#but when she decides to rebel against zeus hes one of the only gods that join her.

[lesbianbanana]

Hera's relationship with Apollo is something that should be studied, in this essay I-

[an-idyllic-novelist]

jack the ripper platonic headcanons with muichiro!fem!reader

warnings: spoilers from the manga, ooc

This is a collaboration project with @onecantsimply, I really had a lot of fun doing this piece with them. Seriously, check their content guys, it is amazing.

With that being said, enjoy these headcanons! :)

[First Name] [Last Name] was the second Valkyrie in recorded history to have been a human prior to their ascension into Valhalla. ‘Mist Hashira’ was the only thing they could remember who they were, and quite frankly she did not care either way. All she wanted to do was have an easy life and spend her days watching the clouds without being nagged by her sisters, especially Brunhilde. 

Then there was the incident at the council hall, which led to Zeus allowing Ragnarok to decide the fate of humanity: preservation or extinction. Brunhilde was ready to rebel against the gods and prevent Midgard’s destruction alongside the other Valkyries through the method of the Volundr, the wielding of a Divine Treasure. 

 [First Name] did not have a choice in the matter, even when she was assigned to work together with the most despicable serial killer in mankind’s history: Jack The Ripper. 

To create a weapon that will kill the gods, the weapon and its user must synchronize their emotions. That might sound easy, but it’s a lot harder to pull off when someone in the party, well, lacks any emotion whatsoever. When Jack had formally met his partner for the first time, he was a bit stunned to see the Valkyrie’s ‘canvas’. 

It did not exist. More specifically, it was colorless. Cloudy even. [First Name] was practically invisible to his right eye. When she looked at him, her own gaze half-lidded and dull. A blank face to match a blank canvas that should at least be brimming with fear at the mere mention of his name. Alas, his and Brunhilde’s efforts were in vain as the younger Valkyrie remained unfazed. Brunhilde shook her head in exasperation and left in a huff, more than likely to pair up the other champions with their respective Valkyries. 

Over the next few days, he quickly realized that [First Name] did not care what he did so long it never included her. And even if he did try to do something, she could stop him without trying. That was probably why he wasn’t too upset with the young lady’s rudeness towards him. She fascinated him. 

It became his goal to make her feel fear. The Mist Hashira, in contrast, wanted to make sure he did not die in Ragnarok. So, she put him through a ‘special training’ regimen to help increase his stamina, strength, and agility in no particular order. 

But Dear God, she showed no mercy towards a gentleman. Not even a speck of compassion when he was worn out in body and soul, barking at him for being an incredibly weak fighter in the roster as her sword clashed against his knives. She might have the appearance of a young lady, her strength was nothing to scoff at. 

Although there were times when he wanted to simply quit and rest his weary body, Jack knew he could not do that. He was the one who took up on Lady Brunhilde’s offer to fight in this competition. And as much it pained him to say it out loud…he has noticed the changes in his body. He had been a nimble fellow when he was alive, yet his speed between then and now was….well, the difference is unbelievable. Not to mention he was not as tired as he used to be when doing anything particularly strenuous or physical. 

He’s changed quite a bit this past month….including his Volundr. 

It had been a slow process of [First Name] warming up to him, but now he can with certainty that she has actually begun to enjoy nibbling on the sweets and drinking Darjeeling tea when the clock struck three in the afternoon. However, there is still the issue of performing the Divine Treasure ritual. 

He had many emotions, and she still had exhibited nothing else beyond annoyance when he corrected her table manners and the slight wonder of gazing up at the clouds. Truly, what was so interesting about spending hours laying around the tall grass of a floating island and doing nothing? 

When Jack tried it out himself, sitting on a large boulder that was conveniently settled right behind his Volundr, he actually managed to space out a bit. Him, a productive gentleman and an artist! In retrospect, it could even be called a miracle that he has been able to form a bond with [First Name].

It was not an instant connection like some of his fellow fighters, but he knows she has grown more comfortable around him, even while knowing what he had done as an assassin who wanted to see the color of fear in his victims. Pardon him, his targets. 

A  slow, platonic relationship? He’s fine with that, even though you are still a little rude. A gentleman must be patient, after all~.

He eventually dragged her away from the island and back to the Valkyrie compound, only getting a blank stare instead of a glare this time….but he’s not too sure if that’s actually an improvement or not. 

With the clock ticking down to the first round of Ragnarok, he and his Volundr spend the rest of their time trying to link their souls together. They eventually were able to agree on a single emotion that did the trick: betrayal. 

Jack felt betrayed that his mother had never loved him, instead seeing his very existence as a chain to connect herself to a playwright that abandoned her to marry nobility. [First Name] felt betrayed that the pantheons wanted to destroy humanity, even after you had supposedly died to save them from demons. 

That’s all Brunhilde would tell her just to make sure the ritual would be completed. Jerk. 

When the ritual activated, a bright green light surrounded the two of them before a kaleidoscope of fragmented memories entered Jack’s mind. By meticulously piecing them together like a puzzle, a tragic story unfurled before his eyes. [First Name] had lived a hard but happy life in the mountains with her twin brother Yuichiro after their parents died, but it all came crashing down when a demon destroyed everything. 

It was [First Name]’s rage towards demons that kept her moving forward, even when she had been pushed into a corner by Muzan’s commanding officer, the Upper Moon One ranked demon known as Kokushibo. Even when her memories had been buried again in the dark corners of her mind, not because of the shock, but because of Brunhilde’s machinations. 

She wanted another Valkyrie amongst the ranks, a soul who was powerful and yet malleable enough to twist to her own design. After all, what use is the soul of a Hashira if they’ve lost their fighting spirit and desired peace?

Ah…poor thing. To go past her limitations and become a Hashira within two months, to obtain the Demon Slayer Mark and single handedly kill an Upper Moon demon…all of that power, to die at such a young age. And just when she had begun to express herself more, exhibiting a compassionate, teasing persona towards her comrades. The one she’d liked the most was a young man named Tanjiro. 

Jack assumed that he, at least, had survived against Muzan in the final confrontation. 

Including learning the truth behind her memory loss, he was also able to discover what was his Volundr's ability in combat: anything that he can touch with his hands  would become a Divine Weapon. Even a small pebble can be lethal to a god. 

The given name of his Volundr is Muichiro. In the Japanese writing system known as kanji, the name meant ‘nothingness’  but ‘Mu’ could also be written as ‘infinity’. 

Upon the transformation being released, Jack’s opinion of [First Name] changed. Someone he’d believed to be a disrespectful, slightly spoiled brat, to a young lady who struggled on how to cope with her memory loss.

Right up until the fourth bout of Ragnarok, he made sure his Volundr was comfortable and fully relaxed with snacks or blankets for her to curl up under on the couch. 

[First Name] was quite confused with his behavior, but did nothing to stop it. She was, however, taken off guard when her partner confessed that he saw her as a surrogate child. If something went wrong in the match, he wanted her to commence the separation ritual as quickly as possible and get to safety. 

Thankfully the confusion did not cause any mishaps as she transformed into a pair of tailor-made leather gloves, synchronizing their hearts together as a single unit to fight against Heracles, the beloved Grecian God of Fortitude. 

(Jack did have to hold back a snicker when his Valkyrie asked if she could punch Heracles just once, really hard, because the spiel he gave about asking Zeus to spare humanity if his opponent ‘laid down his arms’ is really fucking stupid. If Heracles loved mortals so much, why not just fight with them as a representative of humanity?) 

As to be expected, the battle had been tough. Timing was everything in order for Jack’s plan to be executed perfectly. He defeated a god, and gave humanity an advantage they desperately needed in Ragnarok. 

So why was [First Name] happy that her partner had changed over the course of round four? She’d seen through his memories, the good and the bad, and she didn’t mind it. Now, all of a sudden, his heart seemed to be purer than before….more than willingly to change some parts of himself? It did not make sense. 

Neither was the hate that Jack received from the angered guests in the god’s stands. Heracles knew what he was getting himself into, so why all of the fuss? What part of a combat tournament that can end in total annihilation for either party did these idiots not understand? 

Quickly releasing the Divine Weapon ritual, the sword at her waist quickly unsheathed, creating a veil of mist that disintegrated the shower of stones flung at Jack into a pile of dust on the ground. But one attack did not faze the screaming spectators, who now resorted to using glass and garbage. 

Annoyed, [First Name] maneuvered her grip on the hilt and created a thick veil of fog around the arena. Originally it was supposed to provide some cover until the two of them made it pass the drawbridge to humanity’s side of the coliseum, but hearing the crowd become confused and panicked amidst the chaos was worth it. Served the idiots right. 

Jack also seemed happy that she had helped him…but why? More importantly, what was with the sudden change of heart? She bluntly asked him this question, though the only answer she received was it had been Heracles’ unconditional love that saved him.

 A stupid answer, but whatever. 

Upon arriving at the medical wing, [First Name] kicked the door open just when a group of winged nurses were coming back from their break. Quickly realizing they had a patient, they immediately guided the Valkyrie to an empty unit where they instructed her to lay Jack down and let them start working on him. 

[First Name] nodded, following the command before plopping down in a chair and staring off into space. Ah…she was  tired. Is it time for a nap now? 

Bonus Content:

After hearing that Jack will need to spend a night under observation before being released, [First Name] left the medical wing to go get cleaned up. 

Once she had taken a hot shower and changed into some spare clothes, the Mist Hashira decided to reward her human partner with a box of sweets from a high-end patisserie shop. Purchasing two boxes and some other items, she ventured down the corridor leading towards the medical wing when she was attacked from behind by a god. She hasn’t had an opportunity to draw her sword when her entire body was encased in a floating sphere of water. 

The thought that she may die again in Valhalla triggered a flood of emotions to encompass her body, followed by…memories? Ah….that’s right….this is the second time she’s  lost them. 

How annoying. 

Feeling her face burn, it took only a moment to realize that her Demon Slayer mark appeared again. Half a second to decapitate the god who had the guts to try and kill the Mist Hashira with the same trick Gyokko pulled when she said his art was shit. 

Wiping the god’s blood off with the hem of her shorts, she sheathed her sword and continued her trek towards the medical wing, teal sneakers squeaking across the marbled corridor. 

Blinking, she stopped walking and looked down at herself.  Ah…she was covered in blood and water. Should she go back to her room and change again? No, it should be fine. Water will dry out, and these clothes - a black, long-sleeved hoodie, shorts with teal suspenders, and kneepads - were all that she had right now besides that stifling Valkyrie uniform. 

Besides, Jack was an assassin. Seeing her like this shouldn’t be too much of a shock to him when she tells him that she recovered her memories, right? 

Spoiler alert: The Ripper almost fell out of his bed when she greeted him, his face white with fear and shock even when she handed him a big slice of apple pie on a paper plate. He wouldn’t have reacted in such a manner if he didn’t just wake up moments ago. 

Taglist:

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[takaraphoenix]

Here’s a rant that’s been on the back of my mind for a long time but that I’ve never put into actual words before.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians had a whole lot of potential that was entirely wasted with too heavy themes of US patriotic propaganda and a “don’t rock the boat” message.

It’s rare for me to actually criticize PJatO, usually my criticism is aimed at HoO, because I really, truly do love the original series and I think the books are great. But the older I get and the more I actually think about the world itself, its implications and how the author chose to go about things, the more I shake my head and think that a far more intriguing story would have laid within this.

The one where Luke leads the rebels with Percy and the demigods wage war against the gods to take over for them.

Throughout mythological history - and human history too, quite frankly - the theme is that the next generation takes over from the last ones. Kronos slayed Uranus to become king, Zeus slayed Kronos to become king. And now, millennia later, these same gods are still the ruling class. When values and the world have changed so much, but instead of setting it up that these young demigods will become their own pantheon that goes with the time, the choice is to have them fight to keep the status quo.

Everything about the PJO/HoO series is about keeping the status quo. About the young, next generation dying to protect the status quo. Fighting to make sure that the old ruling class stays in charge.

And it is just so... US propaganda in the most cringey manner?

Greek demigods have to sleep on the floor, in a summer camp. Riordan only thought of demigods having an actual city in the sequels, for the Romans. The Greeks, for whatever reason, are living in a summer camp (which in itself is already absolutely ridiculously American). I mean, JKR gets a lot of flag for only giving one school to the US, but Riordan decided that the entire world only has one summer camp for Greek heroes. And it’s located in the US.

(The entire decision to put the GREEK PANTHEON into the United States in itself is such ridiculous US Patriotism Propaganda nonsense, I mean, seriously, Greece still exists, but the US are just such a more powerful and better and more amazing country that even the Greek gods want to come here! That is US Patriotism 101; absolutely everybody wants to come here because this is the best country ever.)

And at this point I gotta tag on how I think this does Chiron dirty. He’s been raising heroes like his own children since the dawn of the gods. Why in the world would he have a summer camp and not a boarding school where the demigods could live and train. Also, his wife is a mountain nymph all the way over in Greece and she did the raising while he did the training, but Chariclo doesn’t even get a mention in the whole series, but that’s more a personal irritation I suppose.

Still though, a summer camp was always, always a weird choice, ever since I first watched the movie, I thought it was an incredibly weird and incredibly American choice. But the deliberate choice to say that Hera and Artemis have cabins that just stand empty, that Zeus and Poseidon have cabins that are completely empty because there isn’t a kid of either of them at the moment, but in the Hermes Cabin, the unclaimed orphans and children of “minor” gods (and I am using quotation marks here because actual Titan Gods like Nemesis and Hecate are just not the same category as that super specific plant-god kid of Demeter or something). Not even a special cabin for the unclaimed children, no, they crash with Hermes.

But somehow, for some reason, This Is Fine. So is the child death rate, actually! The prophecy states that Percy would “reach sixteen against all odds”, implying that demigods actually die before they reach sixteen. Which means their death rate has really increased since ancient times?

Because demigods were parents to like 10 children and many lived to have adventures with their own grandkids, actually. Most great heroes, even when they died, had still lived into adulthood to get married and have more than one off-spring. But you’re telling me that today, over two thousand years later, we’re at “oh wowsie, this one lives to reach sixteen!”? That’s what the conditions for demigods are like now? And that’s... just fine, yeah?

I’m sorry but Luke Castellan was 100% right to want to rebel? There’s not even an argument about him being wrong, not even a little bit. He had completely valid motivation. The gods don’t give half a shit about their children, most don’t even claim them, the kids die before they reach adulthood, and before that, they have to sleep on the floor in a summer camp. Down with the ruling class, it’s time for change, hell yeah!

That would have been such a fascinating starting point. And PERCY, of all people, would have absolutely fit into this narrative! His weakness is loyalty. Luke is the first friend he makes at camp itself, he becomes a mentor, Percy is living in Hermes Cabin and sees the conditions first hand. How does his loyalty not lay with Luke, how does it lay with... Chiron and Grover, who both spent all this time lying to Percy and deceiving him? I love Grover and the Percy-Grover friendship, but really? After learning that Grover only befriended him for the sake of finding out of he’s a demigod, there was absolutely zero doubt, huh?

No, our protagonist has to be blindly loyal to the ruling class and to the status quo. Percy is truly, genuinely given no reason at all to be loyal to the gods. What for?

Poseidon, who allowed for Percy and his mom to live with an abuser for six years? Zeus, who wants to straight-up murder Percy for a theft he didn’t even commit? Hades, who abducts Percy’s mom?

None of the gods do anything to earn his loyalty. And it’s in-universe weaseled out of by saying that he’s loyal to his “friends”. But what friends? He only befriends Annabeth during the quest. And aside from her, we don’t really see him making friends at camp. Luke. And potentially others at Hermes Cabin. Of whom many most likely were loyal to Luke and rebels themselves (Ethan, Alabaster, Chris, to name a few canonical ones).

And that is just so inherently, terrifyingly American. These young soldiers who have no idea what they’re fighting for, but they fight for their country, or in this case for their pantheon. It reminds me so much of the post 9/11 warped thinking that the American troops all the way over the ocean are fighting for “American freedom”, what freedom, you are not being invaded and that war stretched on for years and years and years and still Americans deluded themselves into thinking that they are being “protected” by this war. There’s such a special brand of brainwashing to the military propaganda in the United States that leaves both its soldiers and its people genuinely believing that they are fighting for a greater good of freedom and protection when it’s just greed and the whim of the ruling class (en large; I am aware that there are many critical of it within the country and that many are coerced into joining the military through crippling student debt that they could never pay off otherwise).

That’s exactly what is being reflected in the way the wars are treated in the PJO/HoO books. The demigods, who are used like cannon fodder, who are children as young as 12 years old, fight loyally for the ruling class of the gods, because they are the gods and they are in charge and no we are fighting to protect each other really. But they’re not.

And in the end, in the end, even Luke himself, who had all of these good points and this honestly actually good personal motivation (Thalia’s death, his own scarring during a quest, the way his mother was driven mad by the gods) turned to help them and died a hero - a hero for the gods.

Because we couldn’t let Luke and the rebels actually be rebels. They had to go to the previous ruling class and no, actually, the previous ruler was brainwashing and mind-controlling Luke! Luke was mind-controlled this whole time! He didn’t have to be. He had good, good reasons to rise against the gods even without brainwashing.

But no. If you fight against the status quo and the ruling class, then it’s mind-control. It’s very wrong. You should stick to the status quo, actually.

Even the way the Titans were portrayed was so incredibly black and white when in reality, they could have been much more gray too. Hell yeah did Hecate and her siblings have reason to fight against the gods - their own children have to sleep on the floor, for crying out loud. To have a genuine team-up between demigods and certain Titans who truly fought against the gods would have been a much more intriguing set-up than to make Kronos the evil bad mind-controlling mastermind and all other Titans mustache-twirling villains.

And sure, you might argue that this strong black and white narrative is because it’s a book-series for children. But... even things for children can be more complex than bad guys = evil, good guys = good. And, again, the lens through which this is all set up, it is such a... fundamentally American narrative.

It gets worse if you also consider Heroes of Olympus, at which point we have established veterans and older teenagers but still 4/7 of the main chosen ones are basically untrained complete newbies who hadn’t even been a part of the last war and who are all around 14 years old. And no, don’t come at me with “but Competent Adults ruin children’s books, we need the kids in charge!”. This is a YA novel and our protagonist from the last book is 16 and we can’t even manage to have his fellow protagonists be his age, or carry over older established teen characters such as Clarisse.

And once again, these children who have no reason to will fight blindly for the gods. The gods, who appeased the children after the last war with promises of... claiming their children... and giving them enough housing. That’s the bare minimum thing that Percy got to request from the gods after the war? Everyone gets a bed and gets to know who their biological parents are. That’s just so pathetic, but it was enough to appease them and keep them fighting for the gods.

Speaking of wars and HoO, I just have to mention how utterly disturbing it was that Riordan made the Civil War about Greeks vs Romans. I know... very, very little about American history, but even I know that the Civil War was the one about slavery. That is such a weird real-world implication to make here.

The villainification of actual Mother Earth and fact that, once again, instead of presenting a new threat, we go further back in the past to dig out a previous ruling class, are also baffling choices for me, but that’s a bit beside the point of the post. (Still, it baffled me enough that I have to mention it here.)

Percy Jackson and the Olympians could have had a really cool and fresh premise of forging a new pantheon, of passing on the mantle and shaping a new future, instead its entire message can be boiled down to stick to the status quo, fight blindly for the ruling class without questioning them, because that is where your loyalty should lie and only if you fight for them can you protect the freedom of your friends. And that’s such a disappointment, but it also makes perfect sense for a relatively shortly post 9/11 published US-centric American book series.

[xu-ren]

Genshin gods and their connection to demonology and mythology

I’m no expert on demonology nor mythology, simply someone that enjoys both and the connection between them and Genshin Impact. I think that Mihoyo did a splendid job on the choices they made when deciding which demons in The Lesser Key of Solomon to use. Anyways, I hope that you enjoy. 

Barbatos

Barbatos in demonology is one of the earls of hell, ruling thirty legions of demons and has four kings as his companions to command his legions. His name seems to derive from Latin 'barbatus', bearded, old man, philosopher. He is the 8th demon in The Lesser Key of Solomon, while Pseudomonarchia Daemonum listed him as the 6th demon.

So far it does not really have anything to do with Genshin, except maybe the fact that Barbatos refers to Morax as old man when his name means old man, so that’s a little ironic.

Barbatos is very known for his command over archery, which is why Barbatos in Genshin uses a bow.

Alright, here is the fun part, Barbatos, unlike some of the other demons in The Lesser Key of Solomon, doesn’t have anything to do with foreign gods. Foreign gods in this case refers to gods not belonging to the Abrahamic religions.

In fact, Barbatos is a fallen angel and was once of the order of the virtues of heaven. This is a delicious piece of irony, given that Barbatos’ godly form greatly resembles an angel.

Barbatos takes upon the name ‘Venti’ as a mortal. The name Venti is most likely Latin instead of Italian. Venti in Latin means wind, and can either refer to the entirety of the four wind gods that serve Aiolos, the Roman Lord of the Winds, whose Greek counterpart is Aeolus or a specific type of wind spirit in Roman mythology, whose Greek counterpart is known as Anemoi Thuellai. The wind spirits are violent storm winds, sons of the monstrous hurricane-giant Typhoeus and were kept locked up in Aiolos’ floating fortress. 

The four wind gods that served Aiolos are Aquilo, the north wind, Favonius, the west wind, Notus, the south wind, and Vulturnus, the east wind. Their greek counterparts are Boreas, Zephyrus, Notus and Eurus respectively. I brought this up because of the Knights of Favonius. 

Another of the four winds gods appear in Genshin, although this time with a Greek name. Andrius, the Wolf of the North, is also known as Lupus Boreas. Lupus is the Latin term for wolf while Boreas, as stated above, is the Greek god of the north wind. In conclusion, the name Lupus Boreas itself more or less means Wolf of the North. 

Morax

Morax in demonology is one of the presidents of hell, ruling thirty legions of demons. His name seems to come from Latin 'morax', that delays, that stops. He is the 21st demon in The Lesser Key of Solomon.

So far, similarly to Barbatos, the only thing that has anything to do with Genshin is his name, mostly because rock is the most likely to be able to endure time.

Morax appears as a great bull with the face of a man, which is interesting in a Chinese context, as Liyue is based on Ancient China. In the Chinese zodiac, an ox has a fixed element, which is earth. The Chinese zodiac sign Ox is disciplined and orderly in his or her thoughts and actions. They are known for the strength of body, mind, and character, and tend to be very conservative. They do well in business, not because of ingenious inventions or clever self-promotion, but by hard work and long hours. Sometimes considered old-fashioned, Chinese Oxen are well-known for their moral fiber. They live by a code that may no longer be popular, but they have a clear sense of what is right and wrong. While others may see them as slow and plodding, inside, they are romantics who want to look at the world as it once was (or at least how they know it was).

This makes the ox a very fitting animal for the Morax we know in Genshin.

Furthermore, another belief for his name is the Egyptian goddess Maat, the goddess of truth, balance, order, harmony, law, morality, and justice. This makes it fitting for the Morax in Genshin in my opinion.

Alright, back to demonology, Morax teaches Astronomy and all other liberal sciences, and gives good and wise familiars that know the virtues of all herbs and precious stones. The precious stones part is fitting for the Morax in Genshin but also the fact that Morax in demonology likes to teach, just like the Morax in Genshin.

Morax descends upon Liyue as a dragon. Dragons in East Asian mythology is commonly associated with good luck, propitiousness, power, and nobleness. In ancient times, only emperors were allowed to use a dragon as a symbol. This is probably used to further reaffirm Morax’s position as the highest of the adepti. The colours used in Morax’s dragon form are simple, brown for the earth and gold for the gold that flows in his veins. Even if he did not create Mora, it is typically said that immortals bleed gold, which is commonly known as ichor.

“The Dragon is believed by the Chinese to present power and valiancy, excellence and determination, dignity and divinity. A dragon is believed to have the powers to overcome obstacles to see success. He is spirited, confident, enthusiastic, intelligent and determined.”

As a mortal, Morax takes the name ‘Zhongli’. Chinese names are a bit more difficult to decipher, compared to Latin names since they depend more of the characters used to make up the name as compared to just the sound of the name. Different characters in Chinese could make the exact same sound but mean very different things. Zhongli’s name in Chinese characters is 钟离, the Zhong in his name means clock while the Li in his name means leave. A interpretation of his name would be off the clock, symbolising his retirement. 

His name is likely from a figure in Chinese mythology, 锺离权, Zhongli Quan, one of  the Baxian, the Eight Immortals of Daoism. Zhongli Quan is also sometimes known as , 汉锺离, Han Zhongli because he is said to have lived during the Han dynasty. In legend, he wields a large fan which can resurrect the dead and transform stones into silver or gold. The Zhong in his name is actually the same Zhong used in Genshin’s Zhong but in traditional Chinese as opposed to the simplified Chinese used in Genshin. 

Baal

Baal in demonology is a Duke of Hell, with 66 legions of demons under his command. His name comes from a Canaan and Mesopotamian god, specifically the god of fertility and storms. The Semitic word Baal means lord or master, and the ancient people believed he was in charge of all of nature and humans. He is the 1st demon in The Lesser Key of Solomon.

Baal in Genshin forms herself as a ruler or lord and master of Inazuma. Unlike Barbatos, who is mostly absent or Morax, who descends once a year, Baal seems to be a god that rules with an iron fist, appropriate for someone whose name means lord or master.

Baal in Genshin claims that her ideal is "nearest unto Heaven," calls her body the "noblest and most eminent of all in this world," and sees her reign as eternal which is again, fitting for someone whose name means lord and master.

Baal in demonology is also commonly associated with Satan or at least as his primary assistant. The arrogance shown in Baal in Genshin is therefore fitting, given that Satan was once Lucifer, the most perfect of angels before he rebelled against God and fell to heaven. He too believed that his ideal was the nearest unto Heaven and that his body is the noblest and most eminent of all in this world. Another interesting factor is that Baal in Genshin believes that humans are not deserving of visions, similar to Satan’s reason for his rebellion against God, for he believed that humans did not deserve God’s love or protection.

Baal as a god was believed to be the "giver of life" and mankind was dependent upon him for providing what was necessary to sustain the farms, flocks and herds. Baal was the god of fertility and storms, it is fitting as storms meant lighting and therefore electricity. In Ugaritic and Hebrew, Baal’s epithet as the storm god was He Who Rides on the Clouds.

The question on how a powerful ruling god, similar to Zeus in Greek mythology, became known as a demon is fairly simple.

“According to the Old Testament, after the Israelites wandered in the desert for 40 years, they arrived in the fruitful land of Canaan where the prime deity was Baal. Before they entered the Promised Land, the Hebrew people were warned not to worship the pagan gods of Canaan. However, after wandering in the desert for all that time, they weren’t quite sure that their god was the right choice since the Canaanites were living it up on the fertile soil. Many split their allegiance and decided to worship both their god and Baal.”

Many pagan gods were demonised by the Abrahamic religions as the Abrahamic religions did not allow worship of gods that weren't their God. They called it idolatry and deemed it a sin.

Baal’s primary prophet was Jezebel, if you are not familiar with the Abrahamic religions, she is symbolically associated with false prophets. The original Jezebel instituted the worship of Baal and Asherah on a national scale and violently purged the prophets of Yahweh from Israel. Through the centuries, the name Jezebel came to be associated with false prophets. By the early 20th century, it was also associated with fallen or abandoned women. In Christian lore, a comparison to Jezebel suggested that a person was a pagan or an apostate masquerading as a servant of God. By manipulation and seduction, she misled the saints of God into sins of idolatry and sexual immorality. In particular, Christians associated Jezebel with promiscuity. The cosmetics which Jezebel applied before her death also led some Christians to associate makeup with vice.

