Son of Kaos (PJO Chaos Gacha)

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER 1​

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I didn't know what woke me first, the sun stabbing at my eyes or the crick in my neck.

My entire body had stiffened while I slept. Sitting upright sent a dull ache down my back, and I had to work my shoulders loose before I could properly look around and establish where the hell I even was.

The answer appeared to be a park bench.

'A fucking bench? What the hell's going on? … I'm not homeless am I?'

The questions chased each other around my skull as I slowly pushed myself upright and looked around. Trees stretched overhead in every direction, their leaves filtering the afternoon sunlight into shifting patches of green and gold. A paved path wound lazily between rolling lawns and clusters of granite outcroppings while joggers, dog walkers and tourists drifted through the distance. None of them seemed to even notice the confused looking young man blinking blearily against the midday sun.

'They probably just think I have the mother of all hangovers… Which could be true for all I know…' I groaned as I rubbed the palms of my hands against my eyes.

I didn't have a headache (though I could feel one steadily building), but my mind was… filled with fog for a lack of a better description. The only thing that I knew for sure was that my spine had conformed to the shape of the bench beneath me, but other than that my head was filled with one question after the other.

Though most of them boiled down to why. Why the hell did I wake up on a park bench in… actually, where even was I? I lifted my head and took in my surroundings again.

Central Park, I realised after a moment. New York.

I knew that much at least, same as I knew my name was Ethan Creed. It was everything before waking up on that bench that was giving me trouble. I could remember things, plenty of things actually, but the moment I tried to remember anything about myself or how I'd gotten here, I drew a blank.

As I tried to sort through the growing mess inside my head, a strange prickling sensation slowly began crawling across the back of my neck. Then the air above me shimmered, and I froze as something appeared overhead for the briefest of moments.

Not a symbol exactly, it was far more simple than that, a vast circle of darkness suspended impossibly in midair, though darkness wasn't quite the right word either. It was deeper than black and felt more hollow than empty. Looking at it felt disturbingly similar to staring into a hole punched straight through reality itself. Around that impossible void drifted countless pinpricks of silver light, swirling slowly around its edges like distant stars trapped in orbit.

Then, almost as quickly as it had appeared, the thing broke apart into tiny motes of gold and disappeared.

I blinked up at the now perfectly normal sky.

"... What the fuck?"

I'd been awake for all of five minutes and already I was starting to wonder if I was suffering from a concussion rather than a hangover.

Before I could make sense of any of it, shimmering motes of light gathered directly in front of my face. The air rippled as they coalesced and gathered into a scroll that unfurled itself in front of me.

This wasn't a metaphor or a trick of the light.

An actual parchment scroll appeared in midair and calmly rolled itself open, as though magical office supplies manifesting in public parks was a perfectly normal occurrence.

I gaped at the scroll. The scroll silently glowered back, and for a few seconds I found myself stuck in the world's most bizarre staring contest.

Somehow, I got the feeling I was losing.

Golden lettering slowly burned itself across its surface.

[WELCOME, ETHAN CREED.]

I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder as the thing somehow addressed me by name (and then I had to resist the much harder urge to say "You talkin' ta me?"). The golden lettering lingered for several moments before slowly fading away, replaced by a fresh line of text.

[DIVINE HERITAGE AWAKENED.]

I frowned as more words appeared, before my eyes widened as I realized that I had somehow had been reading the Greek alphabet flawlessly without even questioning it.

[LINEAGE IDENTIFIED: CHILD OF KAOS.]

The name felt strangely familiar, like hearing a word you knew you should understand while simultaneously realizing you had absolutely no idea what it meant.

The parchment, unfortunately, seemed determined to continue as a fresh line appeared.

[THE PRIMORDIAL ENTITY KNOWN AS KAOS CURRENTLY SLUMBERS.]

[THE LINK BETWEEN PROGENITOR AND DESCENDANT REMAINS ACTIVE.]

[DIVINE HERITAGE SUCCESSFULLY AWAKENED.]

The golden lettering pulsed softly.

[ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM UNLOCKED.]

[TRAITS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH GREAT SURVIVALS, TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES AND NOTABLE DEEDS.]

[ABILITIES MAY BE EARNED THROUGH THE COMPLETION OF QUESTS AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS.]

[SKILLS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH MASTERY, EXPERIENCE AND REPEATED SUCCESS.]

[ITEMS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH NOTEWORTHY KILLS, DISCOVERIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.]

The words vanished and before I could even try and comprehend what the waterfall of ancient Greek had tried to explain, new ones immediately took their place.

[AS A DESCENDANT OF KAOS, FRAGMENTS OF CREATION ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM.]

[DOMAINS, BLESSINGS, TALENTS AND POWERS ASSOCIATED WITH GODS, SPIRITS, MONSTERS AND CONCEPTS MAY BE ACQUIRED.]

[ALL THINGS ORIGINATE FROM THE SAME SOURCE.]

My eyes slowly tracked back up the parchment, to Central Park still brimming with life, oblivious tourists and preoccupied New Yorkers, then back down to the scroll again that apparently only I could see. I still wasn't entirely certain what any of its golden words meant as the scroll continued.

[AWAKENING REWARD GRANTED.]

[GOLD TRAIT DRACHMA ×1]

A brilliant golden coin materialized in the air before me. Before I'd even finished staring at it, a second appeared beside it as the lettering on the parchment kept changing.

[GOLD ABILITY DRACHMA ×1]

The drachma fell neatly into my hand with a metallic clink, though they had more heft to them than I'd expected from something so small. For a moment, I just looked down at them, then at the parchment, then back at the coins again.

"... why the hell do I suddenly know what a drachma is?"

The parchment offered no response whatsoever, which was rather unfortunate, because I had roughly several thousand questions and the growing suspicion I was about to receive answers to absolutely none of them.

Actually, scratch that. I understood more than I initially thought. Bits and pieces were beginning to surface now that I had something to focus on, starting with the name that had been bothering me since it first appeared on the scroll.

Kaos.

The name stirred something buried somewhere inside the tangled mess my mind had become. Not much, just fragments of Greek mythology that rose to the forefront of my shattered memories. A primordial void. The very first thing. The thing that existed before everything else, before existence itself became real.

A sort of 'Let there be light!' type of deal.

At least, that was what I remembered from the myths. The scroll had been a little more specific. It called Kaos my progenitor and claimed that everything from gods and spirits to the powers they wielded had ultimately originated from the same source.

Which, apparently, included me, making me his son. Her son? Their? It?

Not sure how literally I was supposed to take that though. Wasn't the point of most Greek myths that they were, like, parables or something? Stories that ultimately conveyed a moral, or a lesson? Though most of those often boiled down to "sit down, be humble" as the song went.

However, if those myths were really just dressed up metaphors... what did that make me? And if Kaos was real, did that mean the rest of Greek mythology was real too? Was Zeus actually sitting on a fluffy cloud somewhere throwing lightning bolts at people? Did Poseidon genuinely rule the oceans? Was Hades managing an actual underworld full of actual dead people? Had humanity somehow stumbled across the greatest cosmic revelation in history several thousand years ago and collectively decided to just file it under mythology instead?

If the scroll was to be trusted (and as much as it wasn't exactly forthcoming with information, what it did tell me felt truthful at least), then Greek mythology was apparently a great deal less fictional than advertised and I had just been rewarded for awakening my divine heritage with two glowing gold drachma whose purpose remained entirely unexplained.

That should have sounded completely ridiculous. Instead the knowledge settled somewhere in the back of my mind with an uncomfortable sense of familiarity, like I had stumbled across a fact I already knew and simply hadn't realized I'd forgotten. The sensation lasted only a moment before slipping away again, leaving behind the growing suspicion that my missing memories knew considerably more about what was going on than I did.

Just how many other important facts were currently buried somewhere inside my head?

"… what the fuck is going on? What even am I?"

The scroll remained every bit as helpful as it had been thus far, which was to say not at all. Honestly, I wasn't entirely certain what I had expected. A customer support department perhaps. A frequently asked questions section. Maybe even a convenient pamphlet titled So You've Just Discovered You're The Descendant Of A Primordial Cosmic Entity.

Instead I got silence.

"You know, for a magical scroll that appeared specifically to tell me things, you're remarkably shit at answering questions." I groaned as I rubbed at my temple. "Now all I've got to go on are two coins which I'm guessing aren't accepted at the local supermarket and an unhelpful mysterious piece of magical parchment-

Said parchment suddenly vanished as it dissolved into drifting motes of golden light that scattered into the afternoon air and disappeared.

I stared at the empty space where it had been.

"...Did you just fucking leave?!" I yelled as I shook my fist at the sky.

It wasn't very helpful and it attracted more than a few uncomfortable passersby who gave me a far wider berth than necessary, but man, did it feel good. My gaze dropped back toward the two drachma resting in my palm.

"Two coins and a fat load of nothing."

The words had barely left my mouth when a deep growl sounded from somewhere behind me, and suddenly I had a pretty good idea why the scroll had been in such a hurry to disappear.

I went still, listening as the sound rolled across the park. I'd heard plenty of dogs growl before, but whatever was behind me sounded more like a bulldozer that had developed anger issues and was waiting for somebody to make the mistake of letting it off its leash.

Carefully, oh so very carefully, I dared to twist around on my park bench, glancing over my shoulder.

For a brief moment my brain attempted to convince me I was looking at a dog. A very large dog admittedly, the sort of animal that would immediately become the subject of several scientific papers and at least one very concerned phone call to the nearest zoo, but still technically a dog.

Dogs, however, generally weren't shoulder-high to a horse and didn't have eyes that glowed like burning coals. More importantly, dogs possessed a certain familiarity to them. No matter how large or aggressive they became, there was always something recognizable lurking underneath. A dog was a dog.

This thing felt… wrong.

Every instinct I possessed seemed to recoil from the sight of it, as though some deeply buried part of my brain had taken one look at the creature and immediately began screaming that whatever stood between those trees was not supposed to exist, like finding a shark in the kiddie pool.

The beast continued forward at an unhurried pace, its massive paws sinking into the earth with surprising quiet for something that looked capable of demolishing a small car through sheer enthusiasm. Black fur covered its body, though calling it black somehow felt insufficient. The sunlight seemed reluctant to touch it, the dark coat swallowing the afternoon light rather than reflecting it.

Then it growled again, the sound rolling through the park like distant thunder. Finally, somewhere inside the tangled wreckage of my memories, a single word surfaced.

Hellhound. Just as the name clicked into place, the massive beast moved.

One moment it stood there between the trees, staring at me with burning red eyes and enough teeth to make a crocodile feel inadequate. The next it exploded forward with terrifying speed, covering the distance between us so quickly that my brain barely managed to register what was happening before my body took over. I practically threw myself off the bench, hitting the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs as several hundred pounds of muscle, fur and bad intentions slammed into the space I'd occupied a heartbeat earlier.

The bench never stood a chance.

The impact detonated it.

Wood burst apart in every direction as the creature tore straight through it, showering the surrounding path with splinters and broken fragments. By the time the hellhound landed, there wasn't much left of the bench beyond scattered debris.

For a brief moment, I felt oddly disappointed at that. Sure, I probably should be more preoccupied with the massive monster that's apparently decided that I was to be its next lunch, but still, that bench had been the only thing I'd encountered since waking up that had actually made sense. A park bench was normal. Familiar. Understandable. It sat there. People sat on it. It had even let me sleep on it for… however long I'd been out for until it felt like my spine more resembled a pretzel.

Simple.

And now the fucking dog had broken it.

The beast lowered itself slightly as another growl rumbled from its chest, and whatever remained of my ability to think rationally finally collapsed as the situation fully caught up with me. The hellhound outweighed me several times over, possessed enough teeth to stock a small museum and appeared entirely committed to the idea of eating me. Meanwhile I had no weapon, no plan and absolutely no idea what I was doing. In fact, the only things currently in my possession were two glowing gold drachma that I didn't understand the purpose of and a growing certainty that I was about to become an educational example regarding the dangers of sitting alone in public parks.

Neither of those seemed especially useful against several hundred pounds of supernatural predator. Still, the coins were the only thing I had… so I threw them directly at the creature's face.

My aim wasn't especially good. At best I might have caught it in one of those glowing red eyes and mildly annoyed it before being eaten anyway.

However, halfway through their flight, both coins simply ceased to exist. There was no impact, no flash of light and no metallic clang as they struck the hellhound's skull. One moment they were spinning through the air toward the creature's face and the next they were gone, disappeared into a bloom of impossible darkness that suddenly unfolded around them like a tear in reality itself. The light around them folded inward, collapsing into a tiny point before that same impossible darkness I'd seen hanging above my head when I first woke up disappeared entirely and leaving behind only a handful of drifting silver and gold motes.

For several long moments both the hellhound and I stared at the empty space where the coins had been.

The fact that a giant monster dog appeared just as confused by the situation as I was somehow failed to make me feel any better.

Then something brushed against my thoughts. It wasn't a voice, not in the normal sense at least. The sensation felt more like meaning than language. A concept arriving fully formed inside my head without bothering to introduce itself first.

Recognition.

Acceptance.

The feeling carried no words, yet somehow I understood it anyway: The offering of the coins had been accepted, compensation was due.

Before I could begin unpacking what that implied, the parchment abruptly reappeared at the edge of my vision, hovering well off to one side. Perhaps I was projecting, but I got the distinct impression it would have preferred to be hiding behind me if that wouldn't have made it impossible to read.

Golden lettering rapidly appeared across its surface, as if it was in a hurry.

[OFFERING GOLD TRAIT DRACHMA.]

Above me, a new symbol ignited.

The vast void that had briefly appeared when I awoke flashed into existence once more, only this time it was accompanied by the image of a closed fist forged from gleaming silver metal. The symbol burned brightly against the afternoon sky before dissolving into drifting sparks.

The scroll continued.

[Adamantine Fist]

|Epic Trait|

Your fists are like Adamantine, unbreakable and incredibly powerful. Your fists are incredibly durable, and the power behind all unarmed strikes is greatly enhanced. All fist-based abilities are easier to use and are more powerful.

I stared.

Even the hellhound stared.

The scroll, apparently deciding there was no time for questions, immediately continued.

[OFFERING GOLD ABILITY DRACHMA.]

Another symbol erupted overhead.

This one appeared as a chain of golden fistprints suspended in the air, each larger than the last. The first was small and unremarkable, the second noticeably larger, the third larger still, until the final imprint dwarfed the others and seemed to radiate enough force to crack the air around it. The sequence lingered for only a heartbeat before dissolving into drifting sparks. Fresh text appeared.

[Combo]

|Rare Ability|

Every time you connect a physical hit within a 3-second time frame, your next hit is 10% stronger. As long as you hit your opponent at least once every 3 seconds, you will maintain the combo and the multiplier will continue increasing. If you fail to land a hit within 3 seconds, the combo resets.

Maximum Multiplier: 999%.

I blinked, then blinked again, just to be sure.

The hellhound chose that exact moment to stop patiently waiting for me to finish reading. There was probably a warning somewhere in the shift of its posture, a tensing of muscles. Some subtle sign that an apex predator roughly the size of a compact car was about to attempt murder.

Unfortunately, I was busy reading a LitRPG equivalent of my own superpowers.

The result was that when the beast exploded forward, by the time my brain caught up with it, the hellhound was already on top of me.

I barely managed to throw myself backward as snapping jaws closed where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier. The creature's momentum carried it past me, claws gouging trenches through the grass as it skidded across the ground before immediately twisting around for another attack.

My heart attempted to achieve orbit as the hellhound lowered itself slightly. I didn't know much about fighting, but even I could recognize the universal body language of something preparing to launch itself directly at my face.

The beast lunged and I (naturally) panicked.

The punch that followed had all the grace and technique of an arachnophobe trying to kill a spider with a shoe.

That is to say, fucking none.

It wasn't even a proper punch to be brutally honest. It was a wildly flailing haymaker fueled entirely by the very reasonable desire not to be eaten.

As my fist shot forward, however, something changed.

A strange pressure gathered around my hand. It wasn't painful exactly. It wasn't even uncomfortable, just... solid. My fist felt heavier than it should have, denser somehow and impossibly sturdy, carrying the same certainty a hammer probably felt right before meeting a nail.

Then my knuckles met the side of the hellhound's jaws.

The impact detonated.

Instead of my arm being torn off clean at the shoulder as it should've, the beast's head snapped violently sideways with enough force to twist its entire body off course. Several hundred pounds of monster crashed across the grass before tumbling to a stop a short distance away, carving an impressive trench through the earth along the way.

For several long seconds both the hellhound and I simply stared at one another across the torn-up grass. The creature's expression somehow managed to communicate profound confusion despite being attached to a giant supernatural murder-dog, which was fair because I was having similar difficulties processing the fact that I'd apparently just punched a monster through several yards of Central Park.

A strange sensation settled into the back of my mind, bringing with it an instinctive awareness of time passing. Three seconds. I couldn't explain how I knew that number, but I knew with a startling, absolute certainty that it was counting down.

The creature somewhat sluggishly began pushing itself upright while the strange sensation in the back of my mind continued its steady countdown. I watched it struggle back onto its feet and found myself focusing less on the hellhound itself than on the rapidly shrinking window of time attached to whatever I'd just triggered. The realization arrived a heartbeat later. If the feeling disappeared before I landed another hit, I'd be starting over from the beginning.

Just as the hellhound finally got its paws beneath it, I charged.

The decision wasn't brave or fueled by some sudden sense of burgeoning heroism. If anything, it was probably one of the dumber things I'd done in recent memory, though admittedly my recent memory currently consisted of approximately twenty minutes and a park bench.

The important thing was that it worked.

The hellhound clearly hadn't expected me to be the one closing the distance. Its glowing red eyes widened slightly as I barreled toward it, throwing another messy punch before it had fully recovered from the first one.

The strike landed awkwardly against the creature's hindquarters. Under normal circumstances it should have been a terrible hit. The angle was wrong, my footing wasn't much better and punching a monster in the ass generally seemed like the sort of tactic employed by people who had completely run out of better ideas. Despite all that, the impact still carried enough force to make the hellhound stumble sideways, and the moment my fist connected, the strange sensation in the back of my mind immediately reset to its starting point.

Three seconds.

Another countdown.

'That's good enough confirmation for me. How did that song go? Right, 'just keep swinging, just keep swinging, swinging, swinging…'

The fight rapidly abandoned any resemblance to skill from there on out. It was just me desperately throwing punches at whatever part of the hellhound happened to be within reach while the creature attempted to figure out why the bedraggled young man it had tried to eat was suddenly beating the shit out of it.

At first the beast tried to push through the blows and only hastily placing my literally unbreakable fists in between me and its chompers saved me from experiencing what it's like to be on the inside of a blender. It snapped at me whenever it found an opening, attempted to force its way back into the fight with a snarl, a lunge or a swipe of its claws, seemingly convinced that eventually I would tire before it did. That confidence began to erode surprisingly quickly, however somewhere around the point where my punches started blasting fist-sized holes through its hide. The more punches landed, the harder they became. The increase wasn't dramatic individually, but it accumulated frighteningly fast. Every successful strike fed the next one. Every reset of the timer pushed the number higher.

The sharp impacts of fist meeting flesh became explosive cracks that echoed through the park like gunshots. Golden dust burst from the creature wherever my knuckles connected, leaving behind small holes in its dark hide as though parts of the hellhound were being erased rather than injured.

Another punch blasted a chunk from its shoulder while the next drove into its ribs hard enough to spin the beast sideways. By the time a third hit, now at almost 200% the power of that first punch, nearly folded one of its legs beneath it, the fight had stopped resembling anything remotely fair.

The hellhound backed away and I almost missed my next punch.

'The thing is… scared?'

It had charged me without hesitation less than a minute ago, utterly convinced that I was prey. But somewhere along the way as [Combo] kept climbing higher and higher, our roles had reversed. Now it was shrinking away every time I stepped forward, snarling and snapping whenever I got too close but making no attempt to come after me anymore, while every punch I threw just kept getting stronger.

By now they sounded less like punches and more like small explosions.

My arms felt like they were on fire. Sweat poured down my face. My lungs burned. Every muscle in my shoulders and chest screamed in protest each time I threw another wailing strike, but the timer kept resetting and the number kept climbing and somewhere along the way the possibility of stopping had ceased to exist.

The hellhound made one final desperate leap and exhausted as I was, I reacted on pure instinct.

With a yell that probably wasn't an actual word anymore, I raised both hands above my head and brought them down with everything I had left.

The impact landed squarely on top of the beast's skull and for a brief moment the hellhound seemed to compress beneath the blow, every muscle in its body tensing at once. The beast hung there beneath my clasped hands, suspended at the apex of its leap as though reality itself needed a second to process exactly how much force had just been introduced into the situation.

Then the monster just… came apart.

Honestly, I wasn't entirely certain what I had expected. Gore, probably. The thing looked like it had crawled straight out of somebody's nightmare and the word hell was literally part of its name. Fire seemed like a reasonable possibility too. Some kind of dramatic supernatural death throes perhaps?

What I wasn't expecting was dust.

The creature simply came apart beneath my hands, its dark fur, massive frame and excessive collection of teeth dissolving into an expanding cloud of fine golden particles that washed across the park like a sandstorm.

Unfortunately, the center of that sandstorm was me.

The resulting wave of monster remains hit me with all the restraint of a hurricane. Golden dust filled my eyes, my nose, and my mouth.

I staggered backward, coughing violently as several pounds of what I desperately hoped wasn't hellhound ash coated me from head to toe. Every attempt to breathe only succeeded in inhaling more of the stuff, which immediately triggered another coughing fit.

Somewhere in the distance people were screaming. Meanwhile I was left coughing and blindly swatting at airborne dog remains like the world's shittiest victory celebration.

'… I miss my bench…'

I spat out another mouthful of golden dust and wiped the rest from my face, uncomfortably of all the other places the golden dust had managed to get into.

'Anakin Skywalker, you were right. Sand is the worst…' I thought as I tried to clear my sinuses while simultaneously trying to rub my eyes.

The parchment chose that moment to reappear. I hadn't even noticed it leaving at some point, though to be fair I was just literally up to my wrists in Hellhound guts.

"Oh, so now you come back, huh? Needed me to kill the big scary monster first did you?" I spat at it, more than a bit annoyed with the floating piece of stationary as I contemplated jumping into a nearby pond just to wash of the monster-grime.

The scroll itself again offered no explanation of its own (because of course it didn't), instead hovering above the ruined remains of my late bench with what I was rapidly coming to interpret as entirely too much self-satisfaction.

Fresh lettering immediately began appearing across its surface.

[KILL CONFIRMED: HELLHOUND]

I squinted at it through a layer of monster dust.

"Thank you," I said. "I was there."

The scroll ignored me as more text appeared.

[First Monster Encounter Survived]

[Reward: Bronze Skill Drachma ×1]

[First Hellhound Slain]

[Reward: Bronze Item Drachma ×1]

The lettering lingered for a moment before another line emerged beneath it.

[Combat Achievement Recognized]

[Victory Achieved Through Unarmed Combat]

[Additional Recognition Recorded]

[Reward: Bronze Skill Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

Golden motes immediately began peeling away from the dust still scattered throughout the park. Tiny particles of light rose from the torn-up grass, drifted free from my clothes and lifted away from the remnants of the hellhound before gathering together in front of me.

Three separate swarms formed.

They spiraled through the air like miniature galaxies before condensing into three bronze coins that dropped neatly into my open palm, as I caught them automatically.

They felt noticeably different from the gold drachma. Lighter. Less... significant somehow. Or perhaps just less powerful.

'I guess beating a Hellhound to a pulp ranks as less impressive in the grand scheme of things than being the literal offspring of the primordial void at the beginning of creation itself... I mean, when I think about it that way...'

Actually, I really rather not think about my origin story right now, considering everything that had happened in the past twenty minutes. Trying to distract myself, I rolled one of the bronze drachma across my knuckles while studying the others. They were identical at first glance, each bearing unfamiliar symbols stamped into weathered bronze, though I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was inside them differed considerably.

"I guess… I just… throw you in the air? Again?" I hazarded, even sneaking a peek at the scroll from the corner of my eye, but frustratingly (and predictably) it gave no answer.

Sighing, I took one of the bronze coins and casually flipped it in the air with a flick of my thumb, the 'ping!' surprisingly pleasant until that same void twisted itself into existence to whisk the coin away. Again that sensation came from deep within me, of acceptance of a bargain, or perhaps a transaction as the sparks (bronze this time) left behind by the tear in reality coalesced into a new symbol over my head.

This one resembled a staff wrapped with a serpent, rendered in shimmering bronze light that cast strange shadows across the torn-up grass before slowly fading from view.

The parchment immediately updated.

[OFFERING BRONZE SKILL DRACHMA.]

[Novice Medicine]

|Common Skill|

You are about as skilled as a doctor in training. You know how to perform first aid, how to apply medicine, what most medicines do, and in a pinch improvise medical tools to perform basic surgery.

The knowledge hit a second later. Not exactly painful in the physical sense, not as the fight with the Hellhound had been. Just… overwhelming. One moment I was staring at the parchment and the next I suddenly knew approximately seventeen different ways to clean and dress a wound, could identify a disturbing number of faults in over-the-counter medications by sight and possessed entirely new opinions regarding proper field sanitation.

"... That's… actually really useful." I mused as I looked down at my scraped knuckles.

The realization surprised me almost as much as the magical knowledge download itself.

Considering recent events, I'd half expected the System to reward me with something like Advanced Basket Weaving or Competitive Bird Watching. Instead I'd apparently become medically competent enough to recognize that my right hand was beginning to swell slightly and that I should probably avoid punching additional supernatural monsters with it for at least several hours.

Not that I needed a magical superpower to tell me that.

The second coin was considerably more interesting. The moment I activated it, another symbol ignited above me. A long black coat appeared suspended in the air, its silhouette outlined in bronze light before the image slowly descended and solidified.

The coat itself followed a heartbeat later and I barely managed to catch the surprisingly heavy leather before it hit the ground.

[OFFERING BRONZE ITEM DRACHMA.]

[Father Garcia's Trenchcoat]

|Common Item|

Faith the Unholy Trinity - "True faith looks forward, not back."

An iconic black trench coat worn by Father Garcia. It is fairly durable and has the property of warding off curses and negative energy from the wearer.

"... I have absolutely no idea who Father Garcia is."

Honestly, after the day I'd had, receiving a mysterious magical coat from an equally mysterious priest ranked surprisingly low on the list all things considered. With the shrug, I pulled on the trenchcoat, only mildly surprised at this point to find it an absolute tailor-made perfect fit.

The final bronze drachma rested alone in my palm. Part of me hoped for something combat related. Monster lore would have been nice too. A map even. Some explanation regarding why giant hellhounds were apparently roaming around Central Park.

I activated the coin. A final symbol appeared above me, suspended in the air like all the others before it. Unlike the others, however, this one didn't immediately inspire thoughts of combat or ancient cosmic significance. Instead I found myself staring upward in growing confusion before eventually arriving at the only explanation that made any sense.

"... Is that a motherfucking steering wheel?"

The parchment immediately informed me that it was, in fact, a steering wheel.

[OFFERING BRONZE SKILL DRACHMA.]

[Novice Driving]

|Common Skill|

You know how to drive most vehicles, you are no expert but you won't fall off your bike or start driving into pedestrians.

The knowledge arrived instantly, bringing with it an understanding of traffic laws, road signs, how to check your mirrors, parallel parking, vehicle operation and the proper procedure for navigating a four-way intersection. I stood there for several long moments while my brain attempted to reconcile the fact that I now possessed practical driving knowledge despite not remembering how I'd ended up asleep on a park bench twenty minutes earlier.

Eventually I looked down at the parchment, then around at the cratered battlefield surrounding me before returning my attention to the scroll.

"... I just beat a hellhound to death with my bare hands, and your reward was teaching me how to drive."

If parchments had shoulders to shrug, it would've.

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AN: If you want, you can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon (same name over there)

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER TWO
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Mentally cussing out a piece of floating mystical parchment was not especially helpful, but it did give my brain something to focus on besides the fact that I was currently standing in the middle of Central Park wearing a magical priest jacket, coated in golden monster dust and suddenly capable of whatever the hell punching a demonic wolf into powder through repeated blunt-force trauma counted as.

Well, that and the unexpected ability to perfectly parallel park, which I was still not letting go by the way.

I looked down at my hands. The swelling around my knuckles had already started setting in. Nothing serious according to the part of my brain that now apparently contained basic medical training, but enough to make itself known whenever I flexed my fingers.

The parchment remained hovering nearby.

I narrowed my eyes at it.

"You know," I said, trying to make a fist and immediately regretting the decision, "for something that just taught me first aid, you could have included a first aid kit."

The parchment offered no apology.

Naturally.

Before I could continue arguing with enchanted stationery, the sound of distant screaming dragged my attention back to the rest of the world. People were still running scared throughout this part of Central Park. Not all of them, because New Yorkers apparently possessed a survival instinct that operated on a slightly different scale than the rest of humanity, but enough. Several joggers had stopped a safe distance away and were staring in my general direction with the horrified fascination of people witnessing either a violent crime, or performance art that had escalated beyond anyone's comfort level.

A woman clutched a small dog to her chest as it barked furiously at the empty crater where the hellhound had been. The dog, having somehow missed the part where its significantly larger relative had tried to eat me, appeared convinced it could take the situation if given half a chance. I, however, had had my fill of demigod-on-canine violence for the day.

So I walked away. I would've run, but first of all, running felt suspicious, and after everything that had just happened, drawing even more attention to myself seemed like a terrible idea.

Also my legs were beginning to realize what the rest of me had been doing for the last few minutes and were starting to protest in earnest.

I pulled the trenchcoat tighter around myself, partly because it concealed the worst of the monster dust and partly because wearing it made me feel slightly less exposed. The coat was ridiculous, sure, but it was also the only object I currently owned that claimed to ward off curses and negative energy. Given my recent introduction to reality had involved a hellhound, primordial ancestry and the universe handing me a driver's manual through magical gambling currency, I was not about to dismiss curse protection on aesthetic grounds.

Behind me, the parchment dissolved into golden motes without so much as a goodbye.

"Of course," I muttered.

I walked for a while without paying much attention to where I was going. The park paths blurred together as I moved south and east, guided more by the general flow of people than any actual knowledge of Manhattan geography; sidewalks, storefronts, traffic and pedestrians all melting into background noise while I tried and failed to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do next.

Waking up on a park bench with half my memories missing and discovering I was apparently related to the primordial source of creation had left me somewhat short on long-term goals.

A few blocks later I spotted a subway sign and found myself heading toward it almost immediately. I didn't actually have a destination in mind. That was a problem for future Ethan. Present Ethan was mostly concerned with putting some distance between himself and the giant crater he'd accidentally left in Central Park.

The subway went somewhere at least, which as far as both present and future Ethan were concerned, currently put it several steps ahead of here.

'Might as well.' I thought to myself as I ducked down the stairs to the subterranean station, one hand brushing against the wall to steady myself as the sounds of the city shifted around me.

Horns and distant sirens faded behind concrete and metal. The air grew warmer, heavier, stale in that particular underground way that suggested millions of people had been breathing the same exhausted breath for decades.

The station was busy.

Not packed, thankfully, but busy enough that I immediately felt less visible. People moved around me in overlapping streams, eyes forward, headphones in, bags tucked close. Nobody wanted to make eye contact. Nobody wanted to ask why I looked like I had gotten into a fight with a golden sandblaster and lost.

For the first time since waking up, I appreciated New York and the fact that for once, I wasn't at the centre of attention. The realization eased something in my shoulders I hadn't even noticed was there.

'Maybe I'm not completely screwed after all.' I even dared to think.

Then (of course, since apparently demigods can't have nice things) I spotted the ticket machines.

I stared at the turnstile kiosk for a few seconds, then checked my pockets again. Nothing, not even a magical drachma, not that it would've helped much. I doubt these things give chance for ancient currency.

A crowd surged toward the turnstiles as a train announcement echoed through the station.

'Good enough.'

I waited until the thickest part of the throng reached the gates, then slipped alongside them and caught one of the turnstiles just as it tried to swing shut. Adamantine Fist made the metal protest loudly for the briefest moment, but it stopped moving long enough for me to step through with the rest of the crowd.

Considering the day I've had so far, I felt only slightly bad about fare-skipping, though that was largely overshadowed by the relief I felt as I wandered onto the nearest platform.

For some time, perhaps more than was prudent, I ambled across the station while examining maps, route diagrams and anything else that looked remotely informative. In hindsight thought, I was mostly stalling in the hopes one of the displayed maps would reveal a genius plan of some sort, considering I was having difficulties coming up with one of my own.

I had almost nothing to anchor myself, or to orient myself towards. No home. No destination. No explanation for why half my memories felt like someone had dropped them down a flight of stairs.

That made it bloody difficult to just pick a platform and run. Eventually, after several minutes of accomplishing absolutely nothing productive, my attention drifted away from my increasingly circular thoughts and toward the people sharing the platform with me.

That was when I noticed the kids.

At first, they barely registered. A lean boy, almost wiry, with messy blond hair and a thin scar running down the right side of his face that sat strangely on somebody that young. A black-haired girl, her face marked by pale skin, bright blue eyes and a dusting of freckles across her nose. There was a sharpness to her features that made her look older than she was at first glance, right up until the freckles reminded you she was still just a kid.

They stood protectively near a little blonde girl with stormy grey eyes who looked far too young to be navigating the subway without an adult, clutching a baseball cap in a small hand. Near them, leaning on crutches, stood an older teenager with a scruffy patch of reddish facial hair that looked more aspirational than successful. His clothes hung loosely from a thin frame and there was something vaguely dishevelled about him, as though he'd slept in them, travelled in them and possibly spent the last several weeks being chased across the country in them.

My eyes would've looked past them if my subconscious (and my newly gained medical knowledge) didn't latch onto the fact that they displayed something I was currently all too familiar with.

They were exhausted.

It was a particular kind of weariness that went beyond simply being tired. Tired people slouched. Exhausted people became sharp in strange places. Their eyes moved too quickly. Their shoulders held too much tension. The blonde boy stood slightly ahead of the others like he had decided, consciously or otherwise, that anything coming for them would have to go through him first. The black-haired girl watched the tracks with the kind of suspicion most people reserved for dark alleys and poor life choices. The little blonde girl had a backpack hugged against her chest and a face that looked too serious for someone who should have been worrying about cartoons, scraped knees and whether adults were lying about vegetables.

The teenager with the crutches kept adjusting his stance, and something about him bothered me, though I could not have said why.

Then again, plenty of things bothered me at the moment, so I decided to just mentally file the group under unfortunate but unrelated and turned my attention back toward the station maps instead.

That lasted all of three seconds.

Movement caught my eye. Not from the children themselves, but from somebody watching them.

The woman watching them stood near a pillar.

Older, like a grandma, but more evil somehow. Grey hair pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense bun. Thick leather jacket despite the warmth of the station. She looked ordinary enough at first glance, which was exactly the problem. After the hellhound, my tolerance for ordinary-looking things behaving oddly had dropped considerably. She wasn't watching the tracks. She wasn't checking her phone. She wasn't impatiently shifting from foot to foot like every other person waiting for a train.

She was watching the kids.

I mean, so was I, but I was simply observing out of a mild sense of concern. This woman though, the way she didn't even fucking blink… she wasn't staring, she looked like she was hunting.

Her fingers flexed at her sides, and in the dim light of the platform, they seemed oddly longer than they should have.

The more I stared, the more they seemed to stretch, joints bending in ways that made my stomach tighten. Her nails scraped lightly against the leather of her jacket, and what I'd initially dismissed as an unfortunate manicure suddenly looked a lot more like claws, her fingertips curving into awful hooks.

Then the old woman shifted her weight and started moving and my stomach immediately sank. That hungry stare never left the children, and as she slipped away from her hiding spot, those wicked claws seemed to inch closer and closer to their backs with every step.

My body moved before I could even decide whether that was a good idea.

In hindsight, there were probably better ways to handle the situation. A warning might have been useful. A shout. A thrown bottle. Literally any form of intervention that did not involve madly sprinting up to an older woman in the middle of a crowded subway station and delivering an absolute mega-ton punch to the back of her head.

Unfortunately for the both of us, my instincts had spent the last half hour learning a very specific lesson: when in doubt, punch first.

'Man if turns out she's human after all, this is gonna make me look so bad on the security footage!' I winced as my Adamantine Fist slammed into the back of the woman's head.

She had almost reached the children when I completely blindsided her. For a fraction of a second her face twisted, skin stretching tight over something beneath it that was not remotely human. Her mouth stretched wider than it should have, her eyes flashing as a hiss tore its way out of her throat.

Then she burst into golden dust.

'Oh thank God! …or, uhm, gods, I suppose? Thank Kaos? Dad? Mom?'

I was drawn from my musings as the station erupted much like Central Park had done, though of course with much more immediate pandemonium. People screamed as a bag hit the floor somewhere nearby with a jarring thud. A man near the vending machines shouted something I didn't catch. The little blonde girl vanished from where she'd been standing so completely that for a second I thought I'd imagined her, while the black-haired girl produced a spear from absolutely nowhere, a shield on her arm that was surprisingly difficult to look at directly and the blonde boy had a sword out before I even realized he was armed.

The teenager with the crutches yelped and swung one of them in a frantic arc that came nowhere near me, the children, or anything useful, though I respected the spirit of the attempt if nothing else.

"Whoa!" I said, raising both hands before I froze as a sharp point suddenly pricked at my back.

Very slowly, I looked over my shoulder to find the little blonde girl somehow standing behind me.

The same little blonde girl who had been in front of me half a second ago was now at my back with a dagger pressed between my ribs and a glare that suggested she was considering using it.

The kids clearly hadn't been oblivious to their evil grandma stalker. Judging by the wide-eyed looks they were sending me, however, my involvement had come as something of a surprise. Before the children could decide whether or not I represented a threat as well and before I could ask why kids these days apparently conceal-carried swords and spears around, the next metro arrived with a rush of wind and screeching metal.

Perfect timing too, as its doors slid open just as a howl echoed down from the platform stairs. It wasn't a single voice but several, overlapping into a chorus that sent a chill through the station and drew every head in our little circle toward the sound.

The blonde boy swore under his breath and immediately shifted his stance, one hand tightening around the hilt of his sword as he turned toward the stairs. The movement was so immediate it felt practiced, as though he'd heard that exact noise before and had already learned to fear what followed it. Beside him, the black-haired girl's entire posture changed. The spear came up instinctively and whatever uncertainty she'd felt about me vanished beneath a much more immediate concern as she instinctively placed herself between the youngest child and the station entrance, that oddly disquieting shield raised as a barrier.

I saw movement at the top of the stairs, too many figures pushing into the station at once and moving far faster than they had any right to. People were shoved backward as something came down through them, not caring who it knocked aside. As the crowd scattered, I caught flashes of glowing eyes and bared teeth, along a collection of claws that immediately confirmed my growing suspicion that we were dealing with something considerably worse than an aggressive commuter. The first monster hit the platform on all fours, followed by another behind it, and behind that something taller forced itself through the crowd with a sound like stone scraping against bone.

"Guys, quick, the train!" I said, pointing at the open doors.

Nobody moved.

In hindsight, that was probably fair. From their perspective I was a dust-covered stranger in a trenchcoat who had appeared out of nowhere, punched a pensioner into powder and was now loudly offering tactical advice. Still though…

"Unless your plan involves staying here and finding out how many of those things there are, I'd strongly recommend we get on it." I pressed, my warning punctuated by a monstrous howl ripping through the station.

That did the trick more than my urging and we quickly piled into the nearest carriage in a rush of limbs, weapons and panicked breathing. The blonde boy hauled the little girl inside while the black-haired girl backed through the doors a step behind them, spear raised and shield angled toward the platform. Something about the thing made my eyes want to slide away from it and judging by the sudden hesitation that rippled through the approaching monsters, I wasn't the only one. The horde visibly slowed, several creatures faltering mid-charge as though they were struggling to focus on her long enough to close the distance. Others slowed, claws scraping against the concrete as they fought some instinctive reluctance to get any closer. It didn't stop them entirely, but it bought us a few precious seconds.

The teenager with the crutches stumbled as he tried to hurry through the doors, one of the crutches catching awkwardly against the lip of the carriage and for a split second his balance disappeared entirely.

I caught the back of his jacket before gravity could finish the job.

Unfortunately, the motion was apparently enough for my Adamantine Fist to activate and what had been meant as a quick tug turned into me hauling him bodily off the platform and into the carriage with enough force to make him yelp. He landed several feet inside the metro, staring at me with wide eyes.

"Sorry," I said.

"What was that?" he squeaked.

"Honestly? Still figuring that out myself." I muttered as I glanced down at my fist, clenching and unclenching it as I felt that unmistakably solid feeling of the Adamantine Fist fade away.

The doors had almost closed when one of the monsters finally forced its way through whatever hesitation the shield inspired. A clawed hand shot between them and the narrowing gap immediately shuddered as the creature tried to force the doors back open.

I grabbed both sides on instinct and pulled them together as hard as I could, earning an immediate shriek from the monster outside. Even through the narrowing gap I could tell the creature was monstrously strong as it tried to brute force its way inside, even throwing its weight against the closing panels with enough force to make the entire carriage shudder, but my Adamantine Fists, once wrapped around the handles, were the very definition of unyielding.

For however long though, I couldn't say. I had no idea whether subway doors were designed to resist supernatural invasion.

'Probably not. Most civic engineers probably don't include "potential monster breach" in their stress-tests.'

Still, between adrenaline, Adamantine Fist and the fact that I was becoming increasingly tired of being attacked by mythology, I managed to hold the doors together long enough for the metro to finally pull away from the platform.

The monster's clawed hand remained trapped between the doors as the carriage lurched forward, dragging the beast along the platform. It shrieked and slammed into the side of the station hard enough to crack stone. A moment later the hand tore free, dissolving into golden dust as the rest of the creature vanished behind us.

The metro pulled away just as the rest of the monsters reached the edge of the platform. Several skidded to a halt near the now empty tracks while others continued pouring down the stairs, arriving only in time to watch us disappear into the tunnel. The sudden silence inside the carriage felt almost surreal after everything that had happened.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

The carriage rattled through the tunnel while the five of us stood there breathing hard, surrounded by ordinary passengers who were very deliberately pretending not to understand what they had just seen. Some stared at the floor. One woman clutched her purse to her chest. A man in a suit had gone completely rigid, eyes fixed on the advertisement above my shoulder as though it contained the answers to life itself.

The little blonde girl continued pointing the dagger at me, which felt slightly excessive given that I'd just helped save their lives. I looked from the blade to her face.

"Are we still doing that?"

She responded by narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

The blonde boy, on the other hand, relaxed fractionally. His sword dipped a few inches, though not nearly enough to make me comfortable.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Ethan."

He continued staring.

"Ethan Creed." I elaborated with a shrug.

The black-haired girl stared at me like she was evaluating potential stabbing locations.

"What are you?"

Ordinarily I would've considered that a remarkably rude question. Unfortunately, it was also a complicated one and, under the circumstances, an alarmingly fair one.

I wiped some of the lingering golden dust from my face and immediately regretted it when some of it got into my eye.

"Judging by your fancy weapons and the fact you didn't act surprised that Hell's Angels grandma got dusted, literally, I'm kind of hoping you guys can tell me."

The teenager with the crutches made a strangled sound. "You punched Alecto."

"Right in the schnozz, yeah." I agreed, before I blinked.

"Also… who?"

The blonde boy stared at me. "You don't know who that was?"

"I knew she was watching you, had claws and seemed generally murder-adjacent." I looked toward the dark tunnel beyond the window before I shrugged. "That was pretty much the extent of my decision-making process."

The black-haired girl's expression shifted slightly. Not enough to qualify as friendly, but at least a step removed from actively considering my murder. The blonde boy studied me for another long moment before lowering his sword another inch.

"I'm Luke."

"Thalia," the black-haired girl said after a brief hesitation.

The little blonde girl kept her dagger exactly where it was.

"Annabeth."

"And I'm Grover," the teenager with the crutches added weakly. "Please don't punch me."

My eyes drifted from the crutches to his face and back again. Something about him still felt off, though I couldn't have explained why if asked.

"Wasn't planning to."

"Great," Grover said. "Good. Love that."

Luke didn't respond immediately. He just kept watching me with a thoughtful look, as though trying to fit several pieces together and not entirely liking the picture they were forming.

"That woman you punched. She is called Alecto. One of the Furies straight out of Hades. The Underworld?" he probed as he saw the lack of recognition on my face.

"Could've guessed. Figured she wasn't a kindly grandmother, not with those nails of hers." I just shrugged instead.

"You saw through the Mist. You saw what she really was."

"The what?"

The question earned a brief silence as the look that passed between the four of them suggested I had somehow managed to give the wrong answer.

"You don't know what the Mist is?" Thalia asked, incredulous.

"Should I?" I raised an eyebrow, increasingly aware (and somewhat embarrassed) that I seemed to be the least informed person in a group whose oldest member was barely fourteen.

Another look passed between them before Luke was the first to speak, apparently having come to some sort of conclusion.

"You're a demigod." He said simply.

The word hit harder than it should have.

Demigod.

Something about it felt familiar. For a brief moment, I had the distinct feeling that I'd just been handed the edge piece of a puzzle. Monsters hunting children through New York. Swords and spears appearing from nowhere. Ancient names attached to things that should not have existed. Somehow all of it felt connected, as though I'd stumbled into the middle of a story I already knew.

The frustrating part was that every time I tried to follow that thought any further, it simply... stopped. Like reaching the end of a bridge that should have continued and finding empty air instead.

The sensation was maddening. I knew these things. Knew them well enough that none of this should have been surprising, yet every time I tried to grasp the memory directly it seemed to slide away from me.

What remained was a growing certainty that the children in front of me mattered to whatever story my missing memories were trying and failing to reconstruct.

"That… does explain some things. And immediately raises even more questions." I hesitantly reply, before sighing as I drop down in one of the free seats in our suddenly vacated carriage, most of the other travellers having rapidly relocated when they saw me tear off a creature's arm using a subway door.

"What questions? How come this is news to you? You're the oldest demigod I've ever seen. I don't think anyone reached past thirty for the last… eighty years. Maybe more than a century." Luke prodded as he took a seat across from me, the other children following his lead.

"Oi, I'm barely past my twenties, you brat. At least… I'm pretty sure I'm barely past my twenties…" I trail off in a mutter as Talia blinks.

