy. No dreams or fears will trouble you while I am here. This much I can give you, far as it is from what your kind heart truly deserves.'

AN: You can find the Discord for another chapter or two, how to support me for all the access to my rough draft chapters and my best original stuff, and my website (a labyrinth of terrible web design, but just about functional) via this link tree.

linktr . ee / mjbradley