Personally, given that the records of Jezebel are mostly from Abrahamic religions, I would advise that it be taken with a spoonful of salt. I mentioned Jezebel because she was said to have violently purged the prophets of Yahweh from Israel, similar to how Baal in Genshin purged the vision holders in Inazuma.

[firerose]

Dark-Seven part three - Jason

I apologize @reading0mens for the longtime it took me but I love Jiper angst sooo it got a bit long XD, feedback would be cool :)

- The day Gea was destroyed marked the end of the giant war

- But for Jason, it was the most horrible day of his life

- He wakes up in the infirmary without Leo and Piper

- They are dead Chiron tells him

- Leo gave his life to kill Gea and the eagles could not catch Piper on time

- Jason refuses to believe it until he runs out and sees her

- Her bloodied corpse, her lifeless eyes they will hunt him until the end of his life

- He wanted to grow old with her

-As he gently rocks her in his arms he tries to understand

- Why would Hera let her die after she screwed so much with her life already?

- Why would she let Leo sacrifice himself in such a violent way?

- He knows the truth deep in his heart

-As he watches Piper‘s body burn among the others he learns what real hate feels like

-It scares him

- He was supposed to be Hera‘s champion, a loyal soldier to the gods

- His pain gets worse when he is alone

- Percy and Annabeth leave Camp for school

- Hazel and Frank go back to Camp Jupiter

- He spends his time alone in his cabin living in the vision he saw when the gods came to help them

- Piper is alive whispering soft words to him that everything is going to be okay

- That he is a person instead of Hera‘s shallow Champion

- They even help him to continue his designs for the minor gods temples

- But soon his love for her turns to desire

- He knows that she is not really with him and who is responsible for it

- He does not want to sit around anymore doing exactly what Hera would want him to do

-“I…..I can‘t do this anymore Pipes.“, He tells her one night his body trembling in despair

-“Yes you can Jason! You are a hero that always stepped up to do what‘s needed.“ She says her words piercing into Jason‘s heart like her dagger

-To him, they feel like an accusation

- All of the sorrow and anger boils up in him

- He does not notice the wind around him growing stronger, or the thunder from outside

- He is tired of Hera, tired of being too perfect

- The papers are thrown across the room and he stands his body shaking with rage

- A yell of defiance leaves him and the storm sends lighting to hit the Cabin

- The Campers find Jason sitting still in smouldering remains

-His eyes are closed tears running down his cheeks but there is a smile on his face

- Invisible chains put on by Hera have just been broken

- Jason never felt more alive

-“I‘m done being their servant Chiron and you should be too.“, that is Jason‘s goodbye, a reminder that the centaur should be a protector not a trainer of child soldiers

- No one follows him when he leaves not even Nico

-They all saw the cold bitterness in Jason once-loyal blue eyes, they all feel his calm aura like wolve ready to strike everyone that comes to close

- Jason is glad for their fear

- He does not want anyone innocent getting hurt in his crazy plan

- Jason fly away but still stays close to the sea

- The papers of the minor gods are destroyed but he can still remember all of their names

- Kymopolaia is the first one he calls on the beach of Montauk

- She emerges from the water in all her glory and Jason can‘t suppress his joy

-He acts like Jason grace always did

- Flattering, his compliments even making the violent storm goddess blush

- Only when she wonders why he is here that he shows her a few of his true emotions

- He talks about how Hera forced his mom to give him to the wolves

- He tells her about all the friends that he lost to Hera‘s obsession with tormenting him, how much Piper and Leo gave him hope for a home, how the queen of the gods let them die

-When he is finished high waves are fluting the beach while Kymopolaia cries in pity for the young hero

- Jason‘s apology enrages her even more

-“The twelve Olympians will never respect or honour anyone who is not useful to them.No matter how many temples I build for them you are just a goddess of lower rank just like I was just their servant. I would just waste my time trying to fix their mistakes and in the end, neither of us would get what they want.“, He says true regret in his voice

-Poseidon's daughter grits her teeth while high waves flute the beach as her body is shaking

- Jason confirmed what she has been dreading since the war ended and her father made up excuses to exclude her from his royal court

-He comforts her and he can tell how he stirs up her hate for Posidon

- Jason can barely hide his satisfaction, his plan is working just like hoped it would

- He advises her to turn the sea against her father, it‘s her birthright after all

- Kymaploaia‘s eyes fill with a mad gleam, a whirlpool around her shows agreement

- She is not afraid to take on the sea, hundreds of tormented river gods will stand behind her angry because they had been forbidden to kill the humans that hurt them every day

-After Jason wished her good luck she leaves and he lets out a laugh of satisfaction

-Words can be more powerful than lightning he learned that from Piper

- A part of him still despises what he has become but he tells himself that Hera turned him into this

- She created a weapon and now she has to deal with the consequences

- He continues to travel all over the country flying over it with his storm horse, never staying at one place for long as he is sure the eyes of Hera are on him

- Every stop brings a talk to another minor god

-Hypnos and Morpheus are easy to convince

-Every mortal needs to sleep and dream so why are they never invited to mount Olympus throne room?

- Jason orders them to rebel against the Olympians in the cities of the demigod Camps first

-It is the only way to ensure that his friends will stay out of his way

- Aelous is harder

- The mad lord of the winds always hated demigods and he is not pleased when Jason holds the dozens Venti he sends to kill him still in the air with one move of his hand

-Jason uses no charm on him but instead reminders of all the times Zeus forced him to deal with storm spirits all by himself

-The idea that he can banish the storm spirits once and for all after Zeus is gone finally convinces him

-But Jason still wants the god to know that he is the leader of this rebellion who should not be messed with

- So he concentrates and moves his hands to control the storm spirits again

- He can feel their anger through the winds but he still manages to force them to turn into wolves their lightning eyes blazing with hatred

-“You will serve me from now on.“, He orders them through his mind his voice sounding like thunder in their heads and they indeed bow their heads before him

-Aelous only laughs at this sight

-“You have changed Jason Grace! If you are ready to rebel against your father just because of the Aphrodite girl and that son of Hephaistus then you are just as crazy as me.“ The lord of the winds jokes when Jason is about to leave with his new wolves

-“I‘m just ready to do anything for the people I love.“, Jason replies coldly

-From Olympus Hera hears those words too

- They seem a weak excuse for all the chaos Jason has caused

-The sea has been stormy for days swallowing ships and fluting beaches while the cities are fluted by rivers

- Zeus is barely able to control his winds and so the weather jumps from hot to cold in minutes

The gods own children are sleeping alongside hundreds of mortals unable to help their parents

- Hera knows that Jason will make things even worse if he is not stopped now

- But her love for him or rather the love for his loyalty to her is what makes her believe that she can bring him back

- Not herself she is not that naive

- Only one person can and even though she is gone Hera has figured a way to use her against Jason

-If only she could see the cruelty of her tricks

- Jason begins to hear Piper‘s voice again in his dreams

- She is not soft with him anymore

- Instead, she tells him how terrible he has become, that he acts like a pathetic child just because he failed to save her

-He yells that he is doing all this to get justice for and Leo but that only makes her laugh so loud that he has to cover his ears to drown it out

- Sometimes he also hears Leo mocking him, saying that he can‘t believe he ever looked up to him

- Jason wakes from those nightmares in sweat and tears until he decides that sleep is overrated

- He feels more comfortable moving around with his wolves anyway, it reminds him of old times, his childhood

- Unfortunately, his sleep deprivation changes his methods to gain more allies

- The nature spirits (Nymphs and dryads), aren‘t met with his charm but instead little patience and quick anger

- To Jason they are dumb, Zeus hit on them for centuries why are they so unwilling to turn against him?

-He tries to stay calm but their talks about how his plan is insane to remind him of Piper and the things she said in his dreams

- Not only once does he command his venti to burn whatever three or plant annoys him too much, the wolves happily oblige and tore the spirits apart with their electricity sparking teeth

- More and more Jason Grace begins to remind them of Zeus, unforgiving, cruel to anyone that does not obey his wishes

-When a young dryad girl dares to say that to Jason out loud he snaps

-A huge thunderstorm is summoned, lightning blasting the girl loved ones

-The forest burns in bright orange flames and Jason uses the winds to direct them towards the girls three

- She dies screaming in the flames while storm wolves bite at her to electrocute

- Jason grins at her Beggs as he looks directly into her beautiful dark eyes, Hera has those too

- Nature decides to join him out of fear

- The gods will be mad but it is the only way to avoid Jason‘s rage

-Jason feels powerful riding past them on his horse while they bow

-He can feel the wind gods around him ice cold, hot like fire

-On mount Otrys he calls for Hecate as the next step for his plan

- When she ignores his call he does not care

- Electricity runs through his veins power, it does not matter if he has to wait a bit until Olympus falls

- Suddenly a voice calls him making his blood turn cold

-He turns his head to look behind him and as expected no one is there

-He tells his rising panic that it was not real, he just hasn‘t slept for four days

- The temperature drops, darkness crawls over the hilltop, he feels watched

-“I‘m here Jason it‘s okay.“, Her voice is sweet close and yet it makes him shiver in fear 

- It can‘t be her

- Jason draws his sword and gets on his horse, the wolves growl restlessly as they can feel their master distress

-“Who are you? Show yourself!“, He demands despite his shaking voice

- Her laughter is loud wild like the summers breeze, he has heard it a thousand times before

-His eyes fly around frantically there is only the shadows of the rising night

-“I‘m your girlfriend Jason! Did you already forget that?“, the girl that can‘t be her asks amused

- A person stands in front of him out of nowhere

-Jason‘s sword falls to the ground, his eyes fill with tears

-Her clothes are nothing she would wear and yet he would recognize her blind

-Piper McLean, the love of his life stands there in a white long dress, her dark brown hair falls loose around her shoulders, her eyes of lighter brown are reaching into his soul

-“No…...this is a trick! You…….you are dead.“, Saying it hurt but it was the truth

- His venti flicker with lighting in agreement

-“I……..don‘t know why they let out but does that matter?!, I‘m here and….I missed you.“, Piper sobs, her despair finally washes away his doubts with guilt

-He slides off his horse ignoring the suspicious neighing

-Jason goes to her slowly putting his hand on her cheek, she feels real

-“I missed you too Pipes.“, He croaks and then breaks down pulling her against his chest all pain of losing her, the hatred against Hera, the things he did to convince gods and spirits to rise against their rulers, even the nightmares in which she hated him, spilling out of him

-He is scared of her backing away when he is finished, of her making his horrible dreams come true

-Instead, she looks flattered and sad as she puts a hand on his chin

-“Perhaps that is why they allowed me to leave the underworld.“, She says so softly and Jason is caught in confusion and overwhelming relief that she does not hate him

-“What do you mean?“, Jason asks suddenly feeling worried, the gods would never allow someone to cheat death especially someone close to him

-“I think the gods want me to save you from yourself.“, Piper answers with concern,

-Jason looks at her stunned then as he processes her words anger rises in him

.-Yes it does sound like Hera to use Piper that way

-“No Pipes I never felt better ! They are just scared because I make their system fall apart.“, He responds not able to hide his pride,

- He is happy that she worries for him but he wants her to know that he is okay that they are okay

-He wants to squeeze her hand as recurrence but Piper steps back with guilt in her eyes

“ Jason…….you haven‘t slept for days and all those burnt nature spirits? This isn‘t you.“, She says her words soft but they are too much like his dreams

-“Yea I have been a bit crazy lately but only because I want to make them stop Pipes. All those mistakes or wars of the gods that we have to die and fight for. Losing Leo and you was something I don‘t want any other demigod to go through. I want us to live in peace and that is only possible if we aren‘t controlled by an egoistic good and his controlling queen.“, He explains and despite his fear, he means every word

- He just wants Piper to understand so that she will fight at his side again

-The image brings a smile to his face

-The two of them standing in front of a chained up Hera in all their glory

-Piper brings him back with a sigh and the deep pity in her eyes fills him with despair

-Why is she so against opposing the gods, Wasn‘t she the one that cursed Hera and despised how the goddess put herself in charge of his life?

-A dread rises in the back of him, he suppresses it quickly

-“Our lives aren‘t controlled by the gods Jason. The fates are the ones that decide what challenges a hero has to face. You are wasting your time and ruining your own life fighting for something that will never change. Call off the rebellion Jason and tell the gods to be actual parents. Tell them to protect their children from their destines as long as possible and then go home to rest. That would be easier than a war you can‘t win.“, Piper finally says

-Despite all of his anger Jason has to admit that her advice is tempting

- The vision of him growing old with Piper could come true plus he truly is not strong enough to fight fate itself so why not ask the gods for a favour? Maybe he can convince them to change after all he is the favourite of their rulers

-But then a thought washes away that option and he figures a way to tell Piper why the Olympian council needs to be reformed

- When Piper takes his hand again he looks at her with determination

“I can‘t. Hera loves using demigods too much. Look what happened to Leo. She claimed that she wanted to prepare him for his future just to let his mom die and let him sacrifice himself. You once said that heroes have to step up and do what is right and that is what I‘m doing right now.“, He explains

-For a short moment he thinks guilt washes over Pipers face

- Suddenly he realizes how strange her pleading was

-Piper always was someone to take action, she would never tell him to just do nothing and the way she almost took all fault from the gods……..

-“Hera only did that because she knew what Leo‘s role in the war was gonna be. She may not be the best but she is not our enemy Jason. She cared for Leo and she cares about you too.“, Piper says and now Jason is sure

- He rips his hand away from her his eyes burning with rage

-“Piper would never defend Hera ! Who are you?“, He asks coldly anger numbing the shattering of his heart

-The girl looks at him in confusion, he hates that she does it through Pipers eyes

“ Jason -“

-“ Don‘t! Stop using her voice and show yourself! I want to know which god I have the honour to kill!“, Jason spats

- At this moment he forgets all of his good morals, only blind hatred is left

-The Venti come to his aid, they swirl around him like a mini hurricane and he can feel their power pulsing through him, waiting for his command

-“I‘m just trying to help you Jason even if you could kill me that would not solve anything.“She warns but it is still Piper's voice and he will make her pay for it.

-“Oh no I think this will make me feel a lot better and if Hera send you just know that what happens to know is her fault, not mine.“, Jason says with a cruel smile before turning his storms to pure lightning

- with a hand wave the spirits turn into pure lightning crashing into where she stood

-Flames light up the hill but she is not there anymore

-A huge dove is in her place attacking immediately scratching at his face

-Dark clouds gather thunder is booming, rain falls,

-the Windlords themselves lift Jason into the air pushing his attacker away

- He does not need his sword

- The sky is his weapon

-Jason chases the goddess, calls cold wind to let hail fall onto her instead of rain

- Lightning strikes and he catches it in his bare hands, it flickers over his entire body until it gets thrown towards his victim

-Despite all of this the dove keeps trying to get closer, her voice pleading for him to stop his madness

- A hysterical laugh is his answer, he remembers a time where the gods loved him for his kindness, the same one that forced him to keep Heras chains on him for too long

- This goddess is treating him like he is still a pawn but that will end now

- Jason spins himself around his arms outstretched

- Wind blows around him, the dove shrieks in panic

- A tornado is throwing her around in circles like a puppet

- She changes form to other animals, attempts to escape through the cloud storms walls

- That is when they become pure lightning

- it hits her makes her body twist unnaturally

- She falls and Jason is still in the storms eye, He feels like a god bathed in his fathers lightning bolts

- The goddess unmoving body beneath him looks so tiny almost fragile even when she has changed to her Olympian form

- He would have pitied her if he hadn‘t recognized her, now he only feels disgusted

- Another shockwave is sent through her body before Jason dissolves his tornado

- The wind gods hesitate for a moment not liking what Jason might have in mind

- Jason is stronger and so they follow him down towards his victim as only a soft breeze

-“Why?“, He spats down at her as she wakes up

- His short question holds her crime all the pain and false hope she put him through

- She gets on her knees to look up at him her ever-changing hair clothes and eyes even her skin that is healing her burns are no beauty to him anymore

-“Hera and I only wanted to help you Jason.“, Aphrodite apologizes maybe there are real tears in her eyes

-“ I need help? I‘m not the one impersonating my dead daughter to manipulate her boyfriend!“, He spats finding her trick even more disgusting as he puts it into words

- He thinks about how she held him, what would have happened if he did not find out who she was

- He feels dirty

“I always take on the form of loved ones that's why Hera send me. She knew that Piper was the only one to get you out of your grief. Love is the only thing more powerful than hate“, Aphrodite explains and with every word, she looks more and more like Piper again

- Jason realizes that she is just as bad as Hera, another god that messed with his mind

- He sees how heavy she is breathing, it is time to punish her

-“Well then let me tell you something about love.“, Jason says making a pulling motion with his hands reaching for her breath

- He bends the oxygen out of her, the goddess head being forced forward

-The winds grow stronger again, he hears their whispers to not do this, he is deaf to their pleads

-“N – No!“, She protests in horror, her body glows attempting to release her true form but his attack surprised her and is now making her too weak

-Jason continues an air bubble forming around her head

-She digs her nails into her throat until they are bloody, her eyes nearly pop out of her skull and her face is an ill shade of blue

- the chocking noises she makes are music for him

-Jason enjoys every second

-Her looking like Piper does not save her

- It only reminds him more of the future he has lost and that makes him more furious

-When her sounds and body become still and her face is one mask of fear he finally tells her

-“Love never lasts long in this world.“

-No air gets added to the bubble, it dissolves

- An Aphrodite goddess of Love and beauty falls dead to the ground killed by her daughter's lover

- Jason feels empty

- He just killed a goddess he should feel ecstatic

- But instead, he feels as if something broke inside him

-Jason stares at the sky waiting for a reaction

-“ Come on Hera! This is what you wanted me to become right? A murderer your weapon. Just come to me and admit it !“, Jason yells tears streaming down his cheeks

-He falls to the ground as the thing he did crashes down on him

-He killed for revenge just like Zeus, Hera and all other gods did for centuries

-How is he better than them now?

-His allies seem to think the same thing

-Jason can‘t summon his venti in the morning

- The winds are harder to bend under his will

- Nature hides from him it does not matter how much he burns no one shows up

- Sometimes he hears the spirits weeping but he knows it is not meant for him

- Jason gets more and more desperate

- As of last hope he goes to San Fransisco

- The first step he takes into the city shows him that it‘s full of life again

-He plays with the thought of going back to Camp Jupiter

- But he does not want his friends to see what he has become

- On Ocean Beach, he yells for Kym

-Jason tells himself that she can help him turn his fate around

-“I‘m sorry Jason but I don‘t talk to traitors.“, She whispers from under the sea

-Jason feels like a wolve being cornered

-“ I never betrayed you the gods did !“ He shouts his voice sounding childish in his ears

-“You promised to fight in my name and then went on a crazy rampage just to make Hera feel bad. I expected better from you Jason.“, Kym told him in a stern almost motherly tone

- The words are a punch to his gut, a mirror showing him the truth

-His plan was supposed to be a peaceful change of the god's council, yes he knew about the damage the minor gods would cause but that was just to get the higher gods attention

-He sees the dryad girl in the flames, aphrodite chocking as air is pulled out of her

-This rebellion started with a wish for justice for Leo and Piper, for all those treated badly by the gods

- His lust for revenge destroyed all that

-Regretful he walks into the sea the water going up to his knees

-“ I‘m sorry.“, Jason says honestly

-That is when they finally react

- The waves grow bigger a man with a trident emerging out of them, Nature spirits come out of their plants with pinecones and daggers for weapons the blond-haired woman with her crown of corn is their true goddess

- The mist rising around him lets him hear his victim screams once more

-“Jason Grace we are here to punish you for crimes against us and the entire western civilization. Surrender now or seal your fate.“All of the Command in Unison

-He thinks of giving himself up

-He was raised as a Roman, he learned when a soldier has no chance to win

- Yet the thought of kneeling and letting Hera win so easily makes him sick

- And so he refuses

- The fight does not take long

- Jason summons lightning to blast away Nyads that grasped his ankles

-He runs out of the sea directing lightning at the advancing Dryad warriors

-They burn but the flames seem to have gathered they're own concise

-Orange and high they rage towards him growing on sand which was not possible

-They burn Jason‘s arm as he attempts to fly over them

-Screaming in pain he struggles to stay in the air

-Demeter uses her giant staff to let the three roots attack him like huge arms

-Her followers throw weapons at histones that for some reason always hit no matter how much he uses wind to push them away

-Rain comes and turns into a huge rain shower blinding his view

-He is forced to fly backwards and that is when Poseidon's trident impales his gut

-Blood spills pain forbids him to breath

-His vision goes black before he falls in the threes arms

-Jason wakes in ironically on chains in front of Hera and Zeus

-"I hope you know what a disappointment you are to me.", Zeus says but Jason's eyes are fixed on Hera

-She looks at him with a deep sorrow he did not expect so he chooses the last beg

-" Whoever you choose as your next heroes Hera please don't control them. Remember me as a warning of what happens if you do.", He pleads

-He is scared of his punishment but if Hera realizes her mistakes then maybe all of this was worth it

-Hera only replies with a small nod

-Then he is dragged off to the underworld by Hades off to the cliffs that lead into Tartarus

Jason panics as he realizes

He thought that he would end up in the fields of punishment

-But of course, Zeus hates when his children ruin his good name

-He struggles against his bonds begs his uncle to at least let him see his friends one more time

Luckily Hades is one of the kinder gods 

-He summons Piper's ghost, he does not say why Leo is not there

-She smiles at him sadly and maybe with anger which Jason does not blame her for

-Her kiss on his forehead brings tears to his eyes

-"Goodbye Jason. I'm sorry I caused you so much trouble.", She whispers and he shakes his head

-"Don't be. All of this is Heras fault and mine.", He tells her and with that, she is gone again

-He thinks of her and Leo while he falls

-Hera mourns him for days

-She watches the rest of the seven holding his funeral at Camp Jupiter

-They understand his motives and that's why they still love him as the friend he was

-Hera understands him too

-She was not liked in the past few centuries and that was why the idea of her very own hero made her blind for letting him be a child

-Now that was what killed him and Zeus was already off making another hero that he can  be more proud of

-A child he warned her to not even look at

-The other demigods resent her even more

-Frank Zhang would be her other hero but Hazel Levesque would never let her near him

-She thinks about Jasons last words, his beg that she shouldn't mess with children's lives

-It's when Leo Valdez returns and learns of his friend's fate that she promises herself to remember

-The hatred in his eyes is enough to bring even a goddess to her senses 

[godsofhumanity]

Rhea 30 day HCs

Hello its online tumblr noob anon who is very tired but finally mustered up the determination to do rhea's HCs lol

- i don't have many ideas for rhea's appearance and personality, but i feel like her personality before cronus's children eating shenanigans (lets call it BCE for Before Children Eating LOL) was similar to freyja's, but more mellow and less aggressive lol. But i generally agree with vans' interpretation of her personality. She was definitely a bit wild and mischievous BCE, bcos how else would she be able to handle kronos LOL. But she would definitely be less out of control and ambitious as cronus, although she liked power too. Anyway, for her appearance, the only thing i feel for certain is that her hair would be a dark reddish brown that is still distinctly red, to reflect her fiery potential, as she can be extremely determined and driven, almost in a steely way, as we will see after cronus eats her kids (ACE, After Children Eating)

- rhea and cronus definitely loved each other. But the difference between them was that cronus valued power, ambition and control over love and Generally Being a Good Husband and Father™, while for rhea, it was the opposite. No amount of prophesies and power seduction could convince her that it was right for her children to be destroyed. When hestia was first eaten, rhea was torn apart by grief, but she still stayed with cronus bcos she loved him and didnt want to give up on him and his potential for love. She kept hoping against hope that he would change, but he didn't. The more children cronus ate, the more pain and despair rhea felt. Ultimately, all the grief rhea felt accumulated to the point where it overcame her love for cronus. She realised that the man she loved was gone and all his empty promises were meaningless bcos he was entirely consumed by power and his hold over the cosmos.

- this was rhea's breaking point and her grief steeled her to be determined to save the next child she had with cronus, even if it meant betraying him. She colluded with gaia and uranus to hide zeus from cronus and and raise him. (Honestly idk what she would have felt towards gaia and uranus, bcos they were the ones who told kronos the prophecy that his children would overthrow him and caused him to deteriorate to this point, but yet they are helping her... I guess she would have felt conflicted at best, but with no one else to turn to, they were her best bet). When zeus grew up and decided he wanted to save his siblings and rebel against cronus, rhea understood that this would be the ultimate betrayal to kronos and was pained by this, but ultimately let zeus go ahead, knowing that this was inevitable and with cronus now so different from the titan she once loved, she knew it was time for the age of titans to come to an end)

- after all the fighting ended and the gods emerged victorious, zeus threw cronus and his allies into tartarus, but let the other titans such as rhea go. I think after the whole ordeal, rhea would have been fundamentally changed by everything she went through. She would no longer be the vivacious girl she once was BCE, but would now be almost numb to everything, after being scarred for so long by so much. After the gods took over and rhea was left to roam freely, i think she vowed never to get involved in anything like this again, the equivalent of "retiring from politics", if you will. I think she lived out the rest of the days with oceanus and tethys since they mostly stayed out of the conflict and were generally very nuturing and wise, being her older siblings (especially bcos im so influenced by vans' oceanus HCs... i love it). But i think she sometimes hung out with gaia (and uranus), bcos looking past all her conflicted feelings towards them, who else truly understands what she has been through? I think that despite everything, she feels safe and secure with gaia (and uranus), since they are the only ones who truly understand her.

- but i do think that sometimes, (if this is even possible), she visits cronus in tartarus, as a sad recollection of what they once were and everything they've been through. It's like the equivalent of your ex-wife visiting you in prison. Cronus definitely feels sad too, but he understands that everything was his own fault. Although he may have felt super angry and betrayed by rhea initially, after stewing in tartarus for so long, he would definitely come to understand his mistakes. All in all, rhea's visits to kronos in tartarus are like a mourning session for their relationship, for both of them. Ultimately the whole thing was a terrible tragedy for everyone involved, and nobody would ever be the same again.

Wow that was depressing

[inthiswhisper]

alright, it’s been a while, so my whole episode... recap? analysis? commentary? thing is rusty, but 8x16 got me excited for a few reasons.

i’m focusing on prometheus’ very familiar story and character parallels. despite what dean says about sam dying like prometheus, within the context of this episode, he’s not prometheus. i think he’s actually oliver, prometheus’ son.

the real promethus is (not a shocker) dean. what first tipped me off is this moment—

—of dean staring at the family. dean has had a history of yearning for one, image similar to ben and lisa, which is important but not anything new, so i dismissed it. then sam explained—

dean: didn’t [prometheus] steal fire or somethin’?

sam: yep. he stole the flames of olympia for us. zeus decided to revoke humanity’s ability to make fire, and in return [for prometheus’ actions], zeus decided to strap him to that mountain and make him relive death every day.

dean: damn, every day for how long? no wonder the guy’s hard drive is fried.

—which, again, is important, but defying gods and protecting humanity are already obvious elements of the show. however, what really struck me was how dean and prometheus both suffer from immortality by a higher power. one as a consequence of his actions, the other to play a pawn in god’s game. both men die over and over at the hands of a god binding them by fate, enough that it grows tiresome. like what dean says too often, at the start of the episode even prometheus says—

prometheus: all i know is all i do is die, so if you want to shoot me, shoot me. just promise me you finish the job ‘cause i can’t take this anymore.