"What do you mean, 'pretty sure'?" she presses.

I rubbed at my face, which mostly just succeeded in spreading monster dust around. "I woke up on a bench about half an hour ago with no idea how I got there. Then a symbol appeared above my head, a magical scroll told me I was the child of Kaos and a hellhound tried to eat me, in that order."

For the first time since meeting them, all four went completely still.

Even Annabeth's dagger dipped slightly.

Grover swallowed. "Kaos? Are you… are you sure?"

"That was the word."

Thalia and Luke exchanged worried glances while Annabeth looked at me like I had just said something impossible and she was furious at the universe for not explaining it to her first.

"That's not a god," she said.

"I gathered."

"No," she said, with the intensity only a very serious child could bring to correcting an adult. "Kaos came before the gods."

"Also gathered."

"So, you can't be a child of Kaos."

I opened my mouth, thought better of whatever I had been about to say and glanced toward the empty space where the parchment had spent most of the day appearing and disappearing.

A thought occurred to me.

So far nobody had reacted to the thing. Then again, nobody else had reacted to Alecto until she stopped pretending to be an old woman either. If seeing through whatever supernatural camouflage monsters used, this so-called Mist and being able to see the parchment were related, then...

'Well, one easy way to find out.'

"Would you like to explain that to the scroll?"

As if offended by the small child's stubbornness and eager to prove her wrong, the parchment immediately reappeared at the edge of my vision.

The reaction was instantaneous. Annabeth made a small sound. Luke visibly stiffened. Thalia's spear came up and Grover emitted something halfway between a squeak and a strangled yelp.

'Interesting. And good to know.'

The parchment ignored all of them and calmly displayed a fresh line of text.

[KILL CONFIRMED: ALECTO, THE UNCEASING ONE]

[Combat Achievement Recognized]
[Named Monster Defeated]
[Victory Achieved In Single Unarmed Strike]
[No Damage Sustained]
[Additional Recognition Recorded]
[Reward: Silver Item Drachma ×1]
[Rewards Dispensing]

The final line vanished.

A moment later a swirl of silver light gathered beneath the parchment, spinning faster and faster until it condensed into a single metallic shape.

A silver drachma dropped neatly into my palm with a surprisingly gratifying 'clink!'.

For a few seconds nobody spoke.

The coin looked similar to the bronze and gold drachma I'd already received, though noticeably larger and stamped with a far more intricate design. It also carried a strange sense of weight that had absolutely nothing to do with its actual mass.

Luke was the first to recover as he looked at the coin with the kind of expression people usually reserved for loaded weapons. "That's a drachma."

"Yeah, I got that part. Not even sure how though."

Annabeth frowned.

"It's because we're Greek."

That did not clarify anything.

"I don't think I am, Annabeth. I mean sure, I may look handsomely Mediterranean-"

"Not Greek Greek. Demigod Greek." The little girl interrupted with an impressive eyeroll.

Somehow that clarified even less.

"Our brains work differently," Luke explained as Thalia placed a calming hand on Annabeth's shoulder. "We understand ancient Greek because that's where our godly side comes from. Most demigods can read it without even trying."

He pointed at the parchment.

"Your scroll uses Greek letters. If it didn't, you'd probably be stuck on every word."

"Wait. Really?"

Annabeth nodded decisively, then paused, almost embarassed.

"Lots of demigods have trouble with normal reading too."

"Why?"

"Because our brains are built for ancient Greek instead." Annabeth explained, though she sounded distracted.

"That seems backwards."

"Welcome to being a demigod."

Grover also looked distracted, though apparently for different reasons.

"I've never seen monsters drop cold hard cash before, not even in drachma form. Stuff made out of gold, sure, golden scales, swords, armor, but never just straight up money." He said, sounding both awed and slightly greedy.

Luke's attention shifted between the silver drachma and the floating parchment.

"So what happens now?"

"Not entirely sure." I mused as I turned the coin over in my hand.

The coin felt familiar in a way I was struggling to explain. I'd gone through this three times already. Gold. Bronze. Bronze again. Every time the process had ended the same way.

"The last times I got these, I sort of just… threw them up in the air. They disappeared and I got my rewards."

"That almost sounds like offering drachma up to Iris. Don't suppose your special drachma summon rainbows as well?" Thalia questioned and I blinked at her for a moment.

"Do yours regularly summon rainbows?"

"Only when we can't find a phone and got the drachma to burn." The demigod said with a shrug, as if that's supposed to explain everything.

"Right… no, these don't do that. Or maybe they can, they just haven't so far. They get swallowed up by what I'm beginning to think is Kaos itself, or an aspect of it at least. The offering is accepted and I get the reward. In this case, the reward will be an Item of some kind, similar to this magical jacket."

Grover pales even further at that.

"You… y-you can summon a piece of the Void into existence? How… h-how does that even work, He predates existence itself-"

"Show us." Luke said surprisingly intently.

"Please." Thalia added, elbowing Luke in the side and shooting him a reproachful glare.

"Fine." I sighed.

I tossed the silver drachma into the air.

The same impossible darkness unfolded around it, swallowing the coin in a brief flash of silver and black. The sensation brushed against my thoughts again. Recognition. Acceptance. Transaction.

Above my head, a symbol ignited.

The symbol looked nothing like the previous ones.

The bronze rewards had been straightforward enough. A staff wrapped in a serpent. A steering wheel. Simple images that immediately conveyed what they represented.

This thing looked like somebody had started drawing a star and then become distracted halfway through.

Silver lines spread outward from a central point, weaving through one another in an intricate pattern that vaguely resembled thread. More and more of them appeared, twisting together until they formed the outline of a school uniform suspended within the star.

Annabeth's eyes widened as she stared at the slowly fading symbol overhead.

"That looked like being claimed."

Thalia frowned.

"Not exactly."

"The symbol appeared over his head," Annabeth insisted. "That's what happens when a demigod gets claimed."

"Yeah, but it felt different," Luke said. His gaze remained fixed on the spot where the sudden darkness had swallowed the coin. "When a god claims someone, you know who's doing it. That's sort of the point, after all."

Grover shifted uneasily in his seat.

"This felt... bigger."

Nobody seemed particularly happy with that observation.

"That's not exactly reassuring," I noted.

"That's because we don't really have better words for it." Luke grimaced.

Silence immediately fell as the parchment updated itself.

[Goku Uniform 1-Star]

|Uncommon Item|

Kill la Kill — A school uniform made of 10% Life Fibers, granting its wearer superhuman physical abilities strong enough to break walls and flip cars. The uniform itself is also extremely durable, surpassing even carbon fibre.

A second line appeared beneath it.

[Please Select Coloration]

The silence lasted another few seconds.

Then:

"...A school uniform?" Luke asked.

"Apparently."

Annabeth frowned.

"What are Life Fibers?"

"I have absolutely no idea."

Thalia stared at the floating text.

"The weird paper just gave you armour."

"I think it technically gave me a school uniform."

"It says it's stronger than carbon fibre." she shot back with a roll of her eyes.

"...Fair."

The parchment remained hovering nearby, the request for a colour choice still displayed beneath the description.

That was new.

Up until now the process had been almost completely automatic. Throw coin. Receive reward. End of transaction. The magical parchment had never once cared what I thought about medicine, driving or suspiciously durable trenchcoats.

Apparently magical school uniforms was where it finally decided my opinion mattered.

'Right. Bright colours seem like a terrible idea.'

I had already spent the day attracting the attention of monsters, primordial entities and apparently at least one immortal spirit of vengeance. The last thing I needed was clothing that made me look like a radioactive crossing guard.

Besides, it had to match the priest's black trenchcoat.

"Charcoal grey." I intoned clearly.

The symbol overhead immediately shattered into hundreds of silver threads.

They spiralled downward and gathered in front of me, weaving together into actual fabric before my eyes, until a neatly folded uniform hovered briefly in midair before dropping into my lap.

The material felt strange beneath my fingers. Smooth, almost silky, yet far denser than ordinary fabric had any right to be. Almost… alive.

"Are you going to wear it?" Annabeth asked as she pointed at the strange uniform.

"Well, considering I've been involved in no less than two monster deaths in the first hour since I woke up, I figure I can use all the help I can get. Soon as we get to a station that has cubicles so I can change in private, that is."

Annabeth looked disappointed by that answer.

"You were hoping I'd put on the mysterious magical outfit immediately, weren't you?"

"...Maybe."

"You'll just have to wait and see. I know I don't look it, but underneath all of this monster-grime, I do still have some dignity left… somewhere."

I refolded the uniform as best I could and rested it across my lap. For a few moments nobody spoke. The metro rattled through the tunnel while the adrenaline slowly bled away, leaving behind sore knuckles, exhaustion and entirely too many unanswered questions.

Across from me, Luke kept glancing toward the darkness beyond the windows, idly spinning his sword on its axis as its sharpened tip dug a small groove in the carriage floor. Thalia sat with her spear resting across her knees, though she had thankfully stored away that creepy shield of hers. She explained it was called Aegis, a replica of the thundershield her father had wielded when he first overthrew his father and apparently a Quest reward she'd gotten for when she followed a magical goat of all things into a haunted mansion. Annabeth had finally lowered her dagger, though she still looked suspicious of me (then again, that seemed to be her default state regarding pretty much everything). Grover meanwhile seemed to be working himself steadily toward a nervous breakdown (which also seemed to be his default state to be honest).

Looking at them now, it was difficult to remember that the oldest among them couldn't have been much older than fourteen.

Eventually curiosity won.

"Okay," I said eventually. "Let's start with the obvious. Why are half of New York's monsters trying to murder you?"

Thalia snorted.

"Because of me."

There wasn't any self-pity in her voice. If anything, she sounded annoyed by the inconvenience.

"That is not reassuring." I frowned.

Luke rubbed a hand across his face.

"Thalia's father is Zeus."

I blinked.

"As in, Zeus Zeus? Lightning-slinger Zeus? That Zeus?"

"There's another one?"

"Fair."

For a while, they explained. Not all at once. The story came out in pieces as the metro rattled through the tunnels beneath Manhattan, each answer raising two more questions and every explanation somehow making the situation worse.

"...the Big Three swore an oath," Luke was saying. "No more children."

"The Big Three?" I asked.

"Zeus. Poseidon. Hades." Thalia said, sounding less concerned than the others. There was a faint defiance in her voice when she spoke her father's name.

"Thalia!" Annabeth hissed reproachfully as she and Grover looked fearfully at the ceiling.

"What's the matter? You guys look like you're about to be struck with lighting." I chuckled, though it died off as the three demigods (and one satyr) shot me a reproachful look.

"Don't even joke about such things." Grover said with a small tremble in his voice, though he seemed to relax a bit when it became clear our subway would remain unsmote... for now.

"Saying their names tends to attract attention," Luke explained. "Usually."

"Usually?"

"Well since we're underground, we have less to fear from Pops, especially with me here. Though being underground, we would normally have to be more careful with saying Hades' name, though that's common sense most of the time. Since he already wants me dead though… meh, fuck him." Thalia said challenging, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the bravado in her expression.

"Why on earth would your own Uncle try to turn you into monster-chow?" I ask baffled.

"Because of the Oath. The Three swore it on the Styx, no more kids. Thalia is proof Zeus broke it. You can't just break your word once you've given it to the Styx. That carries… consequences…" Grover explained nervously.

"Alright... breaking a magical pinky promise gives you bad juju, kinda like breaking a mirror by throwing a black cat through it or something. I get that. What I don't get is why it seems as if the entire Underworld has got it out for you, specifcially. You didn't ask to get born, it was Zeus who couldn't keep it in his fucking pants-" "Ew, gross..." "-sorry Thalia, so why isn't it his ass on the line? It was Zeus who broke his promise to Hades, so why doesn't Hades fucking take it up with Mr. Oathbreaker then, instead of beefing with a fucking twelve year old?" I asked, talking more and more heatedly.

Judging the child for the sins of the father sat wrong with me on a deep, personal level that surprised me, considering I was basically just half a day old at this point. Either this was something Ethan Creed felt very strong about before he went to sleep on that park bench before I woke up, or (slightly more worrying) this visceral reaction was prompted more by my divine/primordial side, influencing my thoughts without me even realizing it.

"Hades can't directly move against Zeus." Grover interrupted weakly, shrinking away from my rising anger.

That caught my attention.

"Why not?"

He shifted uneasily.

"Because they're gods. The Olympians aren't just a family. They're part of... everything." He tried as he struggled to find the words.

"The structure of the world," Annabeth supplied.

Grover nodded gratefully.

"If Hades and Zeus actually went to war with each other, it wouldn't stay a family argument." Luke added.

"Their domains are woven into reality itself," Thalia continued. "The sky. The sea. The dead. The foundations of Western civilization. Everything is connected."

I frowned.

"And if they start tearing at those connections?"

Nobody answered immediately.

"Bad," Annabeth said at last.

"How bad?"

The seven-year-old met my eyes.

"End-of-the-world bad."

The carriage fell quiet again as I sat there for several seconds digesting that.

"So Hades can't strike at Zeus."

"No."

"But Thalia..."

Grover nodded miserably.

"Thalia isn't protected by the same rules."

"Hades is taking it out on her." Luke finished bitterly as Thalia glanced outside the darkened windows without a word.

For a moment, I couldn't even talk as I tried to grapple with that statement.

"Wait. If Hades opened the gates of the Underworld to get at Thalia here, why are we on a subway? Shouldn't we try to stick to above ground? Maybe try and book a cross-country flight and stay up in the air?"

"Because this will take us most of the way to Long Island. We're trying to get to Camp Half-Blood," Grover said immediately.

The name tugged at something buried deep in my mind.

Camp Half-Blood.

I knew that name, it stirred that same frustrating sense of familiarity I'd been wrestling with all evening. The memory slipped away before I could catch it, though I felt a slight... almost push towards it. Or perhaps more like a magnetic pull. Something within me was subtly trying to tell me I should go there and once again I wondered about the influence my divine half had on my thoughts.

"And Camp Half-Blood is...?"

"Safe," Grover said.

Luke winced.

"Safer," he amended.

"That's not the same word."

"It's the best one we've got."

"Fantastic." I sighed. "We're fleeing a murderously angry god toward a safe haven that isn't actually safe."

"When you put it like that—"

"I feel like there is no other way to put it, Grover."

"If you-… if you want to leave… I've tried telling these guys as well, but they're too stubborn for their own good…" Thalia began haltingly, before taking a deep breath and fixing me with a startlingly blue gaze.

"If you want to leave, none of us will blame you. Hades is on a murderous rampage, but only because Dad's breaking of the Oath allows it. You get out of his way, stay away from me, and Hades won't even care about you. It sounds like you already got attacked by one of the monsters that follow behind me everywhere I go when it found you instead. If you don't want to become monster-food, then do yourself a favour and put as much distance between yourself and me as you can." she said firmly.

It was a surprisingly logical and selfless argument for one so young and clearly under so much pressure. I was touched. But more than that, I was pissed. These three demigods (and one nervous wreck of a satyr) were only children and yet, just because of a brotherly spat between two ancient beings who really should've known better because one of them couldn't keep it in their pants even after a magic pinky promise, these kids were forced to grapple with death and self-sacrifice. Even if Hades failed in taking Thalia's life, he had already made sure he had taken away her childhood and the same went for the other children.

"Thanks for the offer Thalia. But truth be told, unless the scroll somehow gives me a drachma that gives me my memories back, I've got nowhere else to go. I'll stick with you guys, see this Camp Half-Blood for myself, if you'll have me." I replied strongly.

I could tell part of Thalia wanted to press the issue, but the larger part of her let it go and settled for a weak smile instead.

Demigods or not, they were still kids. Tired kids at that. Whatever confidence they'd managed to project since I'd met them had begun to crack around the edges as the adrenaline wore off, revealing the exhaustion underneath. For the first time since we boarded the metro, the trio didn't look seconds away from leaping into battle.

The realization sat with me for a while as the metro continued rattling through the tunnel. Eventually I turned toward the window, watching darkness flash by beyond the glass.

"By the way, where does this subway even go?"

Luke glanced over.

"Brooklyn."

The name snagged on something buried deep in my head, like standing in front of a locked door and realizing the key was somewhere in your pocket, if only you could remember which one. It felt important somehow. The kind of important that made my missing memories stir restlessly in the back of my skull.

"Brooklyn," I repeated slowly.

Thalia frowned. "Problem?"

I was already preparing to say no when I hesitated. The question had touched something buried deep in the mess of missing memories rattling around inside my head. Brooklyn meant something, I was sure of that much. Unfortunately, certainty and understanding were turning out to be two very different things.

"I don't know," I admitted.

---

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon.

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER THREE
​

---

We got off in Brooklyn.

Considering I'd just punched a Fury, torn off a monster's arm with metro doors, and paid the primordial void for a magical school uniform, simply stepping onto a platform without being attacked felt like a refreshing change of pace.

Naturally, I did not trust it.

The station was quieter than the one near Central Park, though that was not saying much. The air still smelled like old concrete, hot metal and the faintly damp breath of underground places that had never once known the touch of sunlight. A handful of commuters hurried past us, doing their best not to look too closely at the group of heavily armed children, the satyr with crutches, and the dust-covered twenty-something in a priest's trenchcoat carrying a folded magical school uniform under one arm.

To their credit, they mostly succeeded.

I was beginning to appreciate that about New York.

Luke led us toward the stairs with the confidence of somebody who knew where he was going, or at least knew better than to stop moving while monsters were hunting him. Thalia followed near the back, spear gone again but shoulders still tight, her eyes constantly flicking toward exits and shadows. Annabeth stayed close to her side, which would have been more adorable if she hadn't still looked ready to stab anything that moved too suddenly. Grover brought up the middle, muttering nervously under his breath as his crutches clicked against the floor.

I made it about three steps before realizing there was one problem I should probably solve before we went any farther.

"Guys, bathroom break," I said.

Everyone stopped as Thalia gave me a flat look. "Now?"

"Well, unless you'd prefer I change in the middle of the platform?"

Luke looked at the uniform like he still hadn't decided whether it was armour, clothing or a practical joke from whatever cosmic force had decided to sponsor my survival.

"Make it quick," he said.

"Yes, sir." I mock-saluted with a faint grin that saw him rolling his eyes, though none of the children were very successful in hiding their small smiles.

The station bathroom was about as glamorous as expected. It had a single flickering light, two cramped stalls, and a sink that looked like it had seen unspeakable (or at the very least, illegal) things. On the bright side, the door had a lock, and at that moment privacy ranked higher than hygiene.

I shrugged off the trenchcoat, unfolded the uniform and quickly changed.

Just like the trenchcoat, it fit perfectly.

I probably should've been more concerned about that, but at this point perfectly fitting supernatural clothing barely cracked the top five weirdest things in my day. The charcoal-grey fabric settled comfortably against my skin, lighter than I'd expected despite how unnaturally dense it had felt in my hands only moments ago. I buttoned it up, adjusted the collar and stared at my reflection in the scratched mirror.

Nothing happened.

No sudden surge of power or dramatic transformation, and certainly no helpful scroll appearing to congratulate me on successfully dressing myself.

Well, almost nothing. There was something there, faint but unmistakable.

Not strength exactly. More like a sleeping muscle I'd never had before, resting just beneath the surface and waiting for me to call on it. I clenched my fist experimentally and felt the sensation stir for a heartbeat before settling again.

"Huh."

Between this, Adamantine Fist and whatever Combo turned out to be, I was beginning to suspect my fighting style was going to involve an unhealthy amount of punching.

I pulled the trenchcoat back on over the uniform, gave my reflection a quick once-over and decided I looked reasonably normal, provided one ignored the monster dust, tired eyes and general impression of an overly dedicated cosplayer at an anime convention.

Good enough.

When I stepped back out, Annabeth immediately looked disappointed.

"What?"

"I thought it would look different."

"It's a school uniform, not a fireworks display."

"It can flip cars." She said and I could distinctly hear the unspoken "duh".

"Only if I'm the one wearing it, apparently, and I am making the mature adult decision not to test that inside a public transportation facility."

She considered that with visible dissatisfaction.

Luke, meanwhile, gave the outfit a quick once-over and nodded toward the stairs.

"We need to move."

That was hard to argue with.

We emerged onto the street a few minutes later and Brooklyn greeted us with traffic, old brick buildings, narrow sidewalks and the kind of ordinary city noise that almost felt comforting after everything that had happened underground. The sky above was already beginning to shift toward evening, the light turning thin and dull between the buildings.

"We need to get out of the city," Luke said quietly, keeping his voice low enough that only our little group could hear. "The longer we stay in New York, the more monsters catch our scent."

"So, we make for Long Island," I said.

Grover nodded quickly. "Camp is on the North Shore. We just have to get there."

The problem, as it turned out, was 'just' transportation. None of us had money in any useful amount, unless ancient Greek drachma suddenly became legal tender in Brooklyn. None of us had a car. One of us had recently acquired the ability to drive, which would have been more impressive if it had come with the ability to summon a vehicle or legally acquire one.

"Could steal one," Thalia muttered.

I looked at her.

She looked back at me with the expression of somebody who had expected judgment and was prepared to be annoyed by it.

"I'm not saying no," I said carefully after a moment. "I'm just saying that if our plan involves grand theft auto, I'd like it to be at least plan C."

Annabeth frowned. "What's plan B?"

"Finding someone who already has a car and convincing them to help."

Grover perked up slightly.

"That might actually work."

Everyone turned toward him.

He shrank a little under the collective attention.

"There's, um, there's supposed to be another satyr around here," he said. "Or near here. I think. He helped me once before, a few years ago."

Luke's expression sharpened. "You know someone in Brooklyn?"

"Maybe. I mean, I knew someone who lived on the outskirts of Brooklyn. He had a place where satyrs could hide for a while if they were moving through the city. Sometimes he helped with transportation."

"Transportation as in a car?" I asked hopefully.

"Maybe."

"That is the most beautiful maybe I've heard all day."

Grover managed a weak smile, clearly relieved to have contributed something useful. "He knows the area better than I do. If he's still around, he might be able to get us out toward Long Island without using the main roads."

Thalia still looked wary, but less immediately opposed to the idea. "You sure you can find him?"

Grover hesitated.

That hesitation was not comforting.

"I think so."

"Grover."

"I said I think so! It's been a while, ok, and you know how cities are disorienting to a child of Pan!"

Luke sighed, but not cruelly. More like this was a familiar argument and exhaustion had worn all the sharp edges off it.

"We don't have a better option," he reminded Thalia wearily.

Which, unfortunately, was true, and after a brief, collective hesitation that said none of us liked it but none of us had anything better either, we fell in behind Grover and let him lead the way.

Brooklyn shifted around us as we walked. Storefronts gave way to row houses and older homes squeezed together behind fences and narrow yards. Grover kept checking street signs, muttering to himself, occasionally stopping at corners to peer down one road before choosing another.

At first, he seemed confident.

Then less confident.

Then very much less confident.

"Grover," Thalia said sharply, "are you sure this is the right neighbourhood?"

Grover scratched nervously near one of his concealed horns.

"I'm pretty sure."

"That's not a yes."

"It's... almost a yes."

I glanced at Luke, who looked like he was trying very hard not to say anything that might make Grover more nervous, which was either impressive restraint or proof that the boy had spent entirely too much time managing group morale.

Grover stopped near the corner of a narrow street lined with particularly old houses. Some still looked (barely) maintained, others looked like they were losing a long, slow war against time, weather and possibly property taxes.

He glanced up and down the block, his brow furrowing.

"Though..."

Luke turned. "Though what?"

Grover's voice dropped until he was mostly speaking to himself.

"I could've sworn the outskirts looked different than this."

That was hardly comforting. Before I could ask the obvious follow-up, something moved behind a window in one of the old houses across the street.

It was brief, just a blur of a pale shape behind dirty glass.

There and gone so quickly I couldn't tell whether I had seen a face, a hand or just some curtain shifting in a draft. The window itself was small and smudged, tucked beneath the roofline like an attic window. For a second I stared at it, waiting for the movement to repeat.

Nothing happened.

"What?" Luke asked, spotting the tension in my posture as Thalia and Grover got into an increasingly heated argument.

I kept looking at the house.

"Not sure."

That was becoming another dangerously common answer.

From the outside, the house looked abandoned. The paint was peeling off in strips, showing grey wood underneath. The windows were dark with grime, making it impossible to see inside, and a crooked fence leaned haphazardly into the yard. The front porch sagged in the middle like it was tired of holding itself together. There were weeds growing through cracks in the path and something about the shadows near the doorway seemed a little too thick.

I was just starting to decide that I did not like it one bit when a voice called from inside.

"Grover?"

The satyr went perfectly still as the voice reached him. It was old and rough, but unmistakably warm, carrying a note of recognition and relief that seemed to settle something deep in his chest. Grover's face changed immediately.

"Leneus?" he asked desperately.

A pause.

Then the voice came again, louder this time, carrying through a cracked window near the front of the house.

"Grover! Thank Pan, boy, get in here!"

Grover lit up like someone had handed him hope itself with both hands.

"I knew it," he said, already hurrying toward the gate as fast as his crutches allowed. "I knew he was still here!"

"Grover, wait!" Thalia snapped.

He did not wait.

To be fair, I understood. The poor kid had been terrified since the moment I met him. If the voice belonged to someone safe, someone older, someone who knew what to do, then of course he wanted to believe it.

That did not make the house any less creepy.

Luke moved after him immediately, Annabeth close behind. Thalia cursed under her breath and followed, which left me with the unpleasant choice of either staying outside alone like an idiot or entering the obvious murder house alongside the armed children.

"Fantastic," I muttered, stepping through the gate.

The front door opened before Grover reached it. Not all the way, just enough for a warm yellow light to spill through the gap as Grover slipped inside.

Luke reached the door seconds later and glanced back at us, his expression tense but hopeful. Annabeth slipped in after him. Thalia lingered half a heartbeat longer, eyes scanning the windows, the porch, the roofline.

Then the voice called again.

"Hurry now. Quickly."

Something about it made my skin prickle. It wasn't even because it sounded wrong or anything. Because it didn't. It sounded perfectly right, almost too perfect even. I opened my mouth to say something, to slow us down or at least question it, but the door widened before I could, and from inside came Grover's voice, bright with relief.

"It's okay! He's here!"

At that, Thalia went in, and after the briefest hesitation I followed her across the threshold, the door easing shut behind us with a soft, final click.

For one brief, hopeful moment, the inside of the house looked almost normal. Dusty, yes. Old. Dimly lit by lamps that should not have been working. The air smelled stale, like closed rooms and old wood and something faintly sour underneath, but I could see a hallway, a staircase, wallpaper peeling near the corners.

Then we walked ten steps and the hallway kept going.

The outside of the house had not been large.

The hallway did not care.

It stretched farther than it should have, past too many doors on either side, each one closed. The wallpaper changed halfway down, from faded green to yellow stripes to something red and floral that made my eyes ache if I looked at it too long. The floorboards creaked beneath our feet in uneven rhythms, like the house was shifting its weight around us.

"Grover?" Luke called.

No answer.

The hallway ahead turned left, where it should have led toward the side of the house. Instead it opened onto another staircase that descended into darkness. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the front door still there, solid and reassuring for all of two seconds before the lights flickered. When they steadied again, the door was gone, replaced by yet another stretch of hallway that hadn't existed a moment before.

Nobody moved.

Annabeth's hand tightened around her dagger, Thalia slowly raised her spear, and Luke drew his sword. I stared at the wall where the exit had been, then at the impossible corridor now occupying its place.

"Right," I said quietly. "I'm starting to think we may have taken a wrong turn."

Somewhere deeper in the house, Grover screamed. The scream echoed through the house before cutting off so abruptly it was almost worse than if it had continued.

"Grover!" Luke shouted.

No answer.

He took off at a run.

"Luke!" I barked.

He skidded to a halt just before the first corner, turning back with a look somewhere between panic and frustration.

"We have to—" Luke started.

"I know," I cut him off.

"No, you don't. We have to find him!" Luke snapped.

"And we will. I promise," I tried to soothe him, to no avail.

"Then what are we waiting for, let's move!"

"We will. Slowly." I replied.

He stared at me like I'd completely lost my mind.

"The monsters—"

"The monsters already have him."

That finally stopped him.

"The only thing sprinting blindly into a haunted house accomplishes is giving them more people to grab." I insisted.

Nobody liked hearing that, but that didn't change the fact that it was true. Luke took a slow breath, forcing himself to calm down before giving a reluctant nod, and together we advanced.

The hallway twisted again after only a few yards. It should have taken us toward the back of the house.

Instead we found ourselves standing on a wide landing that overlooked another staircase, one that stretched both above and below us, each direction disappearing into darkness. I frowned.

"Didn't we already go downstairs?"

"I think so," Thalia said uncertainly.

Annabeth had gone strangely quiet, her attention drifting away from the stairs as she studied the walls instead.

"The rooms don't fit." she said in a distracted tone.

Luke blinked.

"What?"

"The outside."

She pointed toward one wall.

"This should be the edge of the house."

"It is the edge."

"No." She shook her head. "It should be."

She walked over and pressed her palm against the faded wallpaper.

"The hallway is too wide."

I looked around again.

Now that she'd said it...

"She's right." Thalia growled, electric blue eyes scanning the hallway.

Even accounting for the staircase, there was simply too much hallway. We'd already walked farther than the house should have physically allowed.

"That's impossible," I muttered.

Annabeth looked at me like I'd missed the obvious.

"We're in a monster's lair."

"...Fair enough."

Somewhere below us a door slammed.

Then another.

Then another.

The sound echoed up through the haunted house until it became impossible to tell where any of them had come from. It was something straight out of some horror slasher flick, the one that was inspired by events so disgustingly horrific, the History Channel would happily be making documentaries about it for decades.

Despite this, I should've felt more scared by this creepy murder mansion with a ghost in its impossible walls, but for some reason the rising panic I felt never managed to actually become overwhelming. I probably had Father Garcia's coat to thank for that.

Unfortunately, the frightened children didn't have such protection.

"Grover!" Luke yelled again.

"I'm here!" the answer came immediately from somewhere ahead.

"I can't find the way back!"

Luke started desperately toward the hallway the voice had come from, but I managed to grab the back of his jacket before he took off again.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"He's right there!"

Before either of us could continue, Grover called again.

"Luke!"

"I'm coming!"

"No!"

The shout came from behind us.

We all spun as Grover's voice echoed down the hallway we'd just walked through.

"Don't go that way!"

Luke's face drained of color as the realization hit him all at once: there hadn't been enough time for Grover to move, not that fast, not through this maze.

"That's..." Thalia whispered.

"...impossible?" The first voice laughed.

Not Grover.

Something pretending to be him.

A low chuckle drifted through the corridors before disappearing somewhere inside the walls.

"That," Annabeth whispered, "wasn't Grover."

"No." Thalia said, knuckles white around her spear, "but which one?"

Luke's jaw tightened.

"We split up." He decided.

I looked at him incredulously.

"What?"

He pointed his sword down one corridor.

"Grover's voice came from there."

Then he pointed down another.

"And there."

His eyes met mine.

"Whatever's copying him is trying to draw us away from… wherever it's keeping Grover. Fine. It draws some of us away, but we're not leaving our friend." He turned toward Annabeth. "You and Ethan keep looking for Grover. Thalia and I will deal with the monster."

I stared at him for a long second.

Then cuffed him upside the back of the head with a rather gratifying 'whack!'.

"What was that for?!" Luke yelled as he rounded on me.

"DnD rule number One: never split the party."

"I don't even know what that means!"

"It means we're not splitting up."

Luke rubbed the back of his head, looking equal parts offended and incredulous.

"Ethan, think about this. If Grover's in one direction and the monster's in another, we don't have enough time to check both." He pleaded desperately.

"We don't have enough people to split up either."

"One group finds Grover-"

"The other gets eaten."

"The other kills the monster!"

"You don't know which group is which."

Luke opened his mouth but found he didn't have an answer.

I stepped closer, lowering my voice.

"Listen to me. Whatever's in this creepy ass house has had exactly one goal since we walked through that front door."

I gestured at the branching hallways.

"Separate us."

Luke glanced between the two corridors.

"It's a maze. Stumbling through it means we're playing its game."

"No," I said. "Splitting up is playing its game."

He hesitated.

"What if Grover really is down one of those halls?"

"Then we rescue him."

"And the monster?"

"We deal with that too."

"How?"

"Together."

For a long moment, Luke just looked at me, before with a weary sigh, his shoulders slumped.

"...Fine."

"We stay together," I ordered, turning towards the girls. "We don't lose sight of each other unless they're physically dragged away."

Annabeth nodded immediately.

"I think he's right."

Luke muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "I still think this is a bad idea."

"Good," I said. "That means we're all equally miserable."

We'd barely made it another twenty yards before another voice drifted toward us. It was unmistakably (and therefore probably not) Grover again, quieter this time, calling my name from behind an old wooden door on our right.

"Ethan? Ethan, I'm in here. I tried the door, but I can't open it."

I shot Luke a warning look. He looked back in frustration and desperation, hand curled tight around the hilt of his trembling sword. Neither of us moved.

"Guys?" There was genuine panic in Grover's voice now. "I think... I think it's coming back. It's coming back, oh gods, oh please-"

Thalia stepped forward, eyes wide as she heard the pain and panic in her friend's voice.

"Grover?"

"Oh thank the gods." His relief sounded painfully real. "I thought I'd lost you."

Almost on instinct, Thalia reached for the handle.

"Thalia, don't!" I roared, cursing myself for focusing too much on Luke while forgetting Thalia was also just a teenager, one equally as impulsive and concerned as her friends.

It all happened in a matter of seconds.

The door swung inward into a room that lay in complete darkness.

"I can't see anything," Thalia muttered.

"Further in," Grover called desperately.

She took one cautious step through the doorway.

"I still can't—"

A massive hand shot out of the blackness, bloated, its skin a sickly pale sheen of grease, and seized her ankle. For a split second, Thalia's eyes went wide, her mouth opening in a soundless gasp.

Then the darkness swallowed her whole, and she vanished as the door slammed shut hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

"THALIA!" Luke roared, voice cracking as he slammed bodily into the door, just a fraction of a second too late to pull back his friend.

It didn't even so much as shudder underneath his assault. Desperate, he hacked at it with his sword, cutting shallow grooves and sending splinters flying before my hand engulfed his shoulder, my face grim.

"Luke, move."

I didn't bother with the lock. A sense of absolute immutability settled into the flesh of my hands while a comforting heat spread from my uniform throughout my body and with a grunt, I punched the entire door clean off its hinges. Luke was already through the opening before it hit the floor, but he stopped dead as soon as he crossed the threshold.

The room beyond was empty: no furniture, no windows and most of all, no Thalia. Just another stretch of hallway disappearing further into darkness. Tears of frustration began to well at the edge of Luke's eyes while besides me, Annabeth had slipped her small hand into mine, gripping with a strength born of fear and desperation.

"How… what… what's even going on?" the wiry boy gasped, struggling to keep some measure of control, wide eyes flitting through the dilapidated corridor.

"It's herding us." I realized.

Annabeth frowned.

"What?"

"The voices."

I looked at both of them.

"It either copies voices..."

Another scream echoed through the house, this one sounding exactly like Thalia.

"...or it can make us hear whatever it wants."

Luke's expression hardened.

"So, what now?"

I reached out without taking my eyes off the hallway.

"Hands."

"...What?"

"Nobody lets go of anybody."

Luke understood quickly, grabbing Annabeth's hand as I took his free one.

"If one of us gets dragged away," I said quietly, "it'll have to take the rest of us with them."

Somewhere deep inside the house, Grover began crying.

Then Thalia started screaming.

A heartbeat later Grover joined her, the two voices echoing through the impossible corridors before, impossibly, both screams dissolved into the same ugly, wheezing laugh.

None of us spoke after that. We simply tightened our grip on one another's hands and continued deeper into the maze.

Luke's hand stayed locked around Annabeth's while I held onto his. It made moving through the narrow corridors awkward, especially whenever they twisted sharply or the floor dipped beneath our feet, but I wasn't about to let whatever lurked in the walls peel us off one by one.

For a while, nothing happened.

That somehow managed to be worse.

The house groaned around us. Floorboards creaked in rooms we never entered. Doors opened and closed somewhere beyond the walls, each sound seeming to come from a different direction than the last. Every few seconds the wallpaper changed again, faded flowers giving way to cracked stripes before becoming bare plaster stained with dark patches that looked unpleasantly organic.

Then Grover cried out again.

"Ethan!"

The voice came from somewhere above us.

"I'm up here!"

We ignored it.

A few moments later it came from below.

"Luke!"

None of us answered.

"You have to hurry!"

Still we kept walking.

The silence that followed lasted perhaps ten seconds before Thalia's voice echoed down a side corridor.

"I'm over here!"

Luke slowed instinctively.

"I found the exit!"

He stopped, not because he believed it, but because just for a heartbeat he wanted to.

"Please!" The voice came again, this time edged with panic.

Annabeth squeezed his hand.

"Don't."

Luke shut his eyes for a moment before nodding once, and without another word we moved on, leaving the voice behind us as the corridor stretched ahead. The house did not take the rejection well. A heavy crash echoed somewhere nearby, followed by another. Dust drifted from the ceiling as something massive slammed into the walls beyond our sight.

Then the voices changed.

"Luke!"

Grover again.

"I can't breathe!"

Another corridor.

"Ethan!"

Now Thalia.

"It took my spear!"

A third voice, that sounded like... Annabeth.

"I'm scared..."

The little girl's cry nearly stopped me in my tracks, the pain in that seven-year-old's voice going straight through me with a deadening chill, before the actual little girl at my side gripped my hand, grounding me and reminding me she was still here as she stared up at me with determined stormy grey eyes.

"Don't fall for it, I'm right here."

I clenched my jaw as I nodded and forced myself to keep moving.

The voices became angrier after that.

"Are you deaf?"

"What are you doing?"

"Help me!"

Then...

"You left us!"

Luke flinched.

"You're letting us die!"

The words echoed through the corridors from every direction at once.

"You coward!"

"You're too late!"

"You should've come!"

The accusations followed us through the impossible house until they blurred together into one endless chorus, each one chipping away at our composure.

"They're not real," I said quietly, though at this point I wasn't sure whether I was reminding them, or myself.

The next door almost killed us.

As we rounded a corner, the door burst open to reveal another stretch of hallway beyond, and Luke had barely taken a step toward it before Annabeth yanked him backward so hard he nearly lost his footing.

"There isn't a floor!"

She was right.

The hallway continued exactly as before, with its faded wallpaper, identical doors, and dim ceiling lamps stretching ahead in a way that felt almost reassuring... until, about six feet in, the illusion broke completely. The floor simply ended. Beyond the threshold yawned a black shaft that dropped into darkness so deep I couldn't even see the bottom, while the hallway on the opposite side carried on as though nothing was wrong.

Luke swallowed.

"I didn't even..."

"You weren't supposed to," Annabeth whispered.

I looked down into the darkness, adrenaline from the near-death stampeding through my veins, mixing with the rage that had steadily been building as the monster kept trying to trick us and hurl abuse at us.

"Fuck this." I said from somewhere deep in my soul.

I stepped back from the doorway and turned toward the nearest wall, surprising my remaining companions.

"Ethan?"

"Annabeth."

She looked up quizzically.

"If you had to guess..."

I tapped the wall with my knuckles.

"...where's the middle of this place?"

Her eyes wandered over the corridor.

She frowned, lips moving silently as she pieced together distances only she seemed capable of visualizing.

"We've crossed ourselves."

"I noticed."

"No..." She shook her head, "We've crossed ourselves three times."

I blinked as I glanced down at the little girl at my side.

"How do you even know that?"

She ignored the question.

"The stairs can't exist where they do."

She pointed somewhere beyond the wall.

"If the house still has a center..." Her finger shifted slightly, "...it's that way."

I looked at the faded wallpaper.

Then at my fist.

Luke caught on almost immediately.

"...You're kidding."

"You know what, I'm sorry Luke. You were right about one thing."

"Of course I was right. ...about what, specifically?"

I rolled my shoulders.

"The whole point of a maze is walking it from end to end, turn after turn, find your way back to the exit through trial and error, clever reasoning if you can. Except once you introduce impossible geometry, you start playing an unwinnable game..."

My right hand tightened into a fist.

"...so I'm done playing by its rules."

Adamantine Fist flared to life beneath my skin, and somewhat to my surprise, the dormant strength sleeping inside the uniform answered immediately.

The wall exploded.

Bricks, splintered timber and centuries-old plaster erupted inward as my fist punched straight through the impossible hallway. Dust filled the air while chunks of masonry crashed into whatever room had been hiding beyond.

For the first time since entering the house... everything went silent.

Luke stared through the hole.

"...You can do that?"

"I was honestly hoping so, yeah."

Somewhere deep inside the mansion something let out a furious, inhuman bellow. The walls trembled, and then every voice in the house began shouting at once.

"No!"

"Stop!"

"Wrong way!"

"You'll die!"

"TURN BACK!"

Grover.

Thalia.

Annabeth.

Luke.

Voices we'd never heard before.

Old men.

Children.

Women.

All screaming over one another until the corridors shook with the noise.

"We're getting close." I smiled despite myself.

The next wall came down even easier.

Then the next.

Each punch carved a straight path through rooms, corridors and stairwells alike, reducing the impossible geometry to a series of gaping holes. Furniture exploded into kindling. Rotten beams snapped. Wallpaper fluttered through the air like dead leaves.

Behind us the house screamed. It came through the walls themselves now, an agonized howl that rattled my teeth.

"LEFT!" Annabeth shouted over the noise.

I adjusted course and drove my fist through another wall.

A dining room.

Another punch.

A bedroom filled with broken furniture.

Another.

A corridor.

Another.

I must've punched through half a dozen more walls as Annabeth kept shouting rough directions (at one point even calling out "STRAIGHT DOWN!") before the scenery finally changed. The final wall shattered outward into a cavernous chamber lit by the orange glow of a roaring fire.

Heat washed over us as the screaming abruptly stopped, leaving behind a room that reeked of old blood, damp fur, and rotting meat. Rusted cookware hung from blackened rafters. Piles of junk filled the corners—broken furniture, smashed carts, tarnished shields, cracked pottery and bones.

Far too many bones.

Only then did I notice the polished brass horns jutting from the walls around the chamber. Some had been crudely patched together with newer lengths of copper pipe, others were bent or dented from years of abuse. At first I took them for oversized gramophones until I noticed the thick brass pipes disappeared into the walls and ceiling in every direction, branching through the house like arteries.

Speaking tubes.

The kind old manor houses had used before telephones so the family upstairs could summon servants from anywhere in the house.

Except somewhere over the decades, this monster had turned the entire system into its own hunting tool. Every corridor we'd walked, every room we'd passed, every voice that had echoed through the walls had been funneled through those pipes before being perfectly mimicked by whatever obscene talent the Cyclops possessed.

Every single one ended within easy reach of the absolutely massive firepit and above it, suspended from thick ropes hanging from the ceiling, two figures struggled.

Grover and Thalia.

Grover was openly sobbing.

Thalia had apparently skipped fear altogether and gone straight to murderous rage.

"I AM GOING TO SHOVE THAT POKER SO FAR UP YOUR—"

She stopped as her eyes found us.

"Luke?!"

Across the fire, something enormous slowly rose to its feet.

The room had felt massive when we'd entered. Now, it suddenly (and worryingly) didn't.

The Cyclops unfolded from a mound of filthy blankets and scavenged junk until its head nearly brushed the rafters. Its skin was a sickly, bloated white stretched over obscene layers of fat, while swollen purple lips glistened wetly beneath a single enormous eye fixed squarely on the hole I'd just punched through its masterpiece.

I was about to shout something (maybe a simple "let them go!" or perhaps a cool battle cry) when out of the corner of my eye, something cautiously drifted into view.

The parchment.

I hadn't even noticed it had summoned itself again. It didn't float out in front of me this time however. Instead it hovered just behind my shoulder, exposing only enough of itself for the writing to be visible while leaving the rest hidden behind my back.

"...Are you seriously hiding behind me?"

It, as always, declined to comment and remained stubbornly tucked just behind my shoulder as fresh golden lettering bled across the page.

[Survival Achievement Recognized]

[Successfully Navigated A Monster's Deadly Lair]

[Labyrinth Cleared Through Unconventional Means]

[Reward: Silver Trait Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

"Seriously?" I hissed under my breath. "Now's the time for magical paperwork?"

Again, the parchment managed to somehow shrug despite having no shoulders to do so. With a sigh, I tore my eyes away from the infuriating thing and looked back at the Cyclops.

It still hadn't moved. For several long seconds it simply stared, the cyclops' single eye fixed on the parchment, me and the me-sized hole in its wall in stunned disbelief before its lips slowly peeled back.

"You..."

Its voice rumbled through the chamber, its own voice ringing out for the first time. It sounded like two boulders grinding together in passionate, hateful, break-up sex.

"...BROKE..."

One massive hand wrapped around an iron fireplace poker almost the size of a telephone pole, its tip a deep molten orange.

"...MY HOUSE!"

---

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Pa Treon (same name)

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER FOUR​

---

The poker came down with enough force to turn the stone floor into gravel.

"Ethan!"

Luke had already thrown himself sideways. I followed a heartbeat later as the glowing iron head slammed into the ground where we'd been standing, heat washing over my face as chunks of shattered stone peppered the room.

The impact shook the entire house.

Above us Grover let out a panicked yelp as his rope swung wildly.

"Don't hit the ropes!" Thalia shouted. "You overgrown idiot!"

The Cyclops snarled, planting one enormous foot on the edge of the crater it had just made before wrenching the poker free with a shower of sparks.

"I KILL..."

Its single eye locked onto me.

"...YOU FIRST."

"I'm flattered."

It charged.

For something that looked like an overfed walrus standing upright, the thing moved with terrifying speed. Every step rattled the floor beneath my feet as it drove the poker forward like an oversized spear, forcing Luke and me apart before either of us could get close enough to strike.

Luke darted back in first, his sword flashing toward the Cyclops' wrist as the giant twisted to meet the strike.

The blade bit into thick flesh, drawing a line of black blood but doing little else before the poker swept sideways.

Luke ducked beneath it with inches to spare.

"I've got its attention!" he shouted.

"I noticed!"

I tried to move towards the Cyclops' other flank, hoping that its single eye would limit its vision. But either that eyeball saw more than I thought or the giant had experience dealing with demigods. Probably both. Right before I could close the distance and start ramping up my Combo, the poker whistled around, coming straight toward my head.