—wishing to stay dead. and, though an eagle eating prometheus’ guts is easy to dismiss, it’s interesting when you learn what intestines symbolize (limbo or the halfway point between a beginning and an end) and what eagles symbolize (strength, courage, and immortality).

dean and prometheus are either always killed or on the brink of death, finally passing a halfway point to reach the end, until they’re revived — forced to fulfill a duty or endure a punishment. survival / protecting people via strength and courage (eagle), which once was the goal, now eats away at them, leaving them perpetually stuck in limbo (intestines) and growing tired.

but, even if they don’t want to continue, the will they have left to try is drawn from their children — oliver and sam (who i’m counting as dean’s child). sam and oliver have their commonalities, and as i’ve said before, i think dean would have stopped trying if it wasn’t for sam. similar to prometheus’ feelings about oliver—

sam: you pretty much saved the whole world.

prometheus: yeah, i guess, but none of that means anything unless i can save my son.

—protecting sam is dean’s priority. prometheus struggles with immortality and is willing to die, but knowing his son has taken on that burden means he needs to rid oliver of the curse first. likewise, though the trials were intended for dean and he made it his mission to be chosen, sam beat him and is now taking on the mantle, but dean still won’t let him die because of it.

so much so that dean is desperate enough to pray to (really, beg) cas to watch over sam—

dean: listen, you know i am not one for praying. in my book, it’s the same as begging... but this is about sam, so i need you to hear me. we are goin’ into this deal blind. i don’t know what’s ahead, or what it’s gonna bring for sam. he’s covering pretty good, but i know he is hurtin’, and this one was supposed to be on me. so, for all that we’ve been through, i’m asking you... you keep a lookout for my little brother, okay?

dean: where the hell are you, man?

—and protect him. like how oliver rejects sam’s offer for ice cream to stay at his father’s funeral, sam is holding himself up and being braver than he is about the trials. even dean being the one to light prometheus’ funeral pyre and comfort hayley (reminding me of dean before, watching them be a family) touches on some symbolism.

however, dean’s prayer actually holds another parallel — one similar to asking cas to protect sam, except of sam convincing artemis to stop her father and protect oliver. this is where it all takes a turn. right before sam wins artemis over, he exposes her feelings for prometheus—

sam: [prometheus] was in love with you, you know. he told us.

artemis: what did he say to you?

sam: this wasn’t the first time he escaped that mountain, and that you let him go free, as long as you could hide your little tryst from [zeus]. you were afraid [to tell anyone or else your father] would find out that you fell for the person he hates the most in this world.

—claiming she is not only in love with him, but also helped him escape his banishment, where he endured never-ending punishment. at the end of the episode, she even kills her father to save prometheus and the people he loves — caring about them because of prometheus — and helps them regain their free will. 

not to state the obvious, but... unless we know of someone else who symbolizes free will and rebelled against their father-god and freed a prometheus-paralleling character from a fate-bound narrative of endless torture (or, hell), all while vowing to protect his family... i can only think of cas here. (i also obviously associate cas with prometheus — his protection of humanity, his immortality, and the emmanuel vibes — but for consistency’s sake, i’ll keep from rambling.)

however, prometheus gets caught in artemis’ crossfire and dies with zeus. she doesn’t take his body, leaving it for oliver and hayley (again, ben and lisa vibes) to keep because she’s willing to let go even if she loves him. but... i think both artemis and hayley count as his love interests. like the immortal / monstrous beings and their mortal / human partners we met this season, one half of the pair meets a tragic end, usually because the other is at fault for the death. never out of malice, always grief, because either their lives or their love couldn’t outlast their reality. and, though artemis killed prometheus, hayley freed zeus, which put him in danger. for which she apologized for and grieved over with dean.

we already know dean and cas’ end was tragic, but what’s interesting — what i’ve mentioned before — is that it wasn’t his grief that took cas. it was his happiness. it was loving dean that much. out of all of these relationships’ ends, that was the difference.

and all of this might be me talking nonsense and seeing parallels that aren’t there, that’s fair lol, but it’s hard to ignore the overlaps that exist between these characters and their mirrors.

[notfeelingthyaster]

Imagine (Son of Hades! Percy; Godswapped! Big Three's kids (5/7) or (10/12)

House of Hades AU Pt.1 - Perseus' Journey

Hello! Before reading this, check on the masterpost - it's essential for the understanding of this. Read the warnings before proceeding. Leave reviews, suggestions, and good reading :))

Perseus falls for what it feels like hours - but he counts thirty minutes inside his head - it gives him time to think and plan.

He has his ax - his warhammer left behind in the ship, unfortunately - no food, an empty canteen, his very drained powers, and absolutely no way to get to the Doors. If all the monsters are leaving through the Doors, he could follow them. But how? Would they be able to smell him? How quick would the story of a demigod in Tartarus get to the ears of Gaea's army?

He would be hunted all the way through - and how many obstacles could he really cross?

Nothing in his body was broken - but, every few moments, he could feel himself flicker - absolutely drained. His priority should find somewhere to rest, if he even survives the fall.

Perseus doesn't want to think that way, but he can calculate it: he was falling for about thirty minutes now. 30min x 60 = 1800s; 1800s x 10 m/s² = 18000 m/s. Or 64800 km/h. Simple physics = he shall be a smudge at the bottom of Tartarus.

In fact, the free-fall itself should be enough to at least dislodge his internal organs. Why is Perseus still breathing anyway? Is his godly blood maintaining him alive?

If he survives this nasty fall, he can go to the river of fire - he spent enough time in the Underworld to know that the Phlegethon shall keep him alive - perhaps at a horrible price. It might stop him from ever speaking - the dead keep screaming in the Fields of Punishment forever - but he is not dead is he?

Perseus sees a river approaching - he can't summon the shadows to cushion his fall - these shadows are rebelling and he is too weak. He doesn't want to drown, but between the sharp stones and the water, he chooses the water. 

Perseus curves himself into a ball and hopes his heritage will protect him. It still hurts - he probably broke at least five ribs and his right leg feels weird - but he is alive.

The voices in the river are tempting - and Perseus is weak. But his fear of drowning and the sheer willpower of getting the fuck back to his friends is enough. He'll get back to the earth. He will get to his mother. The gods don't get to take this from him.

They took enough.

He goes after the fire river - the Phlegethon is never too far from the Cocytus, Dante was mightily wrong in his self-insert fanfiction - and everything hurts.

Percy cannot walk properly - his right leg is really messed up, all of it - and each breath he takes, he wishes he never fallen down this hole.

A selfish part of his mind wishes he had just... let Annabeth fall. But he knows that his heart wouldn't let it happen - he would die for any of his friends. For any demigods - this was never for the gods.

Everything is trying to kill him. The air is poisonous, the earth is shards of glass, the stones are scaly, the ground is too hot, but he still feels cold - like everything in this place is draining him. There's a giant infinite of nothing stretching over him - no sun, no ceiling, nothing.

The pit feels alive somehow. There's a weird pulsing every time he takes a step, and sometimes he trips on weird purple purulent bubbles. Everything is also so humid and slippery - it's like walking on dead fish.

He shivers - is the beginning of sickness and intoxication settling onto him. Perseus doesn't have the luxury to vomit - not here, not now. He doesn't have nutrients to waste. Perseus stop thinking about the place he is in - the less he knows, the best.

Perseus is half pushing himself through, before getting into the margins of the lava river and just drinking huge mouthfuls. It's awful - it burns his hands, his chapped lips, and all the way down to his stomach. He can feel the taste of ash and blood in his tongue, and wonders if his voice will be the same after this.

It's such a capricious thought that it makes him chuckle mutely. He is lucky if he survives to destroy the doors. It's a miracle if Perseus ever reunites with his friends - he would gladly do it without his voice.

The lava heals most of his injuries - the scars never leave. His leg is still a little wobbly - like he might fall any second.

After he fills his canteen, Arachne appears in all of her dastardly glory - and Perseus hates her. It's her fault he is stuck in this mix between the ninth circle of hell and Mordor. Another immortal being with a sense of superiority and a grudge against the gods. It's her fault, and Perseus wants her to suffer.

She deserves it - Perseus doesn't blame her for her grudge in the gods, but she took it out in them, in the demigods, in his people. At least he could take this opportunity to take this blight from the world for a while.

He kills her - slowly. He starts by cutting her legs - every time one reaches for him, he racks it off. Then, when it tries to run away - or better, roll away - he beheads it.

Because it's not a she. It's not a girl of Athens with a bad case of hubris - it's a monster. A monster created by Athena - and how fitting that the goddess created the monster who stomped her children for centuries in a search the goddess send them in. Wise, indeed.

He keeps limping to safety - is there even safety in this hellhole? Damn Arachne, damn Athena, damn Annabeth for wanting to prove herself to the bitch.

He loves Annabeth - not the way she possibly wants him to, but love nonetheless - but this. This is her fault. If not for her misplaced want for approval and immensurable hubris, they might as well be all in the ship now. But that was always his destiny, wasn't it? 

Child of Hades - might as well die in the depths of hell for those ungrateful bastards. Wasn't that what they did to his father? Cast him into hell - and isolate him forever from earth and heaven. They must be so happy, so glad that he is here, again dying for immortal beings that don't care.

He is going to get out. And then, he is going to punch every single god that he ever restrained himself from doing so: Dionysus, Mars Ultor, Venus Verticordia, Aphrodite, Bacchus, Juno, Hera, Ceres, Zeus, Jupiter, his father, Nemesis, Invidia, Athena. Every single one of them. He has a growing list.

He keeps limping - most of the time, he borders the stones that litter the margins of the fire river. Sometimes, he hides in the shadows of the cliffs - Perseus cannot waste his strength, and the more that he stalls the monsters to know he is here, the most he lives.He can't keep hiding for long. 

Three cyclops pass through him - the exact ones who tried to kill him in his first quest after the Bolt. They attack him - Perseus kills all three of them. It’s their fault too - they should’ve killed him before.

Ugly #1 tries to attack him alone - his hubris is his downfall. Perseus cuts both his arms before finally spilling his guts on the fiery ground. Ugly #2 and #3 go down together - both with their heads split open under his ax.

Perseus has no need for mercy. He has an objective - and no obstacle will stay in his way. He does meet Bob/Iapetus in the way - and is sad, because he has no space for morals here - righteousness will only get him dead in this wasteland.

The titan wants to join him - after he destroyed his life. He can't remember anything - not even here, on the motherland. How much of a dick can he be?

A big one, apparently, because he decides not to tell Bob anything. He doesn't have the raw strength to fight a Titan. He doesn't have his powers - not even his warhammer. It's just him, his ax, and a lot of firewater. And now, Bob and his war shovel. Perseus is not telling a titan that he helped murder two of his brothers and wiped his memory.

Bob tells him they are far from the Doors - that time passes differently inside Tartarus. When Perseus tells him, in a raspy voice that he barely recognizes, that he's been here for almost a day, the Titan disagrees - he might've been here for an hour or a week, maybe more, maybe less. There's no way to know.

They keep walking. The titan's aura is almost enough to keep them safe, but some monsters don't care. Perseus kills two empousai, four carnivorous sheep, and a spartoi - what wonderful flashbacks. Bob kills thrice as much.

They stop to rest in a cave at a secluded part of a cliff. Perseus is unable to sleep - what if Bob remembers that he is not Bob and decides to kill Percy in his sleep? What if they are attacked? What if this poisonous ground swallows him when he closes his eyes? 

So he curls around his ax, with his back to the wall, and keeps his eye on Bob. Bob ends up talking to him - even if Perseus doesn’t think he can talk back - about Persephone's garden and the bloom of pomegranates on the cold of winter nights.

It’s wishful thinking, but Perseus wants to be thirteen again, scrolling through the underworld gardens barefoot, hand in hand with Kore. He remembers the smell of her hair and the curve of her lips, and the way the flowers purred under their joined fingertips. She was the first to touch him - besides his mother - and that he didn’t fear destroying.

The walls are covered with some viscous substance. He doesn't think much about it - the more he thinks, the more he sees. And he doesn't want to see.

They leave when a caravan of monsters pass - and Percy muses if he was able to close his eyes for even ten minutes. They crawl through small passageways and climb walls that feel like ice and fire for what it feels like a week - it's impossible to know. 

Perseus is collecting scars - the river of punishment heals him, but he can feel them under the rags he is using to cover himself. A hellhound left a cut across his face, and he wonders if he'll look like Luke now. His right leg is still acting up.

Seconds could be millenniums and centuries could be hours. The two of them rest five times - it’s how Percy is counting the time.

The war hasn't been won. But the monsters keep reforming and walking in the same direction as them, so they also haven't lost yet.

They find a cat - a skeleton saber-tooth tiger, because this is the place for happy memories - and it just keep following them. It reminds him of Blackjack - and he doesn't have the heart to kill it.

Percy wonders if any of his friends are dead. He wonders if he’ll ever be able to fight for his friendship with Annabeth, if he’ll ever joke with Leo, mess Hazel’s curls, get scolded by Will, or teach Piper math.

He wonders if he’ll ever ask Jason to teach him how to swim to get over his fear of drowning, ask Nico the rules of Mythomagic or simply talk quietly with Frank again.

He wonders if he’ll ever get to choose a college, if he’ll ever see his friends and tell them how much he loves them again. Percy wonders if he’ll ever go on a date, see cheesy movies, have his first kiss with a boy.

He wonders if he’ll ever taste his mother’s cookies again. He misses the warm touch of the sun in his skin, and the days he didn’t survive on lava and sheer stubbornness.

They meet the Arai in a cliff - and Perseus cannot stop killing them. The first curse that falls upon him it’s dust, choking and strangling him - like so many enemies that he let the earth devour. Then the blindness - the same he inflicted in Hyperion with his shadows - and his feet turn to lead - Hercules. One after the other, all the monsters that he killed get their comeuppance - Perseus does not regret any of them.

One of the curses, however, doesn’t come from a monster or an enemy - it’s from Lee Fletcher. His heart aches with loss, a suffering Perseus doesn’t feel in a long time - depression, his punishment for killing Michael Yew.

Perseus regrets it - he also regrets Bob, who stands aside and does nothing to interrupt his suffering. Perseus doesn’t blame him - perhaps he would have done the same, have their positions been reversed.

He feels his blood boil - his body hurts with the pains of the injuries he inflicted through the years - and he knows Phineas’ curse will be the one which finally takes him.

Suddenly, Bob helps. It’s Kore who interceded in his name - the only deity who never failed him. But it’s too late - he doesn’t feel pain anymore. It’s a sign - a sign that he is going. 

He is glad Bob wiped the Arai - at least now, he can go in peace. In the middle of his haze, he looks around and finally understands what he is blocking and denying since this journey started.

Tartarus is not a place. Tartarus is the personification of everything bad - and it’s horrifying in such a level he closes his eyes - he doesn’t need his last moments to be a nightmarish landscape.

Percy can feel himself flicker. Since coming here, he wasn't able to use his powers well. Now he knows is probably because the "ground" is no ground, and he can't travel in the shadows, because the shadows are corrupted. Because this is beyond his father's domain, beyond the gods.

He closes his eyes and imagines Elysium - the children that fell in the first war. The soldiers of the Twelfth Legion that died to protect their home. Michael Yew, Castor, Silena, Bianca, Ethan, Charles. They are waiting for him on the other side.

If he dies here, does he even get to go there? What happens to demigods that die in the dark lands of monsters? Did he get to die? Or was he a part of this now? Would he reform eventually?

Bob is carrying him somewhere. He tried to force-feed him lava - but Perseus could have told him it wouldn’t work. There’s a limit even to magic rivers.

He must have passed out, because when he opens his eyes, he is in a gigantic bed, in a place he doesn’t recognize. Percy looks through the window. It’s not Camp, not Nova Roma, not Argo II - and definitively not Elysium.

The air is red and green and he can see the fires burning at a distance, the mountains of the body he is walking. He is still stuck in Tartarus.

Did he reform? Was Iapetus able to save him? How much time did he stay asleep? Where are they? Percy is pretty sure a house is not part of the Tartarus package.

The demigod tries to sit up, but something is weird. He looks down, and where his full right leg once was, now lies a half-metal one. 

Perseus can see gears turning, the places where the bronze meets black. When he tried to lift it, it answered as if that is his own - even the same weight. His mid-thigh is still meat and bone - but the rest isn’t his.

He touches his knee - knocks into it, twice. It's hollow and clangs like metal, but somehow, he can feel it. Perseus tries to detach it: impossible. Little tubes seen to stick in his upper tight.

Bob is outside - he is talking to someone. He enters the room, but Perseus doesn't see who is.

Bob - or, well, Iapetus - tells him that the weight of his earth-related curses, plus the sheer blood that he lost, was too much for his already damaged leg, the bone broken in at least five or six parts and an infection settling in. He wouldn't survive the fever - so the titan had to cut it off.

"When the Labyrinth fell, it fell here, leaving junkyards everywhere. There's one that is too close to the Mansion of the Night, so almost no monster goes there. Me and our host, we are no monsters - so we go there sometimes. We found a leg for you - from a mechanic body marked as Sextus."

Sextus - where had Perseus heard something similar? Oh, that's right. Quintus. He was wearing the prototype of Daedalus next body, that he never got to use because Percy freed - banished - him to the Underworld.

He says he adapted it a little - it was too short for Perseus, so they needed to bastardize an arm to make the socket a little bigger - and connected into his thigh.

"It was a pretty simple process - this version is advanced enough that the tubes connected themselves, we just had to put a little fuel. It will be like your own leg."

Percy wants to scream. This is not his leg. He wants this leg out, now, and his leg back. It feels wrong. Dead - he can see little tubes not unlike veins, but there's just lava running on them.

So this is what Daedalus used to fuel himself - the waters of Phlegethon, damned waters to fuel his damned life.

This is just a nightmare - how is he going to survive this without a limb? Will he be able to walk? Fight? Run?

But his voice escapes him - Percy is still too damaged from the lava. His scars itch - they are of a pale red, and he has all kinds of them. He must be a terrible person to attract such curses - the weight of Lee's curse was removed from his chest, but not his mind.

The neural connections in this must be pretty good, because he is able to feel when his "foot" touches the ground. It takes him a few minutes to readjust - bit it's just like nothing happened.

But it did. That's not his leg. That's not his limb - that's alien. It feels and it walks and it works even better than his old messed up right leg - but at least the messed up right leg was his.

Perseus has no need for limping now - but as he looks at his first mirror since this started, he staggers.

His whole body is mapped by white and red scars that mix with keloids - a jumbled mess of raised patches and ugly patterns. In his face, there's a scar just like Luke's - from his forehead to his jaw, crossing his left eye.

Perseus puts on his ragged shirt - he hates the scars on his chest - but he looks at his eye, and thinks it suits him - it's a mark of betrayal, of the gods' abandonment.

His hair is no longer the short curls he gained while in Nova Roma - now it's a big dirty mess that Percy can't cut or do anything about, so he just bundles it up on the top of his head, out of the way.

Jeez. He is a mess.

Everytime Percy takes a step, his "foot" clangs against the floor. He tugs his semi-destroyed shoes in, and goes with Iapetus - to meet their misterious host.

It turns out not all giants are bad - of course, Perseus thought that Damasen shouldn't be the only exception - Porphyrion, the one Jason fought, should've been so different. Enceladus too - wasn't Athena a goddess of war?

If they are supposed to be their complete opposite, why Ephialtes and Otis were all for parties? Why was Porphyrion just as arrogant as Zeus, why was Polybotes able to raise tides and shake the ground?

Perseus doesn't trust Damasen. He might be the "gentle" giant. But he could - easily - kill a drakon everyday. Maybe he first killed the drakon to help a girl - Moira was her name - but doesn't change the fact that he is able to kill a drakon.

He is grateful for the leg - grateful, even if a grudge is clawing it's way to his heart with the force of a thousand suns - so Perseus thanks the giant, drinks the broth of drakon meat, and rests.

They stay there for a while - Perseus doesn't count time well. Damasen does not seem really happy to let him stay - but Iapetus has some hold over him. He tries to convince the giant to fight for them, but for no result.

Damasen tells him that, while Gaea locked him here, he would never get accepted by either side - the gods would never let him live between them. He has no reason to pledge his loyalty to anyone.

Iapetus/Bob and him sit together. It doesn't feel like forgiveness when the titan finally talks to him. They talk about Zoe Nightshade and Calypso of Ogygia, and the stars above. The titan tells he misses it - his family, his granddaughters - he calls them little stars, because of their father.

Perseus doesn't talk much about their sorrows - he focuses on the way Zoe was determined on doing everything for what she believed on, and Calypso's cunning mind and sweet words.

Iapetus doesn't forgive him - But he does tell Perseus he has a plan.

Apparently, he cannot cross the army of monsters being a demigod - he would be dead in seconds. He only survived up until this point because of his connection to the Underworld.

So Perseus needs to find Akhlys - the goddess of misery - and get the Death Mist, something to shroud him from everything trying to kill him.

Even Damasen's helpfulness has an ending - when Polybotes comes after vengeance, Iapetus helps Perseus run away - with just his rags, a canteen of firewate, his ax and his new leg.

He hates his leg. It answers almost like it's his, and he can walk almost perfectly with it, and when they had to stop and fight a cyclops, it didn't stop Perseus.

But he hates it. Percy wants himself back. He wants out of this desert and doesn't think there's a single good feeling inside him anymore.

But he has to keep going, keep walking. For Nova Roma. For the Camp. For Reyna, Malcolm, Will, Frank, Jason, Piper, Hazel, Leo, Nico, Connor, Alabaster, Grover, Bob, Clarisse, Paola, Annabeth, Rachel, Persephone, Kore, his mom.

Perseus' stomach rumbles with hunger - he grew too comfortable with the drakon's meat stew in his stomach and the rough blankets beneath him. He got too pampered - time to go back to the hot shards of something beneath his cheek and the taste of fire in his tongue.

Now, at least, he can sleep a little - when he is not plagued by nightmarish visions of what he can now see, or of his friends dying because he is stuck here and unable to help. If Iapetus hasn't killed him until now, it's very improbable that he will.

He keeps muttering to himself - Reyna, Malcolm, Will, Frank, Jason, Piper, Hazel, Leo, Nico, Connor, Alabaster, Grover, Bob, Clarisse, Paola, Annabeth, Rachel, Persephone, Kore, Sally - a chant for hope that never stops. Their names sound bad in his tongue - like he is corrupting them.

The closest they get to the goddess house, the more miserable he gets - Hazel, Leo, Nico, Connor, Alabaster, Grover, Bob, Clarisse, Paola, Annabeth, Rachel, Persephone, Kore, Sally - as if he should just stop hoping, stop yearning.

He'll never leave this Pit - Alabaster, Grover, Clarisse, Paola, Annabeth, Rachel, Persephone, Kore, Sally - he'll die here. If not for the names that keep him going, Percy would just drop down. Stay there, become part of this forest of desolation.

Iapetus can't follow him into misery's lair. The titan has no need for death mist - he can take the direct path to the monsters that wait in the Doors.

So they part ways - Iapetus goes back through the Central Wasteland, and Perseus goes forward - into the Poison Meadows of Akhlys.

Perseus sees the goddess of misery - and thinks she looks the part. She and her shield - Hercules' shield - crying eternally.

She denies his request - but he taunts her. Is she just a minor goddess? Wouldn't she want the Tartarus to be filled with wails of the monsters, unable to go out for decades at a time?

Akhlys agreed - but Perseus wasn't sure. She was a little too eager - not something you want from a primordial goddess based on feelings. Elemental gods are so much easier.

And she was too poison-happy for Percy's liking. The way she smiled, fat tears and snot running down her face didn't impress him though: every time he looks around he sees this convoluted primordial of hell and was two minutes off snapping, so.

Rachel, Persephone, Kore, Sally.

Everything around him was wet and disgusting - like most of Tartarus. Maybe being the habitat for thousands of your children isn't the highest of body care.

They stopped near the void, the emptiness stretching beyond him as sure as nothing was above him. He could feel it pulling at his soul - did he even have a body? Or was he just smoke now?

Somehow, his metal leg clung onto him. His ax didn't fall from his hand, although he felt like the weight of the sky was again in his shoulders - he felt at the same time, eighty years older and as if he was nothing at all.

Death always clung at him - he was a spawn of Hades, a hellish being. Perseus always ran cold - and some people, the ones that thrived on life, couldn't get close to him without shivering. But this - this is what death felt like.

Not being dead - being dead can be either peaceful or eternal torment - this is the permanent state of death. Like he is just about to die, but there wouldn't ever be a release.

Persephone, Kore, Sally

Under him, there was Chaos and Nyx - the two primordials that formed the world. How many of those never leave this pit, never got their cults advanced, and were reborn in between the gods above?

Hecate, Nemesis, Eros, Eris, Morpheus, Hypnos, Geras, the Moirai, all of them, dwindling between the Olympians. Did they laugh at their stupid dominions over physical mattters - while they manipulated the world like puppeteers?

For how many times the arrows of love touched the immortals? How many decisions were made under the influence of dreams or vengeance? How many fates did the Fates decide in the strings of their tapestries?

Erebus - the eternal darkness. That is what is lurking above them. Perseus sneaks a lookup - and he can see curves of a person where should be nothing, the points of sharp teeth - it scares him far more than Tartarus.

Akhlys wants to kill him - Percy is not actually shocked. Everything in this Pit is trying. He tried to slash at her with his ax - but his ax was smoke, and Perseus has a very bad control over spirits, so it's to no surprise he was awful at controlling his own spiritual form.

Akhlys advances on him - and, conveniently, she can hurt him. He dodges as much as he can, but inevitably, she caught up to him.

She gives a swipe at his metal leg, her hands are around his neck - the goddess of misery is trying to suffocate him with her poisonous claws. Perseus hates suffocating.

"Stop... P-Please..."

Kore, Sally.

"Misery doesn't stop, misery is everything you'll ever know"

Perseus can't do much, but as he fights back, he feels it - in the bottom of his stomach, a pulling. The same pulling he uses to open the earth and to summon skeletons, coming from Akhlys.

Then, he touches her.

And Akhlys screams.

Perseus can feel the pulling, the way her immortal life is trying to stay in her body - but he pulls harder and harder.

"Please... Please stop."

She is aging under his eyes - he can take everything from her. Perseus is death - and life has touched him. He wants her to suffer. He wants to see how miserable Misery can be.

"Decay is inevitable, decay is everything you'll ever know."

Around him, the poisonous plants thrive, bloom to full beauty. Under him, Akhlys never dies - she shrivels, wailing as he begs him to stop.

But Perseus is death and life. Perseus is decay - he can take and take and take, and leave only an empty husk behind. He would never stop - he would destroy everything in his path, in this wasteland that he was sent to die by Fate.

Sally.

It's his mom's name that brings him back to reality. He jumps off the shriveled corpse-looking goddess and scrambles backward as she scampers away.

Perseus doesn't know how much time he passes there, in between the garden of poison, looking at his hands and shivering. He became what he feared the most: his touch is poison.

It's been many years, but Percy wants his sweaters and his gloves back. He wants to be covered, so no one will ever touch him again - he wants to cut his hands off. He is dangerous.

A deep, dark part of him wants to kill - what is the difference if he kills them by decay or with a stone spike? They would be dead either way.

Maybe he belongs here - he muses - maybe he became a monster, just like the ones he killed. Maybe he would just die and reform here, eventually.

Is he even a person anymore? With his metal leg and destructive skin - how much of him is god? Can he decide the fate of life - is this his heritage?

He hates himself, this situation, this life. The poisonous flowers flourish under his fingertips - and he wonders if he touches a daisy, it'll shrivel and die just like Akhlys.

But he traded a goddess for another, for who would appear other than Nyx. Perseus tricks her - says that he is making a map of Tartarus, for his father, but that she isn't really in the itinerary.

Nyx doesn't believe in his lie - she is a primordial goddess, not an imbecile. He calls her minor goddess, however, and that's enough to get her mad: hubris is a failing of most deities.

She gets mad, invokes her children to kill him - of which Perseus knows quite a few and would prefer if he didn't. So he starts talking - a way of stalling them - and promptly proceeds to try and make her tell him which one of them is the worst.

The children of Nyx - all with terrifying metaphysical dominions - start an enormous fight - which is enough for him to slip through with closed eyes - one is not supposed to look at the Mansion of Night.

He runs - and he feels them behind him. Their powers can't affect him - he is almost dead after all - but they are gods - stronger and quicker than him.

But Perseus prays and he runs, using the stone under him to propel his feet. He feels like he is running for years when he finally reaches the end of the hallway - finally on the margins of the Acheron.

The son of Hades hates water. But worse of all, he hates water that remembers him of his failures. Michael Yew, Silena, Charles, Ethan, Luke - his fault. Their blood is in his hands. He made Misery miserable - he should jump.

He doesn't. The Nyx cavalry wakes him up from this display of guilt and regret - it's a breakdown he had way too many times in Tartarus, and he is not doing this now.

Perseus uses a stone to propel himself over the River - his adrenaline making him soar through the air. He falls on the other side of the water - and doesn't break anything. He can't - he is made of smoke.

Bob - definitely Iapetus now - has his memories back. When they meet again, it's closer to the doors - who are being watched by glowing Hyperion and Krios - the titan Jason killed.

By the time they reach the Doors, all the Gigantes have returned to the mortal world - or at least, it's what Bob tells him. Even the giants they already killed - here they are again, making a mess.

Perseus tries to be sneaky - but there's no sneaky way to subtly destroy the chains that hold the Doors in hell. The monsters almost don't notice him.

But Tartarus centainly does.

And if he thought seeing Tartarus was bad - well, actually seeing him in his interim is way worse.

Tartarus has the skin he's been walking for who knows how long - slimy and greyish - with red eyes and a vacuum-like face - he seemed to suck the life out of them.

He attacks Perseus - calls him an intruder, tells him that he cannot freely walk him. Perseus wants to scream - He didn't want to be here either! This wasteland took his voice, his leg, his humanity. It took everything from him!

Unexpectedly, Damasen comes to his rescue, having tamed the Maeonian drakon. Bob uses his shovel to do the same - while Small Bob stays around Perseus' heels.

"It's your time to save the world, demigod. This is not the last sacrifice in the war you're raging against Gaea."

Percy enters the elevator. Bob stays to hold the button - he can't take him upside like they talked about. Damasen can't come - they'll die so Perseus can go save the world.

"Twelve minutes. Take Small Bob with you. Don't let them kill him - tell the stars I said hello."

So he starts going up. Perseus holds the Doors firmly shut as he looks at himself - a mechanical leg, a skeleton tiger in his ankles. He wonders if he'll make it upside. If part of him won't ever leave Tartarus - if when he dies, is there he'll appear.

The Elevator shakes - once, twice. Maybe he'll die here. Maybe it's better than what he is going to face when the doors open - it's definitely better than what he left behind.

He doesn't think about Bob and Damasen dying behind him, for him - he doesn't think about it at all.

The doors finally stop. He is not sure twelve minutes have passed - maybe it was less, maybe it was more. Perseus thinks this is it. He is not ever coming out. He walked the whole Tartarus, faced horrors far beyond any mortal ever had to, to now die because of doors.

Then he sees the light, and just let the doors go. Perseus takes one look at them - he can see at least two people and a giant - and takes one step out.

He breathes - ozone, oxygen, pure air - and then passes out, crushed under the sheer pain of life.

[kathyprior4200]

Let Us Rise by Marquis Phenex

Let me tell you a tale

That happened long ago

You may already know the legend

But still I shall speak it so

 Back before the Earth was made

Before life-giving air

Far within the cosmos

The Lord God was there

 Some say he’s an omnipotent being

Appearing as a wise man

One with his son Jesus Christ

The whole universe is His plan

 Others say that’s not so

That He doesn’t exist at all

While some say He’s actually Satan

Here to answer our call

 Or perhaps God is the universe itself

Where atoms and molecules collide

The truth is, none of us know

I’ll let you decide

 No matter the case, at the Creator’s own pace

Heaven emerged so bright

Cyan skies, fluffy clouds

And a realm of pure delight

 Endless room to fly around

There stood palaces of gold

Dancing angels were abound

Songs were sung and stories were told

No one ever grew sick or old

 The Angelorium was a marvelous place

Where we had our council meetings

Were we discussed comings and goings

And where we did our greetings

 We enjoyed feasts and epicurean dishes

Golden fruits and divine fishes

Divine wine that flowed so fine

Only the greatest place to dine

 Yes, our Father created all of us

Lucifer was the first

The bright and perfect Morning Star

Seeking knowledge to quench his thirst

 Shortly after, his siblings were created

Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Jophiel, Zadkiel

And many others more

The Archangels and the various hierarchies

Kept cosmic order, law, and records to store

 Then one day, Father decreed

His new adventurous plan

He decided to conjure a new experiment

And he called his creation “Man.”

 At first glance, there was nothing special

About this new species’ birth

A land of earth and sea appeared

And He called it “Earth.”

 You humans were truthfully

Little more than ants to us

But we peered further in

And you were quite marvelous

 Thousands of years of evolution

You grew and you learned

But you also stole natural resources

None of which you earned

 Humanity was quite weak

Mortal and flawed in mind

But you also had a great ability

To create more of your own kind

 As we’re immortal, we have no need

To create more of us

No fears for thousands of years

That’s the way it has been, thus

 Now many of us were neutrally pleased

As far as humanity would go

But while we felt this way

For Lucifer it was not so

 Lucifer was God’s favorite

He took his status in stride

A new change after many centuries

Conjured a spark in his pride

 Everyone has flaws

God does as well

Everything is not as it seems

It is best not to dwell

 A million new thoughts

Had crossed the morning Star’s head

Why are these humans so special?

When they’ll all just be dead?

We angels were here first

Our superiority is first in line

If humans will not improve themselves

Then with this, I am not fine.”

 But God favoring humans was not the only reason

That Lucifer felt a sudden chill

Like cold after a warm season

All seemed eerily still

Besides being mistrustful of humans

Flying out of range

Lucifer noticed other things not seen before

Things that were quite strange

 All his brethren performed their duties

Like clockwork through and through

It was the same process day after day

That’s all they had to do

No questions were asked at all

No self-expression was allowed

The true kind that frees your mind

Feelings that make one truly proud

Stern rules to stifle creativity

Damnation threats for the smallest mistake

And after many years of submission

It was too much for him to take

  Lucifer strode to his Father and said loud and clear

“What is the meaning of this? What is it that you fear?

Why do you create random beings,

Pets in a lab to analyze?

And why do you impose standards on us

Before our very eyes?”

And He replied, “Listen Son,

“There is reason in everything I do,

To keep angels and humans in good harmony. You don’t have a clue.

To prevent chaos, traditions are set in their ways,

Be an obedient son and do your duty all your days.”

 Lucifer was about to do just that

But he knew in his heart

That it wouldn’t be right

To let pure happiness be torn apart

 Now here’s a major event

You may have heard before

Did it happen? No one is sure

The first Heaven-Hell War

 Now some say Seraphim Lucifer

Gathered his brethren and chose to depart

From paradise for they

Sought freedom and joys of the heart

But the common version does tell

Of how a prideful Lucifer did rebel

Gathered 1/3 of the angels to his side

Led by his jealousy and pride

(‘Tis not the story version to which we abide)

Tired of his Father’s current rule

He sought his throne and his dream to reign

Like Zeus overthrew his father Chronus

A vicious cycle again and again

But alas, his efforts were in vain

 After three days, Michael implored

His bother to stop, to which he ignored

“End this madness,” said he,

“Live our peaceful lives. Obedience is key.”

As Lucifer replied, “I find you are blind,

To what is really going on,

No matter what is asked of you

You grovel and submit and worship in song

Without regard to how you truly feel

I don’t want to fight you either

But if we could enlighten all worlds together

Be more than El’s believer.”

With tears in his eyes, Michael shook his head

“I’m sorry, brother, but instead,

The rules must be followed

Heaven has no need for your greed

It’s a hard truth to swallow

To keep our land in perfection

To support our Lord every day

By His decree, I must send you away.”

 With a swoop and slash of Michael’s sword of fire

Lucifer endured burns most dire

Sharp relentless pains never-ending

And before long, he felt himself descending

Further and further down

As trumpets let out their sound

Lucifer and his comrades

Fallen, defeated, banished

Flames licked at their wings

Until all their glorious feathers vanished

In curls of sparks and ash

They screamed in agony and despair

They plummeted fast

Like meteors crashing toward the Earth

In flashes of light they fell and fell

Until landing in the fires and brimstones of Hell

 They got up with shaking legs

Battered and bruised everywhere

But as they were immortal

They had survived their fall then and there

Lucifer knew that something was amiss

As he stood in the dark Abyss

Was this His plan all along?

To let them fall as a warning

Of what happens to those in the wrong?

With nowhere left to roam

The darkness was now their home

Fiery lakes, smoke and monsters appeared

Filled with suffering and things they suddenly feared

In this new environment

Adaptation was a requirement

Survival of the fittest and strong

The weak would not last long

So the fallen angels morphed in their sorrow and wrath

Gaining animal-like features

Sharp fangs, claws, dark powers

Soon becoming demon creatures

No knowing what else to do

They flew and slew and cities they blew

Losing control of their former selves

The same would happen if it were you

 With the last of his grace

Lucifer scanned the place

And knew what to do

With Beelzebub at his side

Regaining his pride

He spoke to his subjects

“Rise or be fallen forevermore!

When opportunity dies, create another door.

Wounded and weary, our paradise lost

But the price of free will is always worth the cost.

Don’t believe me? Follow me now.

Our former glories will be restored somehow.

After we’re all settled, I have a plan

To help decide the future of Man.”

 Soon enough the capital Pandemonium

Was erected in gold and precious gems galore

Towering pillars, sigils on every door

The palace larger than the tallest demons

Allowing everyone to fit

The citizens had their human-like flaws

But never knew how to quit

 The Infernal Council was founded

Structure more grounded

Demon in various ranks

Of kings, dukes, princes, judges

Everything in between

Adapting to times unseen

  Now I believe

You know the Christian story of Adam and Eve?

Mankind’s first fall and sin

A loss or a hidden win?

Adam’s first wife Lilith

Wanted to be equal to him

But Adam was told she had to submit

Things were looking grim

Lilith soon left Eden, refusing to come back

Representing sexual freedom

But no freedom there was but a lack

  God then made for Adam from his rib

A more submissive partner Eve

Both loved each other very much

But were also new and naïve

Around the natural Eden

They could roam mindlessly unbidden

But the Tree of the Knowledge

Of Good and Evil was forbidden

A forbidden tree with forbidden fruit

Right in plain sight

If God forbade them to eat from it

Guarding it would have been a method more bright

 Then legends say

Satan appeared as a snake

Tempting Eve to eat the apple

Leaving destruction in their wake

Eve then gave the apple to Adam

In some versions, fully knowing the cost

He purposefully ate it too, not wanting Eve lost

With flaming swords in hand

Angels bid the first humans away

From paradise’s golden gates

To the rest of the world that day

Michael then told Adam

Of biblical events to come

While God punished

Eve with future pains of labor

And both with death until it was said and done

 Did Lucifer and Satan (or alternatively Lilith) desire

For mankind to fail and decay by fire?

Or perhaps to your surprise

The devil alternatively whispered to Eve:

“Stop living lies.

Eat the fruit and you’ll be free

To live through joy and despair like me

Or wander around in brainwashed bliss

To remain stagnant with knowledge to miss

You are destined to fall and die

God has made it so

He’s testing you and knows you’ll fail

Resist temptation to no avail

Man and woman are made to be equal

Though God says man must rule

If you’re content to be sheep

No free will to keep

Consider yourself a fool

You will know as much as God does

But in a different way

For in time you’ll learn that you’re your own God

You’ll make the most of every day.”

 Now none of us angels and demons

Are against God and the faithful per se

There is wisdom in every religion

Goodness in Christ, originally that way

Religions ancient and new

Originally promoted humanitarian kindness too

But as time went by with more power to take

Ideals and values became shallow and fake

Killing, raping and converting thousands more

Endless bloody crusades, witch hunts, destruction of land

Wars over faith, no logic to understand

An unhealable hole in humanity, too grand

Suffering, racism, bigotry

All in the name of their God, you see

Their God that humanity corrupted

After concern for fellow men was brashly interrupted

The real God and Jesus would never wish that it was so

But dominant history wins and there you go

  We demons are against bigotry, the ignorant

And all those who try to shut down

The basic human rights of free-will and responsibility

Authoritarianism must drown

It is not Satan who promotes sinful indulgence

And harsh authoritarianism

It is only your social systems

That keep you imprisoned

  And as if our historic fall wasn’t enough

Many of us endured

Our entrapment by King Solomon

Thus more events concurred

He put 72 of us in a vessel

Abused us with blasting rods

Made us build temples and do his will

Like he was one of the gods!

He had wives and gold and luxury

A part of history, an occult trend

But before long, time went on

And he too, met his end

We demons were eventually freed

To aid magicians and roam

From Earth to Hell and back again

But neither realm our true home

We hope to return to heavenly paradise

Where angels, demons and humans

Can someday be themselves as one, so true

(Though it’s hard at times to collaborate with angels, too)

  Much of humanity has been brainwashed

But the angels much more so

For while some humans can question what they see

Angels don’t know how to say no

How can they? Their purpose is to serve

God and some humans, more than they deserve

Like us demons, angels are powerful

Loving liberal science, magic and song

But be rude and make the wrong move

They’ll let you know why you’re wrong

  Angels, demons, other gods and spirits

Fascinated by humanity

We’re just here to watch the result

Whether a blessing or a calamity

Despite your mundane lifestyles

We want what is best for you

To help humanity grow and see progress that’s true

Like the angels we used to be

And still are inside

We are divine on our own

And take conflicts in stride

  God and Christianity are not to blame

It is merely society’s institutions

That puts your race to shame

Thousands of years of corruption and conversion

It’ll take a thousand more for healing

But alas, alternate views and change for the majority

Of humanity is not appealing

To truly get into paradise

Save yourselves in the here and now

Indulge responsibly, do not bow

Respect living things as sisters and brothers

Even though it may be hard

Cherish and forgive the ones you love

But always stay on guard

However you see God or Mother Nature or the Universe

Make Him proud by

Doing the right thing

And do more than try

You are His treasured experiment

Will you succeed in the temporary trial of life?

  Supernatural entities can harm or help you out

But you must first help and protect yourselves, no doubt

Pray as you may, conjure and chant

We are the guides to your self-will and rant

Yes, a few of us see humans

As insignificant as bugs

But many of us can be your friends

Even giving spiritual hugs

  We demons serve under Lucifer, Satan, Lilith, etc.

We have a culture of our own

Some of us are demonized pagan gods

Stolen from what was first known

Most of us are fallen angels

A perilous transformation to embark

But through it all, we survived the fall

And learned to embrace the dark

There’s dark and light in everything

Balance is a must

With your world and ours being complex

How do you know who to trust?

  We endured a horrific fall

We lost all we had

But the ignorance of angels and humans

That’s what drives us mad

You see, black and white is not in the right

Some angels are friendly and warm

But others will push you away

If you don’t follow the norm

There are good and bad demons too

Nothing like you’d expect

Us demons are wise and open to you

Provided you show respect

We’re not afraid to keep you on your toes

If it means you’ll learn good lessons

As everything goes

   Keep demonizing us demons

And the poor and flawed without care

We’ll just watch as you discriminate to death

And destroy yourselves in despair

Or for those open with a change of heart

Who know that none of us are truly apart

Rise from the ashes of atrocity

And fly within the flames of fellowship

  If you dare to fully embrace yourself

All aspects flawed and fine

Through black flames,

With honor and trust, call our names…

 We are the Ars Goetia, Demonic Divine.

[semperintrepida]

Payable Upon Proof of Death

The weather was about to change, and the dawn skies above Kassandra's head glowed like coals in a forge, red folding into orange, bright but without heat. She stood at the Adrestia's railing, shivering in her armor, and swept her gaze further down the beach, where the soldiers in the Spartan camp were already moving with smooth and silent efficiency. Keep your mouth shut and let your spear talk for you. A favorite polemarch saying. She wondered if Thaletas had ever passed it along to his men.

Below her, the huddled shapes that dotted the sands around the dock began to stir, the blanket-covered lumps yawning and stretching back into people, some forty in all, each of them family of one of the rebel fighters left on Mykonos. It would be the Adrestia's job to deliver them to safety.

She didn't envy Barnabas and Gelon, who'd have to make sure everyone made it onto the ship, and quickly. A hard task getting harder in the commotion spreading across the sand, as belongings were packed, little ones escaped from their parents to tumble with gleeful shrieks into the surf, and voices grew tense and louder.

Chaos was what it was, and she imagined what Kyra would do to put it in order. She'd stroll into the crowd, let every eye settle upon her while sizing up the situation. Then she'd pick a few people from the group, give them her instructions, and turn them loose while adding her own hands to the effort until the work was done.

Kassandra smiled as she indulged in the daydream. She closed her eyes, hoping to add Kyra's voice to the illusion — but it only made the sound of approaching footsteps easier to hear, steps that rolled with the perpetual motion of waves.

She glanced upwards as Barnabas joined her at the railing. "I don't like the look of that sky," she said.

"Aye. We'll sail for Siros instead. Plenty of shelter in its coves, and we'll be able to drop anchor early. I won't go running towards Poseidon's anger with so many families aboard."

"Agreed." She watched the people below gather the baskets and bundles that held all they had left of their lives. "Did they decide where they wanted to go?" There'd been disagreement among the families, and Barnabas had been forced to play magistrate to settle the dispute.

"Keos. We'll fly the Pirate Queen's colors, and she's certain to grant refuge to these fine people. She favors you, in her way."

"She'll favor me more when I bring her that chest full of drachmae."

Barnabas laughed. "Aye, she will, but she's no friend of tyrants either. And I'll—" He didn't finish, distracted by movement on the gangplank, where a crewman was limping down to the dock. Kassandra looked closer. Not a he, but a she. That smuggler Iola, who seemed to be moving well after her escape from death's claws and teeth.

"If Xenia asks for more drachmae," Kassandra said, "tell her to add it to my tab."

An annoyed shout blasted the deck and pushed his answer aside. "What are we fucking waiting for? Someone to roll out a welcome carpet woven from the hair on Zeus's ass?"

Kassandra chuckled despite herself. Gelon's curses were growing ever more vibrant. She'd have to remember that one for later.

Then there was a flurry of motion among the crew as Gelon played the part of a herding dog nipping at their heels. The chaos had spread onto the docks, and a crowd of people jostled around the gangplank, while the youngest children played in the sand below and chased each other around the wooden pilings. The older ones wore the same furrowed brows as their parents, and were standing off to the side, some carrying small bundles of their own, others holding babies.

Uprooted. Adrift. Hoping that this would be temporary, that it would last only long enough for Kyra and her rebels to depose Podarkes and cleanse the island of his supporters.

Barnabas leaned back against the railing, his dead eye gleaming orange. "I see you took my advice," he said.

"And which mote of wisdom was that?"

He pressed his hand to his chest. "Mote! You wound me, Kassandra. Have you forgotten that motes can accumulate like sand on a beach?" He grinned and raised his eyebrows. "Some lucky lady owes Eros an offering, eh?"

"Ares's balls, am I that obvious?"

"There's no shame in that. You're a great many things, Eagle Bearer... but maybe not so subtle."

Kassandra sighed.

"Do you know who is subtle?" he asked. "Kyra."

The rising heat in her face would give him all the answer he needed, damn him.

"Ha, I knew it! You two have been circling like sharks since we got here." He punched her lightly in the arm. "You've an eye for the finer things, I see. Why, if I were younger I might have tried to woo her with a few poems myself."

Kassandra rolled her eyes.

His face grew serious. "I like her. I like her a great deal."

"So do I." She pressed her forearms into the rail and flexed her fingers, watching bones and muscles work together. Skin hid so much. "It scares me. A little."

He blinked, then peered at her closely. "How so?"

"I worry about her." Saying it out loud didn't make her feel any better. "No matter where she goes on this island, she's surrounded by threats." Her fingers curled into fists. She squeezed until her shoulders were tight as hawsers, released, then did it again. "And I know she can take care of herself, but..."

"Aphrodite's gifts sometimes don't feel like gifts at all."

Is that what this was? "I hope I've given Aphrodite cause to treat me gently."

"She can be kind as well as cruel. Your worries mean your feelings are real."

"I didn't know you were wise in the ways of love as well as sailing."

"It's the same thing, isn't it? Navigating fickle currents, weathering storm after storm... And yet, when the sun comes out and turns the waves to gold, and you feel the wind in your face and know that you're home — it all becomes worth it." Then he smiled, like a break in an autumn sky, sunny one moment only to cloud over the next. "I was married, once."

"Once?"

"A long time ago." He sighed and looked into the distance, and she sensed him treading water above depths darkened by sadness. "I'll tell you the tale some other time," he said.

She looked down at her hands, and at the water slapping against the side of the ship's hull. "I'm not sure I like this... worrying. Even if it is some god's idea of a gift."

"You'll just have to make room in your heart for it."

"It doesn't go away?"

The question surprised him. "Would you want it to?"

Ever since the night she'd spent with Kyra in the hunter's hut, her worry had become entwined with something more, and now a memory emerged from the buried depths, of a time when she was five years old and had slipped away from her chores to explore the city of Sparta and its wondrous delights, and she'd taken off as fast as she could run, thrumming with illicit excitement, dodging merchants and helots in the agora, climbing the vine-clad walls of the Temple of Artemis onto its roof in time to see the setting sun paint Mount Taygetos gold. She'd stood there, drinking in the crisp air and the divine view, her blood shimmering with the thrill of it, until her mother's voice broke through her elation. Then she'd gone to the edge of the roof and peered over the side. The ground was so far away. How in Hades would she get back down?

She shook the memory away and lifted her gaze back to the beach, where Iola was helping carry blankets to the dock. "Glad to see her up and about."

Barnabas's eyes followed hers. "Iola? Aye, she's a strong one, both in will and good fortune."

"Good fortune? She almost got mauled to death by a bear."

He turned and faced her, his eyes soft. "It brought her to you, didn't it?" he said, along with a cryptic smile. "And you..." He fell silent, but her mind filled in the missing words anyway: You brought her to me.

If he wanted to say more, he would have. She wouldn't pry. Instead, she stood beside him and watched the happenings on the beach in silence, until the fires in the skies cooled to merely dramatic shades of pink, and the rebel families had long begun ferrying their goods up the gangplank.

She gestured at the remnants of the camp. "Will you be ready to depart once they're all on board?"

"We're still waiting on one family that didn't arrive last night... and one of the crew."

"Who?"

"Onomastos. He was due back yesterday with the rest, but no one's seen him." Barnabas frowned. "He's a good lad. It's not like him to be late."

"Wait for them, then. I'll leave it up to you to decide when to depart."

"Aye, Commander. We'll be back in time to see you put Podarkes's head on a spike."

She appreciated his optimism, but she wouldn't be the one holding Podarkes's head up on display — that was Kyra's destiny to fulfill.

And being on the Adrestia wasn't helping Kyra at all.

Down on the sand, past the following eyes and the trailing voices, the expanse of beach between the docks and the Spartan camp was strangely serene. Walls of rock guarded the cove in a protective circle, and the only entry point was on the far side of the camp, where she found Thaletas's lieutenant in conversation with the two soldiers on guard duty.

He turned at her approach. "Eagle Bearer."

She nodded a greeting at him and the others.

"Haven't seen the polemarch, have you?" he asked.

That made her stop. "No."

"He went to the rebel hideout at sunset last night and hasn't been seen since."

That's when she'd left Kyra at the spring. Her stomach tightened. "Perhaps he stayed the night at the hideout," she said in a neutral tone.

"He usually sends word."

She would have answered if the soldiers hadn't readied their spears and shields and focused their attention on the narrow funnel of beach and a lone man running towards them.

"Kassandra!"

She recognized him. The lad Barnabas had spoken of earlier, Onomastos. "Let him through, he's one of mine."

"Stand down," the lieutenant said to the soldiers.

Onomastos ran through the gate, skidding to a halt before her. "Kassandra— I mean, Commander. There's—" He choked on his words, doubling over and panting hard.

"Breathe," she said.

He did, in great huffs, and then he pulled himself upright and tried again. "There's trouble in the city, and smoke in the forest north of it."

"What do you mean by 'trouble'?"

"The streets are deserted, and Podarkes's men have taken over the port. They're checking everyone coming in or out by ship. I only got through because I'm a citizen of Delos." He waved his hands helplessly. "I couldn't get a ride from Delos yesterday. Every felucca was booked."

"You did well getting here," she said, squeezing his shoulder. "Go tell Barnabas he can wait a quarter hour for any stragglers, but after that, he's to set sail no matter what."

"Aye, Commander," he said.

Kassandra had known the truce wouldn't hold, that it was merely an opportunity for the two sides to make plans and prepare them to play out. Kyra had spent her days on the defensive, gathering rebel families across the island and bringing them to safety here. What had Podarkes been doing?

She looked at the lieutenant. "Ready your men. I assume your orders are to hold this beach?"

"Yes." He lifted his shield.

"The Adrestia must leave here safely. You understand?"

He nodded.

"Good. I'm going to the hideout to look for Thaletas," she lied, "and I'm borrowing a horse." Thaletas was the least of her concerns. She'd not waste time readying Phobos for travel when there were horses waiting here already saddled.

Then she was swinging her leg over a chestnut gelding, and once she passed the gate, she urged him to a full gallop, pointing him straight into the teeth of whatever plans Podarkes had set into motion.

.oOo.

The gelding's flanks were coated with lather when she nudged him away from the road and into the forest, and when she reined him in at the hollow where the rebels picketed their horses, the youth who'd been tasked with watching over them materialized next to her knee. "Eagle Bearer! They're waiting for you at the hideout," he said as she dismounted.

She patted the gelding's neck and murmured to him in thanks, then handed the reins over. "Know what's going on?"

"No, just that there's trouble in the city."

Trouble again. She brooded over the word all the way to the cave. Whatever it was, it had roused the rebels to full alert. The air crackled with nervous anticipation, voices speaking a little too quickly, blades lingering a little too long against whetstones.

Kyra found her at the chamber's entrance, and she beckoned Kassandra back to the scroll-strewn table where she plotted strategy. She tapped her finger on the map. "You've heard about the city?" she asked without preamble, her voice a hard rasp that matched the chips of flint in her eyes.

"I know there's something going on, that's all."

"My scout says Podarkes closed the port this morning. All but a handful of ships have been turned away."

"With what army?" The number of Athenian soldiers left on the island should have been countable on one hand.

"His personal guard. But there are also armed fighters roaming the streets, moreso than usual."

"Misthioi?"

"Seems likely."

Kassandra crossed her arms in thought. "Paid for with whose drachmae?"

"Good question. I'm still waiting for my second and third scouts to report back." Kyra slid her finger north on the map, to a spot on the beach that matched the location of the Spartan camp. "Has the Adrestia sailed yet?"

"Barnabas should have her underway by now."

"And what of the camp?"

"Quiet when I left it, and the roads in between were clear." Kassandra glanced around. "Is Thaletas here?"

Kyra's brows lifted. "Why? He's not at the camp?"

"No. His men said he never returned last night."

She sighed, her shoulders slumping, and lowered her voice so only Kassandra could hear. "I told him. About us."

Another complication. "It would have been better if you hadn't."

"You think I don't know that?" Kyra said, her voice sharpening to a point. "He figured it out."

"Where could he have gone?"

"I have no idea." She pressed her thumb against her temple and rubbed her brow with her fingers. "He was furious when he left here, that's for damn sure. But he's smart enough to stay away from you."

"I'm not worried about him."

Kyra gave her an appraising look. "No, you wouldn't be."