I caught the shaft with both hands, Adamantine Fists keeping them from being pulped as the indestructible energy flared to life from deep within my bones.

For one glorious, completely delusional instant I thought I might actually stop it.

Then six hundred pounds of angry Cyclops reminded me that physics was still a thing.

My boots gouged furrows through the stone as I was driven backwards, arms trembling under the strain. Adamantine Fist and the uniform answered together, strength surging through my muscles until the poker finally ground to a halt less than a foot from my face.

The Cyclops blinked.

Apparently I wasn't supposed to be able to do that.

"Little help?!" I grunted.

Luke didn't hesitate.

His sword carved another bright arc through the air, forcing the Cyclops to abandon the shove and yank the poker back before his fingers became considerably less attached to his hand.

I stumbled away, breathing harder than I cared to admit.

One the one hand, that little exchange showed that the giant and I were roughly matched in pure strength. It was larger and heavier and definitely had more experience (though that wasn't saying much considering I wasn't even born yesterday) as I watched it keep Luke at arms-length with wide swings of its crude weapon. One the other hand, I definitely had the potential to outpunch it, just like I had done when I managed to get the drop on that hellhound.

Unfortunately, there was a problem with that.

I could feel Combo trying to build, but it was currently impractical, at best. It only counted when I landed a clean hit, and I needed one every three seconds to keep it alive. With the Cyclops' reach and that damned poker keeping me at bay, the counter kept sputtering out before it could amount to anything. If I couldn't start landing consistent blows soon, it wasn't going to help me at all.

Not that the Cyclops had any intention of letting me survive that long.

Every time I tried to close the distance, the poker came around in another brutal sweep, forcing me back again. It wasn't fighting elegantly.

It didn't need to.

The gluttonous Cyclops had nearly three meters of reach on me, and every wild swing threatened to either cave my skull in or clip the ropes suspending Grover and Thalia above the fire. We couldn't afford to let it simply flail around which meant that, intentionally or no, it forced us both back towards one side of the room, effectively putting ourselves in a corner.

"Ethan!" Luke called as he ducked another horizontal sweep. "Ideas?"

"I'm working on it!"

"Work faster!"

'How very helpful.'

"KILL YOU! EAT YOU ALL!" The Cyclops roared again and lunged.

Slipping inside the first thrust, I was caught off guard when the giant reversed its grip and slammed the iron shaft sideways like a quarterstaff. Barely managing to block with my forearms, the impact still sent me flying backwards. I hit the floor hard, rolled once and came up just in time to duck beneath another swing that took a stone pillar clean off at chest height.

Chunks of masonry rained across the chamber as I scrambled behind the shattered remains of the pillar, mind racing even as my body tried to keep up. We had to find a way to get rid of the cyclops' massive weapon, if we wanted to turn the tide, but how? Just as I was struggling to come up with an answer, my fingers brushed the silver drachma tucked inside my coat, the reward I'd almost forgotten about. It was a bit of a risk, sure, but at this point every option I had was a risk, and standing still was the worst one of all.

Luke glanced toward me while desperately trying to stay outside the Cyclops' reach.

"What are you doing?!"

"Gambling for an edge."

I flicked the silver drachma into the air. As it spun, darkness unfolded around it like ink spreading through water until the coin vanished, leaving behind that familiar sensation brushing against my thoughts.

Recognition.

Acceptance.

Transaction.

Above my head a black symbol shaped like a curling plume of smoke ignited for the briefest instant before fading once more.

The parchment appeared (in front of me this time), drawing a confused blink from the Cyclops while Luke stared at me with an expression caught somewhere between horrified and offended.

"NOW?"

Fresh text burned itself across the page.

[Trait Granted]

[Perfumer]

|Common Trait|

You smell nice, that's about it. You have no distinct scent, your smell like what the person that's smelling you likes.

I read it. Twice.

"...You've got to be fucking kidding me."

The parchment hovered there with the quiet satisfaction of a clerk who had stamped a form and filed it away without a second thought. It suddenly winked out of existence in a hurried shower of golden sparks as something enormous filled my vision.

I'd looked away for less than a second.

The Cyclops hadn't.

Its swollen lips were peeled back into what might generously have been called a grin as one massive arm abandoned the poker altogether and swung at me with enough force to flatten a truck.

I twisted instinctively.

Not enough.

The backhand caught me across the shoulder and ribs instead of square in the chest. Agony exploded through my entire left side as my feet left the ground for one impossible moment before I was sent flying. I crashed through an ancient cabinet hard enough to reduce it to splinters before slamming into the far wall with a crack that drove every last bit of air from my lungs.

The room spun as I slid to the floor, the impact still echoing through my bones. Somewhere nearby someone shouted my name, though it took me a second to remember it belonged to me. I coughed, tasting blood, every inch of my body screaming in protest as pain radiated outward from where I'd been hit.

Slowly, painfully, I pushed myself back onto one knee, forcing my vision to steady. If that had been a clean hit... the thought trailed off before it could fully form. The uniform had absorbed enough of the impact to keep my chest from collapsing; without it, I'd have been dead.

I spat another mouthful of blood onto the floor and forced myself upright.

"Okay," I muttered, my voice coming out considerably rougher than intended.

"The next Trait I get better give me more durability or something instead of... fucking perfume."

The Cyclops laughed.

It was a wheezing, wet sound that suggested the creature was enjoying itself far too much, as if nearly killing me had put it in an excellent mood.

"I..." It thumped one fist against its chest. "BREAK..."

Another laugh bubbled out of its throat.

"...YOU."

"I'm beginning to understand why you prefer using other people's voices," I muttered.

"Less talking!" Luke shouted as he narrowly avoided another sweeping strike. "More helping!"

The Cyclops drove Luke backwards again with another broad sweep of the poker, forcing him to give ground or lose his head.

"Working on it!"

I forced my legs to move despite every muscle protesting the decision. The uniform had saved my life, but it hadn't made the impact hurt any less. Every breath sent a dull ache through my ribs, and my left shoulder felt like somebody had tried to relocate it with a sledgehammer.

The Cyclops' single eye darted between Luke and me, the poker shifting back and forth as it tried to decide which one of us to flatten first. Every time it committed to one, the other darted in just far enough to force it to react. I even managed to get two hits in within that three second time-frame, slamming unbreakable fists into the giant's shin and forearm when it missed another of its wild swings.

It was working, barely, but every exchange at least bought Grover and Thalia another few seconds.

I looked up. Both of them were still swinging gently over the fire, the Cyclops' increasingly wild attacks making the entire ceiling creak. One bad swing, one missed thrust, one unlucky impact against the beams overhead, and the ropes would fall.

The Cyclops saw me looking.

Its swollen lips curled upward as it slowly, deliberately lifted the tip of the poker until it pointed directly at Grover.

"No!" Grover squeaked.

The giant grinned wider, then jabbed upward.

Luke intercepted the strike at the last possible instant with an impressive leap, batting the base of the poker aside with both hands on his sword. The deflection couldn't stop it entirely, but it was enough.

The glowing hot iron head tore through empty air inches from Grover's dangling legs instead of skewering him outright, though it did singe some of his fur.

Luke stumbled backwards, arms trembling from the impact.

"We can't keep doing this!" he shouted.

"I know!"

The Cyclops knew it too.

It raised the poker high above its head with both hands, not to strike us but to smash the ceiling, and my stomach dropped.

"If those beams go—"

"I know!"

The poker began to swing.

A blur shot out from behind the Cyclops' trailing leg, so small and so fast I almost missed it. It was only now that I even noticed I'd completely lost track of Annabeth. The little girl slid across the filthy floor on one knee, disappearing almost entirely beneath the giant's enormous frame before I even realized what she was doing.

The Cyclops didn't notice her until a heartbeat later.

Too late.

Its roar twisted into a shriek, a dark line opening across the back of its left ankle. The giant's leg buckled, and with a thunderous crash that shook the entire chamber, the Cyclops dropped to one knee.

Its ruined leg refused to support it, but the giant never let go of the poker. If anything, its grip tightened. Unable to retreat, it simply swung harder, broad desperate sweeps forcing Luke and me back every time we thought we'd found an opening.

"We need that thing gone!" I shouted.

"Trying to!"

Luke made to dart in, but the poker snapped around so quickly it forced him straight back out again. The Cyclops hadn't even looked at him. Its eye never left me, tracking every step I took, the weapon following each movement like an extension of its will. Whenever Luke shifted position, it adjusted just enough to keep him outside its reach, never fully committing, never giving him an opening. It had decided I was the bigger problem, which meant Luke had effectively become invisible. For a brief instant our eyes met, and in that silent exchange something clicked; then his gaze flicked upward, not toward the Cyclops itself, but toward its shoulder.

Another swing came screaming toward my head.

I ducked beneath it, my fist lashing out as it passed. Adamantine Fist cracked into the back of the Cyclops' hand with a sound like splitting timber. Combo surged just before it could fade, the 30% stronger impact making the giant howl in pain as its grip shifted ever so slightly on the molten poker.

Out of the corner of my eye I caught a flash of blond just as the giant drew its arm back, shifting its grip toward the base of the poker as it prepared another great sweeping strike, determined to keep me pinned outside its reach this time.

To its surprise, I suddenly planted my feet, dropping onto one knee as I locked my hands together, bracing just as Luke reached me without even breaking stride. He hit my waiting hands with one boot, the impact driving me another inch into the stone floor before I exploded upward with everything the One-Star Uniform and my own body could give.

Luke launched skyward like he'd been fired from a ballista.

The Cyclops dumbly looked on as Luke described his arc through the air, but by the time it realized the suddenly airborne demigod was getting rather too close for comfort, it was already too late. It tried to jerk the poker toward Luke, the massive weapon scraping uselessly through the air as it struggled to find the space to swing, but there simply wasn't enough room to bring it to bear. Celestial bronze flashed in a clean, decisive arc, and the giant's howl tore through the chamber hard enough to shake dust from the rafters. Its severed hand struck the floor with a heavy thud, still clenched stubbornly around the poker.

Neither Luke or I wasted the opening.

Descending from his arc, Luke twisted and slammed his sword into the giant's shoulder as if he were a mountaineer trying to conquer Mount Everest and the Cyclops howled in pain as the blade bit deep. Despite Luke's small weight, the pain and angle made the Cyclops lurch forward, still clutching at the spraying stump where its hand had been. Its enormous frame folded in on itself, dragging that massive torso lower.

Low enough that I didn't hesitate as I drove forward, Adamantine Fist meeting flesh with a dull, heavy thud as my arm sank into the giant's gut almost to the elbow.

For the briefest instant it felt like punching through wet clay. Then I finally impacted something solid and Combo caught up. Every punch I'd landed over the last half minute came due all at once. The impact rolled through the Cyclops in a grotesque wave, layers of fat and muscle rippling violently outward before the force finally punched through into the monster itself.

'40%!'

The giant doubled over with a breathless scream. Air exploded from its lungs in a foul blast that smelled of smoke, rotten meat and old blood as its head dropped low with a pained, wheezing gasp. I pushed through the assault of bad breath, moving even closer. I planted my feet, twisted my hips, and threw the hardest uppercut of my life.

Adamantine Fist erupted upward beneath the Cyclops' jaw as Combo surged one final time.

'50%!'

The crack echoed through the chamber like a cannon shot.

The giant's massive bulk briefly left the ground, not by much but just enough for its balance to shatter completely as Luke used it's sudden momentum to kick off the giant's shoulders, tearing his sword free with a roar. With his free hand, he managed to catch one of the hanging ropes close to where Thalia and Grover were suspended next to each other. His sword flashed once above the teenagers.

Grover yelped as his rope immediately came apart.

Luke caught him around the waist before he could fall, using the satyr's momentum to swing them clear of the roaring firepit before letting go, the surging flames licking at their heels (or hooves, in Grover's case). Both of them hit the ground hard, stumbling several steps under the satyr's weight before managing to stay upright.

The Cyclops' enormous body continued to sail backwards, arms pinwheeling uselessly before crashing straight into its own firepit. Burning logs scattered as the Cyclops' bulk smothered the flames beneath it, filling the chamber with a billowing cloud of sparks and greasy black smoke.

For the first time since we'd entered the room the fire stopped roaring.

Grover let out a ragged cough as the heat around us faded, the sudden drop in temperature leaving him shivering even as smoke curled around him.

The Cyclops wasn't dead yet though, not even close.

With a guttural snarl, its remaining hand shot out, massive fingers clawing into the stone lip of the firepit as it strained to haul its enormous body back out of the massive hole.

Which was precisely when the second rope snapped.

Thalia didn't scream as she twisted in midair, even while falling. Aegis burst into existence on her left arm in a flash of bronze and crackling electricity as she drove herself shield-first into the Cyclops' chest, the mystical weapon slamming into the giant like a thunderbolt.

"Let's see how you like to be barbecue, asshole!"

Already off balance, one hand gone and the other barely clinging to the edge, the Cyclops had nothing left to resist with.

Its fingers slipped.

For a single heartbeat, its enormous eye met mine. Then the monster crashed back into the heart of its own firepit, its roar turning into a shriek as the inferno it had so carefully tended to engulfed it in a violent surge of flame.

Briefly I worried that Thalia would fall with it, but the daughter of Zeus had been thrown clear by the blowback of her own thunderous impact, just barely managing to catch the stone rim with both hands. She hung there for only an instant before a much smaller pair of hands suddenly seized her forearm; Annabeth, once more appearing out of nothing where needed most, her heels digging into the stone as she pulled with everything she had until I reached them and hauled Thalia the rest of the way onto solid ground.

The silence that followed was sudden and heavy, broken only by ragged breaths (harshly and painfully in my case, choking and coughing in Grover's and Thalia's case) and the faint crackle of dying embers below.

Then, without warning, a scroll materialized in the air before me.

It unfurled with a soft snap, glowing faintly as golden letters proudly etched themselves across its surface.

[Combat Achievement Recognized]

[First Cyclops Slain]

[Reward: Bronze Item Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

A bronze coin dropped neatly into my waiting hand.

"...Bronze?" I muttered as I stared at it.

Nobody answered. I looked back at the parchment, half expecting another line to appear.

Nothing.

"This thing nearly turned me and the kids into gourmet. After chasing us through a literally haunted mansion!," I said, holding up the drachma. "The hellhound gave me a bronze and that was just a messy brawl. This..." I gestured broadly at the smoking firepit, "...this was so much worse. Hell, the easiest fight I've had so far was against Alecto and she gave me a silver!"

"Are you seriously trying to argue with a piece of primordial magic predating creation itself?" Luke asked tiredly as he dropped down beside us with a wince.

"Look, all I'm asking for is some consistency here. Rewards should match the fight, the prize should reflect the target! This can't just have been a Cyclops, he was way too tough for that! There must be some legend associated with this guy, right?!" I asked desperately, grasping at straws.

Thalia, still catching her breath, glanced toward the pit.

"Sorry Ethan, but it wasn't any Cyclops I ever heard of."

"No?"

She wiped soot from her cheek.

"It didn't exactly introduce itself while preparing to roast us, but it liked to brag as it chased you through the house. I can't remember his original name... but he seemed weirdly proud of a new one."

That got everyone's attention.

"Holmes," she added tiredly.

Annabeth's head snapped up.

"Holmes. As in H.H. Holmes?"

"Not the detective, I'm guessing?" I asked.

Annabeth nodded, her face in a grimace.

"More like one of the bad guys Sherlock would catch. Except H.H. Holmes was a real serial killer. He turned his house into a Murder Castle, way back in the 19th century. Rumours said he killed over a hundred people before he was caught and hanged," she added.

For a moment, all of us silently stared at the blonde, before Grover slightly scooted away from her with wide eyes.

"Annabeth, I know as a child of Athena, you're smarter than most... but it's kind of disturbing a seven year old knows about serial killers."

I found it difficult to disagree as the small child crossed her arms with a huff.

"It was on a documentary on the History Channel, alright? I stayed up past my bedtime and it stuck with me." Annebeth pouted.

"I can imagine." Thalia said with a grimace.

"Wait, if your serial killer got the noose over a hundred years ago, how was ol' One Eye still chasing us around the house tonight?" I wondered, absentmindedly toying with the bronze drachma.

A thoughtful look settled over Annabeth's face as she stared at the blackened firepit.

"Makes sense… monsters don't stay dead, not really. They reform in Tartarus eventually."

I frowned.

"So you're saying one of America's most infamous serial killers..."

"...was actually a Cyclops," Annabeth finished. "The Mist just makes sure people don't remember him as one."

I looked back toward the pit.

"...That's deeply disturbing," I decided.

"No argument here," Luke said.

I turned the bronze drachma over between my fingers.

"Then why am I only getting bronze?"

Luke shrugged.

"Because when it comes down to it, you 'only' killed a Cyclops."

"An infamous one though. Scary enough for people to talk about over a century after they 'killed' him, same as Alecto." I tried to dispute, to him as much as the hovering parchment.

"Not the same thing. Not exactly." Thalia refuted with a slight tilt of her head, shaking loose some ash.

Luke leaned against a scorched section of wall, still breathing hard.

"Alecto has been part of Greek myth for thousands of years, Ethan. People have told stories about her since before Rome existed."

He gestured toward the dying fire.

"That thing wasn't."

"It had a name. Fuck, it even had a police file. There was a History Channel documentary on the guy for crying out loud!"

Luke shook his head.

"That's different."

Annabeth nodded in agreement.

"Myths matter. Stories people keep telling. Names that become part of a culture."

"A newspaper article isn't the same thing," Luke finished. "Not in our world. And apparently, not to your Dad either."

I looked back down at the bronze coin.

"So because this murderous freak was late to the party and never made it into Greek mythology way back in the day..."

"...your parchment, Kaos itself, or at least some part of it, doesn't value it as highly," Thalia concluded.

I let out a long, slow breath.

"That is an unbelievably stupid way to calculate rewards."

The parchment continued hovering in front of me with all the concern of a tax collector.

"...Fine."

I flicked the bronze drachma into the air.

Darkness bloomed around it, swallowing the coin before it had risen more than a foot. That now familiar sensation brushed against the edge of my thoughts once more.

Recognition.

Acceptance.

Transaction.

The black symbol above my head flared into existence, a simple, circular sigil etched with a tiny droplet at its centre, surrounded by faint rippling lines like disturbed water, before fading almost as quickly.

Fresh golden lettering spread across the parchment.

[Item Granted]

[Cleaning Stone]

|Common Item|

A small enchanted bead that continuously cleans and removes filth from everything within a ten-metre radius.

A tiny blue bead dropped neatly into my palm, so light it couldn't have weighed more than a gram at most. I stared at it, waiting for something, anything... but the bead, disappointingly, had nothing to say for itself.

"...You've got to be kidding me." I said, my voice oddly flat.

Nobody interrupted as I slowly looked from the bead to the parchment and back again.

"First Perfumer."

I held up the tiny blue bead between thumb and forefinger.

"Now magical soap."

Silence.

A horrible thought slowly wormed its way into my exhausted brain.

"...Is Kaos trying to tell me I stink?"

Annabeth immediately raised her hand.

"Actually..."

I looked at her hopefully.

"...Yes."

I stared.

She stared back.

"I knew it!" I whirled on the parchment, jabbing an accusing finger at it. "You smug floating clipboard! You've been making fun of me this entire time!"

The parchment remained serenely indifferent.

"I almost died!"

Not so much as a flicker.

"And your response is to call me smelly?!"

"Ethan—"

"I WILL FOLD THAT PIECE OF STATIONARY INTO A PAPER AIRPLANE!"

I lunged, but Luke caught me around the waist before I'd taken two steps.

"Ethan!"

"LET ME GO!"

Thalia grabbed my other arm.

"I'm gonna punch it right in the fuckin' teeth!"

"What the- It doesn't even have a face!"

"I'LL DRAW ONE!"

The parchment drifted calmly another metre away, perfectly out of reach.

Coward.

Annabeth frowned.

"I don't think that's what it meant."

The three of us stopped.

"What?"

Annabeth pointed at me.

"Demigods smell."

"...Excuse me?"

"To monsters."

She shrugged.

"We all do."

Luke released one of my arms.

"She's right."

"The stronger the demigod," Thalia picked up, "the stronger the scent. Take it from a daughter of Zeus. That's one of the reasons monsters keep finding us. They don't just see us..."

"They smell us," Grover finished quietly.

Annabeth's eyes suddenly widened.

"Ohhh... Oh!"

"What?"

"Perfumer."

She pointed from me to the parchment so enthusiastically I thought she was about to poke me in the eye.

"Can you ask it to give you a description again?"

"Uh... sure? Parchment? Do the... thing. What she said."

Almost delighted, the parchment surged closer, new golden lettering blazing over its surface.

[Perfumer]

|Common Trait|

You smell nice, that's about it. You have no distinct scent, your smell like what the person that's smelling you likes.

"Ha! It doesn't just make you smell nice!"

"...It literally says it does."

"Well, yes, but it also says you have 'no distinct scent'. What if it replaced your demigod scent?"

For a moment, nobody spoke before the younger demigods collectively turned towards Grover. The satyr just looked back in confusion before his eyes widened as he looked at me.

"Oh, right!"

He slowly stepped closer, his nose twitching. He took one cautious sniff, then another, and his eyes widened.

"...You don't smell like a demigod."

I blinked at the sudden statement as I put my palm on Grover's face and gently pushed him a few feet away from me, leaning away from the still sniffing satyr.

"What do I smell like?" I asked, morbidly curious.

"Wildflowers." He mumbled against the palm of my hand.

Luke frowned.

"...No."

He leaned in himself.

"Pine trees."

Thalia pushed him aside.

"Move."

She sniffed once.

"...Fresh leather."

Annabeth looked between all three of them.

"You're all wrong."

She took a careful sniff.

"...Old books."

I looked from one to the next.

"...Did..."

Another sniff.

"...Did all four of you just smell me?"

Nobody answered.

I buried my face in my hands.

"I have officially survived a murder maze, only to be sniffed by children. Somehow it's even worse than it sounds!" I wailed, stricken by the injustice of it all.

"We're not children," Thalia protested.

I lowered my hands just enough to look at her.

"You are literally twelve."

"...Fair."

For the first time since we'd entered the house, the four of them relaxed enough to laugh.

Even me... eventually.

The brief moment of levity faded as exhaustion finally caught up with us, relieved laughter giving way to tired chuckles before dying into silence. I looked around the cavern one last time. The firepit had gone strangely still, only the occasional pop of a dying ember disturbing the silence. The ropes still swayed gently overhead. The smell of smoke, ash and something far fouler clung to every surface.

"Right," I said, dusting my hands together. "I'd rather not wait around to find out if he has roommates."

I turned toward Annabeth.

"You've been mapping this place ever since we walked in, right?" I asked.

She nodded.

"I think so. Sort of, I mean. I can't make a perfect map," she admitted, glancing back toward the maze of corridors beyond the cavern. "The hallways move... or they don't... it's hard to explain. But every time you punched through a wall, it made things a bit clearer."

She pointed somewhere beyond the far wall.

"The outside should be... roughly that way."

"I can make do with 'roughly'." I muttered as I walked over to the wall she'd indicated, planting one hand against the cracked plaster.

It felt... ordinary. For the first time since we'd entered the house, it didn't feel like the building was trying to trick us.

'Good enough for me.'

I drew back my fist.

"You know," Luke said, "normal people would probably look for a front door."

I glanced over my shoulder.

"I've spent the last hour learning this house cheats." I said with a small grin as I turned back to face the wall.

"So I'm cheating back."

Adamantine Fist crashed through plaster, timber and brick in a single deafening impact.

Instead of open air, another narrow hallway yawned beyond the hole.

"...Of course," I muttered.

I stepped through and didn't even pause before swinging again.

Another wall shattered.

Another room, this one filled with splintered cabinets and overturned chairs and a ceiling that sagged like it might collapse at any moment.

"Keep going!" Annabeth called.

I obliged.

Each impact echoed like thunder through the shifting maze, dust and splinters raining down around us as I carved a straight, stubborn path through whatever nonsense the house tried to throw in our way.

A kitchen.

A staircase that led nowhere.

A bedroom with no doors.

Then, finally, Adamantine Fist crashed through one last barrier, as sunlight poured through the ragged hole. Not the harsh orange glow of the Cyclops' fire, but real sunlight.

Fresh morning air rushed into the house for the first time in who knows how long, carrying the smell of damp grass, dew and spring blossoms. It swept away the smoke still pouring outwards from the cavern, stirring everyone's hair as though the world itself had taken a deep breath.

Nobody moved beyond the threshold of broken plaster and shattered brick. For just a moment, we all stood there staring.

"...It's morning," Grover whispered.

We climbed through the ragged hole I made one after another. The grass outside sparkled with dew beneath the first rays of dawn. Somewhere nearby a robin began singing as though haunted murder mazes were simply another part of a perfectly ordinary Tuesday.

Behind us, the house looked smaller. Still super creepy in a decrepit and unsettling way, but somehow less impossible, as though whatever twisted magic had sustained it had died together with its master.

Thalia stepped out beside me, tilting her face toward the rising sun. The golden light caught the soot smeared across her cheeks (though to my surprise the ash was steadily fading thanks to the pebble in my pocket), making her look every bit the tired twelve-year-old she actually was instead of the battle-hardened demigod she'd been forced to become.

For a long moment she simply stood there before she glanced up at me from the corner of her tired eyes.

"You know..."

There was a strange softness in her voice as she gestured vaguely toward the city beyond the trees.

"You could still leave."

I frowned down at her.

"What?"

"Now that the scroll took care of your demigod scent, you could just... disappear. They'll continue to hunt us, but they won't even notice you. And you've seen the dangers you'd face if you stuck around us." Her smile was small, almost sad, but disarmingly genuine.

I looked at Luke, still helping Grover steady himself on his borrowed crutches. At Annabeth, quietly brushing soot from her jeans with far more determination than success. Then back at Thalia, the ash smeared across her face, covering her freckles.

"I know."

She studied my face.

"You really don't have to—"

"And I can't bear the thought of what'd happen if I didn't."

The words came out before I'd had a chance to reconsider them.

Thalia stared at me for a long moment, something unreadable flickering across her face before she exhaled slowly. Luke shifted his weight beside her, gaze dropping to the ground as if he'd suddenly found something fascinating in the grass, while Grover's ears sagged and Annabeth's expression softened, the faintest hint of a smile tugging at her lips.

Without another word, Grover stepped forward and wrapped both arms around my waist. Annabeth joined him almost immediately, even if she only came up to my hip. Luke sighed the sigh of someone who knew resistance was futile before stepping into the embrace himself.

Thalia rolled her eyes.

"...This is stupid."

She joined anyway.

For a little while, nobody said anything.

The sun continued climbing above Brooklyn, washing the broken old house, the five soot-covered survivors and the dew-soaked grass in warm gold.

For the first time since waking up on that park bench in Central Park, I was surprised to suddenly find myself with a goal in mind; get these kids somewhere safe. Worry about everything else afterwards.

'Sounds like a plan. Or at least part of a plan. I can work with part of a plan.'

---

AN: You can read up to five chapters ahead over on my Patreon. Also, I will be on holidays from 3 to 22 August (backpacking in Peru), so I'll likely not upload on this site during that time. However, I'm trying to build up a backlog that can be auto-published over on my Patreon, so hopefully you'll be able to continue reading there without missing a beat. I've also read that ScribbleHub supports timed releases as well, so if I can manage it, I'll have the chapters automatically drop there as well. If not, then I'll try to get back into the swing of things once I'm back from my holidays.

 

[Bakkughan]

Chapter 5​

---

The group hug lasted exactly as long as everyone could tolerate admitting it was happening.

Which, given the people involved, turned out not to be very long at all.

Thalia pulled away first, wiping at her face with the heel of her palm like she was clearing soot and absolutely nothing else (which wasn't very effective considering the blue pebble in my pocket had taken care of most of the ash by now). Luke stepped back a moment later, immediately turning toward the street as if the most important thing in the world had suddenly become checking whether anything with claws was waiting behind a hedge. Annabeth released me without much embarrassment, though she did keep one hand wrapped tightly around the strap of her backpack, and Grover lingered just long enough for dignity to become a theoretical concern.

Then he let go and cleared his throat.

"Right," he said. "Good. Very good. We're all alive."

"My, such very high standards." I said somewhat mockingly, but the satyr just shot me a firm (and slightly haunted) look.

"After tonight? Yes."

"...Fair enough."

The old house sat behind us in the growing light of dawn, looking smaller now that we were outside of it. Still the sort of place any sane person would cross the street to avoid, just… lesser, somehow. Whatever had made the halls stretch too far and the stairs fold back on themselves had died with the Cyclops, leaving behind rotten timber, broken windows, peeling paint and the chilling notion that people probably drove past places like this every day without ever knowing what was inside.

"We should go," Thalia said.

Nobody argued.

Unfortunately, that was easier said than done. We were still in Brooklyn, several hours from wherever Camp Half-Blood was supposed to be, with no money, no food, one injured satyr, three exhausted children and me, which admittedly helped slightly in the punching department but did not solve the larger issue of transportation.

Luke seemed to arrive at a similar conclusion at the same time I did, because his gaze shifted from the street to the side of the house.

"There might be a garage."

I looked at him.

"That is exactly the kind of sentence people say right before being murdered in the sequel."

"We need a car." The boy doggedly pointed out.

"We also needed not to get eaten in there, and look how well the house respected that."

Luke gave me a tired look.

I sighed.

"Fine. But if anything whispers from inside the garage, we leave."

"If anything whispers from inside the garage," Thalia said, "I'm stabbing it."

"Also acceptable."

We moved together around the side of the house, because apparently we had all learned at least one useful lesson from the last few hours. Nobody wandered ahead or split off to follow mysterious voices, helpful or otherwise. Annabeth vanished under her cap before we reached the overgrown path, which I still found deeply unsettling, and Luke drew his sword while Thalia's spear reappeared in her hand with the casual ease of someone retrieving keys from a pocket.

The garage stood behind the house, half-swallowed by weeds and leaning fence posts. It was a long, sagging structure with double doors warped by moisture and age. One of them hung open by a few inches, leaving a black slit between the boards.

I pushed it open with one hand, the other balled into a fist loosely at my side.

Just in case.

The door groaned loud enough to make Grover flinch, but nothing lunged out at us, which immediately made the garage my favourite room on the property.

The inside smelled like oil, dust and old damp wood, with something musky underneath that made Grover go very still. Morning light spilled through cracks in the walls, cutting thin pale lines across shelves packed with rusted tools, cracked jars, fraying rope and boxes that had probably once contained useful things before time and neglect turned them into tetanus storage. A tarp covered something bulky in the middle of the garage.

I was just starting to feel cautiously optimistic when Grover made a small sound, not in fear, but recognition.

Luke noticed immediately. "Grover?"

The satyr did not answer. His eyes had fixed on a hook beside the workbench where a worn satchel hung from a nail. It was patched in several places, the leather soft with age, and decorated with little wooden beads carved into leaves.

Grover moved toward it slowly.

"Grover," Thalia said, quieter this time.

He reached up and touched the satchel with fingers that trembled despite how carefully he tried to hide it.

"This was Leneus'." He whispered.

Grover opened the flap and checked the side pocket, then swallowed hard as he drew out a small bundle wrapped in cloth. Several reed pipes rested inside, bound together with twine.

"He always kept spares," he said. The satyr's voice had gone thin. "He said you should never travel without music."

The garage seemed to shrink around us.

"That would explain how the Cyclops knew what voice to mimic to lure us inside." I noted grimly.

There were other things too, once we knew to look. A tin of hoof polish. A cracked wooden case filled with small tools that meant nothing to me and far too much to Grover. But mixed in with them were things that didn't belong to any satyr; an old sneaker with the laces torn out, a child's backpack with a broken zipper, a rusted pocketknife, a bracelet made of cheap plastic beads. Trophies. Not organized, not displayed, just left where they'd been dropped or taken. Grover touched each item like he was confirming something he already knew but had hoped very badly not to.

Annabeth reappeared beside the workbench, cap clenched in one small hand.

"Maybe he escaped," she said, if only because someone had to.

"He wouldn't have left these." Grover refuted with quiet certainty as he stared down at the satchel.

Nobody corrected him.

I looked back toward the house, toward the broken windows and the sagging porch and the hole I had punched through its guts to get us out. For a brief, ugly moment, I wished the Cyclops had taken longer to burn.

Grover carefully slung the satchel over one shoulder. It looked too light for the weight it carried.

"He'd want us to use what we can," he said after a moment, though it sounded like he was convincing himself more than us. "If there's a car... he'd want us to get to camp."

Luke nodded once.

"Then that's what we do."

I gave Grover another second before turning toward the tarp in the middle of the garage.

"Right. Let's hope this tragic keepsake at least comes with an engine."

I grabbed the edge and pulled.

Dust billowed out in a grey cloud as the tarp slid away, revealing an old Chevy truck that looked like it had been built during a period of American history when cars were expected to survive wars, floods and possibly direct artillery fire. The paint had once been blue (though rust had since made a strong counterargument). One headlight was cracked, the front bumper was dented and the windshield was so filthy I could barely see through it.

To four stranded demigods and one traumatized satyr, it looked beautiful.

Luke glanced up at me.

"Can you drive it?"

For once, the answer came without hesitation.

"Yes."

The certainty surprised me a little. The moment I looked at the truck, some quiet part of my brain began sorting through pedals, mirrors, gear shifts and the particular unpleasantness of old engines that had not been loved in a long time. Thanks to my Novice Driving skill, I knew how to handle it, how to coax movement out of it. Knew enough to tell that the thing probably had the turning radius of a cargo ship and brakes that were more a suggestion than a certainty.

The reward that had seemed insulting when I was standing in Central Park covered in hellhound dust had suddenly become one of the more immediately useful things I owned.

I looked from the truck to the empty air where the parchment usually appeared.

Nothing.

"Of course now you stay quiet," I muttered.

Thalia glanced at me.

"What?"

"Nothing. Just mentally apologizing to a piece of magical paper, which is somehow not the strangest thing I've done today."

I slid into the driver's seat, the cracked vinyl protesting beneath my weight. The cabin smelled faintly of old petrol, worn leather and decades of neglect. I wrapped one hand around the steering wheel, inserted a screwdriver Luke had liberated from the workbench into the ignition and gave it a cautious turn.

The engine coughed twice before giving up with all the enthusiasm of a pensioner being asked to run a marathon.

I tried again.

Same result.

Annabeth climbed back out from beneath the dashboard, brushing dust from her hands.

"Dead battery."

Luke leaned through the open driver's door.

"We could push it."

I looked at him.

"This thing weighs about as much as a small office building."

"We have you."

"...That is an annoyingly fair point."

Before either of us could climb out, Thalia walked around the front of the truck.

"Pop the hood."

I shrugged and pulled the release beneath the dashboard. The hood sprang loose with a metallic clunk and Thalia lifted it, peering inside for barely a second before nodding to herself.

"I can fix it."

Luke and I exchanged a look.

"You can?"

She held up one hand.

"Daughter of Zeus, remember?" she said with a grin as blue-white sparks crackled lazily between her fingertips.

"Oh."

Luke's mouth twitched.

Thalia caught it instantly.

"What?"

"...Nothing."

"You just thought something stupid."

"I was merely appreciating your… unique talents."

"You were thinking jumper cables."

"How could you possibly know that?"

"Because I was thinking the same thing."

Thalia rested two fingers against the battery terminals. The air immediately filled with the sharp smell of ozone as blue arcs danced across the metal.

"Try it."

I turned the screwdriver, the engine sputtered...

...and died.

"Again."

The lightning intensified, crawling over the engine block in branching veins of blue.

I tried once more and this time the starter caught, the old Chevy roaring to life with a deafening bark, belching a cloud of black smoke that sent a flock of pigeons exploding off the roof. The whole truck shuddered violently while something beneath the hood made a noise that sounded expensive.

"...She's alive." I grinned.

"Barely," Thalia muttered, slamming the hood shut.

Luke nodded once.

"Thanks."

She narrowed her eyes.

"You're still thinking jumper cables."

Luke looked away.

"...Maybe."

"Knew it."

Grover poked his head through the garage door.

"If we're done bullying the daughter of the King of the Gods, can we please leave?"

That wiped the smiles from everyone's faces. Luke quickly climbed into the passenger seat, his sword resting across his knees. Annabeth slid into the back in-between Thalia and Grover, who carefully placed Leneus' satchel on his lap instead of the floor.

I adjusted the mirrors almost without thinking, Novice Driving kicking in automatically.

'Another little gift from Kaos.'

Yesterday, I'd wondered what kind of idiot rewarded someone who had just survived a monster attack with driving lessons. Today it was the difference between walking halfway across New York and actually getting these kids to camp.

Maybe the parchment knew what it was doing after all.

That was... mildly concerning.

I eased the truck out of the garage. The suspension groaned in protest as we rolled over the uneven ground and onto the cracked driveway. Behind us, the old house disappeared behind a curtain of weeds and crooked fencing.

None of us looked back.

Brooklyn was only just waking up. Delivery vans rattled along the streets as shopkeepers rolled open metal shutters. A woman walked her dog past the end of the road, completely oblivious to the fact that less than a hundred metres away stood a house that had spent decades swallowing people whole.

The Mist was terrifying when you stopped to think about it.

I turned East as I merged into the growing morning traffic, letting the city swallow us as Brooklyn slowly disappeared in the rear-view mirror and the steady rumble of the engine settled into the background. The truck rattled and groaned with every pothole it found, but it kept moving, and for now that was all I cared about.

Camp Half-Blood was still hours away.

Hopefully this old heap would make it there before something else found us.

---

The first hour passed in almost uncomfortable silence.

Nobody slept despite our exhaustion. We were all too wired for that. Every passing truck, every dog barking somewhere behind a fence and every shadow beneath an overpass drew somebody's attention. More than once Luke's hand drifted toward his sword before relaxing again when the "monster" turned out to be nothing more than an elderly man walking his terrier.

Nothing happened, and another hour slipped by in the same uneasy quiet, with still nothing to show for it. The farther we got from Brooklyn, the easier it became to believe we'd finally put the worst of the night behind us.

We stopped only when the truck's fuel gauge dropped low enough to stop being a suggestion.

While Thalia, Grover and I filled the tank, Luke wandered off toward the service station shop with Annabeth trailing after him. He returned a few minutes later carrying enough bottled water, snacks and a road map to stock a small picnic.

I looked past him toward the cashier, a gangly youth sadly losing the battle against pimples who was still leaning half-asleep against the counter.

"...Did you pay?"

Luke looked genuinely offended.

"I'm a son of Hermes."

"...so that's a no."

"I paid," he repeated, "with a valuable life lesson about improving shop security."

Annabeth sighed, though I didn't miss how she tried to hide her baseball cap behind her.

"He stole everything."

"I borrowed it... indefinitely... without permission."

Grover accepted a packet of crackers without the slightest hint of moral outrage.

"I've had worse breakfasts."

Not willing to tangle with both mythological monsters and New York county police, we tore out of there before the cashier could notice we were gone, only stopping roughly an hour later by the side of the rood for a much needed bathroom break. We ate brunch (crackers, chips and whatever else Luke had managed to swipe) sitting on the tailgate of the truck while the sun climbed steadily higher into the sky. Nobody talked much. We were simply too tired, too sore and too relieved that nothing with claws had tried to interrupt lunch.

The journey resumed.

At some point I noticed the dashboard no longer had nearly as much dust on it, and when I looked closer the windscreen seemed clearer too. Even the faded blue paint around the bonnet gradually took on a slightly brighter sheen.

The truck was still a rust bucket held together by stubbornness and what I suspected was divine negligence, but the little blue Cleaning Stone resting in the cupholder quietly went about its work, erasing years of grime one speck at a time.

It was... oddly satisfying.

A little later, after several uninterrupted hours without monsters, we pulled into an empty gravel lay-by overlooking a stretch of woodland so everyone could stretch their legs.

Thalia wandered over while I leaned against the truck, somewhat morosely wishing Luke had managed to steal a pack of cigarettes as well and mentally grappling with the moral implications of wanting a tween to steal tobacco.

'But these are special circumstances, dammit!' I argued against myself, before Thalia shook me from my thoughts with an impatient clearing of her throat.

"So... offering a magical drachma to the primordial void means you really know how to drive cars now?"

"I appear to." I answered with a shrug

She folded her arms.

"Teach me."

I looked at her.

"...You're twelve."

"And?"

"And I don't think New York has many learner's permits for preteens carrying magical spears."

She shrugged.

"We're in the middle of nowhere and it's a valuable life skill to have for preteens that are being hunted by mythological monsters."

"... good point."

Twenty minutes later the truck lurched forward with all the grace of a startled rhinoceros before stalling hard enough to throw us both against our seatbelts.

"I hate this thing." Thalia glared at the steering wheel.

"You dumped the clutch."

"I don't know what that means."

"It means you're trying to fight the truck instead of driving it."

"I fight everything."

"I've noticed."

The second attempt went better, and by the third she was starting to get the hang of it. By the time we switched places again, she could pull away without killing the engine, even if every gear change still sounded vaguely threatening.

Luke climbed back into the passenger seat wearing an expression halfway between amusement and concern.

"Should I ask?"

"No."

Ignoring the (literal) sparks in Thalia's eyes, I took the wheel again and pointed the truck east. The roads gradually grew quieter while the trees thickened around us as we truly left New York behind and began passing through Orange County toward the outskirts of Long Island. The road curved gently through dense woodland, the morning sun filtering through the canopy in broken shafts of gold that flashed across the windscreen. I settled into an easy rhythm behind the wheel, one hand resting lightly on the steering wheel while the old Chevy grumbled beneath us. It still sounded like every moving part had signed a mutual suicide pact, but after several uneventful hours I'd almost started trusting the thing.

Almost.

For the first time we left the cyclops' murder-house behind us, the knot between my shoulders began to loosen.

'Maybe we'll actually make it.'

The truck rounded another bend.

I hit the brakes, hard.

The tyres shrieked across the asphalt as everyone lurched forward against their seatbelts. The Chevy skidded sideways before coming to a halt in the middle of the road, the engine coughing indignantly.

Everyone shouted at once.

"What the—"

"Ethan!"

"Are you—"

The words died in their throats as they saw what was ahead.

The road ahead was blocked.

Hellhounds prowled lazily back and forth across the tarmac, their paws leaving faint scorch marks on the asphalt while wisps of black smoke curled from between their teeth. Behind them stood a line of skeleton warriors in battered bronze armour, shields locked together in front of a wooden barricade. Three tall, pale women with hair like living flame and eyes that burned an unnatural red, their smiles too wide and teeth too sharp to belong to anything human, lingered behind the barricade, talking amongst themselves as casually as commuters waiting for a train.

Empousai was my best guess, based on the crash course of Monsterology 101 Annabeth had given me during the road trip, with enthusiastic (if fearful and sometimes disturbingly graphic) contributions from Grover.

One of the demonic women noticed we'd stopped and smiled, not a predatory grin but a knowing one, like she'd expected us five minutes ago and we'd had the poor manners to arrive late.

I counted quickly. It wasn't on the level of the stampede that had crashed down the stairs in that subway station where I first met the kids, more a hit squad than a small army, but still...

'Too many. Far too many.'

"They were waiting for us," Annabeth said quietly.

"They're waiting for me," Thalia corrected bitterly.

"Losing our tracks in New York doesn't matter if they knew where we were heading. Doesn't take a genius to figure out we're trying to get Thalia to Camp Half-Blood." Luke said bitterly.

There wasn't another explanation that made sense. After all, monsters didn't set roadblocks.

They didn't organize patrols or establish kill zones. They roamed the country, waiting and hunting to catch the scent of a demigod, living for the chase. What they didn't do was stand shoulder to shoulder across a two-lane road unless somebody had told them exactly where to stand and exactly what they were waiting for.

Thalia hadn't taken her eyes off the monsters.

"They're not supposed to do this."

Her voice was so quiet I almost missed it.

"There are Ancient Laws that forbid this. Directing monsters like this, blocking access to the only safe haven demigods have got, that's Interfering. Monsters slipping through is one thing. This..."

She shook her head.

"...this is different."

I agreed. This wasn't the Underworld nudging fate in a particular direction. It was a god assembling a hit squad because a twelve-year-old girl had slipped through his fingers once already.

Which was enough to make my blood boil. There was something genuinely fucked up about an immortal king deciding the appropriate response to his family drama was to send an army after an innocent little girl.

One of the Empousai lazily twirled a spear before pointing it directly at Thalia, actual hunger in her eyes as she let out a cruel grin.

'Right, that fucking does it.'

I dropped the truck into first.

Luke looked over.

"Ethan..."

"Seatbelts." I said with a deadly sort of calm that saw the children scrambling in their seats.

The engine howled as I buried the accelerator.

For a heartbeat the dumbfounded monsters simply watched us coming, before one of them shouted a hurried command. The skeletons scrambled to brace their shields while the Hellhounds scattered, but it was already too late as the Chevy smashed into the barricade with a sound like the world folding in half.

Wooden beams exploded into splinters. A skeleton disappeared beneath the bonnet in a shower of bronze and yellowed bone. Something slammed across the roof hard enough to dent it inward before tumbling away into the ditch. The steering wheel kicked violently in my hands as we punched straight through the centre of the formation, the truck bouncing hard enough that I thought we'd rolled it.

Not that the battered truck was in any better shape than if we had, as smoke immediately began pouring from beneath the crumpled hood.

"...I don't think she liked that," Luke observed.

"She'll live."

The engine disagreed.

It managed another hundred metres before dying with a long, mechanical groan that sounded suspiciously like a death rattle as we rolled to a gentle stop.

"Everybody out!"

We spilled onto the roadside just as the first Hellhound burst from the treeline behind us, followed by skeletons and the shriek of what I was guessing was an Empousa.

"Make for the forest! The Camp is close now, it's on the other edge!" Grover shouted.

The demigods ran, but before I could join them, I caught a flash of gold from the corner of my eye. The parchment (and it was definitely hiding this time, hovering near the hood of the totalled truck) slowly came into view. It almost spat a bronze drachma at me as I glimpsed golden text hurriedly scrawling itself over its surface.

[KILL CONFIRMED: Skeletal Warrior]

[First Skeletal Warrior Slain]

[Reward: Bronze Item Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

Feeling the bronze smack into my palm, I glared at the piece of parchment, mindful off the crashes and screeches coming from where we left the barricade behind us.