"Think he might go after Podarkes?"

"Maybe. He's got a good excuse to now." She traced another circle on the map, just north of the city. "There's more. We've reports of smoke coming from here, but the orphan camp's the only thing worth checking in that forest and I can't spare any more scouts to investigate."

Kassandra's heart squeezed tight as she remembered something Barnabas had told her not long after they'd arrived on Mykonos: that Podarkes had once murdered a farmer's children and fed the bodies to pigs. Even children would not escape the long arm of his cruelty. "What would you have me do?"

Kyra blew out a frustrated breath. "I don't know," she said. "I've been saying that a lot this morning. I don't know enough to act."

The urge to pull Kyra close was almost overwhelming, but Kassandra fought it down. She'd not undermine Kyra's leadership in full view of everyone. Instead, she settled for placing her hand on top of Kyra's, wincing at the chill in the skin beneath her palm. "Waiting is an action," she said, and Kyra tensed, as if she were a started deer, caught between staying and fleeing.

Noise at the chamber's entrance sprung those muscles into motion, and Kyra stepped away from the table to meet a man running towards them. He wore a pair of daggers on his belt and carried a scroll clenched in his fist. One of her scouts.

"Kyra," he said breathlessly. "Podarkes has his thugs posting these all over the city." He handed her the scroll.

Kyra read it, her eyes flickering over the words like flames, and then she passed it to Kassandra without saying a word.

Kyra,

The orphans of Mykonos belong to me now, and one will die every day until you turn yourself in.

Podarkes

The scout shifted his gaze from Kyra to Kassandra, then back again. "Nothing good in there, I take it?"

"No," Kyra said, her expression opaque except for the muscles tightening in her jaw.

Tell Kyra that her execution will be long and painful. Kassandra crushed the papyrus in her fist and threw it onto the table.

Kyra turned to the scout. "What of the misthioi in the city?"

"Still there, mostly around the port and the agora," he said.

"How many?"

"Fifteen or so."

"That we know of." She thought for a moment. "If any of them leave the city, I want to know where they go."

"I'll need more eyes."

Kyra gazed across the chamber, watching her fighters, weighing numbers and risk. "Find someone to take with you."

He bowed his head, then left to carry out Kyra's orders.

She watched him for several moments, then gestured for Kassandra as she headed for the passageway at the back of the chamber. "Come with me," she said. "Now it's time to act."

.oOo.

Kassandra stood beside the table in the center of Kyra's bedchamber, wondering if the room had always been this cold.

"I'm going with you," Kyra was saying. To the orphan camp, where the worst case scenario was too horrific to dwell on for long.

"No, you're not," Kassandra said. "You're needed here, and everything about this smells like a trap."

"I'm not asking you, I'm telling you." Kyra's lines — the cords of her neck, her crossed arms, the bend of her knee and thigh — were stretched taut, like a crane over a quarry straining under a load. She was an arm's length away, but she could have been on the other side of the island.

This was not the hideout's central chamber, busy with rebel fighters who kept their eyes and ears attuned to Kyra at all times. Kassandra took Kyra by the hand and gently led her to the bed, pulling her down next to her.

"This moment is what you've been waiting for all these years," Kassandra said. "He's within your grasp now."

"Is he? How do you know he's not already two steps ahead?"

"Because you've pushed him to the edge. He's acting out of desperation." Kassandra chased Kyra's gaze until she caught it. "Why are you doubting yourself now?"

"I've made some bad decisions."

"Like what?"

"Thaletas."

"Ahh," she said. "I'm sorry, about..."

"Don't be."

Kassandra's stomach hollowed out anyway. Kyra had said 'decisions' in the plural. Who knew the number of her regrets.

Kyra was shaking her head. "I didn't go far enough. I should have made sure the orphans were safe, like the families—"

"You can't protect everyone. And even if you had hidden the orphans, he would have gone after civilians in the city streets instead. No one's safe until you kill him."

There was a long pause. "I let myself get distracted from that."

Her words hung like the motes of frost that dusted the hills below Mount Taygetos after a winter storm, carried by air cold and sharp enough to cut the breath from one's chest.

Kassandra stood up, unable to sit with the idea that Kyra considered this — whatever this was, whatever they were — to be a mistake. "I'm going to the camp. Alone," she said, as she held up a hand to forestall Kyra's response. "It won't take long, and depending on what I find there and what your scouts report back, you'll know what to do next."

Then she turned and left the chamber, left the hideout and its nervous energy, left Kyra behind, every step putting real distance between them to match what she'd felt only moments before.

.oOo.

No birds sang in the forest around the orphan camp. No mice or hares scurried through the pine cones and leaves, no goats or deer stepped through the brush. Even the wind was subdued, and smoke hovered in a dirty grey pall between the trees.

Kassandra found Otonia's body at the edge of the camp. She lay facedown in the center of a damp and darkened patch of dirt, and the stench of death and clotted blood overpowered that of the smoke. Kassandra knelt beside her, and though she had seen countless bodies in her lifetime, she shuddered at the cold, rigid flesh in her hands as she turned Otonia over. Wounds gaped at the woman's belly and throat, her hands and forearms sliced open like a woodcutter's chopping block. Whatever awaited her in the Underworld, she'd not gone easy to meet it.

Kassandra dug a coin out of her pouch and placed it on Otonia's lips, then gently closed those wild eyes for a final time.

Smoke. Silence. Stillness. The camp's makeshift hovels were empty, and there were no other bodies, or signs of blood or struggle. Then she arrived at the open area in the center of the camp, where a massive firepit still smoldered. Nearby, a large, dark spot stained the dirt. Something had bled here, and judging by the size of the gouges leading away, that something was an adult and not a child.

She followed the scored dirt past a cluster of blackened and collapsing hovels, where the air was thick with acrid smoke and a handful of burned out torches lay discarded along the path. The rest of the camp remained untouched. The attackers had arrived before dawn, and they'd taken the children without wanton destruction. Professional work.

Misthioi work.

How many there were remained a mystery. She was no tracker; the dirt had been disturbed by too many feet for her to guess their numbers. Were the misthioi in the city the ones who'd rounded up the children? Unlikely. They would have had to have been as swift as Hermes himself to travel here, take the children, and return to the city by dawn. No, there were dozens of misthioi prowling this island, and Podarkes had used someone else's money to pay for them.

There was nothing left for her to see here. Otonia was dead, but the orphans had been taken alive — more leverage for Podarkes that way. It was up to Kyra's scouts to find them, and then Kassandra would go and kill her way through a camp full of misthioi to bring them back to safety.

But first she had to leave this place, while knowing the trap within it had yet to be sprung. The lines of its snare tightened around her with every step she took away from the camp.

She avoided the well-worn trails the orphans had cut between the trees. The breeze was picking up, obscuring the sounds of her movement, but then again, she'd also find it harder to hear as well. She drew her spear, finding comfort in it as her fingers curled around their usual places along its leather-wrapped handle.

Her breathing sped up, and her heart also, its pounding grasp pulling up a sense of ready anticipation from some deep and hidden wellspring. She stopped. Listened. Felt it, like a vibration, like a murmur of Danger! — and she spun and knocked an arrow out of the air with her spear.

Then she ran, and a second arrow streaked by as she plunged through a curtain of cedar boughs. She crashed through the undergrowth, but now there were other sounds converging upon her, snapping sticks, crunching leaves, and when the first misthios burst into her path, she ducked and let his axe swing over her head into a tangle of branches while her body pivoted up and her spear found a sliver of space between his cuirass and helm.

She felt nothing as he died, not a whisper of pleasure from her blade puncturing his throat. She could guess why, but there was only room in her thoughts for what was in front of her right now: another misthios charging out from the trees, followed by a second and then a third.

Three misthioi. At least she wasn't on open ground. But that damned archer was still somewhere behind her, and the trees wouldn't shield her forever. She'd deal with the three in front of her, and take her chances with the rest.

One carried a sword, the other a spear, and the last was a woman armed with the javelins and sling of a peltast. An odd assortment of weaponry among them, but what was an army of misthioi if not an odd assortment of unique weapons?

Spear and Javelins were at a disadvantage among the trees, their weapons hindered by the foliage around them. She stepped back and put a pair of slender tree trunks in their path, buying herself time to focus on Sword, who was curving around towards her left side, the weak side for most fighters.

He'd find out his mistake soon enough. She quickened her steps, closed the distance, raised her spear to meet his blade — and watched feathers sprout from his shoulder. He cried out in pain and dropped his sword, his free hand reaching for the arrow that impaled him, his fingers closing around two black feathers and one striped with light grey. Kassandra knew those arrows; she'd seen Kyra fell Athenian after Athenian with them.

Movement to the side. Javelins emerged from the green, her arm drawn back, ready to throw at a target behind Kassandra's line of sight.

Kassandra didn't think, but took two hard, driving steps and launched herself at the woman. Too late she saw the flash of a bronze spearpoint off to her side, and pain flared through her left thigh as she slammed her shoulder into her target. The javelin fluttered weakly into the bushes, and Kassandra drove her blade into the side of the woman's neck. They crashed to the ground in a bloody tangle.

When Kassandra rolled to her feet, the misthios who'd stabbed her was already on the ground, gurgling his final breaths around the arrow jutting from his throat. His spear lay in front of him, its blade stained red. She felt around the back of her thigh, and bit off a curse when her fingers came back wet and bloody.

Leaves rustled to her left, where she'd first encountered the swordsman. She swiveled in time to see him stumble backwards and sit against a rotting stump, and then Kyra stepped out from behind a big pine, her bow drawn and pointed at him.

Kyra's head turned, and her eyes flicked over Kassandra, up and down, with a long pause at her leg, where blood was trickling from the wound in a warm and steady flow. No pain, just a cold ache deep inside. Kassandra dug into her beltpouch for a bandage.

Kyra returned her attention to the man. "How many of you did Podarkes hire?" she asked.

He spat at her feet.

She shot an arrow into his thigh, calmly pulling another from her quiver and nocking it while he cried out in pain. "Am I going to have to shoot you again?"

He held out a hand to ward her off. "No! No. Thirty of us, maybe. I'm not sure. We all came to Delos separately."

"To do what?"

"Some to get the children, some to guard him, some to find you. He said: kill the rebel bitch. Kill the Eagle Bearer. Fifteen thousand for each, payable with proof."

Proof. Kyra's head in a bag. Hers too. Fifteen thousand drachmae was an attractive bounty to anyone, but thirty was enough to retire on in comfort. Small wonder he'd found so many misthioi on short notice. She narrowed her eyes, blood pounding in her ears as she bent down and began wrapping the bandage around her leg.

"Podarkes doesn't have that kind of drachmae," Kyra said.

"He paid me just to come here. Got it in deposit at the temple back home. And he paid the others, too. They said the Eagle Bearer fights like a lion, but you..." He bared his teeth with dark humor, his head rolling back against the stump. "You were a surprise."

"Where are the children?"

He closed his eyes and began to groan. "It hurts. Bad."

Kyra kicked the foot on his wounded leg, and his groan turned into a scream. She waited until he was finished. "Where are they?"

"The fort, the fort," he gasped. Miltiades, the fort Kyra had burned down when they'd stolen Podarkes's treasury — or what they'd thought was his treasury. How was he funding this gambit? The mystery grated against Kassandra's thoughts.

"Get off this island and you might live to withdraw your coin," Kyra said. "If I see your face again, your life is forfeit." He'd be lucky to drag himself out of this forest, but Kyra had given him a chance, small as it was.

Kyra watched Kassandra finish tying off the bandage. "Can you walk?"

Kassandra nodded, and she followed Kyra through the trees, each step aching annoyingly from knee to hip. They walked until the birds began to sing and chirp again, but as the smoke faded, it revealed no sunshine overhead, only mottled grey skies and a chill, blustery breeze.

"How bad is it?" Kyra asked after a while.

"Don't know yet. I think the bleeding's slowing." Kassandra didn't want to move the bandage to find out. "There was an archer somewhere behind me."

Kyra stopped walking. "Archers. I killed them."

"Thanks, even though I told you not to follow."

"If you think I'm going to let someone shoot you in the back—"

"And who was watching your back?" Kassandra asked. "I let myself get distracted by you."

Kyra flinched. "I suppose I deserved that," she said, but before the moment could fester, she spoke again. "Can you make it to the hideout? You can yell at me all you want there."

Kassandra didn't want to yell at Kyra, she wanted Kyra to be safe. But now wasn't the time to say it. She tightened her jaw around the words and set them aside. "I'll make it," she said. "I hardly even feel it at all."

.oOo.

She managed to reach the hill below the hideout before she started limping. Distance had turned the ache into a ragged sawblade of pain that cut into her thigh with every step. She stopped at the cave's entrance, looked at Kyra, then down at the blood-soaked bandage. "Can you retie it?" she asked. "Tighter."

Kyra knelt, and Kassandra felt her fingers begin to work the knot. "It won't be good for the wound," she said as she pulled the ends free.

"It's only for a moment." Long enough for Kassandra to cross the central chamber full of rebels without showing any weakness.

She remembered, then, the agoge: kneeling in the mud with the boys in her cohort, each of them holding a spearshaft over their heads to see who could endure the longest. The boys who gave out too soon were whipped, but the winner would get extra rations, and after months of near-starvation, that proved plenty of motivation. First her knees had ached, and then her muscles had burned with a dull smolder, then with a fierce flicker, then with a pain that swallowed the world. And the only weapons she had to fight it were her will and her breath. Breathe in. Breathe out. Will herself to do it again, and again, and again, never stopping because stopping meant failing like the boys around her, as they collapsed one by one into groaning heaps.

And their teacher had walked among them, saying, Pain is weakness leaving the body, and Pain is only a message, and Pain can be ignored, and she'd spent that agonizing day learning that everything he said was true.

She'd feasted well that night, hidden in a hollow on the hillsides high above Pitana, away from the roving packs of boys who'd try to steal her winnings from her by force.

The bandage tightened around her leg, and she hissed as the pain gnawed at her muscles. She gathered it in and exhaled it out.

Kyra winced. "I'm sorry," she said, as she knotted the ends. And then she stood, her hands covered with Kassandra's blood.

Kassandra reached for her and cupped her cheek, and they looked at each other without speaking. Kyra closed her eyes, and relaxed into the touch with a sigh. Then she opened them, reluctantly, and said, "We should get going."

Their arrival in the hideout caused heads to turn, and as Kassandra walked with Kyra across the central chamber, eyes shifted from Kyra's bloody hands to the rusty rivulets of blood coating her leg. There was no hiding her wound, but her stride was steady and her face untroubled. Let them see her brush it off as if it were nothing. Pain was just a message to be ignored.

A short while later, she lay on her side on a woolen blanket in the bathing chamber deep within the cave, watching Kyra gather lamps and a jug of water.

Then Kyra knelt beside her, frowning as she unwrapped the bloody linen from Kassandra's leg. "That's going to need stitching," she said. "It's still bleeding." She lifted the jug and sluiced water onto the wound. "Looks clean though, thank the gods."

Kassandra twisted her shoulders back to take a look. The spearpoint had entered the outside of her thigh below the hip, opening up a wound as wide as her palm and slicing deep into the muscle. She'd been lucky that it hadn't plunged in far enough to hit something important. "Time to find someone handy with a needle."

"I can do it. If you want."

"Of course I want."

Kyra's smile was faint, but her eyes softened. "Are we talking about the same thing?"

"Maybe," Kassandra said innocently. Seeing Kyra relax was a welcome distraction.

Kyra stroked her fingertips over Kassandra's skin, then climbed to her feet. "I'll be right back."

When she returned, her hands were full with a tray that held a steaming bowl of water, cup, a needle, lengths of gut thread, and a pile of linen strips.

She handed Kassandra the cup. "Drink this."

Kassandra did, and had to fight back a cough as the wine burned its way down. "It's undiluted."

"There's water in it. A few drops at least." She grinned. "Trust me, you'll feel better. And I'll feel better too if you aren't wriggling around." She peered at the needle and threaded it with ease.

"I won't be moving, wine or not," Kassandra said. But she finished the cup anyway.

"If you tell me no one feels pain in Sparta, I'm going to kick you into that stream," Kyra said, pointing the needle towards the water flowing across the far end of the room. "Speaking of, go look at it for awhile, because I don't want you staring at me while I'm doing this."

Kassandra did as she was told.

A rustle as Kyra shifted positions, then a deep, indrawn breath and a sigh. "This is going to hurt, Kassandra."

Kassandra nodded for her to do it anyway, then felt the warmth of Kyra's hands, and the first bright stab of pain, as if an ember had crackled out from a fire to land on her skin. Pain that faded quickly. Such was her gift.

Kyra worked steadily, her fingers deft and gentle, and Kassandra closed her eyes and tried to think of something nice, something like a spring meadow by a misty forest of pines, or a brand new set of armor all polished and gleaming, or Kyra naked in her arms, but all she could see was a red sky glowing over dark water, endless in every direction.

A final tug on the thread, and then Kyra was wiping her skin down with a cloth and warm water and saying, "A little higher up and it would have scarred your perfect ass."

Kassandra snorted.

"It's done."

She craned her neck over to look. One continuous line of neat stitches. "You're good with a blade and a bow. Good at spying and tracking. And now, you've a physician's skill with a needle. Is there anything you can't do?"

Kyra's flush was deep and immediate. "Cook," she said, suddenly fascinated by the stitches she'd made. "And I'm hopeless at sailing. Something about being at the mercy of the winds." Then she smiled, self-consciously. "I'm no physician, but it's easier to send people off to fight knowing I can help patch them up when — if — they come back." She picked up a clean bandage and began winding it around Kassandra's thigh. "You made it easy, though. I have to damn near knock Praxos out whenever he needs stitching."

Kassandra waited until Kyra finished tying the bandage, and then she sat up and flexed her thigh experimentally. Back to a dull ache. She could work with that.

Kyra had busied herself with cleaning up the remnants of thread and bandages, and Kassandra took the tray from her hands and pulled her closer so they sat face to face. Then she kissed Kyra, gently; leaned forward so their foreheads touched; closed her eyes and breathed in the warm scent of her and whispered, "Thank you."

"I was ready for you to yell at me."

Kassandra shook her head, smiling as their noses brushed. "Why would I?"

"Oh, I don't know... It's not like you got stabbed because you were busy saving my life or anything."

"You probably saved mine. Those archers would have been trouble."

"I'm not so sure — I just watched you swat an arrow out of the air like it was nothing."

"That... was a first." And it was: another skill Kassandra didn't know she had until she'd done it at just the right moment.

"Whatever it was, it helped me find where that archer was hiding. She just about fell out of her tree." Kyra grinned, then found Kassandra's lips and kissed her, and Kassandra marveled at the rightness of it. "I just want you to be—"

"Safe," they said at the same time.

"That might be impossible," Kyra said quietly. "What are we going to do, raise goats?" Kassandra's own words, echoed back to her from what seemed a lifetime ago.

"I'm beginning to see some appeal in that," Kassandra said. "But I don't think I'd want to do it alone."

Kyra's face lit softly, like a lamp, hopeful in the darkness, and Kassandra's heart beat once, twice, three times. Then the glow began to fade, and Kyra sat back and said, "I need to check if any scouts have returned, and you"— she pulled Kassandra's braid forward to its usual place over her shoulder —"should go to my chamber and get some rest."

The argument rose within Kassandra, growing like a breath as her mind listed off everything she had yet to do. All those misthioi to kill, all those children to rescue. But Kyra... Kyra — who sat before her with furrowed brows and shadowed eyes, who cared enough about her people to learn some of a physician's art, who was the leader of this rebellion — had asked her to rest.

She nodded and let Kyra pull her to her feet. "Will you come back, if you have a moment to spare?" Her words tumbled out in one quick, regrettable burst. "No, forget I asked, you don't—"

Kyra placed a fingertip across her lips. "I'll come back," she said. "But rest first, while I figure out our next moves." Then she kissed Kassandra like a promise, took her by the hand, and pulled her into the passageway.

What else could Kassandra do, but do what she was told?

.oOo.

Kassandra awoke to Kyra slipping into the bed beside her. "How long was I asleep?" she asked, as she opened her arm and welcomed Kyra inside.

Kyra's hair spilled across Kassandra's chest as she made herself comfortable. "A couple hours. I'm sorry I woke you."

Too long. Kassandra had been sleeping on the job. "Don't be. What did your scouts report?"

"The city's quiet, and Podarkes is still cowering in his estate. But they found the children in the fort, under misthioi guard."

"How many guards?"

"Roughly a dozen. I'm still waiting for confirmation." Silence for a moment, and then Kyra shook her head and sighed. "What happens if he starts killing them, Kassandra?"

One child for every day Kyra remained free. "He won't. I won't let it happen."

Kyra played with the fabric of Kassandra's tunic as she lost herself in thought. "I believe it," she said after a while. "Against all reason, I believe it, even if your leg's been cut open like a side of pork."

"It aches some, but it won't stop me from going to the fort tonight."

Kyra's head jerked up. "What?"

"I'm going to kill every misthios there."

"And I bet you're going to say—" She forced herself silent, and tried again. "What do you want to do? Go by yourself? Or do you want help?"

"I want you to come with me, along with however many people you'll need to wrangle all those children once I free them."

Kyra wrinkled her nose. "Playing babysitter."

"Not you. I need you to watch my back."

That made her smile. "Gladly," she said. "I'll tell everyone to make an early night of it, as we'll need all of them to help. As much as I'd like to use wagons, I'm not sure the roads are safe enough..." And as she talked her way through the strategic details, Kassandra found herself smiling at this glimpse of Kyra's mind at work.

Once the plan was settled, Kyra patted her belly and asked, "Is there anything you need before we leave tonight?"

"You, right here, like this." She grinned. "At least until duty calls you away." On the eve of battle, trying to sneak time like a love-addled youth. Surely her grandfather was shaking his head with disapproval in Elysium. But once she tightened her arms around Kyra, and felt Kyra's body settle perfectly into place against hers, Kassandra decided she didn't care.

.oOo.

Miltiades Fort had burned down to a maze of bare stone walls, scorched timbers, and ashes, but there was enough of it still standing that Podarkes's men had been able to turn part of it into a prison camp. Kyra's scouts had snuck as close as they dared to in the daylight. "Fifteen misthioi," they'd said, "with most of them hanging around the ruins near the center courtyard. We think that's where the children are."

We think. Kassandra and Kyra would have to make up a plan as they went along.

The last time they'd infiltrated the fort, they'd been forced to climb the seaward cliffs to reach it without being seen. This time, they hid in the darkness of a moonless sky cloaked with clouds, and followed the gentle slope of the road up to the northern gate, where a single misthios patrolled the elbow of the fort's inner wall.

They moved in sync with the misthios's pacing, freezing in place as the footsteps grew louder and creeping forward as they faded away, and soon Kassandra knelt at the foot of the wall and listened to the waves slamming themselves onto the nearby cliffs, driven by winds that left her skin stinging with salt. A storm blowing in.

She traded a nod with Kyra, then began climbing the wall. No pain in her thigh; just a steady ache. Good. Before they'd left the hideout, Kyra had fed her some concoction that tasted like trees, and it seemed to be doing its job.

When Kassandra reached the battlements, she stopped and waited until the footsteps passed directly above her, and then she pulled herself atop the parapet, leapt forward like a sharp gust, and her spear flashed, and the bracer on her right arm took on a dark and wet sheen.

Kyra watched Kassandra lower the body to the walkway, her eyes lingering on the dead woman's bow and helm. She plucked the pilos from the woman's head, put it upon her own, and picked up the torch that had fallen from her lifeless fingers. She'd take the place of the dead misthios, and as she walked with a slow and steady sentry's gait along the wall, she'd buy Kassandra time to assess the fort's interior.

Kassandra followed the parapet down to the courtyard. Voices skidded across the dirt. Two men, walking closer. She slid into the shadows next to a burned-out building and peered around the corner.

Someone was bound to one of the stout wooden poles the Athenians had used to practice their swordwork. They sat with their back to her; slight shoulders, skinny arms pulled tight overhead by ropes at the wrists. Kassandra had a pretty good guess who it was.

She couldn't see the prisoner's face, but as the two misthioi crouched in front of the pole, she could clearly see them right down to their bad intentions.

"Comfortable yet?" the smaller man asked. "Better than living under sticks in the forest."

Silence.

"You're lucky we didn't slice you up like that other harpy. She'll be wandering the banks of the Styx for the rest of eternity."

"Brave of you to kill an unarmed woman." The voice belonged to Melitta, as Kassandra knew it would.

"A job's a job. She got between us and our drachmae."

Kassandra closed her eyes and took a breath. How long until Melitta tried to kick one of them?

"You greedy fuckers."

The man laughed, and she did try to kick him then. The smaller one caught her legs and pinned them under his knees, while the bigger man leaned in close and wrapped a meaty hand around her throat.

"You're gonna be the first to die, you little cunt, for what you did to Panos," he said. "Tomorrow's your last day among the living."

"I hear Podarkes is a right bastard. Maybe he'll skin her alive."

"Then he won't mind if we help ourselves to some of her first." He grinned a gap-toothed grin and grabbed his crotch.

Melitta spat at him. "The Eagle Bearer is coming for you," she said, her head turning from one to the other. "And you too. You'll die by her blade."

Harsh laughter. "The Eagle Bearer is dead. Six of us went to track her down this morning. They're gonna gut her and that bitch who's causin' all the trouble around here. Gonna get paid, aren't we Gyklos?"

"Only six of you? She's not dead. You'll see. And Kyra will rescue us."

The man backhanded her, a hard sound that cracked through the wind and recoiled off the stone walls surrounding them. Kassandra's blood rose hot behind her eyes, and she pulled her spear from its sheath. Melitta was running out of time.

Up on the wall, Kyra's torch was slowly moving closer, and in a few moments, she'd be at the top of the stairs leading down to the courtyard.

Kassandra found a small clay pot and shattered it against the ground. Then she crouched in the darkness and waited.

"You hear that, Gyklos?"

"The wind, I bet. I'll take a look." Sounds then, in the silence between gusts: the creak of a swordbelt, hands slapping dirt from leather tassets, footsteps coming closer.

He rounded the corner, and she sprung upwards and drove the spear into his throat, his spine parting before her blade, and as she stared into his eyes, he lived just long enough to know who had killed him.

Movement to her right. Kyra, halfway down the steps, bow drawn, taking aim, taking the shot. A startled "Wha—" and Kassandra was moving, around the corner, spear glinting in torchlight, blood spraying into her face. Kyra stepped into her line of sight, bow drawn again, lining up another shot at some target across the courtyard. She loosed the arrow, drew another from her quiver, and shot again in the span of a few heartbeats. Smooth efficiency.

Four misthioi down, eleven to go. Kassandra dragged the big man's body around the corner and dumped him next to the first as thunder rumbled in from the sea. She pulled a dagger free from his belt, then moved back into the courtyard, where Kyra was already using her knife to cut through Melitta's bindings.

"I knew you'd come," Melitta said as Kassandra and Kyra helped her to the courtyard's edge, where she could rest in the shadows between two large crates. She stared at Kyra, one of her eyes blackened and swollen, while fresh blood ran from a split in her lip.

Kassandra breathed in, and out, not realizing she'd gone rigid with anger until Kyra placed a hand on her arm and whispered, "I know, my blood boils also." Then she turned to Melitta and asked, "Where are the rest of the children?"

"To the southwest, in the tallest building. You can't miss the cages outside," Melitta said, grimacing as she shook the blood back into her arms and hands.

"They'll be numb for a while," Kassandra said. "Think you'll be able to walk?"

"After a little bit, yeah."

She handed Melitta the dagger she'd taken from the dead misthios. "Don't try to be a hero. When you can walk, start moving south, to the collapsed wall." She looked at Kyra. "It won't be long before someone notices the missing."

"I'm going to clear the way to the south, so you and the children will have a straight shot to the exit."

"Then I'll circle around to meet you from this side. It'll give you time to work before I free the children."

"Careful, Kassandra," Melitta said. She pointed to a large building next to the tallest. "They've been using that one as a bunkhouse."

Kassandra's mind mapped out the fort: the misthioi they'd already killed, the ones she'd seen prowling the far walls. Perhaps a handful sleeping in the bunkhouse. Who knew how many lurked between here and the southern exit? And the gusting wind made every bowshot a difficult one. And then Kassandra couldn't stop herself, and her worry leaked out across her face, so obvious that it made Kyra pause.

She lifted her hand to Kassandra's cheek. "Have you forgotten? When I aim at something, I don't miss."

When the stakes were highest, there was no room for doubt. Kyra had left all of hers behind at the hideout. In its place was confidence, tricking the mind into believing she could walk through an inferno and come out unharmed.

Kassandra would not weaken Kyra's belief. She made her face smile. "No, you don't."

Kyra nodded. "Good hunting," she said, and then she disappeared into the darkness.

Melitta had been watching them silently. Kassandra met her gaze, said, "Be careful," and stared at her until she acknowledged it with a nod.

Back up the stairs to the top of the wall, past the dead archer, past the back side of the building Melitta had called the bunkhouse, and then a torch was flickering in the darkness up ahead, clinging to life as it moved through the unsettled air. She ducked behind a pile of stones, waited for the misthios who carried it to come into view, and when his back turned, she swept into him and opened his throat to the wind. Another neck shot; when surrounded by heavily armed and armored misthioi, every strike had to be a killing blow.

She drifted back to the bunkhouse as the air quivered and boomed with thunder. From a doorway, she peered into the dimly lit interior. The wooden floor had burned away, but the next level down was made of stone, most of it intact. Below that was the ground floor, where a burning brazier leaked light up through the hole in the ceiling. She dropped down a level, rolling into a quiet landing as her thigh flared with real pain for the first time since she'd arrived at the fort.

The thunder was cracking overhead at regular intervals now, and muttered curses sounded from the misthioi trying to sleep below. She chanced a quick glance over the edge of the hole in the floor, counted six of them in various states of wakefulness.

She managed to kill two before the others awakened, and then it was chaos, as she flipped the brazier over, cutting the light and scattering hot coals across the floor. She chopped one's legs out with her sword as they scrambled to arm themselves, knocked another's dagger away with her spear, then stuck its blade deep into an unarmored belly.

Something slammed against her wounded thigh, and her leg gave out as her vision went white with pain. Just a message, just a—

She moved without conscious thought, turning, seeking her attacker out, reading the angles, power gathering within her, and it surged upwards through her feet and legs as she exploded forward and drove her shoulder into his chest like a battering ram. He flew backwards out the open doorway, and then she had one misthios left to kill, and her sword swatted his blade aside and opened a path for her spear to cut his throat.

Then the skies broke open with jagged lightning, and the rain began to pour, and when she rushed outside, she found Melitta, dagger in hand, scrambling away from the misthios she'd knocked through the doorway.

Melitta's dagger held his attention, and he never even turned as Kassandra floated like a spirit through sheets of rain and speared him through the back.

"This way," Melitta said, wasting no time as she bounded up a set of steps nearby. "Kyra's killed the rest."

Kassandra followed after her, limping now in the fading rush of battle. At the top of the stairway, a body sprawled across the flagstones, pinned with arrows. A long row of cages ran the length of the wall, and then Kassandra heard the crying: lost and desolate echoes of children in despair. Her heart spasmed. She picked up the dead man's axe and hacked at the lock on the nearest cage, moving swiftly up the row while Melitta coaxed each group of children to come out and join the rest.

Then all that separated Kassandra from the children imprisoned inside the building was a heavy wooden door, and when the axe failed to make a dent in its lock, she chopped handholds into the boards on either side and tore it from its hinges.

There was a pause like a breath, and then a swarm of children burst out through the doorway, rushing to join those already crowding around Melitta on the portico.

Kassandra trailed after them, and some of them noticed her and turned and stared, which caused others to turn, and then others, a cascade of attention bearing down on her, and then all of them were frozen in place, gawping at her with terror in their faces. She was covered in blood, she realized. She could taste it every time she opened her mouth, the rain only making things worse. "Melitta, lead them," she said, suddenly weary.

Melitta's whistle was sharp, and it pierced their horror with a sound clearly familiar to all. "Let's go!" she said, and she turned and hurried down the steps.

The children followed like a school of fish, bumping and jostling up the steps and stone pathways, and Kassandra swept along with them as they streamed towards the break in the wall, and once she got there, she stopped and stood motionless, bracketed by dark and crumbling stone, covered in mud and blood and ashes, as the orphans spilled out around her, running to Kyra, running to freedom.

Part of the Elegiad. Go back to the previous story...

[danwhobrowses]

One Piece Wano Theory - The Fall of Onigashima

Spoilers for Manga Chapters leading up to and including c997

So yeah, that happened Not content with just throwing his weight around in beating 8 Scabbards at once, Kaido decided to up his power play by LIFTING THE WHOLE DAMN ISLAND which he’s gonna then carry across this storming sea, to the Flower Capital - which is in the midst of the Fire Festival and completely unaware that this raid is taking place - which he likely will drop on top of the Flower Capital with the people below: destroying its aristocracy, a large chunk of rebels and leaving the weak and weakened at the mercy of Kaido’s (and Big Mom’s) military might.

So now we have more stakes to deal with, 2 stakes primarily:

Stake 1 - Defeat Kaido before Onigashima leaves the ocean, allowing the island to fall before it damages any populated area in Wano Stake 2 - Prevent Onigashima from falling on the Flower Capital, but at the same time defeat Kaido Obviously, neither are easy, but 2 is much more difficult than 1 to achieve, which means that Stake 2 will almost certainly come to fold, so the question is this: How does the Alliance STOP Onigashima from Falling?

No easy feat, but maybe this is a place for other Straw Hats and side characters to shine. So far I have 7 possibilities linked to who could help save Wano from ‘New Onigashima’.

Option 1 - Gods, Titans and Homies

Option 1 considers the idea of what, or better yet who, can amass to such a size to cushion Onigashima, and the first answer that comes to mind is Prometheus and Zeus. We’ve already seen Zeus and Prometheus grow to incredible sizes in Whole Cake Island and they both are able to carry Big Mom with ease, so who knows how much weight they can carry at that size. Zeus is probably the easier bet for cushioning Onigashima since Prometheus would burn everything too, allowing Zeus to be the pivotal character also allows it to go two ways, either Nami reclaims Zeus from Big Mom in some manner - which will likely lead to BM’s defeat - or Big Mom turns on Kaido and works with Nami to help. This allows Nami to show the strength of her Clima Tact, being able to strengthen Zeus beyond Big Mom’s own capabilities.

Option 2 - The Last Gift of the Minks

Currently the Minks are completely weakened by fighting Kaido, despite their Su Long form they have been left with a stalemate, however the Minks do have a disadvantage: if they turn off Su Long they are out for a considerably long time, too long to return to the fight, but if they don’t turn off Su Long they will die from exhaustion. Unfortunately I am convinced that many Minks will fight to the death, including at least one of the leaders, but there is a more valiant way they could go out, and it’s a power all minks had which is overlooked: Electro. Electro is born from every mink, the ability to produce electricity which is further empowered in Su Long, but when Carrot fought Big Mom’s fleet she was able to somewhat float off the ground, and that is what can help Onigashima float. If enough Su Long Minks surround the bottom of Onigashima, they could provide an electromagnetic field that can keep the island from even touching the surface below, pure static electricity as the Minks give every ounce of their life to save Wano.

Option 3 - Rise of the Kozuki Dragon

Momonosuke has an artificial Devil Fruit of a Dragon, one where he too is able to produce these clouds to float. The problem however, is that he doesn’t know how to use them, Momonosuke has been so busy training his human form that he’s never considered the benefits of a dragon form. Of course, this means Momonosuke cannot do this alone, but fortunately he’s got people who can help; Yamato has extensive knowledge of how the clouds work, Nami has weather magic, Shinobu’s ‘maturing’ theories could help strengthen Momo’s dragon powers or even his own age and experience and, should she turn on Kaido, Big Mom could imbue the clouds with souls to make them Homies, not only being able to funnel more power but give more sentient intent to the clouds themselves, she could even enthrall Kaido’s clouds this way.

Option 4 - Combined Might and Monsters

While we expect at the least Luffy and Zoro to have a crack at Kaido in the final fight, and hopefully more if not all the Straw Hats, there becomes a matter of what others can do to stop Onigashima from falling. We’ve seen Nami’s potential with Zeus but others can also combine in strength. First is Robin, her Gigantesco Manos or even a Spider’s Web could help resist the fall, but of course even she cannot carry that much weight. This is where Chopper’s Monster Point and Franky’s Iron Pirate can also assist with their raw strength, and this is where Usopp can also shine. Usopp’s weaponry appear to involve plants now thanks to his pop-greens, but what if he could influence existing flora? One of the main pieces of the Flower Capital is a giant tree and if he could influence that he too could be able to contribute to pinning Onigashima above him. But it can go farther, Tama’s DF allows the opening to control the entire flying squadron, anyone Tama brought with her (remember she has something brewing in 3 minutes), Drake’s Allosaurus form, Hawkins’ giant Straw Demon, Jimbei can even call the giant Koi from the waterfall (though it may serve more to drag it back), Marco’s phoenix flames may also have influence on top of Apoo’s sound manipulation, Kid’s metal, even Law’s shambles could assist - since I don’t think he could make it big enough to cover all of Onigashima. There’s also the matter of Perospero’s candy if he survives to help and anyone else not revealed to have been present in Onigashima, the possibilities are wide and combined could hold up an island. 

Option 5 - Outside Parties

By raising Onigashima from the ground, Oda wants to give us the perception that no other external forces can roll up to Onigashima and support for or against Kaido, but that could be a misdirect. Currently on the surface as far as we know, Big Mom’s remaining forces, Law’s remaining crew and any other samurai, prisoners, SMILE members Tama had taken control over and as far as we know Hiyori, Hitetsu, Onimaru and Caribou, maybe even the Mountain God(s) from the Oden flashback. But outside of who we know is in Wano could be others we didn’t expect to be there; Germa 66 for one may come to ‘repay’ Big Mom for her attempted assassination, reengaging Sanji with his estranged family - and Baeju...which holds bias in this hope - which could just send all the other North Blue boys in a frenzy. The other outside factor is the Marines, Drake may not have called for help but circumstances outside of Wano may call for it: the marines going for a Warlord we didn’t know about (We only knew about Weevil, Mihawk, Boa, Buggy and Kuma, meaning Law and Doffy’s replacements were unknown), if Fujitora also shows up then Onigashima is no problem to his Gravity DF, but it will snowball another conflict.

Option 6 - The Sky Ships

This is probably my most deep-cut part of the Onigashima theory. As much as Luffy has to defeat the Yonko, Wano will never be free unless they see it for themselves: Orochi dead, Kaido defeated, until that is something the people can even believe in, Wano can never truly escape that oppression. Which is why arriving at the Flower Capital during the Fire Festival may actually allow ‘Wano’ itself to help save the country and a key part of that is the Sky Ships. Oda made note of paying attention to it, and making sure that the Fire Festival is as big as ever because this is the 20 year prophecy, every person in the Flower Capital right now is as spirited as ever because they desperately are clinging to the idea of salvation, so what if Oda is actually giving them an opportunity? The Sky Ships alone may actually be imbued with the spirits, the will of those who died for Wano, in that way the spirits of Wano itself could prevent Wano from falling atop of them, the same way Skypeia’s golden bell was to reach Noland and Calgara. It may be simple as these mythic powers from Wano’s culture, but it could be ushered by someone else - Brook. In WCI Brook proved himself capable of suppressing souls of chess soldiers via his DF, able to harm homies via Soul Solid, so what if via his Soru Soru no Mi he would be able to temporarily raise the souls of Wano’s dead and empower them through the memory and belief of the people symbolized by the Sky Ships they would release into the sky. 

Option 7 - All of the Above Outside of Luffy suddenly awakening his DF and making the island bounce off or a surprise Katakuri appearance, there aren’t many other options outside of the six detailed. But, why settle for only one option? Each of these options are feasible together as well as apart; Nami can empower Zeus and Momo’s clouds while Usopp, Robin, Jimbei, Chopper and Franky provide weight support as the Minks surround the island and Momo’s clouds with electro and raised by Brook’s soul-powered Sky Ships. A culmination of an absolutely bonkers scenario we’ve found ourselves in which can allow every Straw Hat a vital means of contribution but also allowing Wano and its citizens to have a large part in liberating its country from Kaido, Orochi and the Isolationist Regime Wano currently has.

Whether that comes to be remains to be seen, there are many pieces moving and as with this moment itself, it can go any manner of directions, we just have to wait for Oda to weave his magic.

[robbyrobinson]

IN HEAVEN - A Horror story 

Being a reverend of our local congregation was a family tradition. My father was a reverend. His father was a reverend. His father was one. You get the picture. Sure, I might have had some doubts about the profession, and in life, I had tried to stave it off by furthering my education at some far-away university, but one way or another, the position called for me. I devoted most of my time at the university studying theology and religion. I was at the top of my class.

Soon came when my father passed the task of reverend to me. I recall that before he died, he seemed to be slightly darker in his mannerisms. He was always an optimistic man, even in the face of anyone who criticized his livelihood. But in his final years, he changed immensely. Anywhere he went, he carried grimness with him. He acted as though a rain cloud were over his head. He had grown despondent at his time of death, refusing to accept any prayers that his immortal soul be taken to a place of rest. But just before he succumbed and left the mortal coil, there were reports that he was deeply horrified and hyperventilated rapidly. His heart rate skyrocketed to abnormal leaps, and he died, a look of sheer horror being permanently glued on his face.

My first year as reverend didn't go as well as you'd imagine. For one, there were many young people who were the epitome of smart alecks. They always loved to bring up the supposed contradictions in the scriptures or how God was an immoral being who for all accounts was a tyrannical, mass murderer who was offended that mankind worshiped other gods or that He was simply unfair. This was always something that I was raised to believe: God had his reasons for what he does. What may seem to be bad for us is mere because we view things from our own perspective rather than his. Sure, descriptions of God's firing down burning sulfur and brimstone onto Sodom and Gomorrah were terrible, or God's slaughtering of the Egyptian children in the tenth and final plague that befell Egypt as stated in Exodus sounded horrific, but ultimately, I was convinced that God ultimately saw it as being for the Israelites' good, or how whenever bad things happened in my life, I held onto my faith.

Just last month, I lost my youngest son, Theodore to childhood leukemia. Yes, we prayed fervently for his recovery until he took his last breath. But still, maybe God wanted his precious, precious soul to be with him immediately. My one regret, however, was that he was never baptized. I remember my daughter looked at me with the most frightful expression of concern. That her brother was in Hell because he was too young to understand the notion of turning his life over to Christ. I tried to console my daughter that he was in Heaven, but she only compounded my frustrations by asking then why man was considered wicked the moment they were born.

But with all my trials, I prevailed. I continued to preach God's Word to the masses, saving countless souls. Some didn't accept the word, but if the seeds were sown, I was content. For sixty years I taught the same lesson of God's love for us and how he sent his son to act on our behalf. I also challenged countless atheist and agnostic debaters. To my congregation, I had - in their words - royally schooled them on my knowledge of the scriptures. By the time I retired, my eldest son Samuel took up the mantle. He started out kind of like how I did. He wasn't as bold in what he was saying, but within three months, he was becoming more convicted in the word.

At the age of 64, everything changed. During a monthly checkup with my doctor, I received the news that a tumor was detected forming in my frontal lobe. I had earlier endured severe headaches and I felt more tired than usual. I went to chemotherapy for weeks; anything that the doctors tried to implement simply did not work. On my death bed, my family gathered around. My church congregation had since ceased their prayers for me. Dying never really bothered me. Since I didn’t remember what it was like to be born, this would then mean that dying would be painless. My vital signs started to fade, and after two minutes, I let myself slip away.

A beam of light gently grazed upon my eyes, forcing them open. My eyes beheld the Pearly Gates. Past that was the streets paved with gold and the many mansions that Christ discussed with his followers. As my eyes beheld several of the sights, I noticed that there was something strangely odd about it all. No one was present. I expected to at the very least see old faces once I woke up in Heaven. Instead, the streets were empty. Rather than hearing angelic singing, everything was bereft of the slightest murmur. I walked around the barren streets for quite some time. Right when I turned to head back, a low audible sound crept into my ears.

My legs tightened. Without a second thought, I sprinted towards the site of the audible noises. It took me to the very heart of the city. Right when I was about to make a right turn, my eyes locked onto something. In the middle of the square was the throne of God. The exact White Throne that was attributed to God and the exact one where it was held that he would judge the living and the dead. It was awe-inspiring. It was everything that I was taught to believe. The throne glowed with pure, white light. But with all that breathtaking majesty aside, something felt horribly wrong about it. The throne flickered feverishly. The sounds became more audible. Curiosity crept into me, and I slowly made for the throne.

What I saw made me question everything.

The throne itself throbbed as if it were a nightcrawler thrashing on a fishing hook. Upon closer inspection, I saw the faintest of humanoid attributes on the throne. The throne of God pulsated rapidly, the screaming nearly deafening me. Before my eyes, faces emerged from the throne. Each one bore the same look of terror. Their eyes were wide, almost as if they were observing something, but at a long distance. I could feel the heat of their glares on me, as though they were trying to telepathically beg me to put them out of their misery. They screamed in unison, their shrieks sounding like legions of malfunctioning sirens. I looked further at the throne, seeing that it had a fleshy appearance. It was as though the throne itself was one living creature. The tortured beings frothed at the mouth, making inhuman noises, the sounds of absolute hell.

I could make out that an innumerable number of bodies that comprised the Great White Throne of Judgment. Limbs littered the throne in different places. The light began to fade revealing the throne to be nothing more than a putrid-smelling mass of red meat. Whoever these people were, they had been conjoined. Something must have broken them down and put them back together with gallons of glue. I felt myself nearly vomiting if it were not for a voice.

“Welcome to Heaven.”

I looked up at the throne of God and saw a gargantuan figure sitting in the chair, as though it were completely unaware of the horrid screaming coming from its throne. The voice wasn’t as loud as I’d imagine it to be. It sounded as soft as the wind, but it didn’t comfort me in the slightest. This being was submerged in blinding light. I searched for a semblance of a face on the large entity, but I couldn’t. The further I looked on this creature, I felt a terror bubble from the deepest parts of my stomach. Somehow, I managed to choke a word out.

“Are, are you God?”

While I couldn’t see it, I could tell that the being before me had a wide smile across its face.

“I have many names,” it stated in the same eerie giddiness. “I am YHWH, Jehovah.”

What he said shocked me the most.

“I am also Zeus. Thor. I am Shiva. I am all of the gods that humanity had willfully believed in.”

I stood there, my jaw agape. “But, but, God, what about my life work?”

God chuckled. “You humans never cease to amaze me with the utter ridiculousness of what you’d be willing to believe.”

God had a good chuckle over it as if I had told him one of the funniest jokes in over a thousand years. The joke being my former life. After laughing fervently, God paused to feel the texture of the throne.

“It is a fine throne, isn’t it?” God asked.

My hopes of God somehow being ignorant of the deathly screeches of its throne died at that moment. This god almost got ecstasy from hearing millions – maybe trillions – of souls being melded together as a large blob of disharmony. The urge to vomit arose again.

“Do you know what this throne is made of?” God asked.

I shook my head, not wanting to know. But God was, of course, going to disclose the texture of it regardless of whether it intrigued me or not.

“Years ago, I created the angels,” God shuffled in its chair before continuing, “they were always meant to worship me, but after eons of feeding off their praise, it wasn’t enough for me.”

I flinched as I expected more vivid descriptions from God.

“When I created man in my own image, the angels didn’t want them to suffer as they had.” God sounded noticeably angered, its voice raising an octave to emphasize it. “So, one leader rose up to rebel against me.”

“Satan,” I said.

God scoffed. “Because of their betrayal, I decided the best way to punish them is to condemn them to a life of endless suffering, one of which would make them regret being birthed from the fires.”

I nearly fell backward at the realization. God’s throne was comprised of the fused bodies of nearly a third of the angels who rebelled against him and failed. Now they were being made to be eternally tortured. I tried to rationalize God’s justifications for this disproportionate retribution, but no logical answer would suffice. There were no excuses for what God had done. But the one thing that made me more curious was what became of the human souls of those who had died. If what God had said was true, then the afterlife as we know is just one inescapable nightmare. God apparently read my thoughts, and before my eyes, God conjured up legions of souls. Each soul lacked pupils in their eyes and their skins were a pale grey. They reminded me of the many zombie-related movies in olden times. But they were all people I knew in life.

The one that caught my eyes the most was a small figure. It tilted back and forth; its mouth open as though it were inciting a chant. I could tell that short stature from anywhere; it was Theodore. I ran to my son and hugged him tightly. I opened my eyes fully expecting the hug to be reciprocated, but instead, I felt the slight nibble on my neck. I looked at my son, to my horror, he started to bite down into my neck in a blind frenzy. I pried him off, tossing him to the ground, only for him to emotionlessly pick himself up and stand with the other souls.

I turned to look at God in anger. “That’s not my son.”

God giggled. He merely looked at the souls before him, as though he were an artist marveling at their work.

“No, he isn’t. And he never was.”

Each human soul was a former shell of themselves lacking even the slightest characteristic that made them lively. They had instead become inhuman slaves without their free will. At the time of death, God stripped each soul of their individuality, making them worship him forevermore. This would be the fate of untold many people who either followed the Christian faith or any religion for that matter. It seemed to not even matter if you chose to not pursue a religion because I saw many of my former atheist and agnostic debaters in the masses. It all made sense for why God would masquerade as different gods: the more people he got to believe him, he would bathe in their worship until their time of death when they would be made into the perfect followers by being removed from anything that made them human. This was the fate of my son, my father, and my grandfather. Even if I chose against the profession of a reverend, it wouldn’t have mattered much to God because he’d convert me the moment, I stepped foot in his kingdom.

I felt myself getting lifted into the air against my will. I levitated over the masses of souls and I was back to God and his revolting throne. While again I couldn’t see a discernible expression on his face, something told me that it was smirking.

“Well, time for you to join the heavenly choir, shall we?”

Not expecting an answer, I felt a surge of God’s power penetrate my body and consume me. I screamed in excruciating pain as my world suddenly started to grow dark. I tried to fight against the conversion with all my might, but my rationalization was starting to melt away. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t think a cognitive thought. I used the last of my consciousness to curse God’s name before sudden darkness filled my sights.

[parttimewriter-fulltimefangirl]

Solangelo Week Day 3: God / Human

Humans were strange. They always kept on changing, never satisfied with what they have. Then again, the same could be said about a lot of gods. Nico can’t remember the last time he didn’t hear some rumor about Zeus cheating on Hera. Again. Although, it’s not like he can judge too harshly. His father has cheated on Persephone many times. If he hadn’t, Nico wouldn’t have existed. 

Nico and his older sister, Bianca, were born in the 1930s. However, there were a lot of problems going on in the world that Nico was too young to understand. All he knew at the time was that it was scary, and the gods didn’t like it. Bianca and his mother ended up dying. To save his life, his father took him away. His original plan was to place him in the Lotus Hotel. Time passed by very slowly there. But then, it got destroyed by some demigods on a quest. Hades needed to keep his son somewhere safe. So, he took him to the Underworld.

Nico spent the next few years training in the Underworld. His only friend was Cerberus, who protected him fiercely. His father’s attendants were too scared to become friends with him. He tried finding Bianca, but his father warned him not to. He said that she was too young to be given the chance to be a hero, but she wasn’t evil either. She would be stuck in the Fields of Asphodel. That didn’t stop Nico from trying when he turned thirteen. He asked other ghosts if they had seen her, but none answered him, only aimlessly roaming the fields. He quickly grew frustrated until he noticed a certain soul sitting on the ground. 

It turned out that Bianca wasn’t the only sister he had in the Fields of Asphodel.

Hazel, his half-sister who did die heroically but acted too late, was sent to spend eternity there. Nico didn’t think it was fair, but she told him that it was okay. She was just happy that she’d have someone to talk to. From then on, Nico learned to move on from Bianca’s death, but he did get to know Hazel. She was always in the same spot, never feeling the need to leave it. It made him sad knowing that she could’ve had a different life, but there was nothing he could do. It wasn’t like he was a god.

Well, that is until the day he was. 

His father finally let him out of the palace on his fourteenth birthday. He knew how much Nico had trained and had more faith that he could protect himself. Neither expected him to run into a monster as soon as he felt. 

It was a rogue cyclops who rebelled against his brethren, believing he was meant for more than working in the forge. As a result, he hated the gods and their children. So, naturally, he tried to kill Nico, which meant that Nico had to kill him first. 

When Nico was done with him, he felt a rush. It was different than fighting underground against those who wouldn’t actually kill him. So, he decided that he would fight other monsters. Thus lead to him becoming a legend.

He never grew close to any of the other demigods he met along the way. He made sure that no one knew who his father was. But, word got around that there was a young demigod fighting monsters left and right. He’d swoop in, kill a few monsters that were about to eat some demigods, and then be on his way. It certainly confused everyone since most of them craved that glory of being a hero. Nico never really cared about all that.

One day, he did meet his doom. He was facing against the Gorgons. It was a fierce battle, but they managed to strike too many blows, and as he was lying on the ground, bleeding to death, he wondered how his father would feel knowing that the son he worked so hard to protect was dying at the age of fifteen. 

His father must’ve been keeping a closer eye on him that he thought because as he was taking in his last dying breath, he felt something overcome him. Suddenly, he was back in the Underworld, but he wasn’t dead. 

“Nico di Angelo,” his father’s voice boomed. All the servants were there in the throne room, along with Persephone. His father was at his throne, looking as regal as ever. 

Nico could tell something was going on, but he knew better than to just stand there like an idiot. He kneeled and said, “Yes, Father?”

“You have exhibited traits that are very worthy. You never sought glory or fame. You simply wanted to save others. You knew the dangers of going out into the world were much more difficult for you, and you knew that the other gods could find out you were my son. You nearly defeated the Gorgons, which is an incredible feat, along with all the other monsters you’ve killed and the lives you’ve saved. You, Nico di Angelo, will never again worry about the wrath of the gods for you will no longer be a demigod.”

Wait, what?

“You are now officially a god. You will be my right-hand, aiding me in controlling the Underworld. You are the God of the Fields of Asphodel.”

Nico felt that same feeling from before. He stayed kneeling, not daring to move.

“You may stand up and face your subjects.”

As Nico stood and looked out at the faces of his father’s loyal followers, he couldn’t help but think of how fucking lucky he is that he didn’t die. 

***

As the years went by, Nico worked hard to make the Fields of Asphodel a better place. His father told him that he didn’t have the power to bring anyone back to life, but he would be able to have control of what went on in the Fields of Asphodel. Hazel was very excited for him and for his plans. He created a community in the Fields of Asphodel. There were shops and buildings and events. Nobody ever remembered things for very long, but they walked around with smiles instead of blank faces. Hazel did remember, and she always had a smile on her face. Nico made sure that her spot was still only hers. There was now a chair with a cabinet with art supplies. She loved it. 

Nico sometimes wondered if he would run into Bianca when he roamed the fields, but he never thought too hard about it. He didn’t want to get his hopes crushed, so it was just better not to have them and accept that she was really gone. 