"Right back at ya." I muttered as I threw the coin back at the scroll.

It disappeared before it could slam into its yellowed surface (unfortunately) as that same feeling of recognition and acceptance settled over the back of my mind.

[OFFERING BRONZE ITEM DRACHMA.]

[Speed Cola]

|Common Item|

Call of Duty - "Crazy Sugar High" Upon drinking Speed Cola, you will be granted temporary enhanced Dexterity for 1 hour. Effects apply after finishing an entire bottle and do not stack by drinking more than 1 can. Warning: Drinking more than 3 different buff drinks at once will cause intense haemorrhaging, strokes, and heart attacks. Restock Timer: 24 Hours

A soda bottle smacked into my waiting palm, the liquid inside a worryingly fluorescent shade of green as the first hellhound smashed through the treeline. It instantly barrelled towards me, so dismissing any concerns I quickly tore the cap off and downed the glowy drink in a single gulp just as the massive beast leapt towards me.

Chemical lightning surged across my veins and over every organ as the Hellhound seemed to slow down in mid-air. Blinking a few times as I felt a buzzing itch cover my teeth, I turned towards where the children had run and took off at a blistering run, the Hellhound sailing through where I'd been just a moment ago and smashing face-first into the tarmac. Briefly my surroundings turned into a blur as I left the confused Hellhound in the literal dust and I easily caught up with the demigods just as we plunged off the road and into the trees.

The difference was immediate. One moment we were sprinting over sun-warmed asphalt, the next we were crashing through undergrowth and ducking beneath low branches while the forest swallowed us whole. Fallen leaves slipped beneath our feet, roots reached up to trip the unwary and every breath tasted of damp earth and pine instead of hot tarmac and exhaust fumes.

"How much further?" I called.

"Not far!" Grover shouted back. "A couple of miles, maybe less!"

'Maybe. I can work with maybe.' I thought to myself as my lungs hammered for air.

Unfortunately, so could the monsters.

They were faster in the open, but the forest forced them to weave between trunks and leap over fallen logs. The Hellhounds still gained ground whenever the terrain opened up, only to lose it again where the undergrowth thickened. Behind them, the skeletons advanced with relentless determination, neither tiring nor slowing, while the Empousai flowed through the trees with an unnatural grace that made my skin crawl.

It bought us time, but I was beginning to dread it may not be enough for the children, who didn't have a dexterity boosting magical potion like I had.

The pace we'd set since leaving the truck had been brutal, and it was beginning to show. Grover was breathing hard despite being built for rough terrain, having left his crutches in the (now destroyed) car, running hard on hooved legs. Luke had stopped looking over his shoulder entirely, saving every scrap of attention for the next tree root or low branch. Even Thalia, who refused to admit weakness on principle, had gone quiet.

Then Annabeth stumbled.

It happened so quickly I almost missed it. Her foot landed awkwardly between two exposed roots, her ankle rolled beneath her and she pitched forward with a sharp cry before disappearing into a patch of ferns.

Luke was beside her first.

"You alright?"

Annabeth tried to stand, but the moment she put weight on her left foot, her face tightened.

"...No." she said through gritted teeth, trying to bite back the tears forming in her eyes.

I was already moving.

"Can you run?"

She shook her head once, and that was all I needed. I scooped her up beneath one arm before she had a chance to protest, settling her against my side like she weighed nothing at all. She looked mortified at being hoisted around like a particularly spindly sack of potatoes.

"I can—"

"No, you can't."

"I'll slow you down."

"You already are."

She opened her mouth.

"Not your fault." I said firmly, but not unkindly.

That ended the argument.

The extra weight barely registered thanks to the Uniform and my increased Dexterity, but it changed my balance enough that I couldn't keep the same pace. Within a minute I could hear the monsters again, closer this time. Much closer.

Branches snapped somewhere behind us as a Hellhound barked, another answering in quick succession.

"They're gaining," Luke said.

"I'd noticed." I panted slightly.

The trees were beginning to thin. Through gaps in the branches I caught flashes of open sky and, further ahead still, what looked like sunlight glinting off rooftops.

'Camp Half-Blood. It has to be.'

Hope lasted all of three seconds before I realized the monsters were still gaining, even with the forest slowing them down. We weren't going to outrun them, not while carrying Annabeth and not as exhausted as we all were.

I looked from the brief glimpses of Camp Half-Blood to the gaining shadows behind us, and an idea began to take shape. It was the type of plan that was either brilliant or the sort of thing that got mentioned in posthumous Darwin Awards.

Probably both.

"Everyone!"

The others looked back while still running.

"Get together!"

"What?" Luke shouted.

"Just do it!"

Something in my voice must have convinced him.

Luke slowed enough for Grover and Thalia to bunch up beside him. I matched their pace, Annabeth still tucked securely beneath one arm.

"When I say so," I said between breaths, "grab each other and don't let go."

Thalia frowned.

"...Ethan?"

"Trust me."

Luke looked from me to the trees ahead, and as the realization settled in, his eyes widened.

"...You're kidding."

"I wish I was."

Behind us came another chorus of barking, much closer now.

"We don't have time for another plan." I hastily pressed.

Luke grimaced.

"...Fair."

He grabbed Grover by the wrist, as Grover seized Thalia's sleeve, and Annabeth, still in my arms, wrapped one arm around Luke's shoulder, forming a thoroughly ridiculous chain.

I shifted Annabeth's weight, planted my feet for a single heartbeat and reached out with my free hand.

"Hold on."

Luke managed exactly one deeply offended expression before I caught the back of his jacket.

I dropped Annabeth into the chain, shifted my grip to the back of Luke's jacket and dug my heels into the earth.

The Uniform stirred, a familiar sensation beneath the fabric, as though something woven into the suit had quietly woken up and was waiting for me to ask a little more of it.

I obliged.

"Sorry about this."

Then I threw them.

The chain of children shot through the air in a thoroughly undignified tangle of flailing limbs and horrified screaming.

"ETHAAAAAAAN!"

"YOU MANIAC!"

"GROOOOOVER!"

"I'M GONNA KILL HIIMMM!"

The forest flashed beneath them as they sailed above the treetops, clearing the last stretch of woodland in a long arc. For one terrifying second I wondered whether I'd overdone it before they vanished over the crest of the hill.

'Good enough.'

I didn't wait to admire my handiwork.

The first Hellhound burst through the undergrowth barely twenty metres away, followed by another and another until half a dozen pairs of burning red eyes fixed on me. Skeleton warriors emerged behind them in disciplined silence, bronze shields scraping against tree trunks as they spread into a loose line. The Empousai arrived last, weaving effortlessly between the trees with spears in hand, in no particular hurry now that the chase was over.

One of them smiled.

"So..." she purred. "The little hero stays behind."

"As long as the same goes for all of you... then yeah..."

The Hellhounds lunged.

I met the first one head-on, a chemical rush still singing in my veins.

Its jaws snapped shut where my throat had been a heartbeat earlier as I deftly stepped inside its reach and drove my fist through the side of its skull. It had taken me about a dozen punches before I managed to seriously damage the hellhound that attacked me in Central Park, but that was with my ordinary dexterity and I wasn't wearing my Uniform then.

Now though? Even without combo active, bone exploded outward in a shower of black ichor as the monster was sent careening off course, crashing harshly through the underbrush. It wasn't dead yet, but give me two more Combo punches and it would be.

The second reached me before the first had fully disappeared in the underbrush. I had to dodge awkwardly, my Adamantine Fist only managing to clip it in the side, but it was enough for Combo to register and the monstrous hound pulled away with a yelp.

I moved to finish the job when I had to suddenly pull back as a spear whistled past my shoulder. If it hadn't been for Speed Cola it would've speared one of my lungs with ease. Instead, I twisted just enough for the bronze tip to graze my sleeve before closing the distance with the skeleton that had thrown it. My fist caved in its ribcage, scattering yellowed bones across the forest floor.

Three clean hits to begin building up Combo. Enough to one-shot the frailer monsters.

A fourth Hellhound barrelled into me from the side before I could capitalize on it, knocking me sideways through a patch of ferns. I rolled with the impact, came back to my feet and planted a straight right into its open mouth.

It's maw exploded into dust, the rest of it following not long after.

A skeleton swung wildly overhead.

I ducked beneath the blade, immediately stepped inside its guard and shattered its spine with a rising punch, Combo making it hit 50% harder than before.

The counter just kept climbing since the monsters just kept coming. It was only once I was hitting at nearly double strength, sending a Hellhound actually flying through the canopy before it rained down on the battlefield in a shower of dust, that the monsters began pulling back more, their earlier hunger and bravado now replaced with something sharper, more wary.

The brief lull was enough.

The faint warmth running through my arms ebbed away as the Combo counter reset completely the moment I stopped attacking. I could almost feel it slipping through my fingers, gone after precisely three seconds had passed.

"Damn it."

I drew a slow breath, trying to ignore the stitch digging into my ribs. My left shoulder still throbbed where the Cyclops had clipped me yesterday, fresh cuts from branches crisscrossed my forearms and somewhere along the chase a Hellhound had managed to rake four burning lines across my side. Nothing life-threatening individually, but together with the constant sprinting and fighting they were beginning to add up.

The monsters seemed to notice. The Hellhounds no longer charged recklessly while the skeletons tightened their formation. Even the Empousai hung back, content to circle rather than commit.

Tension in the clearing rose as they silently circled me, pulling tighter and tighter in clear anticipation for a bullrush... before they all froze in place as someone from behind their lines barked an order.

"Halt! Leave this so-called 'hero' to me!"

The hellhounds growled and the Empousai shot each other frustrated looks, but all obeyed the powerful voice nonetheless as the silent skeletons parted, allowing a single figure to stride through the gap.

He stood a head taller than the others, his frame broader and corded with tick muscle. I was a fairly well-built dude, but even I barely reached this guy's collarbones, not to mention he was about as wide at the shoulders as two of me standing side by side. Tarnished bronze armour (cestuses, the Greek side of me helpfully filled in) encased both forearms, while the remains of a lion skin hung from one shoulder like a tattered cloak. He looked almost like a normal, if very muscular, man save for his ghostly, milky white eyes.

He looked me up and down with unconcealed contempt.

"So."

His voice sounded like old parchment dragged across stone.

"This is the champion that has delayed Lord Hades?"

I let out a slow breath and forced my shoulders to loosen. If this guy wanted to monologue away at me, I was more than happy to oblige him.

'As long as it doesn't take longer than… 45 minutes.' The mental counter for the Speed Cola buff helpfully informed me.

"I've had worse introductions." I tried to keep my voice nonchalant (though I imagine the effect was somewhat ruined with how of breath I was).

The ancient bodybuilder scoffed dismissively, before drawing himself up (even) taller, broad chest puffed up in arrogant pride as he flexed muscles that would put even the greatest 80s action movie stars to shame.

"Then allow me to introduce myself to one so lowly as thyself. Lay thine unworthy eyes upon a trueborn Son of Poseidon! For I... am Cercyon!"

"...Should that mean something to me?" I hesitantly asked after an awkward pause.

The tall man's features were pulled back in a rictus of rage.

"You dare?!"

"I mean..." I kept my tone flat, almost distracted, like I wasn't watching every movement around him. "I was born yesterday..."

His jaw clenched.

"I ruled Eleusis!"

I gave a small, noncommittal nod.

"I was the greatest wrestler in all of Greece!"

"Right."

"I broke every traveller foolish enough to cross my roads!"

"Sound like that might be bad for tourism." I tried to interject, warily keeping my eye on the monsters as they drew into a tight circle around the two of us, though it seemed the Empousai at least were already fed up with the man's grandstanding.

The Hellhounds still just looked hungry.

"I slew them with my own hands until mighty Theseus himself challenged me!" Cercyon (apparently) continued his tirade, not even noticing my lapse of attention.

That, however, caught my interest.

"...Theseus?"

"Pah!" Cercyon spat. "The upstart relied upon tricks and technique! Had he matched me blow for blow, he would have joined the countless corpses beneath my palace!"

"Huh."

A thought occurred to me.

I rubbed my chin, briefly recalling the rewards I'd gotten from the Cyclops and Alecta. The former had been stronger than anything else I'd faced so far, yet had given me a lesser reward only because he didn't feature in the Mythos as the latter had done. If this guy really had a name people remembered, was even connected to Theseus and the foundations of Greek wrestling itself, maybe that meant something.

I looked him over thoughtfully, weighing it.

Maybe if I was lucky, this guy would actually net me a silver instead of bronze, even if I had never personally heard of him before.

It was only then that I noticed the sudden silence that had fallen over the clearing. Even the Hellhounds looked confused as Cercyon stared at me for several long seconds.

"...You… dare?"

"... I said all of that out loud, didn't I?"

His milky white eyes widened with fury.

"I SHALL GRIND YOUR BONES INTO DUST!"

"I'll take my chances."

With a roar that shook leaves from the surrounding branches, Cercyon charged, moving with surprising speed for someone of his size. I barely managed to get my hands up before his fist crashed into my guard, the impact driving me backwards three full steps.

'Damn, he's strong!'

Stronger than the skeletons and the Hellhounds by a wide margin, and while he didn't quite match the raw, overwhelming power of the Cyclops, he was uncomfortably close. Which was still damned impressive considering the giant had nearly two full meters on him. Not to mention he was easily as fast as me even hopped up on Speed Cola.

'Guess they really were built different back in Ancient Greece.'

While I had thought him a no-name nobody at first, that first punch alone told me I shouldn't underestimate the experienced king... not that he ever gave me a chance to.

A second punch came for my jaw, but I slipped outside it and answered with a straight right... only for his free hand to snap up with blistering speed to catch my wrist. He hadn't even bothered blocking it, simply caught it outright.

His grip tightened like a vice as a cruel grin stretched uncomfortably wide over his taut features.

Before I could react, he twisted smoothly, pivoting on one foot as he used my own momentum to hurl me over his shoulder, sending the world spinning around me. I hit the ground hard enough to drive the air from my lungs before instinct barely got me rolling out of the way as Cercyon's heel came crashing down where my chest had been.

The forest floor exploded in a shower of earth and fallen leaves as I scrambled back to my feet.

"... and that's without any proper wrestling technique?" I gasped once I managed to draw a little air back into my poor bruised lungs.

There was little doubt in my mind Cercyon could've ended it there if he wanted to, unleashing a brutal flurry of follow-up punches while I was still recovering, but from the way he casually cracked his neck and rolled his shoulders (not to mention he could've just let the other monsters finish me off at any time) it became clear that the ancient king enjoyed toying with me.

"I have spent millennia in the Underworld, foolish child, helpless as I watched my Kingdom go to ruins and my name become almost lost to Legend, if not for Theseus being the one to defeat me. To think, my greatest accomplishment is to taste defeat at his hands... bah!"

He slid into a proper wrestling stance, feet and arms spread wide, torso low and forwards, a hungry, almost feral expression on his face as he stared me down.

"I will not accept it! I reject such a fate for one such as I, Cercyon, King! Never again shall I face such defeat... and you shall be my proof." the man cackled with a mad gleam in his eye, before he shot towards me again.

Another grapple followed, and this time I ducked beneath his reaching arms, thinking I had an opening, but it didn't matter. His forearm still found its way around the back of my neck before I could slip free, locking me in place with practiced ease. This guy wasn't just some brute; he was wrestling, properly.

And the bastard was good at it.

Very, very good.

Every time I thought I'd found an opening, Cercyon turned it into another throw. Every punch became a wrist lock. Every attempt to create distance ended with him glued to me again, his feet shifting with effortless precision as he manipulated my balance like he'd spent the last three thousand years waiting for someone exactly my size to practice on.

Not that I simply consigned myself to cosplaying a particularly passive sack of potatoes either. The one weakness of his vastly superior grappling, was that he needed to actually make physical contact, which inevitably brought him in range of my Adamantine Fists (even if he was annoyingly good at manoeuvring me in such a way I could never properly strike at him directly). Still, I kept desperately swinging at him, even managing to clip him in the ribs with a short hook while he transitioned into another hold thanks to my increased Dexterity.

Despite the blow ringing harshly against his deadened flesh, he barely seemed to notice.

Instead he dipped his shoulder beneath my arm, planted a foot behind my heel and suddenly I was airborne again before slamming hard enough into the forest floor to see stars.

I rolled away just in time to avoid another stomp, grateful Combo had at least registered the punch.

'One.' I thought viciously to myself as I came up swinging.

Cercyon slipped outside it with almost insulting ease, seized my forearm and yanked me forward. His elbow crashed into my chest before he threw me over his hip for what had to be the fifth time.

Something in my back popped painfully as I hit the ground. However, on my descent, my fist clipped his shoulder.

'Two.'

Another exchange.

Another body shot squeezed into the brief instant before he completed a throw.

'Three.'

Another.

'Four.'

The ancient king laughed.

"Is this truly all that thou can muster? And thou dare consider thyself a 'protector'?" he mocked to the cheer of his fellow monsters.

"Workin' on it... just... give me a minute." I gasped out as I shakily worked myself back to my feet again, trying to ignore the jeers and growls coming from the creatures that still encircled us.

He ignored it entirely.

A knee slammed into my stomach with enough power I almost folded around it like a wet noodle, but when his hands shot out again I was ready, planting a short uppercut beneath his ribs that drew a surprised grunt. Nothing that would end the fight there and then, but it was just enough.

'Five.'

His smile faded as the next punch landed across his jaw while he was dragging me into another clinch. His head didn't merely twitch at my blow this time; with a 50% Combo increase, it snapped to the side, causing him to spit up a thick glob of blood. For just a moment, the monsters around us fell silent, and so did Cercyon, his milky eyes narrowing as he worked his jaw, blood staining his yellowed teeth.

"...In my defence, you did ask for a proper fight."

"And I'll make thee forever regret the final moments of thine life for giving me one."

I didn't really know how to respond to a threat that was so… visceral. So I slammed another fist into his chin instead, whipping his head to the other side.

'Six.'

He answered by introducing my spine to a tree.

The trunk cracked as I bounced off it, barely managing to keep my feet. Blood dripped from somewhere above my eyebrow, stinging my right eye as it ran down my cheek. My lungs burned. My entire body ached. Every throw seemed to find a fresh bruise I hadn't known existed.

Cercyon looked concerned, if only for a heartbeat, but I'd seen it. Undead legendary wrestling champion or no, the bastard had definitely felt the last few punches, and I was determined to make him feel the next ones too.

The ancient King came at me again, and this time I stopped pretending I was ever going to beat him at his own game. The moment his hands found another grip, I answered with a punch instead of trying to break free, driving a jab into his throat before following it with a short hook beneath his floating ribs. As he shifted his weight to complete yet another throw, I managed to hammer my fist across the point of his shoulder, the blow lacking any real technique but still enough for Combo to register before I inevitably found myself airborne once more.

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

Each punch landing harder than the last.

By now Cercyon had stopped laughing entirely, his breathing turning ragged (not that mine was any better, sounding like a struggling accordion) as even my glancing blows began to leave deeper, darker bruises across his body. Slowly but surely, that arrogant confidence began to leave his stance and expression, and my next body shot nearly folded him to his knees before he just barely managed to catch himself.

"...Impossible." Cercyon chocked out as he stared at the deep imprint of my knuckles left in his side, his earlier certainty beginning to crack.

I wiped the blood from my eye.

"To be fair... I did ask you to give me a minute."

Around us, the monsters had fallen silent. They'd watched Cercyon dominate the fight from the very beginning, yet with every exchange the ancient king seemed to walk away a little worse for wear.

Cercyon's expression twisted into something cruel and desperate.

"Enough of these games! I shall end thee, here and now, with my final move!"

He lowered his centre of gravity, hands spreading as his feet shifted into a proper wrestler's stance before he exploded forward. Not for another clinch or throw this time, but a full double-leg tackle that hit me like a charging bull.

His shoulder drove into my stomach as powerful arms wrapped around my waist, lifting my feet clear off the ground. Roots snapped beneath his sandals as he powered forward, determined to drive me onto my back and finish the match the way he'd finished hundreds of travellers before Theseus had ever walked into his kingdom.

For the briefest instant, I considered trying to counter it, but the thought vanished as quickly as it came; I wasn't a wrestler. Instead, I clasped both hands together and raised them high, before bringing them down with every ounce of strength the One-Star Uniform, Adamantine Fist and a full one hundred percent of accumulated Combo could produce.

The rabbit punch landed squarely at the base of Cercyon's skull, the crack echoing through the clearing like thunder as the ancient king's entire body went limp from the highly illegal hit. His grip vanished, and he collapsed face-first into the dirt so suddenly that I nearly fell over him.

Silence.

Even the Hellhounds had stopped growling.

Cercyon twitched once, then slowly, painfully lifted one arm from the ground, an accusing finger rising to point toward me.

"...C-cheater..." he barely managed to gasp out, body still twitching.

I stared down at him, chest heaving.

"How's it feel?"

His cloudy eyes struggled to focus.

"What...?"

"Being on the other end for once."

I took a slow step forward.

"Those travellers never signed up for your little wrestling matches either."

Something flickered across his face and for the first time since the fight had begun, the arrogance slipped to show actual fear.

"I..."

His voice faltered.

"Wait—"

I didn't, instead raising both hands overhead.

"Unfortunately for you... I don't wrestle."

Then I brought them down.

The hammer blow hit with enough force to drive Cercyon's upper body into the earth. For an instant his form fractured into glowing cracks. Then the King of Eleusis exploded into a swirling cloud of golden dust chased by wisps of grey Underworld mist that drifted silently through the trees.

The clearing fell deathly quiet.

---

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon. I will be away on holidays, backpacking through Peru, which means I won't be able to upload here. However, I do have the chapters scheduled to drop over on ScribbleHub, so if you don't want to wait until I get back in the end of August, you can keep on reading over there. New upload every Saturday. My Patreon will also have scheduled drops (as soon as I've figured out how to actually get it working, that is)

 

[Bakkughan]

Chapter 6​

---

The silence lasted barely a heartbeat.

Then one of the Empousai shrieked, her beautiful features twisting into naked fury as Cercyon's golden dust drifted between the trees.

"Forward! Hold him!"

The remaining skeletons obeyed without hesitation, throwing themselves at me simply because they had been ordered to, battered bronze shields raised as they charged through the settling dust. The hellhounds followed not far behind, though moving more in a cautious circle rather than a mindless rush like the animated skeletons.

One of the Empousai let out a shrill hiss and sprang forwards as well, spear poised to run me through.

"Don't be a fool," her sister snapped, catching her by the wrist before she had taken more than two steps. "Make him squander his strength on the dead."

A slow, confident smile spread across her face.

"We shall bleed him from afar."

One clawed hand came up in an imperious command.

"Toxotai! Nock!"

My stomach sank as I saw five skeletons in lighter armour step from the surrounding treeline, unslinging massive bows from their backs.

Then my attention was drawn away from the archers as the first melee units of the skeletal army reached me, their movements sluggish (thanks to Speed Cola) and mechanical, but nonetheless deadly and unrelenting. They weren't trying to win or even trying to survive. They weren't the threat after all; they were just the distraction.

They simply had one job, to keep me exactly where I was.

I drove my fist through the first skeleton's shield and breastplate in one fluid motion, Speed Cola enhancing my momentum. Ancient bronze folded inwards before the rest of it followed, exploding into a shower of splintered bone that hadn't even finished hitting the ground before another skeleton stepped over the remains.

Combo was still roaring through my arms from the fight with Cercyon. Arms, shields and ribcages ceased to be as I punched straight through whatever unlucky undead happened to be standing in front of me. Unfortunately, no matter how quickly I tore the skeletons apart, they just kept coming, like ancient versions of Terminators, just without the Austrian accent.

Even with my enhanced dexterity, I was still unable to take advantage of any gap that briefly fell in the line of ancient bronze shields as inevitably one of the Hellhounds would dart in to take a swipe at me, forcing me to either dodge or counterattack.

By the time the massive beasts had moved out of range (and those unlucky few who didn't had been turned into monster dust), the gap in the skeleton's line would've been closed already, buying precious seconds for their archers.

"Damn it."

I smashed another skeleton aside, ducked beneath a rusted spear and drove an uppercut through the jaw of its owner, scattering vertebrae high into the canopy. Another immediately filled the gap, shield first, more interested in slowing me down than killing me.

Three skeletons still stood between me and the archers.

The toxotai drew in perfect unison, ancient bowstrings creaking as black-fletched arrows settled on my chest. I couldn't force myself through the remainder of the monsters in time. I was too late.

The lead Empousa saw it too and her fanged smile widened.

"Lo-."

The command never came.

Something punched through her forehead with a wet crack, carrying enough force to snap her head backwards before erupting from the back of her skull in a spray of black blood. For the briefest instant she simply stood there, blinking in stunned confusion, one claw drifting uncertainly towards the neat hole that had appeared between her eyes.

Then her body dissolved into brilliant golden dust.

The skeleton archers remained frozen with their bowstrings fully drawn, waiting for a command that never came. Empty eye sockets remained fixed on the cloud of golden dust where their commander had been standing only moments before, waiting with the patient stupidity of puppets whose strings had suddenly gone slack.

The remaining Empousa stared in disbelief.

"What—"

A second arrow hissed out of the trees.

She barely managed to twist aside before it buried itself deep in the trunk behind her with enough force to bury half the shaft in solid oak.

"Campers!" someone bellowed.

The forest erupted.

Figures burst through the undergrowth from three different directions at once, though my heart sank when I saw just how few of them there were. There couldn't have been more than two dozen of them, and most looked barely old enough to be trusted with a driver's licence, let alone a battlefield. Some wore mismatched armour over orange shirts, others carried battered shields that looked older than they were. One boy couldn't have been older than eleven, gripping a celestial bronze spear with both hands so tightly I wondered if his knuckles were going to come off with it.

'These are… fucking hell, they're just kids…' I watched, stunned.

At their head thundered a horse that wasn't a horse.

The great white stallion burst through the trees with impossible speed, hooves tearing furrows through the earth as the upper body of a broad-shouldered man rose above it, bow already in hand. Another arrow flew before I'd fully registered what I was looking at, taking one of the bewildered Hellhounds clean through the ribs.

The massive beast barely had any time to let out a surprised whine before it exploded in golden monster dust.

"Drive them back!" the (literal) horseman roared.

The hesitation in the younglings vanished as without warning Camp Half-Blood hit the monsters like a wave breaking against rock.

The remaining toxotai never loosed a single arrow. Half a dozen campers crashed into them before they could recover from losing their commander, bronze blades hacking through ancient bones while another volley from Chiron shattered two more archers where they stood.

The Hellhounds reacted faster.

They sprang for the newcomers with snarling determination, only to be met by a wall of celestial bronze instead of frightened prey. One monstrous hound disappeared beneath three campers working together with practiced efficiency, while another found itself skewered through the shoulder by a spear before an axe buried itself in its skull.

For all their youth, they fought like a well-trained machine, always making sure to watch each other's backs and shore up another's weaknesses. The remaining monsters of Hades' hit squad quickly learned the difference between harassing one lone exhausted demigod and a trying to fight a small army of them.

"ETHAN!"

I knew that voice.

Luke came tearing through the melee with his sword already slick with monster dust, Thalia scarcely a pace behind him. Relief flashed across both their faces for the briefest instant before it was swallowed by something considerably angrier.

"You absolute idiot!" Thalia shouted.

"Gee guys, nice-"

A Hellhound lunged into my path. I punched through it without even looking, its remains scattering across the forest floor as [Combo] soared higher than ever before, energy visibly humming around my [Adamantine Fists].

"-to see you guys made it to safety." I finish with a tired grin.

Luke looked like he wanted to throttle me.

Instead he drove his sword through the chest of a skeleton trying to flank me, kicked the collapsing bones aside and snapped, "You charged Hades' hit squad alone!"

"In my defence, it's more like they charged me while I was alone…" I tried.

"That doesn't make it any better!"

Another hellhound bounded towards us.

It never reached the ground.

Thalia's spear punched clean through its throat halfway through the leap, the force spinning the beast sideways. It hit the earth awkwardly, struggling to regain its footing for all of half a second before I stepped in and drove my fist through its skull. Golden dust erupted around us as [Combo] ticked higher yet again.

One by one, the remaining monsters disappeared beneath a storm of celestial bronze (and adamantine knuckles). The last Empousa realised it a heartbeat too late. Her eyes darted across the battlefield, taking in the collapsing skeletons, the fallen hellhounds and Chiron already drawing another arrow.

She turned to run. Thalia beat her to it.

Her spear drilled through the air, not to kill but to herd. It buried itself in the trunk directly ahead of the fleeing Empousa with a crack of splintering wood, forcing the monster to veer sharply sideways.

Straight towards me.

She recognised the mistake immediately.

"No—!"

My fist was already moving.

[Combo] had climbed to absurd heights during the fighting. The moment [Adamantine Fist] connected with her sternum, the built up energy discharged in one violent pulse.

The Empousa didn't even have time to scream. One moment she was staring at me in naked disbelief, and the next there was scarcely anything left to destroy. She simply… ceased to exist, erased in a blooming cloud of golden dust that drifted between the trees.

Silence settled over the clearing once more as my fists slowly unclenched, [Combo] slowly ebbing away as my mental counter reached zero. However, with both it and the adrenaline rush finally ebbing away, my mind was left to fully process the (staggering) amount of wounds I accumulated during the fight. Every impact I'd ignored over the last hour arrived all at once with enthusiastic interest.

My knees hit the ground before I had any say in the matter.

"Whoa!"

Someone caught me before I could topple the rest of the way over. Luke's grip found my shoulder while Thalia steadied my other side, though judging by the way she was glaring at me she hadn't entirely decided whether to help me up or throttle me.

"You absolute moron," she said, her voice shaking just enough to betray how frightened she'd been. "What the hell were you thinking?"

I blinked at her. Even with me sunk to my knees, our eyes were almost on the same height.

'Gods, they are all so… small…'

"I was thinking..." I frowned, trying to remember. "...honestly? I don't think I my plan got much further than 'punch the next thing.'"

"That is not a plan."

"It has been surprisingly effective so far."

Neither of them smiled. The words hung awkwardly in the air as I waited for one of them to roll their eyes or tell me to shut up, but the moment stretched on just a little too long. It was only then that I noticed Thalia's hands. They rested on my shoulders to keep me upright, though there was a faint tremor running through them that had nothing to do with exhaustion. Luke didn't look much better. His sword still hung loosely in one hand, its blade coated in drying monster dust, his gaze quietly roaming over the cuts and bruises I'd accumulated over the course of the fight with an intensity that made me increasingly uncomfortable.

'They aren't angry… they're just scared.'

"...You came back."

The words slipped out before I'd really thought about them.

Luke barked a humourless laugh.

"What did you think was gonna happen?"

I frowned.

"I threw you half a mile."

"Yes."

"...Towards safety."

"Yes."

"...That was generally where I expected you to stay." I frowned at them, annoyed that they had ignored the genius of my plan.

Thalia just stared at me as though I'd just confessed to licking electrical sockets for entertainment.

"You don't get to decide to stay behind and fight an army by yourself!" she growled as she jabbed a finger into my chest hard enough that I actually felt it.

"Better me than you guys." I said with a sincerity that even took me by surprise.

Her mouth opened and closed a few times as besides us Luke sneakily tried to rub at his eyes without letting us see (and failing miserably at that).

"You—"

Whatever she'd been about to say disappeared somewhere behind a frustrated noise that sounded suspiciously close to a growl.

Luke finally managed to find the words.

"We actually did make it to Camp."

I blinked.

"...You made it?"

"Of course we made it!" Thalia snapped. "You threw us over the damned hill!"

"Right."

"And then we immediately turned back around." Luke continued simply.

That caught me off guard.

"You... what?"

Luke gestured vaguely behind him towards the campers still moving through the clearing, checking one another for injuries and gathering discarded weapons while the large centaur trotted calmly between them, murmuring encouragements.

"We got everyone we could convince on short notice."

My eyes slowly swept across the clearing.

There really weren't many.

Twenty, maybe twenty-five campers altogether, and most of them looked younger than Luke. One girl couldn't have been older than nine, despite the hardness in her face (and the fact she was methodically cleaning a sword the length of her arm) making her look more mature than she should've been. Another boy was sitting on a fallen log while an older camper wrapped a bandage around his forearm, trying very hard to look tougher than his watering eyes suggested.

Children.

Armor-clad, weapon-wielding demigods… and yet as I kneeled there in the forest clearing, all I saw was a group of scared, injured children fresh off a battlefield against actual monsters. None of it sat right with me.

"...Why?"

Luke just stared at me.

"What do you mean, why?"

"You were safe." I repeated, a little more strongly now.

"So we were supposed to… to just let you die?" he responded, anger creeping into his voice.

"I… I was buying time-" I tried, but the words sounded hollow, even to me, and the fearful youth in front of me wasn't having any of it.

"Not at the cost of your life, you… idiot!"

The words came out much louder than he'd intended.

Several nearby campers glanced our way before politely pretending they hadn't heard.

Luke took a slow breath through his nose, visibly regretting his words already.

"I… I'm sorry, it's just…" he trailed off in frustrated silence, before going ramrod straight, his eyes shooting open wide as I moved forwards to engulf him in a strong hug.

"I know kiddo. I know. And I'm sorry for scaring you like that." I said as gently as I could while ignoring how my body protested at the movement.

It took a few seconds before Luke relaxed somewhat, returning the hug with a sudden fierce strength, his voice thick with emotion.

"Just… don't leave us behind again… please."

"I… I'll try." Was the best I could offer the distraught little demigod as I pulled back, hands firmly on his shoulders.

"Please, tell me what happened?" I asked as I half-turned to face Thalia as well, who seemed seconds away from throwing herself into tearful hug as well.

"A question I would like to learn the answer to as well, if you wouldn't mind." A strong, rich voice called out through the clearing.

The campers instinctively stepped aside as the horseman approached, the great white stallion's flanks still flecked with sweat from the ride. Up close he somehow managed to appear even larger than he had bursting through the trees, the lower half of his body every bit the powerful warhorse while the man above the waist carried himself with the easy confidence of someone who had seen kingdoms rise and crumble often enough that neither particularly impressed him anymore.

"Young Luke and Thalia arrived quite… unexpectedly in Camp. We had heard the sounds of battle coming from afar, but by the tales these two told me, the entire Underworld had opened up, its dark army now lurking at our doorstep, only held at bay by a sole protector." The centaur said with some mild amusement before his features darkened as he took in the dust-coloured clearing, his gaze lingering on the deep crater that Cercyon's body had formed.

"I had not thought their exaggerated tale would prove to be so close to the truth." He finished in a soft voice for such a huge horseman.

"Well, I for one am grateful you chose to listen to them nonetheless." I said with a relieved sigh and the centaur let out a small smile at that.

"And I for the sacrifice you were willing to make for the sake of these children, although it gladdens me it didn't need to come to that. On behalf of Camp Half-Blood, I, Chiron, trainer of Heroes, offer you my thanks."

"Not that it was easy to convince you." Thalia said somewhat angrily as she crossed her arms in front of her, drawing a raised eyebrow from me as Chiron let out a sigh.

"Trust me, Thalia, daughter of Zeus. It was not a decision I made lightly, no matter the plight of your friend here. For centuries I have trained heroes rather than fought their battles for them. There are boundaries that exist for good reason, even in times such as these."

His gaze drifted towards the dissipating remains of Hades' strike force, his eyes gaining a hard glint.

"The Lord of the Dead, however, chose to overstep those boundaries himself," he huffed.

"An organised ambush. Ancient kings recalled from the Underworld to do battle under his banner. Empousai employing the undead under direct command." Chiron shook his head once. "Such open interference affords me rather greater latitude than I would ordinarily possess."

A faint smile tugged at the corner of his mouth.

"That..."

He looked briefly towards Thalia.

"...and Miss Grace here proved remarkably persuasive."

"I told him we'd come anyway," Thalia admitted without shame.

Luke coughed.

"We may have implied he wouldn't be able to stop us."

"Implied? You did no such thing." Chiron said with a stern frown that saw Thalia and Luke tense up before the enormous horseman chuckled.

"You threatened to do so quite… explicitly."

For the first time since the fighting ended, a few nearby campers let out nervous laughs.

Even Thalia looked faintly embarrassed.

"...Right."

Before anyone could say another word, a familiar shimmer of golden light gathered in the air directly in front of me.

I closed my eyes.

"...Of course now you show up."

The parchment slowly unfurled between us in a small twirl, as if it was trying to look around, checking out the battlefield. Seeing no more monsters, but a small audience of demigods (and one centaur) instead, it finished unfurling with a flourish as it rose higher in the air.

The amount of text that it displayed was the longest I'd ever seen on it so far.

[KILL CONFIRMED: CERCYON, KING OF ELEUSIS]

[Combat Achievement Recognized]
[Named Villain Defeated]
[King of Eleusis Slain]
[Victory Achieved Through Unarmed Combat]
[Additional Recognition Recorded]
[Reward: Silver Item Drachma ×1]

[Combat Achievement Recognized]
[First Empousa Slain]
[Reward: Bronze Item Drachma ×1]

[Combat Achievement Recognized]
[Tenth Hellhound Slain]
[Reward: Silver Ability Drachma ×1]

[Survival Achievement Recognized]
[Survived Hades' Strike Force]
[Reward: Golden Trait Drachma ×1]

[Fate Achievement Recognized]
[Monumentally Altered Fate]
[Reward: Platinum Skill Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

In a clinking shower of coin, bronze, silver, gold and even a platinum drachma fell from the sky into my open hands, forming a small pile.

Nobody spoke.

Which, considering the amount of shouting that had filled the forest over the last several minutes, was honestly a little unsettling.

My gaze drifted across the clearing.

Campers stood rooted to the spot, weapons hanging forgotten at their sides. One younger boy had somehow managed to leave his mouth hanging open. A girl beside him slowly lowered the axe she'd still been clutching even after the last monster had dissolved, her eyes never leaving the handful of impossible coins resting in my palms.

Luke looked almost as though he'd forgotten how blinking worked.

Thalia glanced from the drachma to me, then back again as though I'd casually grown a second head while she'd been busy killing monsters.

Chiron was harder to read.

The old centaur had recovered from his initial surprise almost immediately, his expression settling into the careful composure of a teacher trying very hard not to jump to conclusions. Unfortunately, the way his eyes remained fixed upon the platinum coin nestled amongst the others rather undermined the effort.

"...Curious," he murmured simply, showing nothing of his true thoughts.

Apparently centuries of experience came with one hell of a poker face. Unfortunately, the System had apparently decided that simply dropping an assortment of magical pocket change into my hands wasn't nearly enough excitement for one afternoon.

The parchment remained suspended in the air before me, waiting for me to offer up the drachma for my rewards.

Around me, every pair of eyes slowly shifted from the coins to the floating parchment. Even those campers who couldn't read the ancient Greek script clearly recognised that whatever was happening had not finished happening yet.

I stared back at the scroll for several long seconds, before looking down at myself.

My coat was shredded, I hurt in places I hadn't previously known possessed nerves and my arms felt as though someone had replaced the bones with overcooked spaghetti.

I let out a long, tired breath.

"...You know what? I think I'm gonna let Future Ethan deal with this," I sighed as the parchment continued hovering patiently.

"He's a clever guy, I'm sure he'll sort all this out, no problem."

I nodded once, satisfied we'd reached an understanding.

Then I stopped resisting.

Consciousness had been politely asking to leave for the better part of the last ten minutes. I'd kept putting it off because there had always been one more monster to punch, one more skeleton to flatten or one more problem that needed solving.

For the first time since the roadblock, none of those things were true anymore.

So I gave my exhausted brain permission to clock out.

The last thing I saw before darkness swallowed me was Luke lunging forwards with a startled curse as the pile of drachma slipped from my suddenly limp fingers.

//

The first thing I noticed was the complete absence of pain.

That was... surprising. And mildly concerning.

I cracked one eye open cautiously, half-expecting to discover I'd finally managed to punch myself into the Underworld after all. Instead I was greeted by a whitewashed ceiling supported by thick oak beams, morning sunlight spilling lazily through an open window somewhere off to my right. A cool sea breeze drifted through the room carrying the faint scent of salt, freshly cut grass and something medicinal my [Novice Medicine Skill] couldn't quite place.

"...Huh."

Either I was still alive or the afterlife was considerably more… rustic, than usually advertised.

Experimentally, I flexed my fingers.

Barely even sore anymore and thanks to [Novice Medicine] I knew that too would rapidly fade.

'Whatever it is they've given me… it's some damned good stuff! …dang, I hope it's not addictive?' I briefly worried.

I pushed myself upright a little more carefully. My muscles still complained, a dull ache running through most of my body, but compared to yesterday it barely registered.

The soft rustle of paper drew my attention to the chair beside the bed and I tried not to smile (and of course failed miserably) as I saw that Annabeth had apparently appointed herself my guard.

She'd fallen asleep curled awkwardly in the wooden chair, a book thick enough to qualify as blunt force trauma resting open across her lap. One hand still held the edge of a page she'd evidently never managed to turn before exhaustion won out.

The movement of the bedsheets must have been enough to wake her. Grey eyes snapped open and immediately fixed on me. For a heartbeat she simply stared, as though making absolutely certain I wasn't another dream.

"Oh, you're awake! Don't go anywhere, I'll got get Chiron and Mr. D." she said with an accusing finger and a surprisingly effective glare for a girl so little.

I raised my bandaged arms in surrender, shrugging and immediately wincing at the motion.

"Trust me, I'll hardly be running off in this condition." I said as I gestured vaguely down at my body.

Annabeth's stormy grey gaze kept boring into mine, before she lifted two fingers at her eyes before stabbing them at me.

"Stay. Here." She repeated, before she slipped out of the chair and hurriedly padded out of the room.

"… what kinda name is 'Mr. D' anyways… sounds like a porn name." I muttered, before my eyes narrowed in determination.

I had just survived fighting off a literal undead army to protect these kids, I could deal with a pervert.

With Annabeth gone and me still bedridden, I looked around the room properly for the first time.

Calling it a hospital wing felt generous. It looked more like a large dormitory that had accidentally acquired a medicine cabinet somewhere along the way and decided it might as well keep it. Several neatly made beds occupied the room, separated by polished wooden bedside tables and enough open space to move comfortably between them. Sunlight streamed through broad windows overlooking rolling green hills with what looked like strawberry fields sprawling across them, while shelves along one wall held neatly labelled jars of herbs, bandages and enough bottles to make a snake-oil seller jealous.

A wooden clothes rack stood near the foot of my bed.

Father Garcia's trench coat hung from it, freshly cleaned and somehow repaired. The long tears left by claws and rusted bronze blades had vanished almost completely, leaving only the faintest signs they'd ever existed. Beside it hung my One-Star Uniform in equally immaculate condition.

"I'm guessing one of the Greek gods is unusually adroit with a knitting needle." I mused aloud as I took in my 'battle armour'.

My attention drifted to the bedside table. To my surprise the little blue Cleaning Stone sat on its pristine surface. I had completely forgotten I had left it in the cupholder of the old Chevy the kids and I had… liberated from the cyclops. The battered flathead screwdriver next to it indicated someone had gone through the trouble of actually retracing our steps and had somehow managed to get the truck towards Camp.

Or its contents at least.

'Hmm, actually, some of these kids are likely from Hephaestus, maybe they'd like a project to tinker on?' I mused, already imagining the Chevy rebuilt and repurposed until it wouldn't look out of a place in a Mad Max movie.

Putting the fantasies of monster-murder machines out of my mind (for now) I took in the rest of the objects. I was surprised to find a now full-bottle of Speed Cola on the bedside table as well. I'm fairly sure I had dropped it when I hurried to catch up with the kids. Either someone had gone through the trouble of retrieving the bottle along with the truck, or that restock timer meant a new bottle automatically got added to my possession regardless.

However, the real eyecatcher wasn't the pale blue stone or the glowy green liquid, but the small stack of faintly shimmering mystical coins arrayed in a neat pile. On top of it, the platinum coin shimmered with a kind of… weight that was palpable.

A knock sounded against the open doorway, pulling me from my musings on the mystical coins and what potential they represented.

I looked up to find Annabeth returning, Chiron ducking slightly beneath the lintel as he entered beside her. Bringing up the rear was a broad, middle-aged man in a loud Hawaiian shirt whose expression suggested he considered being awake before noon a personal insult.

"Hello Ethan Creed. It is good to see that you are awake. Yesterday was quite an ordeal, I'm not sure how much you remember of that night? We met following the battle, my name is Chiron, Tr-"

"Trainer of Heroes. Yeah I remember. Your entrance was… memorable." I answered with a small grin, and the ancient centaur let out a self-conscious chuckle at that.

"Ah yes, it had been some while since I had engaged directly in a battle like that, I'm afraid I got a little carried away." Chiron said as he ran a hand through his thick beard.

"Where are Thalia and Luke?" I asked, trying to glance past the centaur's massive form.

"They are both doing well, I can assure you. Luke is quite busy getting to know all his half-siblings from the Hermes cabin. Last I heard, he's been regaling them with stories of his exploits. As for Thalia, I am afraid the Zeus cabin offers her rather little company. Ever since the Pact of the Big Three, it has remained... sparsely populated."

The middle-aged man snorted at the centaur's words.

"Sparsely? It's empty."

Chiron inclined his head in concession.

"Quite."

"So where is she?"

"At the arena."

I blinked.

"… you guys have an arena?"

"I am told," Chiron continued with remarkable composure, "that she challenged one of the children from the Ares cabin shortly after breakfast."

"...I'm guessing that didn't go well."

"For the child of Ares, no. His siblings are taking turns now, seeking to fulfil the challenge in his stead."

"None of them have won yet." Annabeth piped up proudly, placing tiny little fists on her waist with a grin.

The light-hearted mood was somewhat broken when the middle-aged man at the centaur's side rolled his eyes.

"Oh come on, enough reminiscing already. Let's just get on with it…" the man scoffed and to my surprise the far larger horse-man shrunk away from the unassuming man.

"Of course, my apologies. Ethan, it is my… privilege, to introduce to you the director of this camp, Mr D.-"

"The porn star!"

"…"

The silence that followed my sudden outburst could not have been louder, as demigod, centaur and camp director just… stared at me.

"Excuse you?" the man fumed.

"C'mon, a name like Mr. D? Either you're a porn star or a stripper and no offence, but you ain't got the build for the latter."

Next to the camp director, Chiron had gone completely ashen for some reason, while next to him Annabeth let her head fall into her hands.

"… please, do continue. It'll make it more amusing later." The middle-aged man pressed in a low voice, eyes fixed unblinkingly on me.

"Look, I don't know how you got this position, but I don't much care. You won't be influencing these young children with your wicked pervert ways if I've got anything to say about it!" I stated firmly, crossing my arms as I sat up in the bed.

For a moment, this 'Mr. D' and I just stared at one another, while Chiron looked like he wished the ground would just open up and take him straight to Hades already. Slowly, the middle-aged man looked up at the despondent centaur, a slightly manic look in his unblinking eyes.

"Please. Please tell me I can smite him now. It's been ages since I've made someone turn their own skin into underwear."

"Mr. D, please, I beg you to reconsider. He… he currently carries much favour with your father, Lord Zeus, for saving your half-sister Thalia from a most horrible fate…" Chiron pleaded with a small tremor in his voice.

"Dang… that's true." Mr. D muttered, before shrugging, his face suddenly losing all of his previous anger.

Somehow, that was scarier than his staring from before.

"Oh well, I'll just curse him instead then."

"Mr. D, please-"

"Oh, relax, it'll just be a little one. An tiny eenie meenie little curse, nothing like the proper ones from back in the day. Why, he might even get to keep all his teeth with this one." The man said idly, before fixing me with a stare that appeared to have a purplish shine to it.

"Ethan Creed, I, Lord of the Vine, Master of Madness, do hereby curse you for your affronts against Olympos. Let it be… extremely inconvenient in some way for you that makes it at least mildly amusing to me."

Before I could react, the man lifted a hand and snapped his fingers. Something rippled outwards from him on a direct course with my bed… before to everyone's shock, something else rippled out from me in response. Whatever the man (or god, I was beginning to understand) had tried to do to me was instead entangled by a massive wave of… nothingness spreading outwards from me. It was less subtle than the void that appeared whenever I offered up a drachma, or the golden sparks that heralded the scrolls arrival, more a… sensation, rather than a true physical thing, yet more real, utterly undeniable somehow, like a deeper truth of the universe itself had just made its presence known.

Both Mr. D and Chiron stared in abject confusion as the shimmering… something that hovered in between us, looking completely baffled, something that I suspected was pretty rare indeed.

The shimmering nothingness shrunk down, before tightening into a central point of infinite smallness like the core of a black hole that felt heavy somehow. Then it resolved in a sudden shower of golden sparks that saw all of us flinch back. To my utter surprise, the scroll hovered proudly besides my bed.

[Survival Feat Recognized!]

[Survived the Ire of a Mercurial Olympian: DIONYSUS]

[Reward: Golden Trait Drachma]

'Oh… ohhh noo… oh, I am properly fucked…'

However, in yet another twist, the golden lettering was swiftly replaced by ominous red lettering that carved itself angrily across the scroll's surface.

[WARNING!]

[Curse Condition Recognized]

[Curse Drachma Dispensed]

[Offer Curse Drachma to Receive Status Effect]

[Failure to Offer the Curse Drachma May Result in Grievous Consequences!]

Then, back to encouraging gold again:

[Resolving the Status Effect Will Grant Corresponding Rewards!]

The golden drachma that fell on top of the pile on my bedside table was familiar by now. The crude iron coin that dropped down immediately after it definitely wasn't. It's surface was blackened and it was even smoking slightly, as if it had been pulled directly from the world's dirtiest, most haunted forge.

For a moment, not a single one of us dared say anything at all.

"Did… did that fucking piece of paper just… eat my fucking curse?"

"Mr. D, please, language." Chiron mumbled weakly as both stared wide-eyed from the parchment to the coins and back.

"What the- a piece of the actual Void just appeared and ate my fucking curse! Mine! You know how good I am at curses? I'm the fucking best at curses, no matter what the Queen keeps saying, and this fucking piece of paper just ate it up, and spat it back out like a demented slotmachine!" Mr. D (or Dionysus himself, apparently) ranted, before his manic eyes switched from the cursed iron coin to me.

"… offer it." He said with a sudden, eerie calm in his voice.

"I… I don't really think that's the best idea right now, Mr. Dionysus, sir-" I tried to backpedal as the god moved slowly closer to my bed, his voice intent.

"Now you listen here, little demigod. You offer up that coin to the Void, or I'll hurl so many curses at your pathetic ass, it'll take days to dig you out of the mountain of iron that thing will bury you under." Mr. D insisted with a worrying gleam in his eye.

"… right."

Seeing as it was no use arguing with a literal Olympian god (who I had just pissed off within five minutes of meeting no less) I reached out with some trepidation towards the iron drachma. It was unsettlingly hot to the touch and I winced a bit.

"Ethan…" Annabeth whispered with wide eyes and I made sure to flash her a grin filled with a confidence I didn't really feel.

"It'll be alright Annabeth. Whatever comes out of this coin, look at the stack I still got sitting right here, see? Something in there should allow me to deal with the curse, no worries!" I grinned and the little girl gave me a shaky nod in return.

"C'mon, get on with it, offer it up already." Dionysus muttered impatiently, eyes not leaving the infernal coin.

"Fine, fine, hold your horses. …uhm, no offence, Chiron?" I glanced at the centaur, who just shook his head.

"Mr. Creed, I think it is best to offer up the curse coin. As you yourself said, should the others prove to be beneficial, you may get through this unscathed. …relatively speaking at least. As Mr. D said, the curse he originally intended to unleash was of a somewhat milder variety. It was one of a mildly variety, right?" Chiron shot the camp director a stern look, but the god merely waved it off with a 'so-so' gesture.

"Eh, tomato, potato."

"That's not how the saying goes." Annabeth corrected him surprisingly fiercely, not that the Olympian seemed to particularly mind, or even notice for that matter.

Unable to put it off any longer with the God of Wine (almost literally) breathing down my neck, I sighed, placed the infernal drachma on my thumb and flicked it up in the air. Like with my previous offerings, it was swallowed mid-air by an unfolding starry void and like before an enormous wave of sensation briefly brushed against me.

Recognition.

Disapproval.

Retribution.

'… alright, that's new… and worrying…' I sweated a bit.

To everyone's continued surprise, an almost holographic symbol appeared above my head, a schematic wheel of all things, before it began madly rotating with dizzying speed. It went on for several seconds before steadily slowing down, until it came to rest on a ominously glowing number that meant absolutely nothing to everyone present. The explanation however was quickly scrawled on the floating parchment in that same aggressive red lettering as before.

[Illiterate]

|Severity: Minor (5)|

|You have lost the ability to read all of the languages you already knew beforehand. Time to learn again.|

|Resolve: Learn the languages which you forgot how to read.|

"… you have to be fucking kidding me." I blinked despondently at the parchment as Annabeth came up to me, patting my hand with a grief stricken look as if I was a dead man walking.

Well, I might as well be to a child of Athena come to think of it.

"Fascinating. Absolutely fascinating. So you truly are a child of Kaos, there is no denying it now. I hadn't thought it possible." Chiron muttered as his human half leaned forward to give the parchment a closer look.

Dionysus was looking at the floating scroll with an intent gaze as well, though with a much different expression.

"Well, it wasn't what I originally had in mind, but damn… Immediate and unavoidable retribution doled out whenever one of the kids is being a little shit, eh?" he mused aloud, stroking his chin in thought.

Then between one blink and the next, Dionysus had suddenly crossed over to the other side of the bed without anyone even seeing him move, leaning uncomfortably close to the parchment to the point the scroll nearly folded backwards on itself as it leaned away from the mad god.

"Say, you're not for hire are you? I could make it worth your while, there's this casket of Romanee Conti 1945, a fantastic year… well, for wine at least, not so much the rest of the world, but still-"

"Lord Dionysus, you are not going to try and bribe a piece of the primordial progenitor of the void with wine of all things! It goes against every part of your punishment, not to mention common sense itself!" Chiron thundered and it was the first time I'd seen him properly push back against the god.

Perhaps more surprising was that Dionysus actually seemed to listen, deflating somewhat as he moved away from the scroll (which seemed to unfurl with a bit of relief) as he summoned a Diet Coke out of nowhere with a scowl on his face.

"Don't remind me… ughhh, fine.'

"Apologies, Mr. Creed. Would you please offer up the remainder of the drachma? I must profess, never in all my immortal life have I heard of a child of Kaos before, save perhaps the most ancient of primordial beings and they are hardly similar to yourself. The process with which you call the Void into being is nothing short of fascinating." Chiron asked politely, his teacher voice slipping out.

Mulishly I went over the description of my curse again (thanks a lot, drunkard gods everywhere) before sighing and nodding.

"I'm not sure what the effects of the higher ranked rewards will be, so let's work our way upward."

I picked up the bronze drachma first and tossed the coin gently upwards.

It never came back down.

Darkness unfolded around it like ink spreading through water, swallowing the bronze drachma before collapsing into a perfect circle of absolute nothingness suspended a few feet above my outstretched hand. It wasn't merely black. Black was still a colour. This was simply... absence. A hole in reality that somehow occupied space without belonging to it.

The room grew noticeably quieter.

I hadn't realised until that moment how much background noise there had been since I woke up. Birds outside the windows stopped singing. The breeze that had been drifting lazily through the open shutters simply... ceased. Even the floorboards beneath us stopped their occasional creaking.

Recognition brushed gently against my thoughts.

Acceptance.

Transaction.

Above my head a symbol ignited.

Two perfectly balanced scales materialised in pale silver light, suspended beneath the Roman numeral XX. The image lingered for barely a second before dissolving into drifting motes that spiralled down towards the void.

Something emerged.

It wasn't thrown or dropped so much as... presented.

A single black tarot card drifted silently from the darkness, rotating lazily as though carried by a breeze that existed nowhere else in the room. It settled neatly into my waiting hand before the void folded in on itself, leaving behind nothing but ordinary air.

The parchment shimmered.

[XX - Judgement]
|Common Item|
Tarot Card - Allows you to compel someone to tell what they think is the truth without being able to intend to trick you.

120 Hour Cooldown.

"Wait, how am I able to read that? I've literally just been cursed with being illiterate?" I frowned at the scroll, but Dionysus just shrugged.

"The text is Ancient Greek, something that you're hard-wired to understand on a genetic level, and is written on a piece of magical parchment tied intrinsically to your divine heritage. Looks like that's enough to override the curse. You'll probably have to relearn standard English though, and considering how pretty much every demigod has some form of dyslexia…" the god shrugged again, clearly unbothered and uncaring.

"Gee thanks…" I answered sarcastically, before looking down at my new reward.

I turned the card over between my fingers. The back of the card had a swirling black starry pattern similar to the Void whenever it appeared to swallow up the drachma. The face showed an angel blowing a trumpet as people rose from their graves below.

Annabeth took an involuntary half-step forwards.

"May I...?"

I handed it over without hesitation.

She accepted it almost reverently, turning it over several times before frowning.

"I can feel magic from it."

Chiron nodded slowly.

"As can I."

Mr. D merely grunted.

"It smells old."

I wasn't entirely sure whether that was a compliment.

"Well, since I'm not currently interrogating anyone, I'll move on to the silver ones."

The first silver Trait drachma felt noticeably heavier than the bronze ones. I tossed it upwards and once again the coin vanished before it could begin to fall. Recognition brushed across my thoughts once more as the void returned, followed by the now familiar feeling of something weighing what had been offered before deciding it acceptable.

A new symbol flared into existence above my head in the form of an eye.

Not a human eye, but the stylised silhouette of a hawk's, its pupil narrowing to an impossibly fine point before the entire image dissolved.

Nothing emerged from the void and I frowned.

Which is when the world lurched.

Every individual fibre of the blanket covering my legs snapped into impossible focus. The grain of the bedside table. The tiny scratches running across Mr. D's empty Diet Coke can. I could even distinguish individual strands of Chiron's tail where it disappeared beyond the doorway.

Instinctively my gaze wandered towards the window.

The camp expanded.

The strawberry fields rushed towards me without moving an inch. Beyond them, the forest. The beach. Whitecaps rolling across Long Island Sound. A gull banking hundreds of feet above the water. A fishing boat so distant it should have been little more than a speck.

Instead I could almost read the name painted across its stern.

"...Whoa."

The effect vanished the moment I looked back into the room and blinked several times.

"That," I decided, "is going to take some practice."

The parchment updated.

[Hawk Eyes]

|Uncommon Ability|

You have very powerful eyes that can see even hundreds of kilometres away with accuracy.

Annabeth stared at me.

"What?"

"You... your eyes."

"What about them?"

"They changed."

I rubbed one experimentally.

"I didn't feel anything."

"The colours became brighter," Chiron observed quietly. "For a brief moment they seemed almost... impossible."

That didn't sound reassuring. Still, the reward was undeniably powerful and I grabbed the silver Item drachma next, flicking it upwards as it was immediately swallowed by an emerging spiral of nothing.

This time the symbol overhead took the form of a small house with a key set across its doorway before something heavy dropped neatly into my lap.

A ring of old brass keys. Bound to it by faded twine was a folded deed sealed with dark red wax.

"… it had better not be just these keys from a silver reward." I said warily as we all glanced towards the parchment as it updated itself again.

[Hideout Realtor]

|Uncommon Item|

Hunter x Hunter - Create a secret hideout in a location of your choosing, the hideout will be stocked with the essentials and the only way to access it will be through the door you have created.

"The fuck is a Hunter-Hunter?" Dionysus asked with narrowed eyes, ignoring Chiron's near automatic 'language'.

"Dunno, but this thing can be stupid powerful. As soon as I find a good spot to put a safehouse down at least." I muse aloud as I carefully placed the keys besides the Cleaning Stone and the Speed Cola.

I rolled the first gold drachma across my knuckles for a moment before flicking it towards the waiting darkness. The symbol that blossomed above my head was unlike the ones before it. Branches unfurled in radiant green and gold, spreading into the unmistakable silhouette of a great tree whose roots reached just as far down as its crown reached upwards. Leaves shimmered across its boughs before dissolving into countless flecks of emerald light that drifted lazily through the room.

None of them reached the floor as they simply faded into the air around us.

For a brief instant the infirmary seemed... fresher. The medicinal smell lingering in the room gave way to the scent of rain on warm earth, while the potted herbs lining the windowsill visibly straightened towards the morning sun. Even the breeze slipping through the open shutters felt softer than before.

Chiron's ears twitched.

It was the first genuinely involuntary movement I'd seen from him since I'd started dispensing the rewards.

The parchment unfurled.

[Nature's Embrace]

|Elite Trait|

Well, you can officially call Mother Nature mommy so that's nice. Nature itself favours you, trees bend down branches to offer you fresh and healthy fruits, animals and nature-aligned beings favour you and are more affectionate towards you, you know how to manoeuvre around a forest, and wild animals will help you. You also recover energy faster the closer you are to nature.

Nobody spoke.

Chiron's gaze had drifted from the parchment to the herbs by the window, lingering there for several thoughtful seconds before returning to me. Whatever conclusion he reached, he elected to keep it to himself.

Mr. D, on the other hand, slowly looked at the ivy growing outside the room (it had grown almost a full foot) before letting out a quiet, almost irritated grunt.

"... oh, the satyrs are just going to love you. You just became the closest thing to a child of Pan they've seen in the past three centuries."

His tone was odd though, less grumpy and almost… wistful? Not that I was going to try and poke holes in his gruff-guy persona. One curse was more than plenty, thank you. Instead, I reached for the second golden drachma, the small stack of coins slinking fast as I tossed it into the waiting void.

Again, nothing physical emerged.

Instead I felt the change happen somewhere beneath conscious thought.

There was no rush of strength, no warmth spreading through my limbs or surge of divine energy demanding to be acknowledged. It was subtler than that. Countless tiny adjustments settled into place throughout my body with quiet certainty, so seamless that I struggled to tell where one ended and the next began. My breathing found a steadier rhythm. My posture shifted by perhaps a fraction of an inch. Even the way my hand naturally rested against the blanket felt... correct.

Less power, more… efficiency.

Above me, two intersecting lines of brilliant gold drew themselves through the air. More lines followed, each meeting the others at perfect angles until they formed an intricate geometric pattern that somehow suggested movement despite remaining completely still. Every line existed precisely where it ought to. None were wasted.

The image lingered only a heartbeat before fading as the parchment shimmered once more.

[Effective Activity]
|Epic Trait|

Your movements, attacks and actions are always effective, landing where they need to land and dealing what they need to deal. Every swing connects, every dodge works, every manoeuvre pays off. Some beings can still resist and it may not work on targets well above your level.

"Damn, that would've come in handy during my wrestling match with Cercyon." I said with a low whistle.

[Adamantine Fists] made every punch hit harder (and [Combo] then took that and multiplied it) but it didn't actually do anything to make me better at punching itself. With this Trait however, every punch I threw would land to deliver maximum damage delivered through unbreakable knuckles.

Dionysus read the parchment once. Then he read it again.

"...I don't like the wording of that."

Coming from the god who'd cursed me after I had accidentally called him a porn star, it carried rather more weight than I'd have expected.

Chiron nodded slowly.

"Nor do I."

"It's only an Epic reward," I tried to point out.

Mr. D looked at me with the weary disappointment of a teacher watching a student miss the obvious.

"Exactly."

"Ethan, while their appearance may have certain similarities to a demigod being Claimed by their divine parent, it would seem that these… 'blessings' function in a fundamentally different aspect as to what we're used to. As if… it is taking bits and pieces of reality and moulding them to suit you…"

Following Chiron's thoughtful words, all of our eyes were drawn to the sole platinum coin still remaining on the bedside table, the implication hanging unsaid in the air.

I swallowed, before picking it up with a shrug, trying to ignore how the drachma didn't quite seem to fit in the palm of my hand despite its small size.

"Well, makes sense right, if reality was created by my dad. Mom? Progenitor. Guess that gives me some mild reality-warping powers too." I mused aloud, before with some trepidation I offered up the final coin to the Void.

The platinum drachma left my fingers.

The familiar feeling of recognition brushed against my thoughts once more, but where the previous offerings had been acknowledged almost absent-mindedly, this one lingered. It was as though the Void itself had paused for the briefest instant before accepting what had been offered.

The darkness that bloomed above my hand looked much the same as before.

It wasn't.

I couldn't have explained why, but the difference settled somewhere deep in my bones. The earlier offerings had felt like reaching through a doorway.

This felt like the doorway had noticed me… and was reaching back.

Chiron's breath caught.

"...Mr. Creed..."

I didn't answer. I wasn't entirely convinced I remembered how as above me, the final symbol appeared.

Unlike the others, it wasn't immediately recognisable.

Thin silver lines swept through the air in rapid succession, tracing dozens of possible trajectories before gradually settling into the outline of a single eye. The remaining lines faded one by one until only the correct path remained.

The symbol dissolved and all eyes drifted back to the parchment. It remained blank just long enough for me to wonder whether something had gone wrong before fresh golden ink finally began writing itself across the page.

[Martial Foresight]
|Elite Skill|

Kengan Ashura - Foresight is a technique developed by highly skilled martial artists. It allows the user to predict an opponent's movements through rapid analysis, experience and instinct, creating opportunities to dodge, intercept and counterattack.

Your Foresight is rudimentary.

Only battle can refine it.

The feeling of a Skill was different in subtle way of how a Trait or Ability manifested. [Adamantine Fists] and now [Hawk Eyes] were simply… there. They required barely any thought to become active, running more on pure instinct, like curling your toes or wiggling your ears. [Martial Foresight] though… I could almost feel it sitting somewhere in the back of my mind. Not raw knowledge exactly. More like the first page of a very thick book I'd somehow already opened.

Chiron glanced from the description back to my bedridden form, eyes wide and I could almost hear the gears running in his head, the Trainer of Heroes in him coming to the fore.

"Mr. Creed… I think it's safe to say that you might become the most terrifying hand-to-hand combatant we have ever seen in… millennia, at the least. I've seen nothing like it since the days of the Argonauts themselves. Between Foresight and Effective Activity, you'll be hard to hit while almost never missing yourself, especially under the effects of that speed potion. Each counter attack made all the more devastating by your Adamantine Fists and as the battle goes on, Combo will make each punch land ever harder than the one before." Chiron trailed off before shaking his head with a slightly disbelieving laugh.

"I can think of no demigod alive, and scant few monsters, that could beat you in a straight up fist fight, especially once you hone that Skill of yours." He said almost eager, as if he couldn't wait to get me started on spars and drills.

"Also, you can pretty much go everywhere!" Annabeth piped up suddenly, and we all blinked down at her.

"You can see people in trouble from miles away! Monsters can't smell you because of the perfume thing, and now the woods actually help you get around. And even if something does find you, you have the safe house!" she said excitedly, before her features dimmed somewhat.

"There's so many demigods that you could find and save, like you did with us… make sure that nobody gets trapped in evil lairs, like that cyclops' house…" she said with a small voice, for the first time truly sounding her age and with a pang I realized that the traumatic experience in the haunted mansion had left a deeper impact on the girl than I had suspected.

Shaken from his training plans, Chiron placed a comforting hand on Annabeth's shoulder, though Dionysus hardly seemed to notice, much less care about the distraught little girl as he rolled his eyes with a dismissive scoff.

Which made me rethink Chiron's words.

"Greatest hand-to-hand combatant alive, huh?" I said, a dangerous edge creeping into my voice that saw the centaur hurriedly straighten and the mad god raise a challenging eyebrow at me.

"Should you refine your skill set, then yes-" Chiron attempted to defuse.

"Well, it did say that's only possible in battle, right?" I interrupted, an almost hungry grin on my face now.

Somewhat worryingly, the Mad God of Wine was matching it.

"Well yes, but let's be reasonable about this please, Mr. Creed… Mr. D?" the centaur tried, bless his heart. Hearts?

Not that I or Dionysus was still listening to him at this point. I was hardly going to let it slide that this guy essentially forced me to relearn my ABC's after all, god or no. The Mad God meanwhile mostly just seemed to delight in the option to beat the snot out of a demigod without repercussion.

Which is how I spent my first day at Camp Half-Blood breaking the God of Wine's nose.

 

[Bakkughan]

Chapter 7​

​

---

Getting into an (un)official brawl with the Mad God of the Vine, as it turned out, required a short walk to the arena.

Chiron spent most of it making increasingly diplomatic (and desperate) attempts to persuade the two of us that settling disagreements through organised fistfights was perhaps not the finest example to set for the rest of the camp. Dionysus ignored him with the sort of practised ease that suggested this wasn't the first lecture he'd tuned out, while I quietly suspected the centaur had trained enough lost causes in his long past to give up on one now. Annabeth trailed silently behind us, though I could feel her stare bore into my back.

Camp Half-Blood looked rather different when I wasn't bleeding all over it or being threatened by a wine god with impulse-control issues. The infirmary sat in the Big House near the heart of the camp, close enough to the other buildings that I could hear faint voices drifting from the cabins and smell woodsmoke from somewhere near the central green. The place had the strange, lived-in messiness of a summer camp that had been invaded by Ancient Greece and somehow decided to make it work. Orange shirts moved between cabins like sparks against the grass. A pair of children carried spear racks past a fountain. Somewhere to my left, someone was shouting at a pegasus with the weary frustration of a man trying to negotiate with an opinionated bicycle.

The cabins themselves were impossible to miss. Even from a distance, they were too varied to have been built by anybody following one coherent plan, unless that plan had been drawn up by a committee of gods who had all agreed to ignore each other. One cabin gleamed like polished marble beneath the sun. Another looked austere and grey, as if it had been designed by someone who considered comfort a moral failing. A third was covered in creeping vines and somehow smelled faintly of strawberries and fermenting grapes, which explained why Dionysus did not so much glance at it as acknowledge it with the vague resentment one might reserve for an unpaid bill.

We were still several hundred feet away when the roar reached us.

It wasn't like the roar of a battle (something I had unfortunately become rather more familiar with than I would've liked this past week), rather it was the high-pitched excitement of... children enthusiastically watching somebody else get battered, I'm guessing.

The sound rolled across the camp in waves, punctuated every few seconds by a particularly loud cheer or groan that suggested fortunes in the arena were changing rapidly. Somewhere ahead of us, bronze clanged against bronze hard enough to make the noise carry across the hills, followed immediately by the heavy thump of a body hitting sand and several dozen voices losing their collective minds.

Dionysus sighed.

"I leave them alone for five minutes..."

"Technically," Chiron said in a careful tone, "Thalia has been placed under supervision."

"By whom?"

Chiron did not immediately answer.

I glanced sideways at him, seeing the old centaur's mouth tighten.

"Luke Castellan. The new Son of Hermes that... dropped into camp alongside the Daughter of Zeus. He volunteered for the position… and since he was the only one, well…" The trainer of heroes reluctantly admitted.

Dionysus stopped walking just long enough to shoot Chiron a withering glare from the corner of his eye.

"That is not supervision. That is an accomplice."

Even though (or perhaps, because) I had known Luke for all of two days, I couldn't argue against the dour camp director's accusation. Luke was the type of kid who, if there was an underground fight he wasn't supposed to be watching, wouldn't settle for just cheering at the sidelines; he'd somehow be selling tickets to everyone else who wasn't supposed to be there either.

'And Grover… well he's a sweet kid, or well, satyr, I suppose, but he'd never be able to talk either Luke or Thalia down and with Annabeth here trailing behind me, that basically leaves those two teenaged demigods to their own devices…'

I found myself picking up the pace as our little group began to close in on the arena, several campers spotting us as we hurriedly passed.

More accurately, they spotted Dionysus.

The effect was immediate and almost impressive. Conversations faltered. A boy carrying a bundle of javelins nearly walked into a tree. Two girls whispering together on the porch of one cabin straightened so fast they almost smacked their heads together. It took most of them a moment longer to notice me walking beside him in my freshly repaired black coat and One-Star Uniform, which honestly suited me just fine. There were worse things than being the second most concerning person in a group, especially when the first was an Olympian god who had recently threatened to turn my anatomy into a fashion statement.

Unfortunately, word travelled faster than common sense.

By the time we had crossed the green, whispers had started following us. Yesterday's battle had apparently already gone through the camp rumour mill, which meant the version most of them had heard probably involved me wrestling a hundred skeletons, punching Hades in the jaw, and saving Chiron from a dragon for good measure. A few stared with open curiosity. Others looked at the coat, then at my face, then immediately looked away when they realised I'd noticed. One small boy clutched a wooden practice sword to his chest and watched me pass with the grim awe normally reserved for natural disasters and older cousins who owned motorcycles.

"Lovely," I muttered.

Chiron's ears flicked.

"I beg your pardon?"

"Nothing. Just realising I may have accidentally become local gossip."

Dionysus snorted. "Puh-lease. You called me a porn star in front of witnesses and then made a piece of primordial stationery eat my curse. 'Gossip' was inevitable... and with what we've seen this morning, you can count yourself lucky it is merely being spread amongst ignorant teenagers for now."

He glanced back at me over his shoulder, a look in those dangerous eyes that I couldn't place, his voice going low as the god lost all of his previous whimsical indifference.

"You think this is bad? Wait 'till the 'gossip' starts spreading on Mount Olympos."

That was fair, unfortunately.

The closer we drew to the arena, the more the camp seemed to bend towards it. Campers were drifting in from every direction now, some abandoning half-finished chores with the guilty speed of children who knew they were doing something they shouldn't, but had decided the punishment would be worth the risk. The roar grew louder with every step. Beneath it I could pick out sharper details: a girl's harsh voice barking something furious, Luke laughing, the scrape of boots against sand, and another ugly impact followed by the kind of collective "oof" that made my ribs ache in sympathy despite having healed faster than modern medicine should have allowed.

Chiron increased his pace. Or... gallop, I guess?

"I had hoped they would've tired themselves out by now," he said, sounding very much like a teacher who had once again underestimated the stamina of children when violence had an audience.

"That was optimistic of you," I said.

"Hope is an important quality in a trainer of heroes." He rebuffed with practiced ease.

"How's that working out for you?"

He gave me a sideways look.

"Intermittently."

By the time we reached the wooden fence surrounding the arena, the gathered crowd was already three or four campers deep. Kids perched on the rails or craned over each other's shoulders (and in some of the more light-footed cases, climbed onto said shoulders) for a better view. Whatever had started before we'd arrived had clearly become the afternoon's entertainment. The arena itself was larger than I'd expected, an oval ring of packed sand enclosed by timber fencing and tiers of rough seating that looked as if generations of bored demigods had carved initials, rude drawings and questionable poetry into every available surface. Weapon racks lined the far side beneath a shaded awning, their contents ranging from sensible training spears to axes that seemed unnecessarily committed to the concept of overkill.

Getting through the crowd proved less difficult than expected.

The first camper I tapped on the shoulder turned, opened his mouth to complain, then saw Dionysus behind me and went pale enough that he could've walked straight into Hades without anyone batting an eye at the newcomer. He scrambled aside, accidentally stepping on someone's foot, which caused another camper to turn, which caused another pale face, which caused the gap to widen in rippling silence. It was not quite the effect I ever imagined having on a crowd, but as social tools went, travelling with a mildly offended god had its uses.

Then I saw the centre of the arena.

Thalia Grace stood in the sand with her spear held low in one hand, her shield raised at a lazy angle and a grin on her face. She looked smaller out there than she had in the forest, surrounded by older and broader children wearing the red-plumed regalia of the Ares cabin, but there was nothing small about the way she moved. The boy in front of her was at least a head taller and built like someone had started feeding him protein shakes in the cradle. He swung a practice sword with both hands, trying to force her back through sheer weight and reach.

Thalia stepped inside his swing, shield clipping his wrist hard enough to ruin his grip before the butt of her spear drove into his stomach. The air left him in one miserable rush. Before he could fold properly, she hooked one foot behind his ankle, shoved with her shield and planted him flat on his back.

The arena erupted.

"Get up!" a tall and broad-shouldered girl with a vicious sneer yelled from the opposite side of the ring, her face red with fury beneath a wild tangle of stringy brown hair, contrasting vividly against the magnificent purple bruise blossoming around one shut eye. "Get up, you absolute embarrassment! She isn't even breathing hard!"

The boy wheezed something from the sand that would've probably been a cutting comeback if he had any air left in his lungs to say it with.

Luke was making rounds along the ring, taking bets and bribes (from cold hard cash to candy and even promises to do chores) from the surrounding children with fast hands and a charming grin, trying very hard to look neutral and failing rather secularly at that, considering his mouth kept twitching every time an Ares camper hit the ground. Grover hovered a little behind him, clutching his beanie with both hands and wincing every time someone collided with the sand, which by then was often enough that his face had settled into a permanent expression of pained concern.

"You got another sibling you want to send to the chopping block, Clarisse? Looks like I broke this one." Thalia called out with a smirk as she twirled her spear before planting it firmly in the mulled sands.

"Again!" Clarisse snapped.

Another Ares camper stepped forwards, rolling his shoulders like he was the chosen one (out of a dozen or so of his siblings it looked like) to finally teach the new girl a lesson.

Thalia tilted her head with a grin that was about as innocent as a criminal in supermax wearing a forehead tattoo that said "I did it".

"Are you sure?" she called out mockingly.

He snarled and charged.

The fight lasted perhaps six seconds, most of which he spent travelling towards defeat with impressive commitment. Thalia caught his first swing on her shield, let the force turn her half a step instead of resisting it, and drove the haft of her spear across the side of his knee, making his leg buckle. She hooked the shield under his arm, twisted, and dumped him into the sand beside the first boy with brutal efficiency that looked out of place on any twelve year old.

The cheering somehow grew even louder, but beside me, both Chiron and Dionysus watched the scene play out with heavy expressions.

"Barely a foot in our world and already stronger than the best trained children of War itself... that's the Blood of the Elder Gods for you... what a mess..." the God of Wine muttered bitterly, even shooting me an accusing look for... some reason.

Though something about the phrase 'Elder Gods' tugged at my memories, all I could do was mouth 'the fuck did I do... y'know, this time?', before our attention was drawn back to the fight, as Clarisse opened her mouth, failed to produce anything more coherent than a strangled growl, then tried again.

"Stop running at her one at a time!" she shouted finally finding the words. "Use your heads!"

From the sand, the newly fallen camper groaned.

Thalia looked over at her with a challenging grin. "Hey, that's actually great advice! Those heads of yours must be harder than any weapon you guys can come up with anyways."

That caused a mix of cheers and boos to ring out from the crowd depending on who they were rooting for (and betting on), with Luke loudly hyping up the crowd. Standing a little removed from the betting going on around the son of Hermes, it was Grover who noticed me first. His eyes widened, then flicked to Chiron, then to Dionysus, and his entire expression collapsed into the sort of dread usually reserved for seeing a lit match drift towards a fireworks factory.

"Ethan?"

Luke turned at Grover's whisper, and the relief that crossed his face lasted only until he saw who stood beside me. "Oh."

Not long after, someone else noticed and the cheering died in ripples.

It began near the fence where we stood, one camper going silent, then the next, then three more behind them as the realisation passed through the crowd. It spread across the arena like spilled ink. Voices faltered as a few children climbed hurriedly down from places they were definitely not supposed to be sitting. Even Clarisse stopped mid-rant, her eyes narrowing as she looked past Thalia towards the gate.

Thalia noticed last, mostly because she had been busy helping her latest opponent back to his wobbly feet (and even wobblier knees). She turned with her spear still in hand, cheeks flushed from exertion, a streak of sand across one knee and the bright, fierce satisfaction of someone who had discovered an entire cabin full of people willing to be… 'educational'. Her eyes landed on me first, sharpening with relief so quick she tried to bury it under a scowl.

Then she saw Dionysus and the scowl became much more complicated.

Chiron stepped forwards, clearing his throat.

"Mr. D, perhaps before we proceed, we might establish certain boundaries—"

Dionysus lifted one hand and the centaur stopped talking so fast, the 'click' of his teeth was audible over the now silent sands.

The god of wine leaned against the fence as if the entire camp had gathered merely to inconvenience his afternoon. His Hawaiian shirt was bright enough to commit several crimes against taste itself, his Diet Coke had reappeared in one hand, and the look he gave the arena suggested he was deciding whether the spectacle amused him enough to delay whatever punishment he had been considering.

His gaze drifted across the fallen Ares campers, at Clarisse who stood angrily at their head, at Thalia who remained standing proudly in the centre of the arena.

"Out." he stated simply.

He didn't shout; a man like him didn't need to.

The two Ares boys still sitting in the sand scrambled to their feet, clearly eager to get out of there. Thalia stayed where she was for half a heartbeat longer, stubbornness written clearly across her face, before Luke caught her eye and gave the smallest shake of his head. She huffed, spun her spear once and walked towards the edge of the ring, glaring at the god who was technically her half-brother the entire way.

Dionysus ignored her completely as his attention shifted to me.

The silence changed. It thickened, turning from the stunned quiet of children caught doing something forbidden into the expectant stillness of an audience that had no idea what was about to happen, but knew with absolute certainty that it was going to be worth watching.

The god pointed lazily towards the churned up sands.

"You're up."

For one long moment, I looked at him, then at the arena, then at Chiron, whose expression suggested he was already composing a deeply apologetic letter to my next of kin... should he find someone he could actually deliver said letter to rather than just yeet it into the literal Void itself, that is.

Despite my misgivings (which were only mounting as I made my way over towards the centre of the arena) there was also an undeniable excitement bubbling up within me, like a skydiver about to make the leap.

After all the blessings I had received this morning (and the one curse...) I was undeniably the strongest I had ever been. Considering my rise in power had seen me go from struggling against a single hellhound to besting a legendary undead bandit king in a brutal wrestling match practically overnight, I couldn't help but ask myself a dangerous question.

'Just how strong am I now... Just how strong will I be tomorrow?'

Only one way to find out.

The churned sand shifted beneath my boots as I crossed the arena, every footstep somehow louder than the last. The crowd had gone so quiet that I could hear the breeze tugging lazily at the banners overhead, along with the distant crash of waves against the shore beyond the camp. Hundreds of eyes followed me across the ring, every single one expecting to watch me get flattened.

Honestly, so did I.

Dionysus ambled into the centre opposite me with all the urgency of a man deciding where to have his next nap, still holding his Diet Coke. He took one last sip, frowned at the empty can as though it had personally disappointed him, then flicked it over his shoulder. It vanished before it hit the ground.

"No weapons," I demanded, trying to mask my nerves, though annoyingly that same restriction meant I wouldn't pull out my [Speed Cola] either.

Dionysus looked genuinely offended.

"Obviously not."

"Thought I'd make sure."

A ripple of nervous laughter passed through the crowd before dying almost immediately. Chiron stepped forwards until he stood just outside the ring.

"This is a spar," he announced, fixing both of us with a look that carried far more authority than his polite voice usually suggested. "Victory will be determined by concession, incapacity..." His gaze lingered on Dionysus. "...or leaving the arena."

The god shrugged.

"Fine."

Then he looked at me, his expression bored, but that worrying, almost purplish gleam had returned to his eyes.

"Whenever you're ready, Mr. Crow."

"It's Creed."

"I don't even remotely care," he shrugged.

He adopted no stance, raised no guard, and simply remained standing there with his hands resting in the pockets of his wine-purple shorts that contrasted loudly against his gaudy Hawaiian shirt.

Somehow, this just made him even more unsettling.

"C'mon Ethan, kick his ass!" Thalia shouted from the sidelines and a scattering of cautious cheers went up from the crowd as Luke moved to stand next to her, shooting me an encouraging nod.

Nice to see he wasn't about to take any bets on my match as he had done with Thalia's (or perhaps there simply weren't any suckers to bet against an Olympian in a duel). Grover looked mortified as Thalia cheered, but nonetheless showed me a thumbs-up… half-hidden behind his beanie, but still, I appreciated the gesture nonetheless. Annabeth didn't cheer, but she took her spot alongside Luke, stormy grey eyes fixed intently on Dionysus and I, her little hands balled into tiny fists.

I took a slow breath, settling into a boxing stance (or my closest approximation of one anyways). [Martial Foresight] stirred somewhere at the edge of my thoughts, quiet but attentive like an honour student perking up when class is in session, while [Effective Activity] seemed to nudge my weight a fraction lower over my feet. Tiny adjustments and yet everything felt more... economical.

The opening signal never came; one moment Dionysus stood there with that same lazy, almost bored posture, and the next he was simply gone, as though the space he'd occupied had decided it no longer needed him. Instinct screamed at me as [Martial Foresight] flashed a prediction across my mind almost before I even understood what I was seeing. A fist. Left side. High.

I moved out of the way- smack! -… as the punch still clipped my jaw.

The impact launched me several yards across the arena before I hit the sand hard enough to plough a shallow trench through it.

"...Ow."

A sympathetic murmur rolled through the spectators as I pushed myself upright, rubbing my jaw. Despite the dull pain radiating outwards throughout my poor skull, I was more confused than angered.

"I saw that coming." I muttered, as if trying to convince myself.

"I know," Dionysus replied simply.

He hadn't moved from where he'd ended up, tilting his head at me.

"Didn't help much, did it?"

Despite the glib tone, he wasn't mocking me, not really. He was simply stating a fact. [Martial Foresight] had shown me exactly what he intended, but Dionysus had simply reached the destination before I could finish acting on the information.

Knowing the train was coming didn't actually make me faster than a speeding bullet.

"Again." I said grimly.

It was as Chiron had said; these blessings of mine could make me the most dangerous hand-to-hand combatant in modern mythology, but only if I was willing to work my butt off (which in this case, meant being willing to have it kicked as well).

This time I advanced first, as quickly as I could while not falling into a desperate charge. [Effective Activity] was already running in the background, making sure to keep my weight balanced and my guard tight, as I watched the god for any hint of movement.

His shoulders shifted just slightly, and in that instant [Martial Foresight] lit up.

Low kick to force down my guard. Backfist to batter through it. Place right elbow into created opening for maximum damage.

I reacted before conscious thought caught up, slipping outside the kick and ducking beneath the backfist exactly as the Skill insisted I should. [Effective Activity] carried my feet into the smallest possible movement to the point I barely seemed to dodge at all. Had I faced Cercyon as I was now, then the ancient King wouldn't have stood a chance.

"Ha-! OOF! Ughhh…" I trailed off as a resounding smack rang out throughout the arena, the breath leaving my lungs in a pained whimper.

The elbow had still crashed into my ribs... from the left side.

'That... that wasn't in the script... How...?'

As I looked up at the god of wine, the answer was clear: Dionysus had read my dodges and simply changed his rhythm halfway through the exchange.

I staggered backwards, coughing.

"That's not… fuckin' fair…" I managed to gasp, air returning to my bruised lungs.

"It isn't. But… this one was … better," the bored-looking Olympian observed, almost reluctantly.

"That didn't feel better."

"It wasn't meant to be."

The next exchange lasted longer.

I slipped two punches, blocked another, and managed to weave beneath a hook that would probably have folded a truck in half. Spurred on by my instincts and my blessings, I unleashed a straightforward punch, [Adamantine Fist] crashing into his shoulder.

It felt like punching polished granite as unseen, [Combo] ticked upwards.

Dionysus glanced at the point of impact.

"...Cute."

His palm landed against my chest.

It wasn't even any great dramatic strike or skill, just a simple shove that sent the world accelerating away from me as I bounced once, then twice, before finally digging my heels into the sand hard enough to stop.

'At least I didn't fall on my ass this time… yay progress…'

I gritted my teeth and rushed in again.

The exchanges became shorter, cleaner. Each time [Martial Foresight] recognised another fragment of Dionysus' habits a heartbeat sooner. [Effective Activity] shaved unnecessary movement from every dodge until I found myself wasting less energy with every pass. He still hit me far more often than I hit him, but the impossible gap separating us no longer felt completely unknowable.

Occasionally my fist brushed his arm, his ribs, his shoulder. It was just glancing contact, barely more than a brush, but it was enough to keep the rhythm going as [Combo] continued to build, steadily and quietly in the background, until Dionysus finally seemed to take notice.

"So that's your trick."

I blinked.

"...What trick?"

"Something about you, one of those blessings… it's making every hit a little heavier than the last."

He smiled lazily.

"Clever, if a bit simple. But insufficient. A hundred times a zero is still a zero." He continued, the smile still on his face, but a cold stare now in his eyes that made me sweat more than the entire fight had so far.

'He thinks he figured it out. Good, let him keep thinking that.'

Because he hadn't. [Combo] multiplied the force of my punches, sure, building quietly with every strike I landed. But there was nothing in the Skill that required me to hit at full power with every strike…

I started holding back. Only a little at first, just enough that each successive blow landed with roughly the same weight as the last, letting the growing multiplier disappear beneath my own restraint.

From the outside, nothing changed. To Dionysus, the fight had plateaued.

On my end however, I could feel the pressure building. Every restrained punch banked more of [Combo]'s potential for later, even as he continued dismantling me.

A knee caught my stomach, a forearm split my guard, and one casual cuff around the side of the head left my ears ringing.

The crowd gasped every time I managed to stay standing as Thalia and Luke loudly (and Grover under his breath) kept cheering me on. I remained on my feet longer and longer now as the exchanges continued, my Skill slowly but surely growing with me as I began understanding the Olympian in front of me with every flurry of blows.

The god noticed too.

"Hm."

His expression sharpened for the first time.

"You learn fast." he murmured reluctantly, almost suspiciously.

"I'm just trying to make a good impression." I managed between panting breaths.

"Don't bother. I'm not easily impressed."

Another exchange followed, then another, the rhythm building until the arena seemed to dissolve into a continuous flow of motion. Sand shifted beneath our feet, footwork adjusting in tight, efficient patterns, predictions flashing through my mind and being corrected in real time, blows landing or glancing away, each hit and near miss blending into the next without pause.

[Combo] climbed quietly in the background like a clock nobody else could hear.

Then, in the midst of it all, something shifted. A mistake, the first one he had made since this beatdown began. It was just the tiniest of openings, there for only a breath of a second as Dionysus committed his weight just a fraction further than necessary as he stepped inside my guard, fully expecting me to react the same way I had during the previous dozen exchanges.

[Martial Foresight] surged through my thoughts, not with the usual scatter of branching possibilities but with a sudden, startling clarity. Everything narrowed down into a single, precise line of action, a fleeting opening that existed for barely a heartbeat before it threatened to vanish again.

[Effective Activity] already had me moving before I could consciously think about it. Instead of retreating, I stepped into his attack as every ounce of restraint vanished.

Instinct fuelled as much by primordial blessings as sheer raw adrenaline, [Adamantine Fist], [One-Star Uniform], everything [Effective Activity] had quietly refined, and the full accumulated weight of [Combo] crashed together behind one punch.

My fist connected squarely with Dionysus' nose, the impact cracking across the arena like a cannon shot as a pressure wave of air radiated out like a shockwave, even throwing back the sands underneath our feet until a perfect circle of barren earth remained.

For the first time all afternoon, the Olympian was halted in his tracks.

Silence swallowed the camp.

Even though this hit was far more powerful than the one that had sent Cercyon back to the underworld in a shower of monster dust, Dionysus remained standing exactly where he was, frozen in position, my knuckles still firmly planted against his face. His head had barely even moved. For a brief moment, he locked eyes with me over the top of my fist, before he took a measured half step back. Slowly, he reached up and touched the flattened ruins of what used to be the bridge of his nose.

His fingertips came away streaked with shimmering golden blood.

For a long uncertain moment, he just stared at it, then slowly lifted his gaze to meet mine. For one impossible second I found myself wondering whether I had actually done it. Had I actually bested an Olympian-?

The Mad God of the Vine let out a bellowing laugh. Not the mocking chuckle he'd used all morning, an actual, genuine laugh, coming from deep within his belly.

That was almost scarier than when he had tried to curse me this morning.

"Good hit."

The words seemed to ripple through the arena with more force than even my megaton-punch, the reaction spreading in a slow, stunned wave as every camper stared in disbelief. Clarisse stood frozen, as though she'd forgotten how breathing worked, and even Chiron's usually composed expression slipped, his eyes widening ever so slightly.

"Did... Did Mr. D really just... give a demigod a compliment?" the centaur asked, stunned.

Before I could process any of it, Dionysus vanished as something caught the back of my jacket. Looking around in a startled panic, I found myself suddenly dangling several feet above the ground. Glancing over my shoulder, I saw the God of Wine standing behind me with that same terrifying grin on his face as he held me aloft like a kitten.

"...Oh."

"Yes, oh."

The god's arm (and thus me with it) began to spin, like an hammer thrower at the Olympics warming up for the shot of his career.

"Wait—!"

The world became sky.