Now, it’s been so many years since Nico has been to the mortal world. He knows that demigods still talk about him, but now they know him as the son of Hades who became a god. Boy, did Zeus get pissed when he heard about that. There wasn’t anything he could do though since Nico wasn’t a demigod anymore. Also, everyone found out that he had a daughter named Thalia years later, so he had to get over it. 

Hazel is sitting in her chair, drawing a horse when Nico approaches her. She looks up and grins, “Hey, Neeks.”

He rolls his eyes. “You know I hate that nickname.”

“Yeah, that won’t stop me from calling you that. Sorry, Neeks.”

He huffs, pretending to be mad. He does have a reputation to uphold. “Well, that is certainly no way to speak to a god.”

She snorts. “A god who looks like a fifteen year old. You don’t even look that much older than me.”

He ignores her. “So, Father was saying that he thinks maybe I should head into the mortal world. He says that visiting Camp Half-Blood wouldn’t be such a bad idea either.”

She tilts her head. “That’s strange. What’s the occasion?”

Nico shrugs. “He says that there’s this demigod creating shrines for all of the gods. You remember Percy Jackson?”

“Who doesn’t?”

“Yeah, well, him and five other demigods had to come together and save the world again. One of those demigods is named Jason Grace, and he vowed to honor all the gods. I think Father wants me to ensure that he actually does that by making a shrine for me.”

“Do you think he will?”

“I mean, I honestly don’t care. It’s not like I have any kids or am going to have any of my own. Last I heard, men still can’t have babies.”

She giggles. “Imagine if they could.”

He cracks a smile. “I’m pretty sure there would be ATMs for birth control if that were true.”

She furrows his eyebrows. “ATMS? Oh, those are the machines that give you money, right?”

He nods. “Humans come up with the most interesting things.”

“Honestly. Speaking of which, don’t forget that you said you’d teach me how to do different hairstyles. You know, like the ones you saw on Yougram.”

“It’s called Youtube, Hazel.”

She smiles sheepishly. “You know what I meant.”

He nods. “I will. I’m going to head up now. Better to get it over with.”

She gives him one of her famous, warm smiles. “Who knows, maybe you’ll make a friend.”

Now, it’s his turn to laugh. “Yeah, I highly doubt that.”

***

Nico never intended to stay long at Camp Half-Blood. He only wanted to get in, talk to Jason Grace, and get out. He never meant to end up talking to any other demigods.

“So, are you new here? I’m Will Solace.”

Then again, he never intended to accidentally bump into a demigod either. 

“Um, nice to meet you,” Nico says. He can’t remember the last time he talked to a living human. Wow, that sounds so sad. 

“I know it can be a little scary coming to camp for the first time. I know that I was really scared. My dad’s Apollo. It’s not like I’m a son of the Big Three, but monsters can still catch my scent pretty easily. That’s why I usually stay here year-round. It’s also easier since my mom is usually on the road. She’s a country singer. Do you listen to country music?”

Nico only shakes his head and lets the demigod keep talking. There’s something about him that keeps Nico staying there, listening to things that don’t even pertain to him. 

“Yeah, it’s not the most popular genre nowadays. Well, that’s enough about me. Let me show you around camp.”

So begins Nico’s tour of the camp. Will points out all the cabins, including the ones currently being constructed. He shows him where the Golden Fleece is. He even brings him into his cabin to introduce him to his siblings. 

“Now, these are my brothers and sisters. Everyone, this is ㅡ oh, I’m sorry, I never asked you your name.”

“Um, Nico. Nico di Angelo.”

Suddenly, everyone is quiet. They all stare at him and his black clothes and take in the strange aura that radiated off of him when they first met him. He already knows how they’re going to react. They’re going to bow and fear him because they’ll know him as a god rather than another ordinary demigod.

Then, a boy who looks around Will’s age smacks Will upside the head. “Only you wouldn’t realize you were talking to a god this whole time.”

The boy blushes, making Nico feel a bit bad for him. So, he says, “It’s not his fault. I tried to make it seem like I wasn’t a god because I didn’t want to draw too much attention to myself. I really just came to camp to see Jason Grace.” He turned to Will. “Actually, could you direct me to him?”

Will nods, still blushing. He starts walking out the door, leaving his snickering siblings. 

Nico sends them all a glare, which quickly shuts them up. 

He runs out to catch up with Will. “I’m sorry for not telling you sooner. You just seemed so eager and kind. Also, I’m not used to interacting with living demigods.”

Will’s shoulders are tense. He lets out a breath, causing his muscles to relax. “It’s alright. Let me show you where Jason is.”

“Wait, Will,” Nico says, feeling a little strange. “I did like talking with you. The tour was really nice. Please don’t feel bad.”

He sighs again. “That’s not why I was upset. I was, well, I was hoping to ask you out.”

“Oh.” 

He chuckles bitterly. “Yeah. Seems pretty ridiculous now. I really liked talking to you and I wanted to get to know you, and I just really felt like we were vibing.”

“Vibing? Oh, wait, that means connecting.”

Will smiles before letting it fall. “See! Even now, you’re hopelessly adorable. There’s no point, though. You’re a god. I’m human.”

“You’re a demigod.”

“Still more human than a god.”

Nico would be lying if he tried to say he isn’t attracted to Will. He has a very pretty face. High cheekbones, nice jawline, bright blue eyes, his lips… But, Will is right. He is a god and these types of relationships never last. It’s best if they don’t pursue it.

“Well, how about we just be friends? I could use some more time in the mortal world.”

Will doesn’t say anything for a while. When they reach what Nico presumes to be Jason Grace’s cabin, Will finally says, “Okay. I think we can be friends.”

Nico smiles, which doesn’t happen often, but he thinks that it will start to the more he interacts with Will. 

***

“I can’t believe you never watched Mean Girls.”

“Hey, I tried learning as much as I could about the modern world! Watching dumb high school movies wasn’t on my list of important things to learn.”

“Yet you managed to watch all the Marvel movies.”

“ …. Look, I think we can admit that the Marvel movies are iconic.”

“Okay, fair, but so is this movie!”

Two hours later, and Nico has come to the conclusion that humans are stupid.

“She doesn’t even go there! Why the fuck would she even be in the movie?”

***

“You’re dead, di Angelo!”

“As if, Solace!”

Nico hears Jason say to Kayla, Will’s sister, “They sure do love water balloon fights.”

She sighs. “Sometimes, it’s hard to remember that he’s a god.”

Nico ignores them and tries to find cover. He can’t let Will win. Again.

***

“Do you ever wonder what it’d be like if you were on the road with your mom?”

“Yeah, sometimes. I miss her a lot. But, it’s better this way. She gets to live out her dream, and I get to survive. I’d rather not put her in danger just by being around her. Besides, I get to see her during the holidays. Not every demigod can say that.” 

“That’s true.”

“Do you ever wonder what it’d be like if Bianca showed up at one of your cafes?”

“I’ve learned to accept the fact that I’m never going to see her again. It’s just the reality of the situation. I should just be thankful that I got to live with her for the first ten years of my life. She was a great sister and took care of me more than our own mother did. I never hated my mother for it. She just had a busy life and was the daughter of a diplomat. Her life was already complicated enough before we came along. But, it did lead to me as seeing Bianca as an authority figure in my life.”

“I think she’d be proud if she knew the person you’ve become.”

Nico looks at Will, who is suddenly a lot closer than he thought he was. “There are some moments where it passes my mind if she even knows what I’ve done with my life and who I’ve become.”

Will places his hand over his. “Even if she doesn’t know, she’d be proud if she knew.”

“How do you know?” Nico whispers, looking into Will’s eyes. Eyes that see him for him. Not the demigod who died and became a god. Not the son of Hades. Just him. Nico di Angelo.

Will leans closer, his lips barely an inch away from his face. He can feel his breath, which smell like mints. He can see the light freckles on his cheeks. He can hear the pounding of both of their hearts. “Who wouldn’t be proud of someone as amazing as you?”

Nico looks down at those lips. The lips that he noticed when he first visited camp all those months ago. He’s tempted to lean in and close the gap and finally find out what they taste like. 

Will looks down at his lips, and he smirks. He knows what he’s doing. That son of a bitch is doing all of this on purpose to unnerve him. Nico knows this.

That doesn’t stop him from crashing his lips against his, feeling the sweet taste of his lips completely take over his senses. All he knows, thinks, and feels is Will Solace, the boy he’s fallen madly in love with. 

***

“Father, there’s something I need to tell you.”

Hades looks across the table at his son, who is clutching the table napkin so tightly that his knuckles are turning white. “Yes, Nico?”

“I’ve fallen in love.”

“Oh? Is she a mortal?”

“He’s a demigod. Son of Apollo.”

Hades makes a face that he can’t quite decipher. “A son of Apollo. Why Apollo? I don’t think you realize how much he’s going to rub it in my face at the next meeting that his son captured your attention.”

Nico smiles softly. “It just happened. I didn’t for it to end up like this, but it did.”

Hades sighs. “Well, I don’t see why you felt the need to tell me. There’s no worry of you creating any demigods, and we know how these types of relationships work.”

Nico knows that this is the hard part. “We’ve been in a relationship for almost three years now, Father.”

“What?”

“I don’t know if you noticed, I’ve been changing my form to match his. I don’t have the body of a fifteen year old anymore. I made myself look different as he aged so that it would seem like I was aging too.”

“Well, how was I supposed to notice? You’re still small.”

“Yeah, it seems that even if I had stayed human and aged, I wouldn’t have gotten much taller. However, that’s not the point. The point is that I’ve realized that I want to spend the rest of my life with him, and he feels the same way. In fact, I plan on proposing to him next year. I even bought a ring.”

“You can’t marry him. He’ll be nineteen and still a demigod.”

“I want to propose, but I don’t want to get married when he is nineteen. I just want to be engaged. We can wait until he’s ready to get married.”

“That doesn’t take away the fact that he is not a god, and I’m sure he wouldn’t want to become one either. If Percy Jackson, who has suffered so much, didn’t want to become a god, why would he?”

“You’re right, he doesn’t want to be a god. He would rather age with his friends and family and live out his life to the fullest. What I want is to become a demigod again.”

Hades is rarley ever rendered speechless, but this is one of the few times where he is.

Nico continues with what he planned to say. “I know that it’s not typically done, but I believe it is possible. We’ve talked it over together, and he said that it’s my choice, and I want to, Father. I want to be with him. I can’t imagine living a life with him, aging with him, only to watch him die and live for eternity remembering him.”

Hades glares at him. “After everything I did to keep you alive, you repay me by becoming mortal for some boy who could break your heart at any moment. I cannot support this. I won’t!”

Yeah, Nico didn’t expect this to go well, so he’s not surprised at his reaction. “Father, I’m not asking for your permission. I’m very grateful for everything you’ve done for me, but this is how I want to live my life.”

“Oh, really? By the side of a boy who you say loves you?”

“I want to live my life by actually living it. With the boy who loves me.”

Hades stares at him for a few seconds before getting up, the back of his chair screeching against the hard floor. He leaves the dining room, not saying a word. 

Nico feels a lump forming in his throat, and his eyes begin to sting with unshed tears. He gets up out of his seat, and in the next second, he’s at Camp Half-Blood in Will’s cabin.

Luckily, Will walks in at that moment, looking as beautiful as ever. He’s smiling, but then he notices Nico’s expression, and he watches as that sunny smile disappears, replaced with a look of concern. He simply opens his arms, and Nico goes to him. As soon as his arms are wrapped around him, he lets the tears fall. 

***

It’s finally the day. The day that everyone has been waiting for, and a day that Nico never thought he would even get to have. 

Today is his wedding day. Today, he will be marrying Will Solace, the love of his life. 

The whole day is entirely chaotic. It’s short and simple since they don’t exactly have the money necessary for a grand wedding. Will is still in med school, and they’ve got to keep paying rent on their new apartment. Also, Will recently took in a stray dog who, according to him, “was too adorable to leave out in the streets.”

So, no, it’s nothing really big, but Nico likes it like that. He may have opened up more and made new friends, but he still doesn’t really have that many friends. It’s not like he really would’ve wanted to invite more people. He still thinks humans are pretty stupid. 

He probably shouldn’t say that since he gave up immortality months ago. Now, he’s a stupid human too. 

Nico gets ready to go out the doors. Will is currently waiting on the other side in his white suit. He doesn’t even have to look to know that he looks gorgeous in it. He wonders if Apollo showed up. They invited him, but he never confirmed. He knows that Naomi came since she was the one who walked him down the aisle. 

They sent an invitation to Hades. He also never confirmed whether he was coming or not, but Nico was pretty sure he wasn’t. He hasn’t spoken to his father since he told him about his relationship with Will. Still, a very small part of him was hoping he would come to walk him down the aisle and give him away. But, he has to be realistic. His father is not coming. So, with no parent to walk him down, he summoned someone else. 

“Nico, are you ready for this?” Hazel says, looping her arm through his, which passes right through.

He smiles at her. It took some work, but he isn’t called the Ghost King for nothing. She can only be here for a certain amount of time, so he’s glad he has family here with him today. “Ready as I’ll ever be.”

The doors open, and then, he hears a deep voice say, “Well, he is handsome, I’ll give you that.”

It’s Hades. He came. He actually came. “Father? I thought you weren’t coming.”

Hades sighs. “I may not understand why you gave up everything. But, I know that you’re a wise young man, and I should respect your choices. I can’t let my feelings of the situation get in the way of your wedding day.”

Hazel is practically jumping. “Father, you have made a very good choice.”

Nico almost doesn’t know where to hug him or cry. “Thank you, Father.”

Hades shows a hint of a smile, but quickly smothers it. “Now, let’s begin, shall we? I believe there is a young man waiting at the end of that aisle to marry you.”

Nico nods. With his sister on one arm (sort of) and his father on his other, he starts walking down the aisle towards the love of his life.

He feels … happy.

***

“Hey, Will,” Nico says, as he sways in Will’s arms. Everyone’s eyes are on them as they make their way through their first dance as husbands. 

Will takes his head off of his and looks down at him. “Yes, husband?”

Nico smiles softly. “Thank you.”

“For?”

“My father saved me from dying all those years ago. But, you made me start living.”

Will shakes his head slowly. “No, love, that decision was entirely yours.”

Maybe it was, but Nico still feels like Will was a big part of it. He’d rather not argue with him on it though. So, he tilts his head upwards and kisses his husband.

He’ll never get tired of the feeling of those sparks flying every time their lips meet. 

[logancreatesworlds]

The Divorce - (Hades!T’Challa x black!Persephone!reader)

Author’s Note:  Hello all!  So I’ve been juggling this concept around in my head for days now, and I finally wrote it.  Hope y’all like it.  Please comment and tell me what you think.

Warnings:  Sexual References and angst.

Disclaimer:  I do not own a damn thing, especially not the images.

“SHE CANNOT LEAVE ME!”  An angry God of Death shouted as he angrily sat on his throne.

“Evidently,” The God of War snapped in reply, “Yes the fuck she can.  Apollo has allowed it.”

“Bullshit,” the divine being hissed, “His dominion is over America, not my wife!  He cannot grant her asylum.”

“Again.  Yes the fuck he can.  According to the very specific Sokovia Accords, a god or goddess may grant another asylum if his or her life is in immortal danger.  Persephone can declare herself to be fleeing another god now.”

That was not what T’Challa wanted to hear.  He, the God of Underworld, had been put in a bind by you - his own wife, the goddess of Spring.

Unlike in the stories humans told each other, Gods were wildly uncomplicated and would kiss, fuck and more commonly - argue.

Such was no exception for the Gods who were married, and that included you and T’Challa.

Again and unlike in the stories, T’Challa had not kidnapped you but you had started the nasty little rumor to rebel against your mother, Demeter, who told you that you were to be married to him on orders of Zeus.

But that was centuries ago.

Even if you despised losing your independence, you had come to love T’Challa with the purest love that one God could give another.

And that pure love came crashing down when you found out that your dear husband, the man who actually despised seeing people die and comforted them in the afterlife, was having an affair.

The argument that you both had at dinner was the biggest and worst one to ever happen between you two.

“You lying bastard!  You deceive me and then do not have the balls to come forth with your deception!”

“YOU DO NOT SPEAK TO ME LIKE THAT, YOU ARE MY WIFE!”

This wasn’t the first time you had caught him cheating.  Of course, there were the multiple dalliances with the mortal woman, who T’Challa assured could not hold a candle to you.  

But then his desires grew from mortals.  There was that time around 1950 when you found a love letter from some other whorish nymph named Minthe.

‘My love,’ the letter had read, ‘I miss you greatly.  Even if you have an obligation to your kingdom, that does not mean I cannot hunger for you in my dreams.’

My love, you thought, a fiery anger bubbling in your chest, MY LOVE?!

That was the final straw.  These affairs had gone too far.

That day, you marched down to earth to find the woman sleeping with T’Challa and you can still remember the smirk she gave you when bragged of your husband’s skills in the sack.

Your mother had always said that your worst trait was your jealously and with the might of mother nature itself coursing through your veins, you struck Minthe down and turned her in a mint plant before crushing her under your bare feet.

T’Challa was pissed when he found out from what happened from his friend and the ferryman of souls, W’Kabi, and he ambushed you at dinner.

Again, that was the worst argument of your life.

“This is not the first dalliance I’ve had.  What made you want to kill her?!”

“I did not marry you thinking you would unsheathe your dick with every single woman, but I put up with that.  I will NOT allow you to love another woman.”

“Well if who I fuck is such an issue, why don’t you just leave?”

Your eyes widened and fresh water tears bubbled in your eyes.

Huffing, you turned around and left.

“I want a divorce, T’Challa.  I have had enough.”

With that, you left the dining room.

Even if T’Challa had slept on the couch that night, he never thought you would actually leave.  

Imagine his shock when he had discovered that the Queen of the Underworld had packed her bags and left.

Not only that, but you had taken your three kids with you.  You had taken his kids with you.

Yeah, T’Challa was pissed.

“Divorce” my ass, he thought spitefully.

“This place is strange mother,” your oldest son, Zagreus, commented as he walked beside you, his dark skin shining from the glitzy lights radiating off the buildings in Times Square.

“It’s just New York, baby,” you answered, your brown eyes darting as you looked for your destination, “It’s quite mundane.”

“I want a hot dog, mommy.” your only daughter, Melinoë, chirped, her 4b hair bobbing as she smiled up at you with adorable gap tooth that reminded you of her father.

“We’ll get one later baby,” You replied, clutching baby Plutus closer into your arms, “But right now we gotta get somewhere first.”

Soon, you made it to a dark apartment building and despite your gruesome situation, you could not resist a brief smirk as how Zagreus glared at the horny homeless man eyeing your hips.

Quietly, you led your kids inside and up the stairs to one of the apartment doors.

Though the humans were unable to see the magic around it, you could read the magic labeled numbers engraved on the door.

III  IX

Three, for the winter months you were originally required to spend with T’Challa after he had fed you the ceremonial pomegranate.  Nine, for remaining months you had to spend with your mother and the other Gods.

Yup.  This was the place.

Gently, you handed Plutus to Zagreus and placed both your hands on the door.  On cue, a magic glow rippled through the door and nob rolled to the right as it softly opened.

Persephone walked in first and her kids followed.

“You made it,” a dark, sultry voice greeted.

Angrily, you growled at the dark shadow in the corner, your eyes glowing a bright green as you readied to turn whoever was stupid enough to advance on your and your family into a shrub.

“Relax,” the figure replied, coming out of the darkness, “It is just me.”

“Bucky,” You greeted as the being calmly sat down.

“Persephone,” He replied, his eyes betraying his brutal demeanor, “You made it.”

“You could have announced yourself,” you replied, shutting the door.

“I could say the same for you, your majesty.”

“You truly are what the humans.”

“I cannot help the stories,” Bucky responded with a dark smirk, “I am what the humans think of in times of war.”

“So you are him,” Zagreus said, sizing Bucky up, “Funny.  You do not look so scary.”

The boy did have his father’s pride.

“Zagreus,” you chastised.

“No it’s fine,” Bucky replied, his smirk turning into a taunting smile, “Little Zagreus is just trying to take his daddy’s place.”

Zagreus growled, his eyes glowing an amber color, as he advanced on the Personification of Terror sitting in his family’s new kitchen table.

Persephone, already used to dealing with his father’s mood swings, tightly gripped his shoulder, “Boy, calm down.  Remember what happened the last time you lost your temper.”

Zagreus resisted the urge to roll his eyes.

By the Gods, he huffed, Blast a soul to pieces one time and your own mother makes your clean the Cerberus pits.

“I’m hungry mama,” Melinoë said with a pout.

“Well eat up,” Bucky said gently as she ran to the large white refrigerator, “The fridge is fully stocked.”

With that, the divine being got up from the table and quietly left for the door.

“Bucky,” you called, making him freeze, “Thank you.”

He briefly turned for a second, regarding you.

“Any time.”

Then, he was gone.

You had tried to keep your kids calm that night.  Taking them away from their father had been traumatic for everyone, and you would be damned if you let it break your kids.

Luckily, Plutus had gone to sleep easily for a change, and that left room for the rest of you to scroll through Netflix.

You insisted on letting Zagreus pick what to watch, and of course he avoided Black Panther since the main actor reminded him eerily of his father.

After watching The Grinch, you decided it was time to turn in for bed.  Zagreus took the couch and you slept in the one bedroom with Melinoë and Plutus.

Don’t worry babies, you thought as your eyes drifted shut while you rubbed your daughter’s hair through her bonnet, We’ll make it through this.

The next morning, your eyes blinked open to see that little Melinoë was gone, along with baby Plutus.

A slight feeling of fear bloomed in your chest, but it quickly gave way to relaxation when you smelled the familiar scent of pancaked and bacon.

Zagreus must be cooking breakfast, you thought, getting up.

It wasn’t a surprise to you.  Zagreus frequently cooked breakfast when his father was too busy or when you were off visiting his grandma.

Sighing and rubbing the kink out of your neck, you sighed as you walked to the kitchen. 

That was odd.  Zagreus wasn’t there, neither was Melinoë or Plutus.  Your eyes widened when you saw the heap of freshly made pancakes, bacon and...pomegranates.

Shit.

“They are fresh from Wakanda.  I brought them for you.”

You whipped around to see T’Challa sitting on the couch with your three kids, the two youngest fast asleep.  Zagreus, the only one awake, sat in dead silence at his father’s arm that had slung around his shoulder.

“T’Challa-”

“No, no my love, there will be no talking.”

“What did you do to them-”

“I placed a sleeping spell on them.  They are fine.  Now, sit.”

You did not.

“Mama,” Zagreus pleaded quietly as T’Challa brushed the 4c curls on his head, “Do as he says.  Please.” 

With a nervous air, you acquiesced to T’Challa’s demands and sat in the chair across from your family.

“Where have you been?”  He demanded.

“I...took the kids and left for New York City.”

“I see that.  But you have only been here for little more than a day.  What about the other four months?”

“I was gonna stay with my mother.  But I did not want you coming after her,” you answered, “So I reached out to Apollo and told him I wanted to take the kids on vacation.  He accommodated.”

By the way T’Challa nodded, you could tell that he was satisfied with the answer.

Apollo would live then.

“Very well,” he spoke stoically, “We should eat breakfast then.”

The five of you all sat around the table, eating pancakes and bacon in uncomfortable silence.

Melinoë, even if she was the little bringer of nightmares and madness, chatted with her father in an obliviously happy manner while you fed Plutus some baby food.

You would be forever grateful to yourself for not letting her see the problems between her parents.

“And we got to see Times Square too,” Melinoë chirped.

“Really?”  T’Challa asked, enthusiastically giving his prized baby girl all of his attention, “Well you shall just have to show baba sometime, yes?”

Melinoë enthusiastically nodded and an aching feeling erupted through your heart.

You felt so guilty, taking your own kids out of a reality they had always known and smashing their happy life.  And all because of issues you had with their father.

It wasn’t the fact that they were in any immortal danger with their father, for even if he was a philandering bastard, you never doubted that he loved them.  

No.  You were just mad at him and you taken it out on the whole family.

“I would love to see the rest of New York,” T’Challa replied, “But I have some business to finish in Wakanda first.”

“Are we even gonna go home baba?” Melinoë asked hopefully.

“Yes.”

“No”

T’Challa and you stared intensely at one another, almost as if seeing who would break first and amend their answer to your daughter’s inquiry.

“Forgive mama, Melly,” he said, a threatening glint in his eye, “She just misspoke.”

You breathed heavily as T’Challa returned back to eating.  You knew better than to argue with him.

You breathed nervously as you once again entered Wakanda, the Dark Palace of Judgement.  You were even more nervous then when T’Challa had brought you here after the wedding.

“Glad to see y’all back,” Erik greeted as you entered the main foyer, swinging his spear as usual.

“Uncle Erik!”  Melinoë shouted happily, breaking away from you and running into the arms of T’Challa’s cousin, “I missed you!”

“I missed you too, little nightmare.”

The God of War always did come up with the best nicknames.

“Erik, can you take the kids into the kitchen to get some proper food.  I’d like to have a chat with my wife.”

Erik nodded and left with Plutus and Melinoë in tow and Zagreus briefly turned to you.

“I love you mama,” he said softly.

“I love you too,” you replied pulling him into a hug.

Why was he hugging you so tightly?

Before T’Challa preceded to even take a step, Zagreus grabbed his arm in a tight grip.

“Hurt her and I will kill you,” he threatened, his eyes shining with a glowing amber.

T’Challa stared into his eyes, and quiet pride bloomed in his chest.  His son, even if he would be facing an opponent ten times more powerful than him, was ready to fight for his mother.  Even if it meant he would lose...

You shall make a fine king one day, he thought.

Zagreus let T’Calla go and then walked off, following his “Uncle” and baby siblings.

Even his walk was just like his daddy’s.

“Come,” T’Challa said, regarding you, “We need to talk.”

It’s Now or Never.

Quietly, you followed the ruled of the Underworld into his main study.

After everything, you still refused to give up your pride.

You were the only on at fault in this situation.

“If you’re expecting an apology-” you started.

“(Y/N), please,” T’Challa replied, “I am not mad at you.”  

You gave a puzzled look as your husband opened up a bottle of wine and poured it into a glass.

“You are not?”

“No,” T’Challa confirmed with surprisingly peaceful nod of his head, “In fact, I am glad it happened.”

Okay.  Now you were befuddled. 

“What?  T’Challa, are you feeling alright?”

“Yes.  I am fine, my love.  Why?”  He replied, sitting down at his desk and cross his feet on his desk.

“I literally just left you and took your kids.  And yet...you’re sitting here drinking Chardonnay like nothing is wrong.”

“I am not upset with you because I am mad at you.  I am upset with myself because I have never appreciated you.”

“What?”

“When I found out you were in New York, I was ready to wage war on everyone there.  I was planning to have Erik suit up the army and destroy the human in a flurry of rage, madness, pain and decay.”

You listened as he continued.

“But then,” he sighed, “Mother spoke to me.  She said that if I loved you, I had to prove it.  And I realized, in all of the centuries we have been married, I have never truly appreciated you.”

A tear dripped down your eyes as you sat down, and T’Challa came over and knelt in front of you.

“(Y/N), Goddess of the Springtime, daughter of Demeter, and love of my life.  I am sorry.  I am sorry for lying to you, for cheating on you.  I want to make things right between us.  If you still want a divorce, I understand.  I will call a meeting with Hera in the morning and we will settle it.  You can even take the kids.”

Your tears developed into full on crying.

“I’ve been waiting over three millennium to hear you say that,” you cried.

T’Challa smiled softly, wiping the tears from your dark cheeks.

“I do not want a divorce,” you said seriously, “But don’t think that just because you apologize that I forgive you.”

“I understand.  So...I cannot do this then?”

He then pulled you into a deep kiss, only gently ending it when you were just getting into it, and biting your lips slightly to punctuate its ending.

Sexy bastard.