I sailed over the arena fence, over three rows of spectators who collectively threw themselves flat, and continued travelling with alarming enthusiasm towards the glittering water beyond the camp.

There was just enough time to think that Long Island Sound looked surprisingly nice this time of year, before I hit the water with enough force to convince every fish in the vicinity that Zeus himself had taken up competitive diving.

The splash rose higher than the arena wall as cold water swallowed me whole.

For a few blissful seconds there was nothing except bubbles and muffled silence until every bruise I'd accumulated over the last five minutes started to hurt at once. My ribs throbbed, my jaw ached, and my shoulders complained loudly enough that I briefly considered staying underwater just out of spite.

Unfortunately, lungs remained terribly old-fashioned about wanting oxygen, so despite my better judgement, I kicked upwards. The moment my head broke the surface, I drew in a long breath and floated on my back for a second, blinking seawater from my eyes.

"...Worth it."

Golden sparks drifted into existence above me.

"Oh, for—"

The familiar scroll unfurled with its usual theatrical flourish, hovering several feet overhead, bobbing over the water's surface as if perfectly buoyant. Fresh lettering spread across its pristine parchment.

[Survival Achievement Recognised]

[Survived a Spar Against an OLYMPIAN]

A second line appeared beneath it.

[Combat Achievement Recognised]

[Wounding of DIONYSUS through Unarmed Strike]

[Additional Recognition Recorded]

[Reward: Silver Skill Drachma ×1]

A silver drachma dropped neatly from the air.

"Oh shit." I lunged for it, windmilling my arms as I splashed awkwardly through the water. I barely caught the coin before it hit the surface and disappeared beneath the waves.

"...You know, if I'd missed that, we'd both have looked very silly." I glared up at the magical connection between me and my primordial heritage.

The scroll offered no opinion, simply hovering above the lapping waves. I kept floating there for another moment, the water gently lifting and lowering me while the aches throughout my body settled into a dull, almost satisfying soreness.

I'd lost decisively. Spectacularly, even. And yet the thought refused to sting as much as it probably should have.

'I forced an Olympian to bleed.'

Granted, the same Olympian had immediately responded by throwing me halfway across Long Island Sound like an unusually mouthy javelin, but details were important only up to a point.

The silver drachma rolled across my fingers.

"...Oh, what the hell." I said with a small grin as I flicked it upwards.

The coin never reached the top of its arc.

Darkness unfolded around it in a perfect circle, the familiar Void accepting the offering with that same strange sense of quiet recognition. A symbol flared briefly above the water, a stylised fish surrounded by branching currents, before dissolving into shimmering light that drifted across the waves.

The parchment updated.

[Marine Biology Mastery]

|Uncommon Skill|

You are a master of marine biology, possessing complete expertise over ocean lifeforms. You can identify species at a glance, predict their behaviour, and understand ecosystems most researchers spend lifetimes studying.

I stared at it for a long moment, before slowly and deliberately looking around as I took in my current surroundings, dogpaddling all the while. I glanced back up at the parchment.

"Ok, now I know you're definitely messing with me. A god launches me into the sea so he can win on a technicality, and your reward is making me better at... recognizing fish."

The parchment remained infuriatingly dignified as it bobbed above the waves.

"Right. Fine." I sighed.

Turning towards the distant shoreline, I started swimming.

The water was surprisingly clear this close to camp. Sunlight filtered through ribbons of Zostera marina swaying lazily beneath the surface, sending a small school of juvenile Brevoortia tyrannus scattering around my legs as I passed.

I blinked for a moment, staring at the small Atlantic Menhaden as the school of fish reformed and continued on its way. I shook my head and kept swimming, weaving around a drifting Aurelia aurita as it pulsed serenely on the current, not bothered in the least by the jellyfish's proximity. The small jellyfish were harmless… unless you're an exceptionally tiny plankton of course. A few more strokes carried me through the shallows before something in the back of my mind finally caught up.

"Brevoortia tyrannus?" I frowned and stopped dead in the water.

I cautiously glanced around this new biome I was suddenly proficient in. A striped fish darted out from the eelgrass and vanished beneath a patch of floating seaweed.

Morone saxatilis. Juvenile, likely feeding on silversides this time of year…

I stared after it.

"...I can't believe there are people who have willingly gone into crippling debt for this knowledge."

The thought lingered for a second, before I sighed and resumed swimming, quietly hoping my internal monologue would stop volunteering scientific names before it decided to classify the seaweed too.

Every patch of algae, shell, fish and crab now arrived accompanied by an effortless catalogue of names, behaviours and ecological relationships, as though an extremely enthusiastic wildlife narrator was living somewhere behind my eyes.

By the time I reached shallower water I'd involuntarily identified six fish species, three kinds of weeds, a horseshoe crab and what appeared to be a perfectly healthy colony of blue mussels.

I stopped on the wet sand and looked back over the water, hands on my hips as I blew wet hair from my eyes.

"...I have been truly dunked on… literally."

---

Back on shore, Dionysus dusted his hands together.

"Out of bounds." He explained simply as he glanced towards the stunned Chiron.

A pair of sunglasses materialized on his face as a new can of Diet Coke suddenly appeared in one hand.

"I win."

Without another glance towards the lake, he wandered away through the utterly speechless crowd, humming contentedly to himself as though beating the stuffing out of a recently arrived demigod had merely been a pleasant way to pass the afternoon. To him, it probably was.

 

[Bakkughan]

Chapter 8​

---

By the time I finally reached the beach, Camp Half-Blood had already started drifting back towards something resembling normality. Or, well, a demigod's idea of normal, at least.

Swords clashed in the distance while the forge rang with steady, rhythmic hammer blows, and somewhere further up the hill someone was loudly accusing another camper of stealing their shield-polish.

Business as usual.

My new [Hawk Eyes] easily picked out Luke already waiting near the shoreline with Annabeth and Thalia, Grover likely off on some satyr-business. The three of them had evidently been watching the water for a while, because the moment I dragged myself out of Long Island Sound, dripping wet and smelling faintly of salt, Luke let out an exasperated breath.

"Well, you sure took your time." he said with a grin.

"You do realize I had to swim all the way back here, right?"

"Really? I never would've guessed. Explains the seaweed wig at least." the son of Hermes pointed at the top of my head with an amused glint in his eye.

"I considered walking on top of it, but alas... need a different divine parent for that." I responded with a shrug, pulling off the various strands of Ulva lactuca that still stubbornly clung to my soaked clothes.

Thalia snorted and Luke shook his head before reaching up to pat my arm, though he quickly reconsidered as he looked from his palm to my slick trenchcoat with a mildly disgusted look.

"Glad to see you haven't lost all your senses after getting into a punching match with an Olympian. Please, do us all a favour and let us know before you plan on pulling another stunt like that, alright?"

"Thanks kid, I appreciate the concern-"

"How else am I supposed to set up the match-fixing? Give a guy a little warning next time huh?"

"… and there it is." I sighed as I lightly shoved the grinning son of Hermes.

"No jokes, it's good to see you're alright Ethan. When Mr. D just grabbed you like that we got real worried." Annabeth piped up and both Luke and Thalia nodded.

"Yeah, I'll give you that much at least, that was one hell of a match. For real though, let us know next time you plan on doing something insane, ok? If we can't talk you out of it, we can at least have your back. In the meantime, I've got to run."

"You've got somewhere to be?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

"Yeah, still settling in at Hermes Cabin." Luke explained as his expression shifted from amusement to mild resignation.

"You've seen how many people are crammed in there? Don't get me wrong, I didn't think I would love having siblings as much as I do... but sometimes, it feels less like a cabin and more like somebody tried solving a housing crisis with nothing but bunk beds."

"That bad huh? Those cabins looked pretty big though when I walked past 'em this morning?"

"The unclaimed kids stay with us," Luke explained. "Along with the claimed children of the minor gods."

"...That sounds crowded."

"It is."

He sighed.

"The younger ones still don't know where anything is, the older ones keep arguing over bunks and one of the claimed kids from Iris keeps trying to reorganise everybody's stuff by colour."

"You know it's not your responsibility to fix the entire Cabin's issues, right? You've only arrived this week yourself." I cautioned with a small frown.

"I know, it's just... it feels nice. To feel needed, I mean. Being able to help them." Luke said with surprising maturity.

He rubbed the back of his neck before offering us all a crooked smile.

"I'll catch you later."

With that, he headed up the hill towards Cabin Eleven, already calling out greetings before he'd even reached the porch as we watched him disappear into the organised chaos. For some reason, the part of my memory that was nothing but shifting fog, a gaping hole in my mind, watched the kid go and felt… sad.

"How come Hermes' cabin is the only one that gets filled with... y'know, non-Hermes kids?" I asked.

"Chiron explained this yesterday when he gave us a tour. You were still knocked out." Annabeth stated.

"Hermes is the patron of travellers, merchants, thieves and people who generally don't have anywhere better to be. When the cabins for the Twelve Olympians were built, every kid that wasn't theirs, or wasn't claimed by them had nowhere to stay. So Hermes declared his Cabin open to them too. Nice guy, Luke's dad, it's just… not so nice for Luke and his siblings is all." Thalia continued with a shrug.

Giving sanctuary to the children nobody else had made room for... It was one of the more decent things I'd seen a god do so far (though considering my interactions with the Olympians mostly consisted of surviving Hades' hit squad and breaking Dionysus' nose, that wasn't saying much). On the other hand, it also highlighted just how unfair the rest of the arrangement was.

"Kids don't get claimed?" I asked and I could feel heat creeping into my voice. "What does that mean, exactly?"

"It just means... they come here, are definitely a demigod there's just... no sigil, like you get when you offer your drachmas. There's just nothing. They don't receive gifts, messages, nothing. Sometimes they have enough power to sort of make an educated guess, but without the god's direct approval, that's still no guarantee."

"Why would a god do that? That's... that's literally abandonment!" I said angrily.

Thalia shrugged, but the frustration was plain to see on her freckled face.

"They say that getting a god's approval must be earned. Just being born isn't exactly an achievement in itself after all."

'Judging by what the scroll said when I just woke up, Kaos would beg to differ...'

"In most cases, unclaimed kids either throw themselves at a Quest hoping their godly parent finally notices them, or they get themselves killed trying. Some just... stop. If they make it to eighteen, they bail and go live like normal mortals. After that, monsters stop caring as much, your scent fades, and whatever powers you had kinda fade out too. It's not exactly a happy ending, but beats getting eaten alive by monsters at least. It's why there's no old campers. Well, except for you now, I guess."

"What, going on Quests for... approval? All to 'catch their eye'? As if gods don't fucking know how many kids they fucking got running around all the time? This is... this is indefensible, no child should earn their parents' basic fucking acknowledgment!"

I would hardly call Kaos an active parent considering he (it?) is a primordial void predating existence itself, but I could definitely feel our connection whenever I summoned its power through the offered drachma. His very essence ran through my veins and the same was true for regular demigods I reckoned. The idea that a god would claim they 'forgot' their kid, a literal physical part of themselves, until they were noteworthy enough was an excuse so weak it would've been laughable if it wasn't destroying children's lives.

Every child they'd ever sired existed within an awareness so vast it bordered on omnipresence. The gods might not know what their children had eaten for breakfast or whether they'd scraped a knee climbing a tree, but they always knew they existed.

Every single one.

This went beyond mere negligence and into the realm of outright maliciousness.

Just like when I had first heard Thalia's backstory back in the metro, an almost visceral reaction of stubborn frustration ran through me on a disturbingly deep level and once again I wondered if this was my divine half influencing me somehow. Was this why Kaos had awoken me on that park bench, to somehow deal with this... injustice? Throw in some Chaos to tip the scales of the status quo? My biggest reward so far was a platinum for saving Thalia's life and thus altering Fate itself after all...

There was a beat of silence on the beach as I allowed my anger to cool off to a simmer, before glancing back at the cabins arrayed at the centre of the camp.

"How come the minor gods didn't get cabins of their own though? Just getting those out of Hermes Cabin would lift some of the pressure of Luke and the others."

Annabeth shrugged.

"They don't have enough children."

"They don't need individual cabins then. Just build one for all of them, kinda like the Big House." I gestured vaguely towards the camp.

"No can do. Dad would feel threatened." Thalia said with a dismissive snort and a roll of her electric blue eyes.

"Why?"

The two girls exchanged a look.

"...You really don't know much about Greek history, do you?" Annabeth asked.

"I woke up less than a week ago."

"...Fair enough."

She sat down on a driftwood log, drawing a branching line through the sand with the heel of her shoe.

"Alright. Way back at the beginning, from Nothing there came the starry sky, Ouranos." Annabeth began in a story-telling voice as if reciting something from memory, before she paused and glanced at me.

"Technically... that makes him your half-brother."

"...Wait, what?" I blinked as I glanced upwards at the sunny skies above.

She shrugged, like she was pointing out something obvious.

"Primordial family trees are messy."

I rubbed my face as I couldn't help but agree.

"Calling that a 'tree' is a bit generous. Too few limbs. A 'shrub' would be more accurate." Thalia interjected, clearly enjoying herself at my expense as Annabeth ignored her and continued.

"Ouranos ruled everything until his son Kronos cut him down and took over."

"Gramps cut down a real important part of him too." Thalia said with a snort.

When Annabeth and I glanced her way, she grinned sharply and made a 'snip-snip' motion that saw me clench my legs in sympathy.

"Damn... condolences brother." I said to… the actual fucking sky.

'What even is my life…?'

"Then Kronos started eating his own children because he was terrified one of them would overthrow him the same way." Annabeth boldly moved on, choosing to ignore the daughter of Zeus.

"Which, in hindsight, wasn't an unreasonable concern." Thalia shrugged.

"It wasn't." Annabeth nodded. "Because Zeus did overthrow him."

"Dad didn't stick to just cutting off a part either. Kronos got chopped into a million pieces and thrown into Tartarus, which is like the Underworld's haunted basement."

"And now Zeus is king." I concluded.

"Exactly." Annabeth nodded.

She tossed a pebble into the surf.

"The thing is..." She hesitated, searching for the right words. "Olympus wasn't... inherited. It was taken."

I stayed quiet.

"They've spent thousands of years fighting Titans, Giants, monsters..." She shrugged. "Even each other sometimes. That's just... what gods do."

"Dad trusts about three people." Thalia folded her arms.

"And one of them's himself," she added dryly.

Annabeth didn't disagree.

"Think about it. Zeus has lots of enemies, right?" she continued. "So what if he lets all their children stay here together? And they could just make more."

"More what?"

"Children." Annabeth looked at me like intentionally churning out babies was obvious somehow. "If a god wanted more people on their side, they could keep having demigods and sending them here. One or two doesn't matter, but what if there are twenty? Or fifty? Then one of their parents gets angry at Zeus and suddenly they already have an army inside camp."

"An army of children?"

Annabeth frowned at me.

"They wouldn't stay children forever." the small girl said grimly.

I let out a slow breath.

"...That's actually a pretty sensible way of stopping someone from literally breeding their own army I guess." I reluctantly conceded.

"Beats Gramps' idea of straight up eating kids at least." Thalia shrugged.

Annabeth nodded once.

"It's easier to have everyone take shelter in Hermes Cabin."

I scratched the back of my neck.

"...Still bullshit."

Thalia barked out a laugh and Annabeth's lips twitched.

"I had a feeling you'd say that."

"It can be strategically sound and still be morally bankrupt." I defended myself.

"...Those two things show up a lot in Greek mythology," Annabeth replied, before she glanced up at me with narrowed eyes.

"Speaking of bullshit..."

It took me a moment to catch her meaning before I remembered the other piece of divine bullshit hanging over my head.

"You mean my Curse?"

Thalia blinked.

"Excuse me. The what?"

Annabeth looked at me.

"You didn't tell her?"

"I've been a little busy getting thrown into the Atlantic if you hadn't noticed."

"Long Island Sound, actually." she corrected automatically with a roll of her eyes, before turning back to Thalia.

"The Scroll cursed Ethan."

"What?! I thought it was supposed to help you!? Give you gifts from your divine parent?" Thalia exclaimed, looking around as if she could catch the piece of parchment in the act.

"It is and it does. This curse was courtesy of our new Camp Director, the scroll just... interfered. Translated, almost." I tried to calm her down.

Thalia's expression tightened.

"Damn, from what I've heard my half-brother is crazy good with curses. How bad is it?"

"... I can't read."

Silence.

"You..." Thalia stared.

"I can't read."

"...At all?"

I shook my head.

"The alphabet currently looks like angry squiggles trying to strangle each other. Only exception is the scroll itself, the rest is a lost cause at this point."

She bit her lip as a snort escaped her.

"... oh no, that's.... that's h-horrible... I'm so sa-hahaHAHAHA!"

Within seconds she was doubled over, laughing so hard she had to brace herself against a driftwood log.

"Oh, gods..." she wheezed. "First day at camp... You get cursed... And it turns you into an analphabetic."

She dissolved into laughter again as Annabeth and I waited patiently. Eventually she managed to straighten up, wiping a tear from the corner of one eye.

"I'm sorry."

"You don't sound sorry."

"I'm a little sorry."

"There are worse curses," Annabeth admitted. "A lot worse."

"I know." I said with a sigh.

Myths were filled with unfortunates doomed to an eternity of pushing boulders uphill both ways or having their liver torn out on the daily, so in the grand scheme of Greek curses, temporary illiteracy barely cracked the top hundred.

"It'll be fine," Annabeth said. "I was going to help him relearn anyway."

"You?" I asked with a raised eyebrow.

I didn't doubt her smarts, not after her role in the fight against the cyclops, but it did sting somewhat to get reading lessons from someone fifteen years younger than me.

"And some others at the Athena cabin." Annabeth admitted.

Something flickered across Thalia's face, gone almost as soon as it appeared, but not before I caught it. It was the uncomfortable realization that Luke and Annabeth now had siblings, an entire cabin filled with others like them, while she stood alone. Her gaze drifted up toward Cabin One, standing the apex of the horseshoe the cabins formed.

"I'm guessing that invitation doesn't extend to me." the daughter of Zeus said somewhat morosely.

"I could ask," Annabeth offered but Thalia shook her head.

"Thanks, that's sweet, but I don't think my half-sister would appreciate me trespassing on her digs, even if it was to check in on my favourite niece." she said with a comforting smile towards Annabeth.

"...Probably not." the little girl conceded.

There was an awkward pause. The demigods of Camp Half-Blood were obviously all somehow related to each other, all of them distant cousins, nephews and nieces generations removed. But for Thalia it was different. To about half of the cabins here, she wasn't just another cousin, but their aunt, a sibling to their divine parent.

A step up on the family tree and that created... distance.

'And that's not even getting into my own genealogical shrubbery...'

Thalia took one last look towards Cabin One before squaring her shoulders.

"Actually..." She grinned. "I've got an entire cabin to myself. I'm hanging a hammock somewhere completely impractical and putting up posters on everything that's vertical, the worse the better. Nobody's gonna complain anyways and if Zeus doesn't like it..." She tipped her head back to look at the sky. "...he can come down here and complain in person."

There was a faint rumbling in the sky, but it was far off, distant. More acknowledgment than threat.

'I've never heard thunder that sounded… distracted? What's going on over there?'

"You go do that," I said, nodding. "If you need a wall knocked down, give me a shout."

"Will do." Thalia said with a challenging grin and with that she turned and strode towards the Zeus cabin with renewed purpose.

Annabeth watched her go for a moment before looking back at me.

"So. Ready to relearn the alphabet?"

I sighed.

"I've got a bad feeling about this."

"You should." Annabeth said as she started walking and I fell into step beside her.

Behind us, somewhere up on the hill, I heard Thalia loudly announce to an empty cabin that the Decorating Time had officially begun. It sounded more like a battle cry.

The trip from the beach to the collection of cabins further down the central field was a fairly short one, though it was marked by gawking demigods that watched us go from a healthy distance. The Athena cabin was understated, built from grey stone with clean, practical lines and no unnecessary flourishes, save for decorative owls spread throughout. It looked solid and purposeful, like it had been designed to be used rather than admired.

Annabeth caught me looking.

"What?"

"...It's a nice cabin. Very... austere." I tried diplomatically.

"I know." the girl said with a grin.

"You sound very proud of something you moved in just two days ago."

She shrugged.

"It's home now."

She pushed open the door, and the smell hit me first, a mix of old paper, ink, and fresh wood. It felt less like a cabin and more like the sort of library where even whispering felt like a crime.

Several heads turned.

A handful of Athena campers looked up from books, maps and an elaborate board game spread across one of the tables, 'Campaign for North Afrika' stamped boldly (almost threateningly) on the box.

"Annabeth?" One of the older boys blinked.

"I need help."

Every pair of eyes immediately shifted to me.

"...With him?" another camper asked.

Annabeth nodded once.

"Ethan got cursed this morning. Now he can barely read properly."

"… uhm, Annabeth? We're demigods. All of us got dyslexia, nobody can read 'properly'.

"Sure, but the Curse completely made him forget how to read. He doesn't even know the alphabet anymore."

There was a beat of silence before every Athena kid in the room slowly closed whatever they were reading. For some reason, a very familiar feeling settled in my stomach, like when I had volunteered for a punching match with an ornery Olympian this morning. Those kids looked far too... hungry all of a sudden.

"H-hey now kids... let's be reasonable about this, shall we? ... guys?"

Three hours later, I'd developed a personal hatred for the Ancient Greeks. Twenty-four letters was simply too many letters for any language to reasonably need, and I was beginning to suspect they'd done it specifically to fuck with me.

"...This," Annabeth said for what had to be the fiftieth time that afternoon, tapping the page with enough force to leave a dent in it, "is A."

I nodded.

"Good."

She moved her finger to the next symbol.

"And this?"

"...Also A?"

Her eye twitched.

"No."

"... Are you sure-"

"Ethan."

My jaw clicked shut as I frowned at the page. They were just... squiggles.

Not even interesting squiggles. Just tiny black marks sitting there with all the personality of dead ants.

I knew they were supposed to mean something. I could practically feel my brain trying to make the connection, like reaching for a word that sat stubbornly on the tip of your tongue. Every now and then I'd think I'd caught hold of it before a veil was forcibly drawn over it, like someone throwing shut the drapes to keep out nosey neighbours.

Overall, the process could be described like trying to nail jelly to a tree.

Across from me, one of the Athena kids quietly slid another stack of flash cards onto the growing pile. There were more flash cards than I'd ever seen in one place, some of them even color coded, or illustrated with little (overly cheerful) drawings.

"Alright." Annabeth inhaled slowly through her nose. "We're changing tactics."

"We had tactics?"

"We've had three."

"...Oh."

She snatched the cards back, arranged three of them in front of me, then pointed decisively.

"Which one's A?"

I stared.

The one on the left looked vaguely annoyed.

The middle one seemed smug.

The one on the right had an unsettling air of superiority.

"...The angry one."

"There isn't an angry one!"

One of her siblings quietly buried his face in his hands. Another looked thoughtfully at the cards.

"...I can sort of see what he means."

'Bless your heart little one, you've just been promoted to my favourite great-great-grandnephew!' I thought with tears in my eyes, but my tutor was having none of it as Annabeth whipped around.

"You are not helping." she bit out.

"I'm just saying the middle one does look a little pleased with itself."

"The middle one is just a Q!"

"Exactly. It looks like it thinks it's better than the others."

"Well, it is most often used by the French..." another demigod piped up as she rubbed her chin, getting considering hums from her siblings.

"Ha! Tough talk, you know it would be nowhere without U always there to support it!" another challenged.

"Don't you dare ignore the humble A! It's always been there for Q as well, backing up U! It's a lingua trifecta!"

"Oh puh-lease, it's playing second fiddle and you know it!"

"QuAlifications! QuArantine!"

The first demigod drew herself up taller, a challenging gleam in her eye as she unleashed her ultimate weapon.

"Queue!"

The discussion somehow continued for another ten minutes. By the end of it, there were over half a dozen Athena campers involved.

Somebody produced a chalkboard.

Somebody else suggested starting with phonetics.

One camper disappeared into the cabin and returned carrying three different books, a length of string, and what looked suspiciously like a compass used for naval navigation.

I still couldn't read.

Somewhere around then, the 'lesson' turned into a competition to see who could finally get the alphabet through my skull, physically if need be in the case of some of the more… enthusiastic kids.

It went about as well as expected.

Eventually, the sun began dipping towards the trees and the lesson dissolved into complete surrender. Books lay scattered across the grass as flash cards drifted lazily in the breeze and the chalkboard had been left abandoned halfway through writing what I assumed was a revolutionary new teaching method.

It ended with three question marks and what was either a raincloud or a lava pit.

I was lying flat on my back staring up at the sky while Annabeth was sprawled beside me, breathing hard enough you'd think we'd just finished wrestling a hydra. Around us, the rest of Athena Cabin looked less like the smartest children in America and more like the aftermath of a failed military campaign.

For a long moment, nobody spoke.

Then Annabeth turned her head a fraction.

"So..." she panted. "...you get it now?"

I let the silence stretch out for a moment, closing one eye as I considered it with all the seriousness the question deserved, until a slow, satisfied smirk finally spread across my face.

"...Not a fucking thing."

One camper groaned into the grass. Another quietly rolled onto his side and stared at the sky with the hollow expression of someone reconsidering every life choice that had led them to this exact moment.

Annabeth let out one long, defeated sigh.

"I hate your curse."

"Join the club."

She snorted despite herself.

"You know we're doing this again tomorrow, right? We'll get it then."

"You sound pretty confident for someone who just roped her entire cabin in wasting a whole day on trying to reinvent teaching a twenty year old their ABC's." I raised an eyebrow.

"Today was not a complete loss: I've eliminated six teaching methods so far."

"Only six?"

She pointed a finger at me without opening her eyes.

"I have dozens left."

I considered arguing, before I looked at the sea of abandoned flash cards surrounding us.

"...Gods help me."

"They won't," Annabeth muttered. "They're dyslexic too."

A conch shell sounded across camp before I could ask whether dyslexia counted as divine solidarity or incompetence.

Around us, the dead and dying of Athena Cabin stirred.

"Dinner," one of them croaked.

Another camper lifted her face out of the grass.

"Food..."

The word passed through the assembled children like a call to arms. Within seconds, the same group that had spent the afternoon attempting to breach my curse with flash cards and increasingly deranged applications of geometry had gathered their books, rescued their stationery from the lawn and begun limping towards the dining pavilion.

I pushed myself upright with a groan. My body had recovered remarkably well from being hurled into Long Island Sound (the lingering effects of being pumped full of ambrosia if my [Novice Medicine Skill] was right), but three hours of sitting hunched over an alphabet book had apparently targeted muscles even Dionysus hadn't managed to injure.

Annabeth got to her feet beside me, brushing grass from her clothes.

"Let's go get something to eat. You'll like it: the goblets are enchanted, so they never run out and are activated on voice command to fill with whatever drink you like. Just remember: no alcohol."

I groaned mournfully.

"You realize I'm the adult here, right?"

"So is Mr. D, but the ban is Camp-wide I'm afraid." Annabeth said with a smile before she turned to follow her siblings, with me trudging along behind her.

The dining pavilion stood on a hill that overlooked the sea, surrounded by white columns, its sides left open to the evening air. Long tables covered in white cloth filled the interior, each marked with the symbol of one of the Olympians, while braziers burned between them despite the warmth.

The campers filed in with a level of order I hadn't expected from people who spent most of their afternoons hitting one another with swords. There was still plenty of shoving, shouting and attempted theft of bread rolls, but everyone knew where they were going.

The children of Ares gathered at the table marked by a boar's head. Apollo's crowded beneath a golden sun. Aphrodite's table filled with campers who somehow looked freshly clean despite having spent the same day outdoors as everyone else.

Athena's children peeled away from Annabeth one after another, already arguing over which of their failed methods had shown the most promise.

Hermes' table was by far the busiest. Luke sat among his newly discovered siblings, surrounded by campers whose parents either hadn't claimed them or didn't possess enough influence to earn their own piece of furniture. Children of minor gods sat shoulder to shoulder with the unclaimed, squeezing along the benches wherever they could find space.

By stark contrast, the Artemis, Hera and Poseidon table were completely empty. Hades didn't even have one (though thanks to the Oath, he didn't really need one either).

And then there was Zeus' table.

It had enough room for a dozen people, perhaps more, but only one plate had been set upon it. Thalia occupied the centre of the bench with her shoulders straight and chin raised, attacking a piece of bread like it had personally insulted her.

Nobody sat near her. In a camp full of her relatives, fellow demigods and raucous satyrs, Thalia Grace sat truly alone.

Campers glanced over occasionally, though their eyes never lingered. Some looked curious. Others wary. A few seemed openly resentful, which made sense when half the pavilion had apparently spent years waiting for the smallest acknowledgment from their divine parent while Zeus' newly arrived daughter had received a private cabin and an entire table just to herself.

Thalia seemed determined to pretend she hadn't noticed.

She was doing a poor job.

"Where do I sit?" I asked.

Annabeth, who had been heading towards Athena's table, stopped.

"I don't know. There isn't a table for Kaos. I don't think anyone thought we'd ever need one."

"Considering my siblings are the literal earth and sky, I can see how that would make for a difficult seating arrangement." I responded dryly.

"You could probably sit with Luke at the Hermes table," she said. "That's where everyone without a cabin goes."

I looked towards Cabin Eleven's table. There were already enough bodies crammed around it to qualify as a fire hazard.

My gaze drifted back to Thalia, who still sat alone. More than anything, she looked… lonely.

The Camp had gone to extraordinary lengths to arrange every child according to their parentage. It was efficient, traditional and apparently important enough that nobody had questioned leaving a twelve-year-old girl by herself in the middle of a crowded pavilion.

I picked up a plate and goblet from a nearby serving table.

"Ethan," Annabeth warned quietly.

"What?"

"You're supposed to sit at your parent's table."

"I'll be sure to use the Kaos one the moment somebody builds it."

Before she could object, I crossed the pavilion and dropped onto the bench opposite Thalia.

Almost immediately, the whole area fell completely silent, not even the clattering of cutlery on plate ringing out as the assembled demigods, satyrs and nymphs sucked in a collective breath. Thalia froze halfway through tearing off another piece of bread, her eyes wide as her face blanched in shock.

"What are you doing?" she hissed, half-choking on her food.

"Having dinner." I responded glibly, before peering down into my cup, clearing my throat.

"Non-alcoholic beer. Uhm, please?" I hesitated, and it almost seemed as if the cup had to think it through before glorious golden liquid finally began filling my cup.

'Be strong, Ethan... no tears, not now...'

Half a dozen tables away, seated beside nervous looking nymphs and satyrs, Dionysus suddenly jumped up, shouting "Genius! Utterly genius! How did I not think of that?!"

He raised up his own cup to the sky with a manic gleam in his eye and a grin on his bearded face.

"Non-alcoholic Cabernet Sauvignon, now!" he declared grandly.

For half a second, nothing happened before...

"Ahw..."

... the cup straight up melted in his hands. Looking more grief-stricken than a widow at a funeral, Dionysus slowly sank back down in his seat again, not even appearing to notice as some of the braver satyrs hesitantly petted his shoulders.

Thalia's mouth twitched before she glanced around the pavilion. People were still staring at us. Worryingly, some of them glanced cautiously from us to the sky above.

"You know this is Zeus' table, right?" Thalia said warningly.

"Hard to miss. There's an eagle carved into everything."

"You're not supposed to sit here."

"Neither are you, judging by the amount of company you're allowed to have here."

Thalia's expression tightened.

I picked up my cup and took a cautious sip.

'Not as good as the real thing of course, but hey, compared to how it backfired for Dionysus, you won't hear me complaining.'

"Besides," I said, waving a hand dismissively. "If one of the gods has a problem with me making sure a twelve-year-old isn't eating by herself, they know where to find me. We'll have another match in the arena."

Thalia looked at me for a long moment.

"...You're impossible."

"I've been called worse."

"By whom?"

"Dionysus, mostly, before he threw me out of said arena."

Thalia stared at me for several seconds before laughter escaped her, abrupt and unwilling. The tension in her shoulders loosened.

"You are going to get struck by lightning."

"Probably. At least I'll die fed."

A plate landed beside mine.

Annabeth climbed onto the bench with the careful dignity of someone breaking the rules entirely on principle. Thalia blinked at her.

"You too?"

Annabeth folded her arms.

"Ethan still can't read. He needs supervision."

"I feel like I keep having to repeat this, but the two of you are aware that I'm the only adult in the room, right? Dionysus doesn't count, he's still crying over his melted cup."

Annabeth pointed her fork at both of us.

"This discussion is over."

The pavilion's whispering intensified.

At Athena's table, several of Annabeth's siblings watched her with expressions ranging from surprised concern to reluctant approval. One of them raised his cup towards her. Annabeth pretended not to notice, though she sat a little straighter.

Across the pavilion, Luke had gone very still.

He glanced between us and the overcrowded Hermes table before lowering his eyes to his plate with a conflicted expression on his face. One of his brothers said something to him. After a long moment, Luke replied quietly, stood and made his way over.

He sat beside Thalia without asking, before glancing around.

"Hey, this seat taken?" he asked rhetorically with a lopsided smirk and Thalia smiled down at her food.

Grover took considerably longer to join us.

He stood near the satyrs' section clutching a plate loaded mostly with salad, staring at us as though we were inviting him to picnic inside an active volcano. His gaze moved from Thalia to the eagle carved into the table, then climbed nervously towards the sky.

The poor satyr was obviously torn, so I decided to help him out as I raised a hand.

"Grover!"

The satyr flinched so hard that several leaves flew off his plate. Every head in the pavilion turned towards him and he gave me a betrayed look.

"C'mere. Saved you a seat." I said with a grin.

His eyes widened as he shook his head quickly, but I simply patted the empty space beside me. Grover looked to Chiron for rescue. The centaur stood near the head of the pavilion, watching the developing situation with an expression of profound exhaustion. After a moment, he gave the smallest possible nod.

Grover swallowed, and with the slow and deliberate steps of a man approaching his own execution, he crossed the pavilion and lowered himself beside me.

"I want it known," he whispered, "that I think this is a terrible idea."

"Your objection has been noted and recorded." I reassured him.

"By who?"

"Somebody else, I suppose. Not me, I still can't write."

Annabeth groaned.

For a few minutes, things almost became normal.

Food travelled around the table. Luke complained that someone in the Hermes cabin had started stealing everyone's socks. Annabeth suggested assigning everyone their own sock drawer, only to be reminded that Hermes cabin barely had enough drawers for clothes to begin with. Thalia outlined a plan to rig lightning rods along Cabin One's roof so she could "borrow" storms on demand and Luke immediately began brainstorming on how to market it as a light(ning) show to the rest of the Camp.

Grover remained tense enough to crack walnuts between his shoulders, but gradually began eating.

The stares continued as it appeared immediate divine retribution was off the table for now, so I ignored them.

There were traditions worth respecting. There were traditions worth questioning. Then there were traditions that existed purely because everyone was too frightened of the people who'd invented them to admit they were stupid.

I reached for another bread roll and every brazier in the pavilion erupted.

Flames roared upwards in pillars of white and gold, blasting heat across the tables. Plates rattled against the tabletops. Campers cried out and scrambled away as thunder cracked directly overhead hard enough to shake dust loose from the columns surrounding the pavilion.

Grover made a noise somewhere between a bleat and a prayer before disappearing beneath the table.

"I knew it! I knew it! My deepest apologies oh great Lord Zeus, I was peer-pressured!"

Annabeth gripped the edge of the table, grey eyes wide as the clear evening sky vanished beneath a wall of black storm clouds. Thalia shot to her feet as beside her, Luke's hand moved towards his sword.

'Spoke too soon, I guess.'

I'd challenged a god, insulted several others and ignored a sacred seating arrangement within my first day at camp.

Apparently somebody had finally decided to send me the bill.

The central fire twisted in upon itself, the flames gathering into something almost resembling a face. It possessed no stable features, only the suggestion of eyes and a mouth formed from burning light.

When it spoke, the sound came from every brazier at once.

"ETHAN CREED."

The force of my name pressed against the pavilion. Every camper shrunk back in their seat as I slowly lowered the bread roll.

"Present."

The fire surged and thunder rolled across the valley in answer.

"YOU ARE SUMMONED BEFORE THE COUNCIL OF OLYMPOS."

My stomach sank.

'Perhaps Thalia was right about the lightning.'

Behind the head table, Chiron bowed his head. Even Dionysus had set aside his goblet, the usual boredom stripped from his face.

"Listen, I get that you've done things a certain way a long time now, but I just think every demigod has the unalienable right to sit with their friends at dinner, alright."

"For a moment, the flames flickered, almost uncertain.

"... WHAT?"

"Just to be clear, this is about the seating arrangement, right?"

"SEATING ARRANG- ARE YOU TESTING ME, CHILD? WE HAVE GRAVER MATTERS TO ATTEND TO. THE MOIRAI HAVE LAID A CHARGE AGAINST YOU."

Conversation died around us. Campers who had merely looked frightened went deathly pale. Annabeth drew in a sharp breath beside me. Thalia's expression hardened, while Luke looked towards me as though hoping I might explain why the literal Fates had filed a complaint about me.

I had nothing. Sure, the scroll had rewarded me with a platinum coin for upsetting their plans, but it didn't tell me what those plans actually were save for that they apparently relied on Thalia not reaching Camp alive and that was something I would oppose no matter who's strategy it was.

Again that indignation welled up from deep within me as I slowly rose to my full height, facing down the flames with steel in my gaze.

"Am I allowed to know what I'm accused of?"

The flames snapped violently.

"YOU WILL HEAR THE CHARGE BEFORE THE COUNCIL."

"So that's a no."

Mr. D closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. The burning face turned towards him for a fraction of a second before returning its attention to me.

"UNDER OTHER CIRCUMSTANCES, YOU WOULD BE BROUGHT BEFORE OLYMPOS IMMEDIATELY."

"I'm guessing I'm a special case?" I shot back and the flames flickered in frustration.

They were silent for a moment, as if debating with themselves, before they spoke again.

"... DIONYSUS HAS REPORTED THAT KAOS ITSELF INTERVENED WHEN DIVINE POWER WAS LAST DIRECTED UPON YOU. UNTIL THE NATURE OF THAT INTERFERENCE IS UNDERSTOOD, THE COUNCIL WILL NOT RISK TOUCHING YOU DIRECTLY." It admitted reluctantly.

That was probably wise.

Kaos had translated a god's curse into something survivable, then rewarded me for enduring it. There was no guarantee the next attempt at divine transportation wouldn't deposit me inside a wall, another dimension or somebody's digestive tract.

"YOU WILL PRESENT YOURSELF AT THE EMPIRE STATE BUILDING WITHOUT DELAY." the flames continued with authority.

The mouth in the fire widened.

"GET YOUR ASS TO OLYMPOS, ETHAN CREED. NOW."

The flames collapsed.

The storm vanished with them, darkness peeling away from the sky as abruptly as it had appeared. The braziers returned to their normal size. For several seconds, the only sound in the pavilion was Grover breathing hard beneath the table.

I stared at the fire for a long moment. My entire conscious existence had been spent travelling away from New York.

I'd fought through Central Park, escaped monsters in the subway, survived a haunted house, and driven through half of Long Island in a stolen truck, all in pursuit of the distant promise that once we reached Camp Half-Blood, we'd finally be safe.

Now, mere days after arriving, Olympus wanted me to turn around and go straight back.

'There's probably a moral in there somewhere. ... I hate morals.'

Whispers spread through the pavilion as everyone tried to decide whether staring at me was worth the risk. Chiron remained motionless, his expression troubled, while Dionysus watched me with an unreadable look that was somehow worse than his usual contempt.

Luke leaned closer.

"...What did you do?"

"Trust me, I'd love to know."

The stares of the assembled demigods washed over me before my attention settled on the Hephaestus table. Several soot-stained campers were already watching me with intense interest and an idea began to bloom in my mind.

"Hey," I called. "You guys retrieved my truck, right?"

One of the older campers nodded cautiously.

"Yeah?"

I grinned as I clasped my hands.

"How do you guys feel about being my pit crew for a bit?"

---

AN: So, as promised, here are the chapters of the past three weeks. As I am back from my holidays, new chapters should return to weekly updates.

IMPORTANT: I've recently discovered that I forgot to include Ethan's rewards for beating the Curse in future chapters. It will be his first Advantage roll, meaning a choice between two things. I've decided to make a poll with the options over on my Patreon. From now until Friday (28 August) Patrons can vote on which roll they prefer. Since this is a Curse reward, I'm restraining myself from rerolling or discarding useless or non-narrative compliant results.

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER 9​

​

---

The next morning found me standing in front of Cabin Number Nine, having spent the night in the forest since I didn't feel like overcrowding the Hermes cabin even further.

It had been surprisingly comfortable thanks to [Nature's Embrace] and all of the aches and pains from the past days had completely disappeared as the soothing forest environment helped me regain my energy.

The cabin in front of me could not be more of a contrast to those peaceful surroundings.

The Hephaestus cabin looked less like somewhere people lived and more like someone had parked a small factory in the middle of Camp Half-Blood. A squat brick building sat beneath a smoking chimney, while the circular front door resembled the vault of a bank more than the entrance to a home. As I approached, hidden gears clanked into motion and steam hissed through unseen pipes before the entire door slowly rotated open with enough flair to make me feel like I'd requested access to a Cold War bunker instead.

Every surface had been claimed by workbenches, power tools, half-finished weapons or piles of scrap waiting for inspiration. Fold-away bunks disappeared into the walls behind exposed gears and enough switches and displays that sleeping in Cabin Nine probably required reading an instruction manual first.

My truck, meanwhile, looked like Cabin Nine had gotten a little carried away taking it apart.

It rested on heavy-duty stands in the middle of the workshop with most of its important components removed. The engine sat on one bench, the transmission on another, and I was fairly sure someone had wheeled the driver's door into a different room entirely. Only the front bumper remained attached, still proudly displaying the crater left by introducing Hades' welcoming committee to several thousand pounds of American steel.

"Morning."

The voice came from somewhere beneath my truck.

A creeper rolled backwards, depositing a blond teenager onto the workshop floor. He climbed to his feet, wiped his hands on a grease-stained rag (making them noticeably dirtier) and held one out.

"Name's Liam."

"Ethan. Ethan Creed." I replied after a moment's hesitation, shaking the soot-covered hand.

"So," he said, nodding towards the truck. "You're the owner of this beauty."

"You know, I'm beginning to wonder about that..." I mused slowly as I glanced around the workshop.

"Hey, it'll go back together." Liam quickly tried to reassure me, "We only took it apart because we wanted to see how it was built."

"… and you couldn't just have looked up a manual or something?" I asked somewhat bleakly.

"We did! You know, before we took it apart. We don't get to work on vehicles often. Especially old ones." The kid said abashedly, before glancing at the scattered parts with a gleam in his eyes that reminded me uncomfortably of the Athena kids during yesterday's 'lesson'.

"You say that as a compliment."

"It is. They don't make 'em like they used to."

"… and you said that as if you're sixty." I pointed out, but the blonde kid just shrugged.

"No computers controlling everything. Plenty of room to improve. Whoever designed this actually expected people to repair it." He explained as he walked over to the engine block, running a hand over one of the cylinder heads.

"Also a compliment?"

"The highest one I know."

I couldn't really argue with that.

"We've actually wanted to get our hands on a proper car for years." Another of the Hephaestus kids continued as Liam's siblings curiously approached us.

"You've never worked on one?" I asked, somewhat surprised.

"Never had the chance." The kid shrugged. "Nobody in the Camp owns one. I mean, Argus, the chief of security does, but he said we're not allowed within ten feet of his van without supervision."

"Why's that?" I raised an eyebrow, feeling a bit more worried for my truck now.

"He said we'd give it back in boxes."

I glanced around the room.

"...I can sort of see his point."

"We would've labelled them." One of the smaller kids said defensively.

I snorted.

"Fair enough."

I looked over what remained of my truck again before clearing my throat.

"So, how long before you can put it back together? As I'm sure you all heard yesterday, I need it back sooner rather than later."

Liam shrugged.

"We've already started. It'll be ready by tomorrow morning."

I raised an eyebrow as a thought occurred to me.

"If you're already taking the whole thing apart, could you, you know… improve it as well?"

"I knew he'd ask!" one of the kids behind Liam pumped his fist enthusiastically.

Liam crossed his arms with an eager grin on his face.

"We're children of the Forge. Of course we can. What did you have in mind?" he asked excitedly.

I held up a hand.

"I'm not enough of a mechanic to tell you kids how to do your jobs. A little more ground clearance would be nice, and reinforce anything that's likely to break if another monster barricade decides to get in my way. Beyond that..." I shrugged. "I'll leave it up to you for the most part."

Liam nodded approvingly.

"We can definitely do that. We got some anti-monster contraption blueprints we've been wanting to test out and plenty of scrap Celestial Bronze lying around to make it happen." He said as his siblings cheered, before he held up a hand.

"On one condition."

"There it is." I grumbled good-naturedly.

"… We'd like driving lessons too. Like you gave Thalia." Liam asked, almost embarrassed.

I blinked.

"That's all?"

"It's just... Nobody in Camp can actually teach us. You're the only camper I've ever seen that's so old that they can drive."

"Oi, I'm barely 25 you brat..." I muttered with a barely suppressed twitch.

"That's still about a decade more than even the older campers here." Liam shot back as he crossed his arms and I didn't have a rebuttal for that.

"What about Chiron? He's the legendary 'Teacher of Heroes', surely that involves Driver's Ed?"

"He wanted to, but he doesn't fit in cars."

"...Fair enough. Well, you said Argus has a van, right? What about him?" I proposed but some of the kids immediately began shaking their heads.

"No can do. Little while back some Hermes kids asked, but Argus doesn't trust them with anything on principle, since their dad cut off his head and stole the cow he was protecting. Then they tried to joyride it anyways, but Argus caught them right before they crashed it into the Big House, so he banned all demigods from driving his van, forever."

"Wait, let's go back a bit. Your chief of security got beheaded guarding a cow?" I asked, baffled.

"Well, the cow was Zeus' girlfriend at the time, so…" Liam shrugged and I pinched the bridge of my nose.

"Of course she was. Forget I asked."

Come to think of it, there really wasn't anyone else (well, technically Dionysus, but I wasn't sure the God of Wine belonged behind the wheel of anything more complicated than a lawnmower). No older campers. No adults who'd learned to drive before passing the knowledge on. It was one of those things I hadn't even considered because Camp Half-Blood was full of children.