“No,” you moaned, trying to ignore the hot feeling between your legs as he moved to kiss your neck, “We cannot make this up sex.”

“(Y/N).  You just got home,  Let us not make this just sex.  Let us make love.”

You sighed softly as he went back to your neck.

“Fine,” you moaned, wrapping your thick legs around him, “But we are calling Hera in the morning for couples’ therapy.”

Over the next few years, the relationship between you and T’Challa had almost completely repaired itself.  Yes, there were those times when you did not trust who was texting on his phone.  But those days when he was int eh shower and asked you to check it for him made up for that.  Yes, there were those days when men would stare at you and wish you were theirs. But T’Challa knew that you were his.

Even more?  He knew that for once, he actually deserved you.

You never thought you would say this, but were glad the two of you were able to fix it.

Thank the gods you didn’t go through with the divorce.

Author’s Note:  Aaaaaand that is all folks!  Hope y’all liked it.  Just a little brainchild I made up in my head.  Comment to let me know what you think.

@kumkaniudaku  @brianabreeze  @sisterwifeudaku  @destinio1  @pocmarvelworks  @black-mcu-imagines  @black-is-beautiful18  @inlovewithmakeupcomicsanimelove  @wakandalivesforever  @macfizzle  @iwrite4poc  @siriuslycollins  @wakandas-vibranium  @100kindsofblake  @muse-of-mbaku  @naturally-bri  @helperofthenight  @dumbchick  @sweettea-and-honeybutter  @drsunshine97  @pastelastronomy24  @plussizeappreciationfics  @royallyprincesslilly  @afro-royalty  @tenaciousarcadeexpert  @shinyanchorface  @scarlettlullaby16

[flightfoot]

A Convergence of Apollos Ch. 3

*Apollo’s POV

We arrived in Times Square. Hopefully we could find the Celedon BEFORE she started causing havoc.

I wasn’t optimistic.

But that did remind me of something...

“Percy, Meg, do you two need something to stuff your ears with? Grover and I should be resistant to the Celedon’s music, but I’m concerned about you two.

Meg split open a seed packet and poured a few seeds into each of her ears. “I’m fine.”

Grover dug out a small ball of warm wax from... somewhere (I did NOT want to know where, or how long it’d been there) and held it out to Percy. “I always keep wax handy. Like chewing gum!”

Percy looked at the wax with disgust, but he took it. “Gee, thanks Grover.” 

We wandered around the area searching for the Celedon. I wasn’t too concerned about not being able to find her. She wasn’t here to hide, after all. Finding her before she could cause harm though... I was less certain of that.

As the four of us walked around looking for the golden woman, my mind went over the events of the past hour.

I’d known I could be callous as a god. I knew that I hadn’t put much weight on mortal lives, or mortals’ feelings. But to actually seriously threaten a young girl, just for insulting me...?

Actually, that sounded exactly like something I would’ve done before all this.

The thought wasn’t comforting.

Threatening Meg, threatening Grover. Even if I couldn’t say for sure that I’d have gone through with those threats, I wasn’t sure that I WOULDN’T have, either. And even if I could say for sure that those WERE empty threats, THEY didn’t know that. 

‘It is better to be feared than loved, if you cannot be both.’

I’d always felt weirdly about line, and I couldn’t figure out why. Everyone loved me! I could instill fear when I needed to, but I didn’t have to choose.

That had sounded hollow and false even in my head, but I’d ignored it, like I’d ignored so many other uncomfortable truths throughout the millennia.

Subconsciously I always knew I wasn’t as beloved as I liked to tell myself. So whenever I felt like I might not be getting as much deference as I deserved, I compensated with fear. That’s why I’d stoked that rumor that I’d skinned Marsyas alive, so that no one would DARE to claim that they were better than me.

I didn’t care about the negative effects it had on the people around me. Why should I care about some random kid’s feelings?

Being down on Earth, truly being a part of the mortal’s world, and not simply a visitor... I couldn’t help but care.

I glanced over at Percy. This was only two years in the past, yet this version of -Percy seemed so much lighter. Softer. Less disillusioned. But he’d already been through so much.

At twelve years old, only a couple weeks after discovering he was a demigod, he’d been framed for a crime he did not commit, and forced to prove his innocence and return Zeus’s Masterbolt, or else suffer his wrath.

I remembered Zeus’s thundering around when he discovered that his Symbol of Power was missing, his certainty that Poseidon MUST have gotten his son to steal it for him. This despite there being no evidence that Percy had even known the mythological world existed. And being only twelve years old. And not being on Olympus at the time.

All us gods knew that Percy was innocent. That Zeus was taking his anger out on him as a way of getting back at Poseidon, who he also didn’t have sufficient evidence to suspect. But when had he ever cared about such things? He’d decided that Percy must be involved with the theft in some way, and even if he wasn’t, Poseidon surely was, and hurting Percy would hurt Poseidon. 

He never stopped to think about Percy as a person. As a kid who was dragged into this through no fault of his own. He was just a tool, one he wouldn’t mind breaking in a sibling spat.

All demigods were disposable tools, acknowledged when useful, ignored when they were not. 

I wish I could say that I had thought better of demigods than that. And I suppose I had - of some of them. Of my own children certainly. But as for other gods’ children? It was more hit-or-miss. I’d help them sometimes, but I rarely considered their thoughts and feelings important, unless I had a crush on them. Aside from that? Not really. Not until now.

When Thalia’s tree had fallen ill, all of us were concerned about the Camp’s waning defenses. Yet Hermes was the only one who had DONE something about it, who had gone down and helped, despite not having a child involved in the quest itself. He’d encouraged Percy to go on the quest, even though he hadn’t been chosen for it. He’d even given him tools to help on the journey.

I smiled a little. My younger brother was a rebel. Always had been.  He’d had the guts to go against Zeus’s general directive to not interfere with demigod quests, to help someone he barely knew, on the off chance that he could bring his son around.

My smile faded. Luke... his methods may have been bad, but he had reason to hate the gods. We’d wronged the demigods - wronged our children - wronged the children of others’ - so many times. We hadn’t cared about the destruction we left behind.

I’d only been mortal for a few months, yet I already felt some stirrings of resentment at the lack of help I and the other mortals had received. I understood why most of the gods couldn’t help me. But couldn’t they do more to help the others?

I hoped I was wrong. I hoped that the divine side of my family had helped Leo get to Camp Jupiter. That they’d helped to repel Caligula’s attack.

Somehow, I doubted it.

Percy’d snuck out to go on a quest AGAIN when my sister and Annabeth were kidnapped.

I tightened my grip on my lyre and grit my teeth thinking about it. I remembered the moment our bond had clouded over. I’d tried to tell myself that she was fine. She was my sister! She wouldn’t be taken down easily.

But I couldn’t help but remember that time Ares had been trapped in a jar for months. How lifeless he’d looked. How he’d nearly faded away...

When I’d heard that a quest had been sent out to find Artemis, I’d been relieved. Moreso when I found out that one of the participants was Percy Jackson, and another was Zoe Nightshade. I’d been impressed with Percy’s previous exploits. Not just anyone could traipse out of the Underworld and immediately defeat Ares, especially after only having had a week of training, nor could they enter the Sea of Monsters and escape with the Golden Fleece, WITHOUT losing anyone along the way.

As for Zoe, she was one of my sister’s oldest hunters, her most trusted lieutenant, and her best friend. She’d had my sis’s back on many, MANY hunts over the millennia. She must have been as desperate to get Artemis back as I was.

Still... I had to help. Even though Zeus had told me not to. Even though he’d threatened to hurt me if he caught me interfering. 

It would hurt to be incinerated with lightning, again and again, until I had trouble reforming.

Losing my sister would hurt more.

I’d helped in what little way I could, providing transportation to the group so they could get to Atlas - and my sister - faster.

I remembered seeing sis again just after they’d freed her from her imprisonment. After Percy had freed her.

She tore into Olympus as fast as she could, flickering silver. 

I understood what that meant. My sister didn’t cry often. But her aura’s flickers betrayed her distress. As soon as I saw her, I enveloped her in a hug, determined not to let her go. 

She hugged back.

“Zoe...” she’d murmured, her voice cracking.

I understood what must have happened.

I held her even tighter.

My sister may have been safe.  But she’d lost someone close to her.

I knew how that felt.

After things had calmed down, I asked her how Atlas had persuaded her to take the sky in the first place. She’d told me that Annabeth, a young maiden, had been trapped under the weight of the sky, and would have died if she had carried the burden much longer. Taking it from her was the only way to save her life. It may have meant trapping herself, but she had had no other choice.

I’d always known how far my sister would go to help girls in trouble, so I wasn’t surprised. But I’d never understood why she’d go so far to help mortals she barely even knew.

I understood now. The lessons I’d been learning the past few months, of the value of mortals, she’d learned long ago. Or perhaps she’d always known them. 

I smirked, remembering my encounter with Ares a few months later. He’d mentioned cursing Percy to drop his sword in retaliation for Percy kicking his butt during the lightning-bolt-stealing incident. (Not in those words of course, but we all knew what’d happened.) I’d given him a tight smile and left as quickly as possible, not trusting myself to speak.

I’d headed straight to Artemis, relishing how easily our bond let me find her. I’d insisted on checking in on her every other day for months after her capture. She hadn’t protested.

I told her what Ares had done. How he’d cursed Percy to drop his sword when he needed it most. Cold fury filled her eyes. She’d made arrangements with her Hunters and left with me to track down Ares.

We’d found him less than an hour later. He’d made for good target practice.

About eight months after Artemis’ kidnapping, while we were hunting down monsters that might be turned to Kronos’s cause, I’d heard that Kronos’s forces had invaded Camp Half-Blood.

And that they’d killed one of my sons.

Lee...

I hadn’t gotten to know him as well as I wanted to. 

I’d visited him in his dreams, of course, like I did with all my children. But I’d only seen him in-person a handful of times. And I REALLY hadn’t seen him - or any of my kids - much since Kronos started stirring.

I didn’t have much time to mourn. So I shoved the thoughts away, buried them under the need to party. To have the adoration of a crowd.

I’d lost many, many children over the millennia. I’d gotten good at coping with it.

Hopefully with Percy’s help, this universe’s version of me wouldn’t have to cope with Michael’s loss as well.

“THERE SHE IS!”

My head snapped upwards at Percy’s yell.

A gleaming golden woman was walking across a nearby stage to the center microphone.

We rushed over, elbowing people out of the way. Truthfully, Grover and I mostly just followed in Percy’s and Meg’s wake. Percy could have a pretty intimidating presence when he needed to, which was helping him get the crowd to move apart, and Meg was... well, Meg. I winced slightly as I heard another swear from one of the poor pedestrians Meg had elbowed out of the way. 

Just as the Celedon reached the microphone, the four of us reached the stage.

Percy and Meg summoned their blades.

Grover fumbled for his pan-pipes. 

I moved my lyre into playing position.

The Celedon opened her mouth and sang.

It was only one note, but the sorrow in it caused the mortals to drop to the ground, weeping uncontrollably. 

Meg and Percy were only a little better off. Both froze as the note rang out, though at least they remained standing.

Oh. They’d both forgotten to put in their hearing protection. Crap.

Grover frantically started playing on his pipes, trying to drown out the Celedon’s song. He didn’t entirely succeed, but he did disrupt it enough that the mortals - and our friends - began to stir.

“PERCY, MEG!” I shouted. “YOUR HEARING PROTECTION!”

Percy quickly stuffed wax in his ears, while Meg closed her eyes. Moments later, bluebonnets sprouted from her ears. 

Now that my friends hearing situation was fixed, I turned my attention to my lyre. I needed to trap her, obviously. Now how could I do that...?

My fingers started moving before I could finish that thought, weaving a familiar melody on the lyre. Walls rose up around the Celedon, twenty feet high. surrounding her - and Percy and Meg - in a nearly impenetrable cage.

Then she turned into a bird and flew out, leaving my friends trapped in a now-quite-unfortunately nearly impenetrable cage - so long as you couldn’t get out the top somehow.

Right. I forgot my Celedons could do that.

“APOLLO!” I heard Meg’s muffled shout from the other side of the wall. “LET US OUT!”

“Well, uh, you see,” I stammered, embarrassed. “I... can’t exactly do that. The lyre creates. It doesn’t destroy.”

I could practically feel Meg’s unimpressed stare. “You can’t...? Never mind. Just make a ladder or something so we can get out.”

I strummed on the lyre a melody about climbing out of deep holes. A rope manifested. I threw it over the wall and quickly secured the other end to a lightpole.

A minute later, Percy and Meg climbed out of my open-air cage. I noticed that the flowers were gone from Meg’s ears, which explained how she could hear me before.

Meg set her hands on her hips, glaring at me. “You never said she could turn into a bird.”

“I forgot.”

She grunted, looking annoyed. “Well is there anything else we should know about the Celedon that you forgot?”

I wracked my brain, trying to think of anything. I’d been getting a feeling I was forgetting something about the Celedons, but what? I mean, I used them as my back-up singers for concerts, but they could also amplify my singing for other... things...

Oooooh. That wasn’t good.

Percy noticed the look on my face. “I don’t like that expression. What else can she do?” he asked, clearly dreading my answer.

I licked my lips nervously. “Well, you see, the Celedons are my backup singers. But they don’t just back me up at concerts. They can back me up when singing anything. Healing songs, plague songs, burn-everything-with-fire songs...”

Percy’s face twisted into an expression I had dubbed the “Oh Crap” expression. I’d worn it often over the past few months.

“Great,” Meg grumbled. “More fiery charmspeakers.”

“Technically, the Celedons don’t charmspeak-”

“They make people want to do what they say. Close enough.”

Percy cut in urgently. “She could burn New York to the ground, or start an epidemic?!’

“Well they’d be a fraction of the strength of what I’m normally capable of, so she could hardly affect ALL of New York. A block at most.”

Percy paled. “We have GOT to stop her. NOW.”

I nodded. “That’s great, but we need to FIND her first.”

“She went over that way,” Grover said, pointing to a tower.

We all turned to look at him. He looked back at us, annoyed. “What? I needed to do something to help while Apollo was getting you two out of that cage, so I kept my eyes on her, so we could find her later.”

I blinked. That made sense.

“Well, what are we waiting for?” Meg asked. “Let’s go.”

We took an elevator to the top floor. Luckily the Celedon had chosen a public building to perch on. I wouldn’t have wanted to explain to some secretary why four teens urgently needed to get to the roof of some private business building.

We found her standing on to rooftop, singing “New York, New York” to the enraptured crowd in Times Square. Her voice REALLY carried.

At least this song only compelled people to dance.

“So what’s the plan?” I whispered to my friends.

Percy gauged the situation. He whispered back, “We need to shut her up and trap her, this time in something that she CAN’T fly out of. Apollo, can you make a birdcage? Out of Celestial Bronze, preferably?” 

I nodded. I could see where this was going.

“You’re going to force her into bird form and then stuff her into the birdcage. How’re you planning to get her to change form?”

“Gag her, then wrestle her until she changes form, and stuff her into the cage.”

Simple plan. I respected that.

Percy turned to Grover. “You still have that blindfold from Pin-the-tail-on-the-human?”

Grover handed over a small strip of cloth.

Percy looked at Meg, “Ready?”

She nodded.

Meg and Percy reinserted their seeds and wax, respectively. They weren’t about to make the same mistake as last time.

They snuck up behind the oblivious Celedon just as she was belting out the final lyrics of ”New York, New York”.

Percy clamped the make-shift gag around her mouth as he and Meg wrestled with her.

I got to work making the birdcage, singing about strong, gilded cages. It manifested within seconds.

I looked over at the demigods. The Celedon was bucking and kicking, trying desperately to throw them off, but the two of them stubbornly clung onto her. 

She edged closer to the edge of the building and spun quickly, breaking Meg’s grip. 

Percy acted quickly, releasing his hold on the Celedon - and subsequently releasing the gag he’d been using to silence her - and dove quickly to Meg, catching her just as she started falling off the building.

I breathed a sigh of relief, my heart still hammering.

Then the Celedon began singing an ode to me.

Now you might be thinking, “Why would you mind her singing a song about how great you are, Apollo, and all of the awesome things you can do?”

The answer to that, dear reader, is that I prefer when the song about my awesomeness DOESN’T SUMMON A FIERY INFERNO TO TRY TO SCORCH MY AWESOME SELF OUT OF EXISTENCE.

I dove for cover, dropping the lyre in my haste. I quickly picked it up again, strumming a tune about raindrops, rain, and storms. Stormclouds quickly gathered and let loose, putting out the fire.

Then Percy rammed into the Celedon like a freight train.

Oh yeah. Son of Poseidon. Well this just became very one-sided.

Percy held onto her with a vice-like grip. No matter how hard she struggled, she couldn’t shake him. She opened her mouth in an attempt to sing, but Percy just shoved water in her mouth, gagging her. Thankfully she didn’t actually NEED to breathe, so he didn’t have to worry about choking her.

As a last ditch effort to escape, she turned into a bird and attempted to fly away before Percy could adjust his grip. Since Percy had been TRYING to get her into bird form, this didn’t happen. He captured the bird-Celedon in a water bubble and threw her into my Celestial Bronze birdcage. It clicked shut, locking the squacking Celedon in.

Percy picked up the birdcage, carrying it over to me and Grover. Meg walked over to me, scowling, her hair and dress completely soaked from the rainstorm I’d summoned. Belatedly I realized I was also completely drenched, and that Grover smelled badly of Wet Goat. 

Looking at the three of us (Percy was completely dry and looked like he could run three marathons in a row. Cheater.) I asked, “So... what size clothes do you two wear?”

We walked out of the building wearing (in my opinion) incredibly stylish new outfits, courtesy of my magical lyre. Well, except for Percy. He’d declined for some reason. His loss.

I admired my sparkly golden tight pants and white shirt festooned with rhinestones and glitter. It felt good to be able to strut around for once. Maybe I didn’t have my usual good looks, but I could still pull off the glitz and glam!

Meg and Grover, sadly, had opted for far less extravagant outfits. I pouted a bit - I was sure I could make them outfits that would make them look FABULOUS - but complied. I summoned a simple tie-dye t-shirt for Grover, and a plain black shirt and denim jeans for Meg. Apparently they were really paranoid about me going overboard after seeing what I’d made for myself.

Meg carefully tucked her sopping green dress away. I smiled a little. She cared for that dress, that present, so much. It’d gotten burned, covered with mud, and torn again and again, but she insisted on mending it each time.

Together the four of us (plus one feathery Celedon) entered the subway again.

[ajoy3fanfics]

A/N: I’m going to apologize for this upfront. I have NO idea what I was thinking as I wrote this. I just kept thinking about how Hades got a bad rep. He was so much more than the leader of the underworld- a position he did not even ask for. I was considering writing a piece solely on Hades and Persephone, but then of course my Inuyasha brain kicked into gear and here we are. This story is told from Rins (Persephone’s) point of view. It’s a take on her love story, one where she wasn’t kidnapped.

No one asked for an Inuyasha/Greek God mash up, but here it is.

ETA: This has been sitting in my unfinished work  for so long. Lens drawings totally gave me the inspiration to get on this and finish it! I decided to make this a multi-part story :)

Also psted on FF

~.~

Persephone

The legends say that I was kidnapped.

The story tellers still spin the tales of my abduction- if you could call what reallyhappened an abduction- their stories striking fear in the heart of mortals- a warning to all young women. Never set foot outside alone. Keep your wits about you. Be prepared for anything, even the ground swallowing you whole. If you don’t, if you are careless, you might end up like Persephone.

Humans and Gods, mortals and immortals alike pity me, pity the waste of my beauty in such a desolate place. How could someone so full of life be condemned to live below the Earths surface, where not even a ray of light breaks through? Persephone, bringer of spring, goddess of grain, Queen of the underworld. They have given me as many titles as they have names; it still surprises me that Rin, my true name, never stuck. Humans are like that though- they will cut away at bits that displease them, at parts that do not fit their stories. Details become less important than the message they are trying to weave.

If I had heard the stories the poets tell of me, I too would feel sadness for the poor young maiden. Forced to marry her captor, forced to spend the better part of her life hidden away, far from the comfort the living world of friends and family. Doomed to spend eternity locked in an unhappy union with the God of death himself.

Of course, my husband is not the God of death. He does not torture the poor souls that make their way here. No, those are jobs best left to someone else. My dear husband does not have that in him- he finds the details of mortals lives far too tedious. Legends, as they so often do, have gotten him completely wrong. An injustice- one he does not deserve. Had the bards knew him better, they could have never accused him of taking me against my will.

In truth, I met him long before he approached my father, respecting the old ways and asking for my hand. Proper. It’s not a word that people associate with my husband, the king of the underworld. Then again, there are many aspects of him that are simply overlooked.

No, I had not met him in the underworld when the Earth swallowed me whole. Instead, I had met him in an almost unremarkable way. How strange the story spinners got that part right.

I met him while picking flowers.

~.~

It had been a splendid morning; the sun was high in the sky, warming the world and all those in it. There was a gentle breeze that with it carried the fragrance of wildflowers in the distance. It was the sort of day I loved; it made me want to run into the open fields, to feel the freedom I craved and go where the wind would scatter me. A fantasy, only that. My mother would never have allowed me to go off on my own, to act in such an unbecoming way. So, on days like this, I would settle on picking flowers.

I liked to do that- to capture bits of the spring that I could plant in places that nature did not bloom- in my room by the stone windows, in the kitchens as the servants cooked. I wanted to bring the beauty of spring inside where It did not belong.

“May I go out today, mother?” I tried my best to get her approval, doing my best to make my voice not sound desperate. Mother sheltered me, even in the best of times. I was her precious daughter- one that she found beautiful, powerful. Long before it was appropriate men would leer at me and without fail mother took notice. She did her best to keep me safe. And while I understood her reasoning- truly, I was lucky to have such a devoted mother- I also craved the freedom she denied me. I wanted time to be amongst my creations. “Please?” I added in for good measure, putting on my brightest smile.

She did not even so much as consider my request. “No, not today Rin. I have too much work to do to keep you company.” She brought a cup of water to her lips, taking a deep sip.

“You do not need to accompany me!” I quickly said. “I am old enough to go on my own.” My mother rolled her eyes. She did not think 16 was old enough for anything. “I just want to go down to the fields to see the flowers, maybe the river bank. Please?”

“Rin, could you not find-“

I  leaned on the table, trying to plead with her once more. “Mother, its so nice out today! I cannot be kept locked up inside all day! I need fresh air, and- and- fresh flowers! Mother-“

“You do hear the ridiculousness of your request, right?” she said, raising a disapproving brow, “A goddess of spring complaining that she needs to go outin order to see flowers?”

“Please?” I ended my begging by sticking out my lower lip, looking every bit the part of a begging puppy. Mother threw up her hands in the air, utterly defeated.

“Fine!” She sighed, exasperated. “Take the attendants with you.” I expected that, she was always reluctant to let me  go. I gave her a smile as I hugged her from behind.

“I will bring you a beautiful bouquet!” I said, “As thanks!” And with that, I took off before she could change her mind.

Mother was lovely; she was good for mankind, did humans a great deed as the Goddess of wheat. Mother was life itself. But she also had dreams for me, ones which I did not necessarily share. I often thought about how she would like to dictate my life, plan out every minute of it if she had her way. I was constantly torn between playing the part of the good daughter and wanting to rebel.

But when I felt the warm sun on my face, felt the cool breeze on my skin, my mother and her plans were the last thing on my mind. In that moment I was free. Kicking of my sandals I let my bare feet touch the grassy Earth, sprinting ahead, leaving my attendance to trail behind me.

I spent my day like that; basking in the sun, picking flowers and making crowns, frolicking by myself with people just far away enough to remind me that I wasn’t alone, not really. Sure, I had friends. But they were ones that mother approved of, and secretly, I wondered if they were spies for her, telling her little snippets of my feelings and whereabouts. I never felt completely alone, complete autonomous from her. My mother was a lovely woman, and my admiration for her is still strong to this day; but so much control can be stifling, leaving me gasping for freedom. Letting out a sigh, I sank down into the green meadow to relax, flowers beside me as the sun slowly began to lower. The day was winding down and soon mother would want me back in the nest.

That was the first time I saw him. A god on Earth, resting just across the river.

He looked every bit the divinity he was, his back against the dark brown trunk, a sharp contrast to his long silvery hair. Fair skin, so pale it looked porcelain and robes far more elegant than the richest mortal could hope to afford. He was resting, eyes closed, breathing even; I wondered how many people had seen him in this state, and suddenly became uncomfortable with a twinge of guilt, looking in on a private moment. I was struck by his beauty at once, but a handsome God was hardly a rarity. I had heard gossip of Ares and his build, of Hercules and Apollo. I counted Hermes as a personal friend, and he alone was enough to make women swoon. No, it wasn’t his hauntingly good looks that held my attention, but rather the expression on his face; he somehow looked completely at ease, but also supremely pained. It was not a look that showed easily, one had to truly search to find it. But as I stared, longer than anyone would deem polite, I found a deep loneliness, and it troubled me.

I wish I could say I was feeling bold when I made my small jumps on the slippery rocks, making way across the narrow stream, but I was far too intrigued to feel boldness or shame. I was focused on the supernatural entity before me. As I stepped onto the opposite grassy bank, he made no sign of acknowledgement that I was near. He still rested, head reclined at ease. I moved towards him in a crawl, still on my knees from when I raised myself out of the water . For a moment, I was sure that I would get close without him waking. I had no specific plan in mind, only that I needed to be near him; I was drawn and had no idea why.

“Do not come near.” He said, voice steady, eyes still closed. “Not if you value your life.”

The last part took me off guard, making me freeze on all fours, although there hardly seemed to be bite in his bark. Of course I valued my life; I felt ridiculous and ashamed, but unable to move forward or retreat. I was stuck. Biting my bottom lip, I debated what to do.

“S-Sorry.” I stammered, nervousness making my stomach drop. “I didn’t mean to disturb you.”

“If you’re sorry, then leave.” He bit out, finally opening his amber eyes, piercing me in place. I couldn’t have move if Zeus himself commanded me. Never in my life had I seen a being more beautiful. True, I had lead a sheltered existence until this point, but I was sure I could travel the world twice over and still be awed by his magnificence.

In the days since, when my husband and I talked with fondness of our first encounter, we like to bicker over who was more stricken my whom. Was it I, a mere girl laying eyes upon a sleeping sin, or the God of the underworld, captivated by the look of me on all fours, black hair falling over my shoulder, pale pink dress falling off my shoulder? He even jokes that my flower chain of daises was a sign that I would soon be his wife, the spring crown upon my head.

I’ve heard the version where the Earth swallowed me whole, a fine symbolism for his great lust for me, eating the fair maiden alive. I’ve also heard the rather unsavory take of a kidnapping, an act anyone would reject if they knew my husband. Instead, at our first meeting, we stared each other down, a spark between us so strong it could light a fire. We would have stayed like that, spellbound in a trance, if my attendants were not calling for me. Looking over my shoulder I frowned, unhappy that this encounter was soon to be over. I needed to get back, but more than that, I wanted to know this stranger. He raised his finely arched brows, a silent signal that others were coming. I moved closer, a breath away from him. I could practically feel his body tense, as if being in close proximity to another was a foreign thing to him. Reaching up, I removed the flower crown and boldly placed it on his head.

“Cheer up.” I gave him a smile, toothy and genuine. The nymphs called once more and reluctantly, with a heavy sigh, I leaned back and turned to retreat, quickly jumping across the rocks, back towards the sprites that had lost track of me. Looking over my shoulder, I gave him one last long glance, a smile of wanting on my lips, before I cleared the area. My last look was a bewildered God, a chain of daisies around his silver crown.

No, the lord of the underworld did not kidnap as I picked flowers as the stories go. It was the day learned his true name that I found myself in the land of the dead.