Most demigods simply never lived long enough to need a driving license.

I looked around the workshop again. Half the cabin was watching me expectantly, grease smeared across their faces and spanners still clutched in their hands. Kids who could forge enchanted weapons, rebuild an engine from memory and probably dismantle a tank before lunch, yet had never sat behind the steering wheel of a car.

"...Right," I said quietly. "You've got yourselves a deal."

It was a ridiculous thing to feel determined about when there were literal gods and monsters to deal with. Compared to that, teaching a dozen teenagers how to parallel park barely mattered in the grand scheme of things.

But it would matter to them, and so it mattered to me. By the time I left Camp Half-Blood again, every kid in Cabin Nine whose feet could reach the pedals was getting behind the wheel.

//

The following morning, Cabin Nine was already awake (not that I was entirely convinced any of them had actually gone to sleep) by the time I returned from my third and final lesson with the Athena cabin. Progress had been brutal, but steady once we found a few teaching methods that seemed to work (primarily by leaning on as much Ancient Greek as we could, considering my genetic hardwiring for the language thankfully trumped the Curse).

Once I passed a certain threshold of understanding my letters and punctuation, there was a sort of 'click' in my mind, like a veil being drawn back and my knowledge of the English language returned in full.

All at once.

It left me sprawling on the Athena cabin's floor with a bloody nose. It took one of the brainiacs close to five minutes to even notice, they were celebrating that much.

Still, I had gotten a Golden drachma out of it, a special one too, so I wasn't complaining. This one had been stamped on both sides with a rough sketch of a question mark and when I offered it to the Void, for the first time it seemed to almost… think, before that feeling of acceptance returned.

The scroll had then presented me with a choice for the first time.

[Advantage Golden Random Drachma Received!]

[Please make your choice out of the following options:]

[Heat Immunity]

|Rare Trait|

Heat does nothing to you. Volcanoes feel like saunas, deserts feel like mild afternoons, and heatstroke and dehydration are concepts that no longer apply. You may still be vulnerable to cold and primordial flames.

[OR]

[Counselling Mastery]

|Elite Skill|

You are a master counsellor and therapist, guiding others through their personal and psychological problems with perfect technique and timing. People leave your presence feeling heard, understood, and a little lighter. You may still need to learn about a person before your counsel reaches its full effect.

While Heat Immunity sounded dead useful, deadly flames weren't something that I had faced too often up until now, nor did I foresee myself jumping into an active volcano anytime soon. What I had consistently faced were traumatized teenagers beset on all sides by deadly monsters and deadbeat parents, who were desperate for someone to lean on.

The choice turned out to be easy. For now though, instead of organizing therapy sessions, I had a car to pick up.

The Hephaestus cabin's vault door rolled open to reveal organised insanity. Somebody had built what looked suspiciously like a lawnmower with armour plating, three campers were arguing over whether a ballista counted as "portable", and somewhere deeper inside the workshop someone shouted, "It only exploded because you used metric!"

I decided not to ask.

"Perfect timing." Liam called out as he spotted me.

He waved me over with the enthusiasm of a kid showing off a school project. Only this particular school project weighed just under two tonnes.

"...Bloody hell."

It barely looked like the same truck.

The old square body was still there, but every panel had been stripped, repaired and repainted until the faded finish looked factory fresh again. The crater in the front bumper had vanished completely, replaced by something that looked considerably thicker than before, while the suspension now sat noticeably higher off the ground, accommodating thick tires that looked like they ate off-road dirt paths for breakfast and would ask for seconds.

One of the more artistic kids had painted the Camp Half-Blood logo on the doors, contrasting nicely against the calm blue paint of the body.

As we walked over towards the opened hood, Liam was already talking me through the changes like a seasoned mechanic.

"We bored the cylinders thirty thou over, decked the block, balanced the rotating assembly and swapped in forged pistons. Combine that with the absolute beauty that is the new limited-slip diff, chromoly driveshaft, heavy-duty slip yoke and tougher axle shafts and you've got yourself a beast!"

"…"

I slowed down to a halt as I stared down at the enthusiastic blonde at my side, who looked back with a grin before realization hit him and he coughed, a blush on his cheeks.

"Uhm… what I meant to say was… We rebuilt the engine. Both higher top-speed and more power in the lower ranges. Combine that with the Celestial Bronze alloyed bumper and whatever barricade monsters try to throw your way next, this baby will smash straight through no problem. It'll barely scratch the paint." Liam said, a bit calmer now.

"Oh!" one of the younger kids piped up, almost bouncing in place. "Show him the anti-monster package!"

I wasn't entirely convinced I wanted to know what those words meant when spoken by a twelve-year-old wielding a welding torch.

Liam reached through the driver's window before flicking a small switch beneath the dashboard.

There was a heavy metallic clunk.

"...What did that do?"

"Nothing right now. It deploys if monsters get too close."

"Deploys… what exactly?" I asked warily as Liam shrugged.

"Spikes. … Mostly."

"...You know what?" I sighed, fishing my keys out of my pocket. "I'm just going to drive it before I discover something that violates several international conventions."

Liam looked almost offended.

"We only violated two."

"I don't even want to know how you counted."

The engine turned over with a smooth, confident rumble that sounded considerably healthier than it had before and the entire cabin erupted into cheers as though they'd just won Olympic gold.

Honestly, I was beginning to suspect I'd accidentally become Cabin Nine's favourite person purely by virtue of owning something with an internal combustion engine.

"...Thanks guys, I appreciate this. When I get back, I'll take y'all for a spin. Promise."

The workshop actually fell quiet at that, though it only lasted a second.

"No problem."

"Bring it back if you break anything."

"Or if you find something interesting!"

"What are you going to name him?"

I blinked at the sudden question, asked by the smallest demigod there, clad in a grease-stained overall like her siblings (except hers was about three sizes too large), eyes wide on the quietly rumbling truck.

"Name it?"

"He needs a name. We spend two days and all night fixing him up. Wouldn't be right not to give him a name." the small girl insisted, with the rest of the kids immediately nodding as well.

"… well, what do you think I should name it?" I asked, a bit at a loss.

It immediately turned out that was absolutely the wrong question to ask a group of teenagers who had spent the last night fuelled by a mixture of coffee, energy drinks and childish dreams tinkering away at their anti-monster vehicle.

"The Unstoppinator."

"The Monster Mulcher."

"The Internal Combustion of Destiny."

"Trucky McTruckface."

"Truckzilla."

"Truckasaurus Rex."

"Right, alright, that's it- ENOUGH!"

With a sigh I pinched the bridge of my nose as the cabin finally fell into an expectant silence.

"Let's keep it a bit… classier, hm? Anyone else got a suggestion?" I asked somewhat desperately, because at this point, I foresaw having to choose between either Truckzilla or Truckasaurus Rex.

… I was leaning towards the latter.

"Well, the project name was TALOS, but that doesn't really work. The original is an automaton after all, not really a vehicle or steed." Liam mused as he rubbed his chin.

"What about Arion?" the small girl offered and I blinked down at her.

"Who's that?"

"An immortal mythological horse!" she said enthusiastically as if that explained it.

I side-eyed Liam, who shrugged.

"A divine horse, owned by Herakles at some point. Rumor has it that he can run at around 800 miles per hour over water and vertical surfaces. Seems appropriate." He said confidently and I rolled the name around a few times before slapping a hand on the steering wheel.

"Alright then, Arion it is. Now then: off to Olympos!" as I stepped on the gas.

The engine seemed to roar its approval.

//

Long Island slowly disappeared in the rear-view mirror.

For the first time in what felt like forever, I wasn't being chased, ambushed or otherwise inconvenienced by Greek mythology. It was just me, Arion and several hours of surprisingly uneventful driving.

The truck handled beautifully.

Whatever black magic Cabin Nine had worked beneath the bonnet had transformed the old pickup from tired old rust bucket into something that actually accelerated when I asked it to. The suspension soaked up every pothole New York threw at it without complaint, the steering no longer felt like arm-wrestling a rhinoceros and, thanks to Liam's modifications, the spluttering cough of the engine had been transformed into a smooth purr.

I still wasn't entirely convinced the anti-monster package wouldn't accidentally deploy while I was waiting at a traffic light though.

All in all, once I entered New York proper, it didn't take long for me to enter Manhattan. Despite not having spent long in the city (and most of that time on the run from a small army of monsters) finding my destination proved remarkably simple. The Empire State Building had a habit of dominating the skyline. It wasn't the tallest building anymore (not by a long shot) but there was still something iconic about it. The sort of building you recognised instantly, even if you'd only ever seen it in films or on postcards.

By the time I reached the Empire State Building itself, I had been forced to park Arion some streets back and proceed on foot. The pavement was packed with tourists, office workers and the usual assortment of New Yorkers who looked annoyed by both groups. None of them gave the slightest indication they knew Olympos was directly overhead.

Going with the flow of the crowd I entered the (admittedly gorgeous art deco) lobby of the iconic skyscraper and for lack of a better direction ambled over towards one of the reception desks.

"Excuse me? I have a question that is going to sound really… really silly, but uhmm… how do I get to the 600th​ floor?" I stammered.

The receptionist looked at me with surprise and suspicion, which, yeah fair enough.

"The 600th ​…-? Is this a joke or something? Is there a hidden camera?" she asked, turning almost hostile.

"No! No, just… just a joke. Haha… ha…"

I made for a hasty retreat, internally cussing out the Olympians that they could magically manifest in a campfire but couldn't be arsed to roll out the welcoming mat, when a nearby security guard approached.

"Problem?"

"No!"

"Yeah, kinda. This guy just asked me how to get to the 600th​ floor."

The guard turned to look at me, his expression unreadable.

"I think you best come with me son." He rumbled.

"Look, I'm not looking for trouble, it was just a joke-" I tried to backpedal but the guard stepped closer, his voice dropping.

"First time, I take it?"

"… yeah?"

"Right, come along. Best not keep your appointment waiting."

With a comforting nod to the confused receptionist, the guard turned around, beckoning me over towards his desk. As I quickly approached, he rummaged through one of the drawers.

"Usually I like to give demigods the run-around, make them work a little for it, but with the noise coming from upstairs… better not risk it." The guard muttered, before producing a golden key card and pressing it into my hand.

"Insert this in the security slot. Make sure you're alone."

I nodded and made to move away when his grip on my wrist tightened, his face pinched.

"Are… are you really? The son of… well, you know what I mean." He stammered briefly, as if afraid to ask.

"You think they'd be kicking up such a fuss upstairs if I wasn't?" I shot back, somewhat taken aback to see genuine fear at my parentage for the first time.

Annabeth, Thalia, Luke and Grover had been shocked of course, and Dionysus and Chiron had been wary, but this guy seemed genuinely afraid, promptly letting go of my wrist as if burned.

"Right… right, of course, makes sense. My apologies." He muttered as he shooed me over towards one of the elevators, which opened with a contrastingly cheery 'ping!'.

As soon as the elevator doors closed, I slipped the key into the slot and a new button appeared on the console, a red one that said 600. Ironically, the elevator music was playing Stayin' Alive. By the time I finally reached the 600th​ floor, I found myself unintentionally humming along to Disco Inferno.

Before I could contemplate the gods' questionable taste in music, the elevator doors opened up to reveal a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Far below me was Manhattan while in front of me, white marble steps wound up the spine of a cloud, into the sky. My eyes followed the stairway to its end, where my brain just could not accept what I saw, as my [Hawk Eyes] took in each minute distant detail in perfect clarity.

From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of a snow-capped mountain. Dozens of white-columned palaces clung to its slopes, their gilded terraces and bronze braziers gleaming in the sunlight as winding roads climbed towards the largest palace crowning the summit. It was an Ancient Greek city, except it wasn't in ruins. It was new, vibrant and colourful, the way Athens must have looked twenty-five hundred years ago.

"Whoa…"

My enhanced gaze was interrupted when the scroll popped into existence right in front of my face. Golden lettering wove across its surface as I wildly windmilled on the narrow stone path suspended in mid-air. When I recovered my balance I shot the parchment an ugly look, but it seemed more concerned with hovering in place against the cross-winds than to even acknowledge me.

[Landmark Achievement Recognized]

[Entered the home of the Greek Pantheon: MOUNT OLYMPOS]

[Reward: Bronze Random Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

A bronze coin dropped from nowhere into my outstretched hand. I caught it automatically, my [Hawk Eyes] still fixed on the impossible city that had no business existing six hundred floors above Manhattan. For once, even the promise of a new reward struggled to compete.

I slipped the drachma into my pocket. Whatever it contained could wait until I'd finished taking in the sights.

I had barely made it a dozen steps off the stone bridge before my eyes were drawn away from the imposing spectacle to the figure waiting for me at the entrance to the city. He was tall and absolutely corded with muscle, as if he had won all his body-building competitions by eating the other contestants. A shocking stripe of red wound its way over his bald scalp, slashing down over his face across his left eye.

"Ethan Creed. You are to follow me to the council chambers of the Olympian Gods. Do not stray from the path, or you shall be destroyed." The figure intoned in a deep voice, before sharply turning on his heel, clearly expecting me to fall in.

We moved hurriedly through Olympos, just shy of an outright run and despite his gruff exterior, I got the distinct impression this guy was as anxious as the security guard downstairs.

"… what's with the paint?" I found myself asking as we hurried up yet another flight of stairs and the tall figure froze minutely, almost missing a step.

"Damn mortals and their damn video games. Sure my name is known, but he's not even the same guy!" the musclebound man muttered angrily as he picked up the pace even more, clearly not inclined to humour my curiosity.

At the speed we were hauling ass, it didn't take long before we stood before a gargantuan palace shining with white marble and polished silver. The doors were immense, taller even than the Big House and the guard approached them with gravitas, pushing them open with a grunt as his enormous muscles strained. The thick slabs of gold and precious stones moved as mountains, a deep groan echoing out that rattled up through the soles of my feet.

And then we stepped into the throne room and I was briefly too stunned for words. Massive columns rose to a domed ceiling far, far above my head, which was gilded with moving constellations. Twelve thrones, built for beings the size of a small kaiju were arranged in an inverted U, just like the cabins at Camp Half-Blood. An enormous fire crackled in the central hearth, its warmth immediately felt yet somehow not overwhelming.

Adding to the sheer spectacle of the gargantuan room were the figures inside it. Every throne was filled with a being that was unmistakably divine. Twelve gods and goddesses and I had their undivided attention the moment I stepped into the room.

Beside me, the guard sweated before bowing sharply at the waist.

"The Son of Kaos has been delivered to await your judgment, oh mighty Zeus!" he said and if not for the circumstances, I would've laughed at the way his voice cracked.

"That claim remains to be seen. There are those who still harbour doubts." The man at the head of the gods, glad in a sharp pin-stripe suit with a beard shot through with white like lightning, rumbled dangerously, before dismissing the guard.

"You did well Kratos. Retreat for now, you will be called upon if needed." He said, waving his hand.

"Yes Lord Zeus! Right away, Lord Zeus!"

Still bowing at the waist, Kratos moved backwards, grabbed hold of the doors and dragged them shut behind him, trapping me with the fully assembled Olympian gods.

"Step forwards, child." Zeus commanded and I hurried to do as I was told.

There was a time and a place for being a recalcitrant little shit and this definitely didn't feel like either.

"I arrive as summoned, Lord Zeus… uhm, sir." I said, and after a moment of awkwardness I slowly sank to a knee for good measure, my skin tingling uncomfortably under the collective, almost physical weight of the Olympians' stares.

The King of the Gods deliberately let the moment drag out before he finally spoke.

"Rise."

I climbed back to my feet, deliberately keeping my eyes somewhere around chest height. It seemed like a sensible compromise between staring at the floor and accidentally making prolonged eye contact with the immortal embodiment of thunderstorms.

"You have caused quite the stir, Ethan Creed." Zeus rumbled, a faint accusation in his tone.

"So I've been told, lord Zeus, sir." I replied, forcing my tone to stay level as I tried to inject some levity in the situation.

Not that any of the gods seemed to appreciate the attempt. Pretty sure Dionysus was mimicking the sound of crickets softly in the background, the asshole.

'Yeesh… tough crowd…'

Zeus regarded me for several long seconds, his expression betraying nothing. Around him, the rest of the Olympians remained equally silent. Twelve pairs of immortal eyes fixed on me with varying degrees of curiosity, suspicion and outright hostility (and one case of feigned indifference, courtesy of our resident recovering alcoholic).

"The matter before this council," Zeus began, his voice carrying effortlessly through the vast throne room, "is not one of guilt. Not yet, at least."

I resisted the urge to visibly relax.

"It is one of understanding the potential threat at hand."

'...Never mind.'

"I am no threat to Olympos, lord Zeus sir-" I tried to defend myself, but the woman besides Zeus was having none of it.

"A likely story, after you flaunted and insulted our traditions, and even assaulted one of our own." The Queen of Olympos said regally and already I could tell the two of us wouldn't be getting along.

"Well it would help if your traditions weren't such bullshit…" I couldn't help but mutter under my breath, though judging by the way her eyes widened and nostrils flared, Hera had heard me just fine, her mouth opening as she half-rose out of her throne.

"You stand before this assembled council because your existence presents questions for which we currently possess no satisfactory answers." Zeus interrupted, his gaze remaining fixed on me as his Queen bristled besides him before reluctantly backing down. "Before judgement may be rendered upon you, this council must first determine precisely what you are."

The words echoed through the hall before fading into silence once more. Considering all that I had been told about the guy, that all sounded surprisingly... reasonable?

'Guess saving the King's daughter comes with some perks.' I thought.

Finally, Athena leaned forward slightly upon her throne.

"The available evidence supports several competing hypotheses," she said evenly. "The first is that Ethan Creed is exactly what he has identified himself as: a descendant of the Primordial Kaos."

Ares barked out a derisive laugh.

"Impossible."

Athena didn't so much as glance in his direction, though to my worry several of the gods seemed to mirror Ares' sentiment.

"The second," she continued, "is that he has somehow established a connection to that Primordial's power without any familial relationship."

"Which," Apollo interjected, "would itself be unprecedented."

"Precedent is becoming remarkably scarce where this boy is concerned," Demeter replied calmly.

Hermes rested his chin on one hand, studying me with an almost amused expression.

"Or maybe we're all making this far more complicated than it needs to be. Ancient relic. Forgotten blessing. Weird primordial accident. Stranger things have happened."

"No," Apollo said quietly, sounding genuinely unsettled. "No, they haven't."

His golden eyes remained fixed on me.

"I don't like him," Artemis said flatly, in contrast to her brother's cryptic tone.

"You don't like any men," Aphrodite accused.

"I fail to see the distinction."

Aphrodite opened her mouth again to fire back as Ares leaned forwards, ever eager to help his not-so-secret lover.

"Enough." Zeus thundered.

Quite literally, as the air itself seemed to thicken. Clouds gathered beyond the open colonnades despite the clear skies over Olympos, and somewhere far above, thunder rolled once across the heavens.

Both Artemis and Aphrodite immediately fell silent and even Ares settled back into his throne with an irritated grunt.

"Continue." Zeus ordered as he turned back towards Athena.

"The difficulty," Athena said after the briefest inclination of her head, "lies in verification."

She looked around the chamber.

"Every proposed method requires interacting directly with Mr. Creed's connection to Kaos."

Absolute silence filled the impossibly large chamber, before the God of the Sea hesitantly broke it.

"If he truly carries the essence of a Primordial..." He let the sentence trail away.

"...then whatever touches that essence risks touching the first Nothingness itself, where dead gods go to die." Athena agreed.

The implications hung heavily in the air, and no one volunteered. For all their pride, none of the Olympians appeared eager to become the first immortal in history to experimentally prod the embodiment of creation itself.

"...Actually-"

Twelve divine heads turned towards me and I winced at the sudden pressure of their combined attention.

"Sorry. I know I'm interrupting, but... I might actually have something that helps."

That earned me a few interested looks.

"Explain." Zeus ordered.

I reached carefully into my pocket and Ares' hand immediately drifted towards his spear.

Hermes rolled his eyes.

"Oh, relax. If he was going to assassinate the King of the Gods, I doubt he'd start by reaching into his trousers."

I withdrew the small bronze drachma between my fingers.

"This."

For the first time since I'd entered the throne room, Dionysus actually looked awake, his bored expression disappeared almost instantly.

"Oh?" he said, sitting forward. "Oh, this ought to be good."

"Lord Zeus, sir?" I prompted as I looked towards Zeus.

Zeus regarded the coin for a moment before giving a single nod.

"You have my permission."

I flipped the drachma into the air.

It never came back down.

The bronze coin froze above my outstretched palm as reality bent around it.

Infinite darkness lit up by pinpricks of starry lights swirled into existence like a black hole as light itself was sucked in and distorted. The familiar feeling of acknowledgement and transaction welled up from some part deep within my soul, but this time it almost seemed to linger, its attention caught by my surroundings as it almost 'looked' around me with a disinterested gaze, before fading away again.

Several Olympians rose halfway from their thrones and even Hephaestus stopped tinkering with the little mechanism in his hands as his eyes widened.

A symbol of a ring appeared in black and white over my head like a hologram as the parchment appeared beside me with a proud flourish, golden lettering already spreading over its surface.

[Yellow Stoneplate Ring]

|Uncommon Item|

Dark Souls – Stoneplates, the symbol of a true knight, grant the strength to face various hardships. The yellow stoneplate symbolises lightning and storms, bolstering resistance against wind and lightning.

A broad gold ring with an oversized rectangular face framed by an ornate raised border dropped neatly into my waiting hand.

'….What's a Dark Souls?'

Standing before the throne of the King of the Skies, the irony of the reward was almost painful, though it seemed lost on the assembled gods as the room became deathly still. Even Dionysus couldn't quite keep up his disinterested act.

"Anyone else feel a chill go up their spine?" he muttered as he cracked open another can of Diet Coke.

Apollo remained fixed on the fading darkness where the drachma had vanished. "So it is true," he murmured. "Kaos itself acknowledged him."

"Acknowledged," Hera pointed out. "Not explained."

"The demonstration establishes a direct and intrinsic connection between Ethan Creed and Kaos. It does not establish the nature of that connection. Whether he is descended from the Primordial or merely granted access to its power remains unanswered." Athena picked up as her grey eyes settled on me.

"How could he possibly be a descendant? Just look at him, he's scrawny, like a human! Kaos' other spawn are the literal fucking Earth and Sky and we're supposed to believe this kid is their brother?" Ares growled in frustration.

Annoyingly, the big meathead had a good point, I rather stood out on the family portrait.

"Maybe I just got my Dad's good looks?" I (somewhat foolishly, admittedly) needled the God of War, his blazing eyes boring into mine and it took a significant amount of willpower not to flinch away from the sheer senseless violence in that hateful gaze.

"The granting of the ring is significant," Hera interjected, cold as ice compared to her fiery son, "and still inconclusive. A priest may bear the blessing of a god without sharing their blood. A mortal may carry a divine artefact without becoming divine himself."

"True," Athena conceded. "The ring alone cannot establish parentage. Taken together with the scroll, the drachma and his absence from prophecy, however, it makes coincidence increasingly difficult to defend."

Apollo shifted upon his golden throne, his earlier good humor entirely absent. "There is no coincidence here. Whatever name we choose to place upon the relationship, Kaos answers him."

That seemed an uncomfortably intimate way of phrasing it. The scroll had never exactly sat me down for a heartfelt conversation about our family history, but I doubted correcting Apollo would improve the atmosphere.

"We're wasting time." Ares spoke as he sat forward on his throne, one heavy hand resting on the shaft of his spear as his burning eyes remained fixed upon me. "The boy's tied to something none of us can control. We've killed threats for less."

The ring suddenly felt much heavier on my finger.

Hermes sat upright. "He is not a threat merely because you lack the imagination to understand him."

"He broke Dionysus' jaw, just days after getting this unknown power!"

Dionysus finally stirred from his slouch. "It was just my nose, technically."

Ares glanced towards him. "You're defending him?"

"I'm correcting you. There's a difference." Dionysus rotated his can of Diet Coke lazily between two fingers, though his eyes had sharpened.

"You threatened to kill him just yesterday!"

"I threaten to kill most campers eventually. It encourages personal growth."

Ares stared at him, as did a fair few of the other Olympians, causing Dionysus to eventually sigh.

"The boy is irritating, reckless and possesses all the natural deference of a feral goat," he said, waving his can vaguely in my direction. "Unfortunately, he is also a camper under my supervision. Thus far, his alleged offences consist of surviving attacks directed against him, protecting other demigods and refusing to die when several parties found that outcome convenient. If we have begun executing children for that, Camp Half-Blood will be considerably quieter by supper."

That left the assembled gods quiet for a moment. Ares wasn't wrong, they had killed and cursed for less, but those were different times, and I was a different variable altogether.

Athena turned back towards Zeus, though the faintest trace of exasperation remained around her eyes. "My reservations do not justify his destruction. They justify caution."

Hera gave a cold hum from beside Zeus. "How generous. One might almost forget that one of the girls he rescued was your daughter."

Athena's posture stiffened. "I have not forgotten. I speak objectively, nonetheless."

"Nor have I forgotten whom else he preserved." Hera barreled straight through Athena's objections as her gaze passed over me with the detached distaste one might reserve for mud tracked across a clean floor.

"The bastard child of my ever-disloyal husband yet lives because of him. Still, personal offence is not law, and I will not pretend otherwise merely because others assembled here have found convenient reasons to do so. The boy's blood remains uncertain. His connection does not. We should therefore judge him according to the danger that connection presents, rather than the gratitude of gods whose children he happened to save."

It was perhaps the closest Hera could physically come to arguing that I should receive a fair hearing without choking on the words.

Zeus clearly wanted to give his wife a piece of his mind, but his brother interrupted him. Poseidon had remained quiet through most of the discussion, one hand resting against the arm of his throne while his sea-green eyes regarded me with guarded neutrality.

"The boy altered what was expected when he saved Thalia Grace," he said. "That alone cannot be treated as a crime. Prophecy describes what may come to pass; it does not compel a demigod to stand aside while another child dies."

Apollo flinched slightly at the phrasing, though Poseidon gave no indication that he noticed.

"His actions may carry consequences we do not yet understand," Poseidon continued, his voice measured. "So too would his death. Watch him. Judge his choices rather than his connection. If he gives us reason to act, we will."

There was something beneath the neutrality, a private current I couldn't read.

Hephaestus grunted from his throne, turning the small mechanism in his hands over once before setting it aside. "Agreed. Conduct speaks louder than blood. He made a fair bargain with my children. Asked for work, offered something they wanted and kept his word. To me, that says enough, for now."

Hephaestus nodded towards the ring. "The blessing is real. The power behind it's real. Beyond that, I don't much care what title you stamp on him until he gives us reason to."

Demeter inclined her head in agreement. Aphrodite said nothing, though her distant gaze remained fixed upon me, curious rather than warm. Apollo still looked uncomfortable, and Artemis looked as though the absence of an immediate execution remained a regrettable oversight. The division in the council was obvious, but the argument had finally stopped circling the same impossible question.

Zeus allowed the silence to settle before rising fully from his throne.

Every god turned towards him.

"Within the constraints of the law, the distinction between descendant and chosen vessel is presently immaterial. Until evidence proves otherwise, Ethan Creed will be treated as a demi-Primordial and accorded the protections and scrutiny appropriate to that status."

Protections sounded good. Scrutiny sounded considerably less so, but I wasn't about to haggle. Not right now at least.

Ares' face twisted. "You would let him walk away?"

Zeus turned his head, a warning glow in his eyes.

"I said he would be judged according to law. I did not invite you to confuse your appetite for violence with justice."

The God of War's grip tightened around his spear, yet he bowed his head. Zeus' word was absolute here, regardless of what any of them thought of the ruling.

Zeus looked back to me. "You saved Thalia Grace when you owed her nothing. You preserved the lives of those travelling beside you and have committed no proven offence against Olympos. These facts weigh in your favor."

The admission clearly cost him something, although whether that was his pride or the discomfort of publicly acknowledging a debt to a mortal, I couldn't tell.

"They do not grant immunity," he continued. "Should you abuse our grace, threaten Olympos or knowingly bring ruin upon those under our protection, your connection to Kaos will not prevent punishment."

"Understood, lord Zeus, sir." I nodded my thanks.

His expression remained stern, but some of the hostility in the room eased. The question of what I was had not exactly received a satisfying answer, though the gods had apparently settled on 'close enough to Kaos that nobody should poke him without a big stick'. Considering the alternatives, I could live with that.

Zeus rested both hands against the arms of his throne.

"Then the first matter is settled. We turn now to the reason this council was convened."

That wiped away what little relief I had managed to gather.

"I call upon the Morai to lay their charge-" The air changed before Zeus could continue.

The fire in the central hearth folded in on itself, every tongue of flame bending towards the center as though caught by a wind that touched nothing else. The moving constellations across the domed ceiling halted in place. Even the storm outside fell silent, leaving an unnatural stillness across Olympos.

Three voices whispered through the quiet throne room.

They came from nowhere and everywhere at once, dry as thread dragged over bone. The words were too soft to understand, yet the sound sent a cold pressure crawling through the empty place behind my eyes.

Space folded.

One heartbeat the center of the throne room was empty, the next it wasn't. Three bent figures stood around the central hearth as though they had occupied those exact places since the palace had first been built and reality had only just now remembered to include them.

For the first time since I had entered Olympos, Zeus looked neither angry nor suspicious.

He looked alarmed.

The first crone held a spindle. The second measured a length of thread between long, bloodless fingers. The third carried a pair of shears whose edges caught no light at all. Their faces were ancient beyond age, and all three sets of clouded eyes fixed upon me with such concentrated hatred that I instinctively took a step back.

The one bearing the spindle raised a crooked finger.

"ANATHEMA!"

Her shriek struck the palace hard enough to crack marble beneath my boots. The second Fate pulled the thread in her hands taut while the third opened her shears with a slow metallic scrape that made every immortal in the room recoil.

"THREADLESS ABOMINATION!" they screamed together, their voices twisting into one terrible sound. "THE ANATHEMA DESERVES DEATH!"

---

AN: As always, you can read up to five chapters ahead over on my Patreon.

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER 10

​

---

The words hung heavily over the assembly and for several seconds, nobody moved. Athena still stood half-risen from her throne. Hermes' perpetual smile had vanished without a trace. Apollo stared at the Three Sisters with an expression I couldn't quite decipher, though I was fairly certain the God of Prophecy had recognised the significance of "Threadless" far sooner than I had. Even Ares looked as though someone had reached into his skull and temporarily disconnected the part responsible for shouting.

Only Zeus moved.

The King of the Gods rose slowly from his throne, the movement deliberate enough that every eye in the chamber drifted towards him. His expression remained stern, though some subtle shift had taken place since the Fates' arrival.

Zeus didn't look afraid, exactly (I wasn't even sure if a god like him was capable of the feeling in the first place) though there was a wariness in his expression that hadn't been there before. The sort of caution a king reserved for powers he neither commanded nor fully understood.

"My Ladies," he began, inclining his head with all the respect due beings older than Olympus itself, "your words carry a weight no throne beneath the heavens may lightly dismiss."

None of the Sisters answered. They just kept staring at me with the intense obsession of craftsmen examining a blemish in their otherwise flawless masterpiece.

Zeus continued regardless.

"This child was summoned before Olympus because concerns had been raised regarding both his nature and the consequences of his actions. Those concerns have been heard before the assembled Council. Evidence has been presented. Arguments have been made." His gaze swept briefly across the gathered Olympians before returning to the Three Sisters. "By the laws governing this court, judgement has already commenced."

Only then did the eldest Fate lift her eyes from the spindle.

"There..."

"...is no judgement."

"There is only the Great Pattern."

The words were spat out with such certainty, such finality, nobody seemed inclined to argue with them on my behalf.

Zeus neither frowned nor raised his voice.

"For the Loom, perhaps." The god spoke carefully, deliberately waiting a moment before continuing. "But this is Olympus. You stand within the house of Zeus Horkios, where Oaths are kept and my word is Law."

The silence that followed felt strangely different from the one before. Less oppressive, more... attentive. As though every immortal present understood they were witnessing two authorities, each absolute within its own sphere, carefully feeling out the boundaries of the other's domain.

Zeus might not like going against the Fates (especially not on behalf of someone else, even a demi-primordial), but he liked having his authority overruled even less.

"I do not presume to command Fate," Zeus said evenly. "Nor would I dream of questioning the stewardship entrusted to the Three who measure the lives of gods and mortals alike. Yet Ethan Creed was brought before this court in accordance with Olympian law. He was afforded the right to answer the concerns laid against him, as every petitioner before the throne of Zeus Xenios is."

His voice remained calm throughout, though I couldn't help noticing that nobody dared to interrupt him, not even the three ancient snarling sisters.

"Only moments ago, this Council concluded that no offence had yet been established warranting his destruction. The uncertainty surrounding his nature remained precisely that: uncertainty. Accordingly, Olympus rendered provisional judgement."

The word lingered. Provisional. Not pardoned exactly, merely... not yet condemned.

Zeus spread one hand towards the Sisters, his tone remaining carefully polite, yet unwavering. "You now demand a new, graver sentence without trial."

The eldest Fate regarded Zeus with wide eyes and wrinkled lips peeled back from small, jagged teeth.

"A trial..."

"...cannot ignore the truth."

"You delay..."

"...the inevitable."

"This Abomination must be destroyed...!"

"...before it brings ruin to the Great Pattern!"

"You have named this child Anathema and demand his destruction." Zeus pushed back as politely as he possibly could without losing face. "Such a judgement cannot be lightly executed, nor your wishes in this matter be disregarded. Yet before Olympus carries out so absolute a sentence, I would know by what measure it has been reached."

The Fates remained silent for a long moment as they seemed to measure Zeus' words. The spindle turned once, twice, and when they spoke, it was almost with a hint of confusion.

"The measure..."

"...is the Loom."

"The Anathema has no thread."

"We cannot weave it."

"We cannot cut it."

"We must EXCISE IT!"

The assembled immortal gods of the Greek Pantheon collectively flinched at the sudden outbursts, but the Fates barely seemed to notice, blind gazes still fixed unwaveringly on me. Zeus drew himself up taller, his expression conflicted but his stance unwavering, when Athena almost hesitantly interrupted.

"If I may, my King?"

He gave a single nod, looking somewhat relieved.

Athena approached cautiously, as if she was about to try something absolutely outrageous, like a lawyer about to demand to put the judge himself on the witness stand. I'd already watched her argue my case against half of Olympus without blinking, but apparently questioning the Fates required a little more tact.

"My Ladies," she began, inclining her head respectfully, "none assembled here would presume to dispute your stewardship of the Loom. If you declare Ethan Creed to stand outside the Pattern, I have no grounds upon which to question that conclusion."

The second Fate slowly lifted her blind gaze.

"It is..."

"...no conclusion."

"It is truth."

"I do not doubt it." Athena agreed immediately. "I merely seek to understand its consequence."

She folded her hands behind her back.

"Lord Zeus has rightly observed that Olympus has just concluded its own deliberations. We found Ethan Creed's connection to the Primordial Kaos undeniable, yet its nature remains unknown. Whether he is descendant, chosen vessel, or something for which no language presently exists, none among us can yet say with certainty. It is therefore neither wisdom nor justice to render an irrevocable sentence while the facts remain incomplete."

Nobody contradicted her, not even Ares.

Which was... interesting.

I'd expected at least one of them to object that 'uncertainty' wasn't a particularly compelling reason to go against the Fates themselves in order to keep me alive. Instead, every Olympian seemed perfectly content to let Athena continue.

'So basically, nobody has the faintest bloody idea what happens if Olympus executes the only person Kaos has acknowledged since Creation, and nobody particularly wants to find out. Which, yeah, fair enough…' I realized, though of course I kept my observations to myself.

The less attention drawn to me, the better. Thankfully, Athena quickly pressed on.

"You have declared Ethan Creed an Anathema. That he is Threadless, one who exists outside the Pattern. That much is now plain."

Her grey eyes remained upon the Three Sisters.

"However, is he truly at fault for such a crime, or is he the victim of it? Ethan Creed did not ask to stand outside the Pattern. Nevertheless, he now exists. Whether the Loom recognises him or not, Reality clearly does. The First of the Protogenoi, the Void itself, has answered him."

Athena's grey eyes flickered towards the heavy golden band sitting on my finger as every god shifted minutely on their throne, remembering that glancing sweep of… attention as I summoned a piece of primordial chaos inside the throne room.

"If Kaos has introduced into Creation something the Loom cannot account for, then refusing to acknowledge that fact does not preserve the Pattern." Athena continued, voice calm. "It merely blinds those charged with protecting it."

The Fates bristled at the accusation, as Cloyho pulled her thread taut between her knobbly fists, holding it more like a garrotte wire instead.

"We do preserve it..."

"...we must protect it!"

"From the Anathema itself!"

"Alright, fuck this."

Every head in the throne room turned towards me.

Probably because interrupting the three embodiments of Fate arguing for my execution wasn't particularly sane, especially when I'd narrowly avoided the same fate at the hands of the twelve gods around them less than fifteen minutes ago.

Then again, I'd been standing at parade rest listening to everyone debate whether I was even allowed to exist for what felt like half an hour, so sanity was becoming less of a concern than it probably should've been.

I stepped towards the Fates and to my surprise (and everyone else's, including themselves) they flinched away from me.

"Ethan." Athena warned.

"No, seriously." I held up a hand, earning myself a look from the Goddess of Wisdom that promised a very unpleasant conversation later if we both survived long enough to have one. "They've called me an abomination about fifteen times now. I think I've earned the right to ask a question."

The youngest Fate's shears twitched as if she was only seconds away from launching it like a throwing knife.

"You keep saying I'm destroying your Pattern just by existing. Fine. I get that part. I'm not supposed to be here." I gestured vaguely towards myself. "But I am here, and unless I've badly misunderstood how this works, you're Fate. You've got a Loom that controls what happens, you measure and snip the lives of all mortals..."

My eyes dropped towards the spindle.

"So why haven't you killed me?"

The throne room went very quiet as the three old women stared at me.

"That wasn't rhetorical or a challenge or anything, by the way." I added when none of them answered. "You've spent the last ten minutes demanding everyone else destroy me. Why? If you're powerful enough to order even gods around to do your dirty work, why not clean it up yourselves?"

"Ethan..." Athena said again, considerably more urgently this time.

I ignored her.

"If I'm such a threat to the Pattern, fix it your damned selves. Go ahead, cut my thread."

The eldest Fate's expression twisted.

"The Anathema..."

"...has..."

"...NO THREAD!"

"Exactly."

That shut them up.

My heart was hammering hard enough that I could feel it in my throat, but there was something almost intoxicating about finally being the one speaking after spending so long listening to gods debate what should be done with me.

"You can't cut something that isn't there. You can't weave whatever you want into my life, or my death for that matter. You can't decide I fall down the stairs tomorrow and break my neck, because according to you, I'm not connected to your little fucking embroidery."

The sisters sucked in a breath and all three looked just about ready to strangle me with their own loom. Still, that familiar heat was bubbling in my veins, the same anger that I felt welling up inside when I first heard of Thalia's unjust punishment or of the unfair way so many discarded and unwanted demigods spent their days back at Camp.

Even if I wanted to, I couldn't back down now, surfing a wave of righteous anger that came from the most primal parts of me. I hated the Fates, I realized in a flash of clarity, perhaps even more than they did me. It wasn't even because they wanted me dead (though that hadn't exactly made us friends either of course), this went beyond that.

This was... intrinsic, almost.

"So what are you going to do about it?!" I roared in challenge as I stopped barely a pace away from the Sisters, arms spread wide.

Three faces contorted with identical fury as all three ancient crones suddenly rushed forwards, spindly arms shooting out and grabbing hold of me in grips tighter and more unyielding than iron clasps.

"Oh. That."

I had just enough time to realise I might have pushed the ancient cosmic entities a bit too far before the world disappeared.

There wasn't even any pain, just... nothing. For one impossible instant I simply ceased to have any connection to anything around me. Olympus vanished. The gods vanished. The floor beneath my boots, the air in my lungs, even the sensation of my own body disappeared as something vast closed around me from every conceivable direction.

And somewhere beyond all of it, I could feel the Loom.

Thousands upon thousands upon thousands of threads stretched away beyond anything [Hawk Eyes] could ever have shown me, crossing and knotting and dividing until the sheer scale of it became impossible to comprehend, weaving into a tapestry that threatened to break my brain if I looked at it for too long. Every single thread led somewhere, all of them connected to something.

None of them led to me.

The Fates were searching for something that simply wasn't there. I could feel their will moving through the Loom, reaching for me from a thousand different directions, trying to find some strand they could tighten around my existence, some connection they could seize and use to drag me into the Pattern long enough to cut me out of it.

They found nothing.

Their grip tightened around my arms instead, ancient fingers digging hard enough into my flesh that I distantly wondered whether they intended to settle for tearing me apart by hand, and whatever force they were pouring through the Loom surged with them. For one terrifying moment the emptiness around me seemed to contract, as though all of Fate was bearing down upon the single point where I stubbornly continued to exist.

And still, there was nothing for it to catch.

A second later Olympus slammed back into existence around me.

My knees hit the marble hard enough to hurt as air crashed back into my lungs. Around me, several Olympians had risen from their thrones. Zeus had lightning crawling between his fingers. Poseidon was on his feet with his trident in hand, while Athena had moved several steps closer to me.

The Fates looked almost as bad as I felt. Their grey hair had come loose around their faces and their robes hung crookedly from hunched shoulders, leaving all three ancient women looking like they'd just been dragged backwards through a hedge. The tools clutched in their hands hadn't escaped whatever the hell had just happened either. Fine strands were peeling away from Clotho's spindle and dissolving into smoke before they reached the floor, while the markings along Lachesis's measuring rod had warped and blackened as though someone had held them over a flame. Even Atropos's shears had suffered, a thin crack running down one blade as wisps of smoke curled from the joint.

For a moment I just stayed there on my knees, breathing hard as I took in the three dishevelled crones and the battered instruments in their hands. Apparently trying to force something completely outside the Pattern through the machinery of Fate was akin to throwing a fucking wrench into said machinery.

"...yeah. Thought so." I gasped as the eldest Fate's bloodshot eyes snapped towards mine in abject fury.

The scream that followed was so sudden and violent that even Ares flinched.

Before the Fates could rush forwards to physically beat me to death with their attributes, everyone in the room froze on the spot as golden sparks erupted in front of my face, twisting together until they formed the familiar shape of a glowing scroll.

I nearly punched it on instinct when it appeared.

"Gods fucking—" I gasped as I fell back on my butt.

The parchment unfurled itself cheerfully in front of me, apparently unconcerned by the fact that some of the oldest beings in Creation were currently having what I could only describe as a collective aneurysm.

Golden letters burned themselves across the page.

[Achievement Recognized!]

[Defied Fate]

[You have stood against the Great Loom itself!]

[Silver Trait Drachma Awarded!]

[Rewards Dispensing]

A silver drachma dropped from the scroll and I snatched it out of the air, turning the coin over between my fingers as I reread the reward.

A Silver Trait.

For pissing off the literal embodiments of Fate so badly that they'd tried to erase me from existence.

'You know what? Worth it.'

I glanced back at the Fates as they leaned on each other, unsteadily working their way back to their feet. If my mere existence had pissed them off, then the appearance of the scroll outright baffled them.

"You said I have no place in this world. Clearly..." I held up the silver drachma towards them and they shrunk away from it as if it were a powerful talisman. "... Dad thinks differently."

I ignored Zeus' booming 'Mister Creed!' as I moved the silver drachma to my thumb. After surviving an (literal) elimination attempt, I was quite done with asking for permission. The coin flicked through the empty air and at its apex was sucked up by a sudden swirling void that made the Fates scramble backwards in such a hurry they stumbled over each other's feet.

A silver hologram flickered into existence above my head, taking the shape of a broad-shouldered figure standing beneath an enormous boulder, arms raised as it held the impossible weight aloft.

Pleasant warmth spread throughout every individual muscle in my body as the golden text on the scroll rewrote itself before everyone's eyes.

[Strong]
|Common Trait|

You were always pretty strong, granting you slightly increased strength and allowing you to exert more force with your body.

I blinked.

"...Strong? Thanks... I think?"

After everything that had just happened, I'd apparently earned the supernatural equivalent of eating my vegetables and remembering to go to the gym.

However, much like with my previous blessings, this one was actually quite useful if combined with my other rewards. A part of me couldn't wait to see how this interacted with the strength enhancement of my [One Star Uniform].

I shot the baffled looking Sisters a considering glance that actually saw Atropos' eyes widen as she scooted backwards, holding her shears outstretched between us in slightly trembling hands like one would a sword.

'... nah... I've pushed them far enough for today...' I shook my head, squashing that part of my mind.

The throne room hadn't quite recovered either. Most of the gods were still staring between me and the three dishevelled Fates, while the Sisters themselves had drawn together around their damaged tools, whatever murderous thoughts they were entertaining apparently tempered by the fact that they'd just tried about as direct an approach as possible and I was still standing here.

Athena, on the other hand, looked thoughtful.

Her grey eyes moved from me to the faint wisps of smoke still curling from the Fates' instruments, and I watched something click into place behind them. Apparently my brief attempt at getting myself erased from existence had provided the Goddess of Wisdom with something useful after all.

"You have just demonstrated the flaw in your own argument." Athena said.

Three furious faces snapped towards her.

"The Loom cannot account for Ethan Creed. You reached for his life directly through the Pattern and found nothing there to grasp, yet he plainly continues to exist." She gestured towards me. "His existence and his effect upon the Pattern are therefore two separate matters. You cannot simply assume that because one lies outside the Pattern, the other must inevitably destroy it."

The eldest Sister bristled.

"The Anathema..."

"...remains..."

"...a danger!"

"I do not dispute that." Athena replied evenly. "I question whether you have correctly identified the nature of that danger."

That seemed to give them pause.

"If Ethan Creed's mere existence tears the Pattern beyond repair, then there is little left to discuss. If, however, the Pattern has been damaged by his actions instead, by the choices he has made, then surely the nature of those choices must also matter." Athena challenged, and to my surprise the Fates didn't immediately dismiss her words.

The throne room fell quiet as everyone considered the distinction she had just drawn.

If the crime was my existence, then there wasn't much room for negotiation.

If the crime lay in my actions...

Well.

Actions could, at least in theory, be judged.

The eldest Fate regarded her for a very long time. When she answered, there was no longer unbridled anger in her voice, only seething certainty.

"You seek..."

"...a path..."

"...where none exists."

"The Anathema was never woven."

"And its every step unravels…"

"…what was and shall ever be."

"I wonder if that is entirely true. In any tapestry, what has been torn asunder may be woven whole once more. I don't think the existence of the wound obliges us to reject the possibility of its remedy."

The youngest Sister's fingers tightened fractionally around her shears, subconsciously holding them in a reverse grip as she stared daggers at the unflappable Goddess of Wisdom.

"The wound..."

"...cannot..."

"...repair itself."

"No." Athena's agreement came without hesitation. "It cannot. However, in any tapestry, should the weave finally give way, no weaver of any skill attempts to repair it by drawing upon the damaged fibres surrounding the break. They have already failed once. Asking them to bear still greater strain merely enlarges the wound."

Athena allowed silence to settle over the cavernous room as she let the image sink in for everyone.

"The repair must come from elsewhere. New threads must be introduced, to bind together strands that have already forgotten how to hold one another."

She turned back towards the Three Sisters.

"The thread that restores the pattern is, by its very nature, foreign to the original weave."

I became aware that Apollo had gone very still. There was an intensity in his attention that hadn't been there moments before, as though he'd recognised the direction of Athena's reasoning several steps before anyone else and found himself wishing she would choose another path.

At length, Clotho spoke in a furious hiss, her fingers curled so tightly around the spindle that ancient wood creaked beneath them, teeth bared as if the mere possibility of not smiting me on the spot was a personal insult.

"You would..."

"...entrust..."

"...the Loom..."

"...to the flaw?!"

"I would trust that Ethan's unique nature can be used to mend what was broken." Athena challenged, but the Fates scowled at the goddess of Wisdom.

"The Loom..."

"...accepts..."

"...only its own thread."

"And it will. Ethan Creed need not become part of the Pattern itself for the Pattern to change around him. Threads already woven may cross where once they diverged. Others may bend away from courses they once seemed destined to follow, should the caretakers of the Loom see fit to weave them so…" Athena offered slyly and for the first time, the simmering rage of the Fates flickered as something else entered their clouded eyes.

The Three Sisters exchanged hesitant glances, as if barely daring to consider a possibility they had spent eternity very deliberately not thinking about and Athena immediately pressed the advantage before they could reconsider.

"Do not destroy Ethan: use him. If there are places where the Pattern has begun to unravel... where the Loom strains beneath burdens unforeseen... where the tapestry bends towards an image even the Three Sisters would see altered..."

Her eyes returned to the ancient women. "Then send him there."

That was too much for the God of the Sun as Apollo sprang to his feet.

"You go too far Athena! The Moirai are caretakers, observers, not the architects of the future! You would ask the Sisters to introduce into the Pattern something no oracle could foresee? That is to challenge the power of Prophecy itself!" he accused, his eyes twin blazing suns, though Athena didn't back down.

"Hmph. Not like most of 'em have been all that helpful in the past. Or even made sense for the most part." Ares groused.

Tellingly, Zeus didn't rein in his bull-headed son this time, instead thinking Athena's words over as he stroked his beard, a calculating look in his eye. It was the expression of a king who had just realised that, while everyone else had been busy playing chess, someone had dropped a checker onto the board and he was figuring out if he could get away with playing it.

For some reason, I got the distinct impression that I wouldn't like the moves he had in mind for me.

However, more interesting than the scheming of the King of Olympos was the reaction of his brother. From my position below the thrones, I was one of the few who spotted that Poseidon looked almost... hopeful, before he carefully schooled his features.

Meanwhile, the Fates seemed to reach a consensus as they slowly turned towards Athena, to the despair of the God of Prophecy.

"My Ladies..." Apollo began almost pleadingly, "surely you cannot be considering—"

"The Anathema..."

"...has no place..."

"...within the Pattern."

Briefly, Apollo's expression became hopeful as the eldest Fate slowly turned the spindle between weathered fingers, before the Three Sisters spoke again.

"But still, the flaw..."

"...may yet..."

"...serve the Pattern."

The words seemed to surprise the Moirai almost as much as they did the rest of Olympus as Apollo's face drained of what little colour remained.

"Of course. What must be done?" Zeus demanded imperiously, having decided for me.

I opened my mouth to point out that at no stage had anybody actually asked whether I wanted to become Fate's new cosmic repairman, only for the eldest Sister to speak first.

"A knot tightens."

"It must not break."

"The Great Pattern demands its preservation."

For the first time since their arrival, the anger disappeared from the Fates' faces, replaced by a stillness instead (which somehow just made them even more unsettling). They looked past all of us instead, blind eyes fixed on something only they could see as Zeus leaned forwards.

"What Nexus?"

The eldest Sister continued to turn her spindle as though she hadn't heard him.

"The woven cannot reach it."

The second Fate drew invisible thread between weathered fingers.

"The flaw shall preserve it."

The youngest slowly raised her ancient shears.

"Or perish."

There was no menace in their voice anymore, no trace of the naked hatred that had greeted my arrival.

It was simply the conclusion their unknowable loom had reached.

For a long moment, nobody spoke, before, just as abruptly as they had arrived, the Three Sisters were simply gone, leaving empty space where they had stood just before.

"So... now what?" Dionysus eventually asked, as his posture slackened in his chair and he went back to lounging carelessly.

Somewhat similarly, though of course far more reserved, Athena slumped ever so slightly from her rigid posture, now that the ominous charge in the air had left with the Fates.

"You heard the Moirai. Either Ethan proves to the Fates that he can be useful, dies trying, or is executed for the crime of his existence regardless." The Goddess said brusquely, before her grey eyes, so similar to Annabeth's, swept over me.

Her eyes met mine for a moment and some of the severity left her expression as it turned almost apologetic, or as close to it as she could allow herself to. Then it was gone, and she returned to her throne.

"And should he succeed in preserving this nexus of fate, preserving the future that the Fates have foreseen for us all?" Hermes wondered aloud, and Ares scoffed as if the mere possibility of my success (and continued survival) wasn't even worth considering.

"What do you think will happen? When has a specialized tool like him ever existed? When have the Fates ever had an opportunity like this, to actually touch what they've only ever been allowed to observe?" Hephaestus grunted, before shooting me a pitiless look.

"They can't bind him in their threads, but they will find other chains." The Master of the Forge said pessimistically.

Tellingly (and depressingly) nobody challenged the cantankerous god.

"And what if they decide they don't want to bother with chains? What if they just burn him to a crisp instead, wash their hands of this whole mess as we should've done from the start?" Ares challenged his brother, before he stilled and for once, a brief flicker of uncertainty flashed over his features.

"... wait, what would happen? They just proved it ain't easy to really kill a primordial enough they actually stay dead. Ouranos is still floating around up there without his mind and Gaia is still asleep. Even if they did manage to kill the brat the old fashioned way, I dunno, hit him over the head with a really big brick or something, can't imagine his ol' Dad would be pleased." The God of War mused, surprisingly articulate.

"Not to mention the fact that he may not arrive in Hades after death, but return straight to the Sea of Nothing instead. Wouldn't be hard for his dad to just... spit him back out again..." Hermes snapped his fingers as he shot me a considering glance.

"It will not come to that. Ethan will embark on their Quest and successfully complete it. For all our sakes." Zeus calmed the rest of the Olympians down as he shot me a commanding stare.

The 'or else' was left unsaid, yet hung over me like a thundercloud.

"Sure thing, uhm Lord Zeus, sir. But... how?"

The assembled immortals blinked at my question as I turned to look at them all.

"I may exist outside of Fate, apparently, but that doesn't mean I can see it. I have no idea what exactly is being threatened that the Sisters want me to protect." I explained with a shrug.

Zeus frowned at my objections, but could hardly refute them. Even the King of the Gods could not foresee the future. There was one, however, who could and as one the gods turned to face Apollo and the God of the Sun blinked at the sudden attention.

"Well? Go on then, give the boy his Quest. Or do we need to summon that ratty old Oracle from the Camp?" Demeter pressed and at the mention of the Oracle, Apollo's mouth pursed as if he bit into an oversized lemon, before rising to his feet with a sigh.

"There's no need for that, Auntie. I'll summon the power of Prophecy myself..." he responded, before muttering under his breath, "... if it even works on the guy."

The Sun God briefly cleared his throat, rolled his shoulders and closed his golden eyes as he sucked in a deep breath, hands held up, palms facing upwards.

"Oohhhmmmm...."

A hum came from deep within his chest as-

'thwack!'

"Ow!"

-Artemis smacked her twin in the thigh with her bow, rolling her eyes at him as he shot her a betrayed look, hopping on one leg.

"Artie?!"

"Cut it with the dramatics, brother. The sooner the spawn of Kaos can be sent on its way, the better." She said coolly as Apollo rubbed his thigh with a wince.

Then something came to her mind as she narrowed her eyes before-

'thwack!'

"YEOW!"

"And don't. Call. Me. Artie."

"I won't, I'm sorry!" Apollo cried out as he hopped in place with renewed vigour as the assembled gods either rolled their eyes, palmed their faces or outright ignored (Dionysus, of course) the Twin Archers' antics.

"Just cut the theatrics, you child." Hera rolled her eyes in annoyance.

"... you do know I'm literally the god of the dramatic arts though right?" Apollo muttered, before holding up his hands in surrender as Artemis threateningly held up her bow again.

"Alright, alright! Sheesh, tough crowd."

The God of the Sun straightened, glanced at his twin, scooted a little to the left and closed his eyes again. After a few moments however, it immediately became apparent that this was the real deal as a golden glow began to suffuse him and the air took on an almost heavy feel, similar to the presence of the Fates.

When Apollo opened his eyes again, they were completely gold and his voice had an odd, distant echo.

Seek where endless forests meet inland sea;
With she whose quarry still roams free.
A child of gods must live when all is done;
Where sisters fled, stand fast and fight as one.
Upon shattered rim where stars once fell,
One trusted hand shall choose, and all shall tell.

As the last syllable slowly faded from the room, the golden glow surrounding the God of the Sun ebbed away as he slumped where he stood, letting out a small breath.

"That was… surprisingly difficult. And more… intense than I'm used to." The god breathed for a moment, shooting me a considering glance.

"Alright then. You've got your Quest, Ethan Creed, and now the Prophecy to guide you. Make sure to bring it to a successful end." Zeus commanded, clearly done with the whole affair as he made a shooing motion.

"But… but I don't know what any of it means!" I protested and Zeus' eyes flashed at my shout.

"You dare-"

"The prophecy does state he is to be accompanied by someone. It would be… unwise, to send him off without at least considering the matter. The prophecy is trying to predict a fate for one who is naturally fateless, that warrants a bit of caution, brother." Demeter interjected for the first time.

The Goddess of Harvests hadn't intervened much so far, but the dark-haired woman in a wheat-golden dress was still a powerful Olympian in her own right and even Zeus fell silent for a moment at her words, before huffing as he straightened on his throne.

"Very well then. We shall grant you insight into the Prophecy as to further aid you on fulfilling your Quest for the Moirai and thus, your duty to me- to Olympus." The God of the Skies caught himself, before he glanced at his golden son.

"Well? Out with it then! Say it plainly, what is this son of Kaos to do then?"

"Look, Dad, that's not how Prophecy works-…" Apollo pleaded tiredly.

"Just give him a hint then. A heading that gets him out of my throne room at the very least." Zeus rolled his eyes as he leaned back in his chair, waving a dismissive hand.

"He should start in the Great Lakes area. 'Inland Sea' is an old name for them and there are various forests surrounding it. Worth checking out, what with the other hunting references and all." Demeter cut in smoothly, a small smile on her face as if she enjoyed unravelling the puzzle.

"He must be joined by one of my own then." Artemis stated strongly, clearly willing to defend her point with violence if need be.

Across from her, Ares bristled, but refrained from challenging her outright.

"I shall call upon my Lieutenant, to… accompany Ethan Creed on his Quest." The Goddess of the Hunt continued as I raised an eyebrow at her sudden vehemence.

'Accompany? Baby-sit more like. An insurance policy from the gods; distrust and then verify.' I groused, though I wasn't the only one unhappy with Artemis' demands.

"Your Lieutenant? Is that wise? Ethel's provenance already makes him suspect, do we really want to add another potentially untrustworthy-" Dionysus began to drawl, though before he could finish his sentence, an arrow speared itself through his can of coke, tearing it from his hand and pinning it to the back of his throne right next to his head.

The other gods stilled as their eyes tracked from the still-slouching Dionysus to the now standing Artemis, another arrow already knocked, her silver eyes blazing.

"… you missed." Dionysus drawled, but a shiver crawled up my spine at the lazy words nonetheless when I saw that purplish gleam slowly enter his eyes.

"I can assure you: I did not." Artemis rebutted, before very deliberately moving her bow two inches to the left.

"ENOUGH." Zeus boomed and thunder roiled around Mount Olympos at the King's sudden anger.

Some of the tension bled out of his children, though neither dropped their pose. Zeus rubbed his forehead, before looking at Artemis with a somewhat tired expression.

"Artemis, his words, unkindly as they may have been said…" the King shot his uncaring son a dark look which was promptly ignored, "… there is some merit to them. Her parentage-"

"Lord Zeus, Father, my Lieutenant has proven herself in over two thousand years with nothing but utmost loyalty and service. I would trust her without a doubt. I would trust her with my life." Artemis addressed her father, without taking her eyes off Dionysus.

"That may be, child of Leto, but would you trust her with ours as well?" Hera challenged dismissively, venom creeping into her otherwise melodious voice when she mentioned the Moon Goddess' mother.

"Yes." Artemis shot back without hesitation, much to the Queen's annoyance.

"Alright! Alright, so that gives us a heading and a companion. Ethan, head out West towards the Great Lakes, accompanied by one of Artemis' Huntresses, in search of whatever creature or item the Fates think is currently being threatened that should be saved for later. The rest will reveal itself as the Quest develops; that's usually how these things go anyways. Questions?" Hermes quickly defused the situation as he jumped up from his throne and walked over towards me as he suddenly shrank to a human size.

He clapped me on the shoulder with an excited boyish grin, as if he was the one going on an adventure instead of me.

Seeing the tensions in the room and feeling pretty wrung out from the back-to-back trials (which I had miraculously survived on nothing but the fact that nobody knew for certain if just killing me outright was worth the potential hassle) I only sighed and shrugged.

"… when do I leave?"

"Right now! Well, as soon as Artemis has called her Huntress over, that is."

"And how long is that-"

A sudden silver halo appeared at Artemis' side, quickly solidifying into the silhouette of a young woman.

"… oh, I thought you meant like… a cellphone call…" I finished lamely as Hermes chuckled.

The silver glow faded, and whatever I'd been about to think disappeared completely.

'Oh... wow...'

She was stunning and, without a doubt, the most beautiful woman that ever was or ever would be. And also, someone who just turned those dark chocolate eyes on me with a hauntingly regal, almost disgusted expression, as beside me Hermes was clearly struggling to not just double over laughing on the spot.

Somewhere off to the side I could hear Aphrodite let out a barely disguised squeal and I could feel my stomach sink.

"I said that out loud, didn't I?" I said somberly as I lamented the fact the ground hadn't yet opened up and swallowed me whole.

The fact said ground was currently 600 floors above Manhattan was a bonus at this point.

The new arrival lifted her (perfectly shaped) nose up at me as she turned towards Artemis, immediately dropping to a knee as she bowed her head, dark tresses falling past a circlet of pure silver.

"My Lady, thou hast summoned me? What is thy bidding?"

"Zoë, my dear friend. A Quest has been issued, from the Fates themselves no less. Its success depends upon your participation." Artemis said, her earlier confrontational tone replaced with warmth as she addressed her second in command.

Zoë's eyes widened before she immediately bowed even lower.

"Anything, my Lady! I shall not fail this Quest, nor thee."

"I know." Artemis smiled faintly. "But this charge will test you in ways no hunt ever has. Your resolve will be strained. Your patience exhausted. You will be asked to place your trust where every instinct tells you otherwise."

Zoë raised her head just enough to meet Artemis' eyes.

"Then I shall master myself. I will endure."

"You must track a quarry the Fates themselves have marked for preservation. Another has been charged with its protection. You are to ensure they do not lose the trail... and, if need be, keep them alive."

'And if not need be....' I finished the rest of the sentence that was left unsaid, a frown marring my face.

"Gladly, my Lady! Whom dost thou entrust to my care?"

Artemis was silent for a heartbeat.

"… that." she said after a heavy pause, jutting her chin towards me with a displeased look.

"Oi… harsh." I frowned, as Zoë stood and turned, glancing towards me with a troubled expression, her earlier zeal nowhere to be seen.

"But… but, my Lady…"

Her eyes flitted around the room as the assembled gods looked on with varying levels of amusement and disinterest, before she leaned in closer to her goddess, though her hiss was of course heard throughout the entire throne room.

"But, my Lady… that is… a boy…"

My shoulders slumped in quiet despair as besides me, Hermes just laughed even harder.

---

AN: As always, you can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER 11
​

---

The ride down from Olympus was strangely mundane.

For all the pomp surrounding the throne room (the assembled Olympians, the prophecy, Zeus handing down a quest that would probably decide the fate of Western civilisation) we still ended up having to wait for the elevator.

When the elevator finally chimed and the doors slid open, a young satyr stood on the other side, laughing at something a pair of giggling nymphs had just said, one arm draped comfortably around each of their shoulders.

The moment he looked up and spotted Zoë, the laughter died in his throat.

She stood with her arms folded, her expression making it abundantly clear that whatever they'd been doing, she disapproved of it on principle. The satyr paled and his arms disappeared from the nymphs' shoulders so quickly you'd have thought they'd turned into red-hot iron. Both nymphs flushed scarlet, suddenly finding the floor fascinating. All three quickly bowed their heads.

"My apologies, Lady Nightshade," the satyr stammered, giving an awkward little bow from the waist that also somehow incorporated his horns. "We were just... ah... on our way to... to a book club! Right, girls?"

He looked desperately at the nymphs.

"Book club," one echoed immediately.

"Very educational," added the other almost pleadingly.

"Right. Well. We'd best not be late, don't want to miss... the educational value." The satyr finished weakly.

Without waiting for a response, the three of them sidled past Zoë with exaggerated caution, hugging the edge of the narrow walkway. The instant they were clear of the elevator, they abandoned every pretence of dignity and disappeared down the bridge at a pace that suggested 'book club' was about to start without them.

For a moment, Zoë and I watched them go, before I shot the Huntress a look from the corner of my eye.

"You usually have that effect on people?"

"Only foolish ones." She immediately shot back, stepping past me into the elevator without a further word.

I quickly joined her, pressing the button for the ground floor as I silently observed the woman. She stood with her hands clasped behind her back, staring straight ahead with the sort of perfect posture only someone with several thousand years to practise could manage. It occurred to me that this was the first time since we'd met that we'd been completely alone together.

It also occurred to me that my brain had picked a remarkably inconvenient moment to remember she was absolutely gorgeous.

I firmly informed that particular train of thought that it could kindly fuck off.

It ignored me.

"So, does that include me?" I asked jokingly, trying to get a conversation going.

Zoë shot me a look that clearly said that, just by asking that question, I had already answered it.

"Right. Good talk." I muttered.

The rest of the ride down was spent in silence.

---

It was a blessedly short walk from the Empire State Building to where I had left my truck, wedged between a delivery van and a battered yellow taxi. I was somewhat relieved that it still looked like a normal pickup rather than the mobile artillery platform I'd been afraid it would turn into when I wasn't looking thanks to the Hephaestus Cabin's modifications.

"Well," I said, fishing my keys from my pocket, "there's Arion. Hop in, and let's get moving."

Zoë stopped dead in her tracks.

"...Arion?"

I looked over my shoulder.

"Yeah?"

Her eyes narrowed ever so slightly.

"Thou hast named thy vehicle after Herakles' horse?"

"Uh, I named it after a horse that was at one point ridden by Herakles, I suppose. Why, that a problem?"

"Yes. It is an insult."

"What the- why?" I asked, baffled, but the beautiful woman just turned up her nose at me, her stance rigid.

"As a Huntress of Artemis, I will not ride a chariot that bears such a name. You should name it after a proud mare instead."

For a moment, we stood on opposite sides of the Chevy's hood as silence fell between us.

"Yeah, no." I said flatly, before unlocking Arion and hopping behind the wheel.

Zoë's eyes widened, clearly not used to such a casual dismissal, freezing for a moment before she threw open the passenger side door.

"What dost thou mean 'no', you would disobey-!"

"Alright lady, here's the deal. Better we hash it out now since we got about a twelve-hour road trip ahead of us. I'm not your subordinate. You do not give me orders. You're here because I need a tracker, so when it comes to tracking and hunting and camping in the woods, I'll be more than happy to take your lead. Anything else, I'll do what I think is best to complete the Quest and prevent a potential war between the Fates and my dad. ... or mom. Progenitor?"

I struggled to find the proper words for a moment before shrugging.

"And that certainly extends to what I call my stuff, least of all my fucking car. You hate it so much, you can sit in the flatbed for all I care." I said, venom creeping into my voice as I gripped the steering wheel.

Zoë bristled as she stood on the sidewalk.

"Thou foolish boy. Thou knowest not what thy idolatry of that man even means, for-"

"Yeah, that wasn't me." I interrupted, "that was Lily's suggestion."

"...Lily?"

"Eight years old. Hephaestus cabin. Missing her two front teeth. Big fan of refurbishing old Chevy trucks apparently."

Zoë blinked and I sighed.

"So here's what's going to happen. If this is genuinely such a grievous offence, I will turn this truck around, drive us all the way to Camp Half-Blood, find an eight-year-old girl who was just trying to do something nice, and you can personally explain to her exactly why her naming choice is so unacceptable."

Zoë's eyes narrowed.

"...That would be unnecessarily cruel."

"I agree." I simply shot back as I waited.

For a moment, the Huntress seemed to be locked in an internal debate, before she squared her shoulders, lifted her chin (even higher) and got into the cabin as well.

"The name was chosen in ignorance, but without malice," she declared with all the finality of a queen issuing a royal decree. "I shall tolerate it for the duration of our Quest. Once it is concluded, however, I shall seek out this Lily and properly educate her on the many proud mares of Greek history, that she might make a more informed choice in future."

I stared at her for a second.

"... I bet she'll be thrilled."

"Of course she will be: she's a girl." Zoë stated as if that settled the matter.

Still, she was in the truck, she wasn't trying to rename it anymore, and there was no immediate risk of driving twelve hours with an immortal Huntress sulking in the flatbed. At this point, I was counting that as a victory.

I started the engine, pulled out into the afternoon traffic, and pointed Arion west.

"So Huntress," I said as Manhattan began to disappear in the rear-view mirror, "care to explain where we're actually going, specific-like? The Great Lakes cover, what, ninety thousand square miles? We can't exactly wander around until we trip over the... whatever the Fates want me to find."

"We shall do no such thing," Zoë replied. "One does not simply stumble upon prey by searching blindly. One gathers information, narrows the trail, then hunts."

"Fair enough. Where do we start?"

"Chicago."

I shot her a sideways glance.

"Chicago? Why there? Last I checked, it wasn't exactly famous for its forests."

Zoë sighed, though whether at my ignorance or the question itself, I couldn't tell.

"Because it is the greatest source of trade in both goods and information in the area. Every major road and railway around the Great Lakes passes through it and they carry satyrs, nature spirits and monsters with them. If something has disturbed the wilderness surrounding the lakes, word will eventually find its way there."

She looked out of the passenger window as the skyscrapers slowly gave way to suburbs.

"The Great Lakes are surrounded by countless forests, both in the United States and Canada. We know only that our destination lies where 'endless forests meet inland sea.' That is insufficient to choose a hunting ground. Before we commit ourselves to weeks of searching the wilderness, we shall determine which wilderness deserves our attention."

I nodded.

"So we aren't hunting for the monster yet, we're hunting for the information that'll lead us to the monster. Got it."

Zoë gracefully inclined her head.

"Precisely."

That was apparently all the conversation she intended to contribute.

The silence that settled over the cabin wasn't awkward so much as... deliberate. Zoë seemed perfectly content to spend the next twelve hours saying as little as possible, her attention fixed on the passing landscape beyond the passenger window. She sat as rigidly as ever, one hand resting lightly against the door, the afternoon sun catching the loose strands of her dark hair as they framed a face that, despite my best efforts, remained profoundly distracting.

I dragged my eyes back to the road before my stupid subconscious caused a traffic accident.

'This is getting ridiculous.' I kicked myself.

I'd known Zoë Nightshade for all of two hours. She was older than most civilisations, possessed all the warmth of an armed border checkpoint, and had spent the better part of ten minutes arguing with me over the name of my truck. By any reasonable standard, I should have found her insufferable.

Instead, my idiot brain had apparently decided that aloof competence and impossible cheekbones were exactly my type.

'Traitor.'

Outside, New York slowly gave way to New Jersey, skyscrapers surrendering to warehouses, suburbs and eventually long stretches of open highway. Chicago still lay hundreds of miles ahead. If we were lucky, someone there would know enough to point us through nearly a hundred thousand square miles of lakes, forests and wilderness to save whatever the Fates had sent me to find.

It wasn't much of a plan, but sadly, it wasn't as if prophecies came with GPS trackers either.

---

We followed I-80 west, and spent most of the afternoon climbing through the wooded ridges of the Appalachians before the land gradually opened up as we crossed into Ohio. The roads straightened, the horizon stretched further with every passing mile, and before long the scenery settled into hours of asphalt, service plazas and enough cornfields to make me suspect the Midwest was secretly populated entirely by children of Demeter.

A trip from New York to Chicago will set you back about thirteen hours. Considering it was already mid-day by the time the Prophecy had been issued and Zoë and I had embarked on our Quest, we would have to find a place to spend the night and continue on the following morning.

Well, technically we could've kept on driving straight through the night by switching drivers, but I abandoned that idea the moment Zoë confidently informed me she'd mastered driving decades ago.

It turned out she'd driven exactly once, sometime in the late seventies. According to her, the experience had been enough to prove she understood the principles involved. After all, riding a car wasn't that different from riding a bicycle.

She clarified that she meant one of those Victorian monstrosities with the enormous front wheel.

Against my better judgement (and because she'd accused me of "wounding her pride" by doubting her) I eventually relented and let her demonstrate this supposed mastery on one of the many side-roads along the freeway.

After climbing behind the wheel, she took off without taking the handbrake off, confused the clutch for the gas pedal (several times) and frequently committed a sin usually reserved for BMW-drivers to the point I couldn't help but wonder what she would look like with slicked back hair and overpriced sunglasses.

'Nope, still hot.' I thought, before ruthlessly throwing that thought under the car.

"You didn't use your indicators." I pointed out instead.

"I assure thee, Mister Creed, I indicated my intention to switch lanes perfectly well."

"... by pointing an arrow at a minivan?"

"Towards the direction in which I intended to travel, yes."

"That's called a threat, Zoë."

"It's the clearest form of communication."

"That's not the problem," I said as the car bucked hard enough the back of my skull left an imprint on the headrest.

That one might've been intentional if Zoë's innocent whistle was anything to go by.

"The problem is that nobody knows what it even is you're trying to communicate."

"Then clearly the fault lies with them."

I quickly demanded we'd find a motel before she hurt someone (namely me) and the Huntress finally agreed with a pout that did irritatingly fluttering things to my heart.

By the time we'd lurched across an empty motel car park, narrowly missed a shopping trolley and mounted a curb that had done absolutely nothing to deserve it, I'd come to the conclusion that the greatest monster we'd encounter on our Quest was sitting in the driver's seat.

She still considered hitting a postbox "an unfortunate but isolated incident."

The motel itself looked like someone had copied and pasted it from the Official Shabby Motel Design Handbook: faded paint, cracked asphalt, a buzzing VACANCY sign with about a third of the letters missing and just enough neglect to make you wonder whether the place had changed ownership or simply outlived it.

It wasn't much to look at, but it had beds, a roof and, most importantly, would keep Zoë off the road for the remainder of the night.

"Try not to threaten anyone this time," I muttered as we climbed out.

"I never threaten without cause." The Huntress rebuked.

"You drew a bow on a Chrysler."

"I had no intention to fire... as long as he relinquished the right of way."

I decided that was as close to progress as I was likely to get.

A little brass bell chimed as we stepped into reception.

The lobby smelled faintly of stale coffee, cigarette smoke and desperate industrial-strength air freshener currently losing a war against both. Behind the counter sat a woman somewhere in her sixties with heavily permed grey hair, nicotine-yellowed fingers and enough jewellery to set off airport security while still standing in the parking lot. A cigarette rested lazily between two fingers despite the large NO SMOKING sign mounted directly above her head.

She looked up from a crossword, her eyes drifting from me to Zoë and back again before a slow, knowing smile spread across her face that immediately put the both of us on our guard as we approached the grimy window.

"Well now," she said, voice rough enough to sand furniture. "Ain't you two just adorable little lovebirds."

Every male instinct I possessed, passed down from man to man since the time we sat around in caves and invented fire, immediately told me everything about this conversation was going to be unpleasant.

"I assure you," Zoë said evenly, "we are not birds."

"We'd like two rooms for the night." I soldiered on as the old woman cackled.

"Uh-huh. 'Course you do, darlin'." The woman drawled, seeming to delight in dragging out every word.

She didn't reach for the register. She simply kept looking between us with the sort of expression normally reserved for grandparents who'd just spotted teenagers holding hands.

"One room'll do just fine." She eventually rasped.

"Two," I shot back automatically.

The woman snorted as she slapped a single key on the stained countertop.

"... two." I pleaded now in a small voice, intensely aware of the Huntress radiating her displeasure beside me.

"Sorry, darlin'. We're all filled up." The ancient crone shrugged.

Without a word, our eyes drifted up past the receptionist to the board of hooks behind her. More than half the keys were still hanging there.

"...You're full?" I repeated sceptically.

"Emotionally?" the woman shrugged. "Most days."

"...The motel."

"Oh." She glanced over her shoulder without bothering to turn around. "Guess I forgot to update the board."

Somehow, I doubted that.

"C'mon dearies, just take it. It'll be grand." She grinned with yellowed teeth as she patted the single key on the stained countertop.

"We really would prefer separate rooms-" Zoë now tried, but she turned out to be as ineffective as I was as the crone easily interrupted her.

"Oh dearie, no need to pretend around me, you know." She said with a slow wink.

"... pretend?" the Huntress blinked.

"That you're just friends." She leaned on the counter, lowering her voice conspiratorially. "You kids eloping?"

I very nearly swallowed my own tongue.

"What? No!"

"Relax, darlin'. Happens all the time. Daddy doesn't approve, Mama starts crying, the young lovers hit the interstate and wind up somewhere like this before Vegas."

"We're going to Chicago." Zoë corrected and the woman blinked at her, taking a long drag of her cigarette.

"... well, the casinos there aren't as exciting I suppose, but still, good for you. Takes guts."

"There is no 'you two'," I said, feeling my ears burn.

"Uh-huh." The woman hummed (or rattled, more like), clearly unconvinced.

"We're just travelling together."

"My, what a coincidence."

"On a... business trip."

"Honey, I've heard every excuse in the book. Business trip. Study partners. Cousins." She snorted. "That one was weird."

While Zoë and I were still trying to process that last one, the receptionist lit up another cigarette, blowing out a massive cloud of blue smoke that briefly obscured her from view.

"Anyway, when's the wedding?"

"There isn't going to be one." I shot back.

The receptionist mock-gasped, covering her nicotine-stained mouth with bony, liver-spotted fingers.

"Not even bothering with marriage? That eager, huh?"

"What? No! That's not what I—"

"Relax, darlin'. I ain't judging."

"There is nothing to judge!"

"Of course darlin', of course, you're quite right. Free country after all." She winked.

"...Can we please just have the key?" I begged, thoroughly defeated.

She slid it across the counter with a grin.

"Room fourteen. End of the row. Nice and quiet. Walls are thicker than they look."

I almost choked as Zoë slowly glanced from me to the receptionist and back.

"...Why would that matter?"

The old woman just smiled.

"Oh, honey. You'll learn, in time. Not too much time, I hope." She replied, shooting me a significant look that I bravely tried my best to ignore.

Beside me, Zoë looked between us.

"...I do not understand."

"Good," I said quickly, grabbing the key. "Let's keep it that way."

---

It wasn't a particularly restful night, though only in part due to the receptionist's constant badgering having left me with... impure thoughts. Sharing a room with Zoë wasn't inherently awkward. Sharing one with someone I'd managed to simultaneously annoy and become inexplicably attracted to within thirty seconds of meeting however, was.

Zoë claimed the chair by the window while I dropped onto one of the beds, each of us suddenly finding a dozen entirely fascinating ways to avoid looking at the other.

She checked the string on her bow, inspected her arrows with the kind of scrutiny normally associated with customs officers and tax audits and sharpened a broadhead that probably didn't need sharpening. I, by comparison, exhausted the list of things I owned worth maintaining in about forty-five seconds. Out of options, I folded Father Garcia's trenchcoat, unfolded it again five minutes later because I'd done it badly, then concluded I'd officially run out of productive ways to ignore the still-silent Huntress and gave up, spending an inordinate amount of time staring at the motel's popcorn-coloured ceiling.

Conversation never really got off the ground. We'd already covered the important subjects somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, and neither of us seemed particularly interested in discussing the weather.

Eventually we wished each other goodnight with all the warmth of two diplomats negotiating a ceasefire.

Neither of us slept particularly well.

---

The following morning found Zoë marching towards reception with the determined stride of someone who had spent an entire night preparing a rebuttal. Before I could talk her out of it she'd already reached the counter.

Except the woman from yesterday wasn't there.

Instead, a gangly young man barely older than me looked up from a dog-eared magazine, blinking as the bell above the door announced our arrival.

"Morning."

Zoë frowned.

"Thou aren't a nicotine-addled crone. Where is the older woman?"

"...Sorry?"

"The receptionist."

"I am the receptionist."

"The woman who worked yesterday evening." Zoë explained with mounting frustration.

"My dad closed last night." The kid countered with mounting confusion.

I stepped up beside Zoë.

"Grey hair. Enough jewellery to bankrupt a pawn shop. Smoked like she had a personal grudge against her lungs." I helpfully added.

His confusion only deepened.

"...We don't allow smoking in reception." He said slowly as he pointed to the no-smoking sign above his head, clearly wondering whether or not we could even read.

"Then it would seem thy establishment suffers from a serious staffing discrepancy." Zoë scoffed.

He blinked.

"...Excuse me?"

"An elderly woman conducted the check-in procedure yesterday evening. She smoked excessively, wore an unreasonable quantity of jewellery and repeatedly insisted we were courting."

At this, Zoë placed both hands on the counter as she loomed over the kid, her face set in determination.

"She was mistaken. Severely."

"I'm... sorry?" the kid squeaked.

"Not thee. But she will be."

The poor bloke looked like he was wondering whether he should call his manager or the police and I decided we'd probably reached the point of diminishing returns.

"Come on, let's get back out on the road. He doesn't know anything." I interjected, laying a hesitant hand on her shoulder (and being pleasantly surprised when she didn't slap it away automatically).

She looked as though she intended to continue the argument before eventually relenting with visible reluctance, muttering something under her breath about accountability as I ushered her back outside.

The morning air was cool enough to chase away the last remnants of sleep. I unlocked the pickup and slid behind the wheel while Zoë climbed into the passenger seat, still wearing the expression of someone who'd been denied a perfectly reasonable opportunity to win an argument.

The engine coughed to life but as I reached for the gearstick, something in the driver's side mirror snagged my attention.

The old receptionist stood beneath the faded motel sign, leaning casually against it as though she'd been waiting for me to look back.

For a heartbeat I almost wondered if the kid inside had simply been blind all along, but then the image shimmered for just a moment, almost like a shaft of sunlight flitting through an overcast sky.

The stained cardigan became a flowing rose-coloured dress. The cigarette between her yellowed fingers was gone, replaced by a single crimson rose held with effortless elegance. Every trace of the weary, chain-smoking motel clerk had vanished, leaving behind someone impossibly beautiful who regarded me with amused, knowing eyes.

She lifted the rose in a tiny salute and winked.

A lorry thundered past on the road beyond the motel.

When it had gone, so had she.

"...Huh."

"What is it?" Zoë asked, fastening her seatbelt.

I kept my eyes on the mirror for another second before putting the truck into gear.

"...Nothing."

---

Chicago proved remarkably adept at hiding what I was actually looking for.

From a distance, my [Hawk Eyes] were absurd. I could pick out aircraft lining up to land at O'Hare, follow freighters crawling across Lake Michigan and read motorway signs that wouldn't become relevant for another half hour. Give me an unobstructed horizon and I could see for miles.

Unfortunately, cities had an irritating habit of being full of buildings.

Every time I thought I'd found a decent vantage point, another office block, apartment complex or billboard jumped into view instead. [Hawk Eyes] weren't X-ray vision. The moment something solid got in the way, that was that. Chicago was less a city and more a maze of concrete canyons, each one creating another blind spot.

Zoë, meanwhile, seemed entirely unbothered.

"Slow down."

I eased off the accelerator as we rolled through a neighbourhood that looked like it hadn't seen fresh paint since the Cold War.

She studied the surrounding buildings in silence, her gaze lingering on boarded-up shop fronts, a narrow side street and an ageing public house with windows so filthy they bordered on opaque.

"...Nothing," she decided.

"You got all that from looking?" I asked in surprise, but Zoë casually flipped back her hair as she shrugged.

"The scent is wrong."

I nodded as though that meant something to me and pulled away from the curb.

That became the rhythm of the morning. Zoë directed, I drove.

We investigated a crumbling railway depot that smelled strongly enough of monsters for Zoë to wrinkle her nose before discovering it had apparently been hurriedly abandoned about a week earlier. An old cemetery produced precisely three ghosts, all of whom were considerably more interested in complaining about vandalism than discussing current events. A satyr waystation hidden behind an entirely forgettable florist yielded little beyond the revelation that Grover's species possessed an astonishing ability to gossip about absolutely everything except the thing you actually wanted to know.

By early afternoon we'd accumulated plenty of dead ends and absolutely no idea where to find a lead, which in itself was a clue. From how relaxed the satyrs were and the sudden disappearance of the usual monster watering holes, we quickly realized that something in the surrounding area had the monsters spooked.

What that something was though, and how it related to our Quest (if it even did in the first place) remained entirely unclear. All I knew was that every monster in Chicago suddenly seemed to have developed an overwhelming desire to be somewhere else, which was remarkably inconvenient considering I needed to find one.

"I'm beginning to suspect we're searching for a needle in a haystack." I sighed.

Zoë didn't look away from the window.

"No, that one is simple. Simply light the hay on fire and wait for the smoke to clear. This is worse."

"How?"

"We are searching for something actively attempting not to be found."

"...Right. That is... less than encouraging." I agreed with a sigh.

Traffic slowed as we crawled through another junction. I rested one arm against the open window and let my vision drift across the rooftops more out of habit than expectation. Looking down the streets was an exercise in frustration. Looking above them was another matter entirely.

A movement several kilometres away caught my attention, not on the pavement but on a rooftop.

I focused my eyes, the effect not too different from an overpowered camera lens zooming in as the distance shrank and the far-off building leapt into focus.

A woman cloaked in black stalked the edge of a seven-storey building with the effortless balance of someone for whom gravity was little more than a polite suggestion. Wisps of darkness curled around her feet despite the midday sun, clinging to her shadow like living smoke as she carried a burning torch.

"...That's interesting."

Zoë turned towards me.

"What is?"

"Some strange lady with a torch and a magical shadow doing parkour, I'm guessing."

Zoë's eyes widened the moment I mentioned the torch and she immediately followed my gaze for all the good it did her.

"Where?"

"About three kilometres that way." I jutted with my chin and the Huntress stilled beside me, shooting me a long, considering look.

"You can identify her from here?"

"I can identify the stitching on her sleeves."

The woman stopped mid-stride and slowly turned her head. Even at that distance I saw her freeze as our eyes met, surprise flashing across her face a heartbeat before she spun on her heel and disappeared behind the rooftop, ducking out of sight.

"...and she just spotted me. Somehow."

Zoë straightened immediately.

"After her!"

"Why, you know her?" I asked as I pushed down the accelerator, ignoring the honks from other drivers and breaking about half a dozen traffic laws in as many seconds.

"Not her specifically, but her kind certainly. She is one of the Lampades. Exactly what we're looking for." Zoë managed to bite out as she was thrown back in her seat.

"A Lampades?" I asked as I swerved around a busy intersection, [Novice Driving just barely preventing us from tagging a row of flower pots on the sidewalk.

"Children of Hecate, guardians of crossroads. Very useful, though slippery and difficult to catch. Interrogating her will be worth the effort though." she assured me.

"Really? Why?"

"They are pathological gossips, incapable of keeping secrets."

Arion's tires squealed as I rounded the corner close to the building where I had spotted the Lampad. It was a large street, but more importantly, it was ramrod straight and finally opened up the skyline enough for [Hawk Eyes] to fully expand my view.

Several hundred meters ahead, standing on the rooftop of an apartment building with her hands on her knees, the Lampad was catching her breath. Her eyes widened as I drove Arion onwards with manoeuvres that, if it hadn't been for the Hephaestus kids, would've caused the old Chevy to fall apart as if it had a main role in a Buster Keaton movie.

"Found her." I said grimly as Zoë tensed beside me.

The Lampad looked around once, clearly deciding that remaining exactly where she was had abruptly become a poor life choice, before vaulting onto the next rooftop and disappearing behind a taller building.

For a moment I lost her completely before my enhanced eyes spotted a glimpse of her as she emerged on the opposite side, sprinting along a fire escape.

"There," I said, already pulling into the next street. "She cut east."

"Thou can still see her?"

"When she's not behind a building, sure."

Zoë's eyes swept over the street layout only once.

"She is heading for the elevated railway."

"You sound very confident."

"They prefer shadows and overhead cover. She will avoid open intersections."

I took the next right without questioning it.

A few seconds later the Lampad burst from an alley exactly where Zoë had predicted, glanced over one shoulder and accelerated the instant she realised we were still behind her.

I kept my eyes on the rooftops while Zoë watched the streets below. On my own I'd have lost her the second she disappeared behind another building. Without [Hawk Eyes], Zoë would never even have known she was there.

Between the two of us, the Lampad never had a chance.

Zoë suddenly reached for the passenger door handle.

"What are you—"

"Hard left." She commanded without so much as a flicker of hesitation in her voice.

I yanked the wheel without further questions. Arion lurched into the corner hard enough for the tyres to protest, throwing Zoë against the open door before she used the momentum to effortlessly swing herself onto the cab and roll neatly into the flatbed, coming up with her bow already drawn.

"...Show-off."

The sharp twang of a bowstring was my only reply as yet another silver arrow hissed overhead.

With [Hawk Eyes], I watched it cover hundreds of metres in the blink of an eye before burying itself in the brickwork of the next building over with a crack loud enough to startle a flock of pigeons into the air.

The Lampad had already committed to her leap and only saw the arrow at the last possible moment.

Instead of sailing towards the rooftop she'd been aiming for, she twisted in midair with impossible agility, caught the edge of a lower building and disappeared into the mouth of a narrow alley.

"She changed direction," I called.

"I know."

A second arrow followed immediately. The shaft embedded itself halfway up a fire escape just as the Lampad reached it, forcing her to recoil before scrambling across an adjoining rooftop instead.

I quickly realized that these weren't missed shots thanks to my rough driving; Zoë wasn't trying to hit her, she was trying to herd her.

Every route that offered height vanished beneath another precisely placed arrow until the Lampad's options steadily narrowed, the rooftops giving way to balconies, the balconies to fire escapes and, eventually, the streets.

Meanwhile I kept on driving like I was auditioning for a remake of the Blues Brothers, my [Novice Driving] skill being pushed towards its absolute limit.

Chicago traffic parted less because people were being courteous and more because they valued continued existence. Horns blared behind us as Arion muscled its way through junctions that definitely weren't designed for enthusiastic interpretation, the old Chevy somehow remaining perfectly intact despite the abuse.

Building by building, the glass towers of downtown gave way to ageing warehouses and weather-beaten brickwork. The streets widened the closer we got the lakeside and the docks couldn't be far now.

"There," Zoë called from somewhere above me.

I saw it an instant later.

The Lampad darted between two derelict warehouses before skidding to a halt as a final silver arrow struck the brickwork just ahead of her, cutting off the only remaining escape route.

She hesitated for the briefest moment, looking panicked over her shoulder, before making the only decision she had left and darted deeper into the nearest alley, which unfortunately for her, turned out to be a dead end.

I stomped down on the accelerator and threw Arion sideways across the mouth of the alley. The tyres shrieked in protest as the Chevy slid neatly from wall to wall, sealing the exit. As I killed the momentum, the engine settled into an oddly contented idle purr that somehow reminded me of a cheetah sprawled in the shade after finally running its prey to exhaustion.

I chalked it up to whatever the Hephaestus kids had done under the bonnet and turned my attention to the panting Lampad as I climbed out, while Zoë vaulted smoothly from the flatbed with her bow already in hand.

Standing shoulder to shoulder, we probably cut an intimidating figure as we closed in on the wide-eyed nymph, with my black trench coat contrasting sharply against the Huntress' silver parka, and from the way the Lampad instinctively flattened herself against the brickwork, she seemed to agree.

"I'll never talk!" she blurted, pointing her trembling torch at us with considerably less conviction than she'd probably intended.

I didn't even bother to answer the fake bravado. Instead I stepped forward and drove my fist into the wall right beside her head.

Adamantine Fist didn't really understand the concept of warning shots. The brickwork detonated around my forearm, dust and fragments showering onto the pavement as cracks raced through the wall. When the rumbling finally died away, my fist was buried to the wrist in solid masonry.

The Lampad had gone perfectly still, her wide-eyed gaze travelling from the hole in the wall, to my arm disappearing into it, and finally up to my face. Her mouth hung open in silent shock.

"Just so you know," I said, jerking my head towards Zoë, "I'm the nice one."

The Lampad's eyes flitted over my shoulder to where Zoë stood behind me, bow still drawn and her sharp features set in that signature regal expression of hers, before she swallowed and shot me a brittle smile.

"...You guys got pen and paper?"

---

AN: As always, you can read up to five chapters ahead over on my Patreon