#python and apollo and him being the oracle

[intergalactic-garbage]

picrew links: makówka / S0DAPVNK / Nuggts / rayvpng / hellosunnycore / veluv / PotatoLord (my fav<3) / nellseto

[literallyjusttoa]

I have fully reworked and redesigned my Apollo timeline!! These designs are meant to depict Apollo from 2591 B.C.E all the way to 392 C.E., so a good 2,983 years of life lol. A lot of things have changed from my first and second versions of this timeline (which you can see here and here if you're interested) so I'm just gonna rewrite the whole things here for y'all to read and enjoy! (Also disclaimer as always I am not a mythology expert, and I am taking some liberties with dates and time periods so sorry if anything seems off!)

Baby: 2591 B.C.E

Apollo is born. That's pretty much all that happens here.

Fighting Python/Exile: 2591-2582 B.C.E.

Right after being born, Apollo goes off to fight Python. After this, he is exiled from Olympus for nine years due to his crime of committing murder. During those nine years, he spends most of his time as either a shepherd or a traveling musician, and observes mortals and their ways of life a lot.

Pre-First Punishment: 2582-2300 B.C.E.

After his exile, Apollo is allowed to ascend to Olympus. He takes on a form that is extremely similar to the mortals he's been living amongst for the past nine years. As the youngest member of the Olympian Council, Apollo is slightly naive, but desperate to prove himself to the rest of his family. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Apollo finds and mentors Chiron 2. Artemis and Apollo successfully convince their father to release Prometheus from his punishment. 3. Periphas, a king of Attica and priest of Apollo, was so beloved by his people that they honored him above Zeus. This angered Zeus, and he sword he would strike Periphas down and burn his home to the ground. However, Apollo begged Zeus to spare Periphas' life, and Zeus acquiesced. Instead, Zeus turned Periphas into an eagle, the same eagle that now rests on the top of his sacred sceptre.

Post-First Punishment (Troy): 2300-1250 B.C.E.

Back from his time as a mortal, Apollo is now the patron god of the city of Troy. He is extremely attached to his people, and has taken on a lot of their fashions and customs. He is a bit more reserved on Olympus because of the punishment, but he is still young and sure of himself, and is often one of the most active gods on the council. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Hermes is born. 2. The music duel with Marsyas occurs, and he is flayn. 3. Lots of cities are founded on the west coast of Ionia (Modern day Türkiye), many with myths surrounding Apollo. The city of Miletus was founded and named after a son of Apollo. Klazomenai claimed Apollo as their principal god. The city of Colophon becomes the seat of the Oracle of Apollo Clarius, and one of his sons, named Mopsus, lives there. Erythraea is also connected to Apollo's oracle, as it is the birthplace of Herophile. Once you add Troy to the mix, it seems as if Apollo just did a tour of Ionia and set up a bunch of towns along the way, which I think is pretty cool. 4. The seven against Thebes make their march to restore Polynices, Oedipus' son, to the throne. One of the seven, Amphiaraus, was a seer and favored by Apollo (and sometimes his son!). Amphiaraus was fated to die in battle, but Apollo found multiple ways to stretch out his final moments. He redirected attacks so that Amphiaraus was not harmed, and when the man's charioteer was killed, Apollo took the reins himself. When Amphiaraus finally passed on, Apollo wept over his corpse and let him be consumed by the earth, creating an Oracle at that spot.

Asclepius: 1250-1210 B.C.E.

Asclepius is born and Apollo keeps the same look throughout his entire life! Apollo doesn't have much to do with it, but the Argonauts set sail during this time.

Stealing the bolt/Killing the Cyclops: 1210 B.C.E.

This design only lasts a couple of weeks. In his grief, Apollo loses himself.

Second Punishment 1210 B.C.E

Apollo is given to Admetus as a servant for several months. The punishment doesn't last long, but Apollo's time with Admetus is essential in his journey to heal from Asclepius' death.

Trojan War: 1194-1184 B.C.E.

The Trojan War breaks out less than 20 years after Asclepius' death, bringing ruins and carnage with it. Apollo fulfills his duty as the patron god of the city, and viciously protects Troy from the attacks of other Olympians.

Post-Trojan: 1184-940 B.C.E.

The war was lost, and Troy was sacked. In the time following this, Apollo distances himself from mortals, desperate to escape the pain and grief of the last 70 years. This period of his life ends with the myth of Daphne. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Dionysus is born 2. Apollo saves Hemithea and her sister Parthenos and makes them immortal. 3. Apollo's oldest known temple is built in Thebes.

Daphne and Hyacinthus 940-776 B.C.E.

After the death of Daphne, Apollo is devastated. While he had been avoiding the mortal realm before, now he became increasingly uncomfortable on Olympus. He stayed in the mortal realm often, building up his reputation and setting up his popularity in Ancient Greece proper, which was just breaking out of the Dark Ages. Near the end of this period, he loves and loses Hyacinthus. Myths that occur during this time: 1. The cult of Apollo from Crete brings his worship to Delphi officially, and his temple is built at the site. 2. Apollo's music duel with Pan occurs.

“Main” Apollo 776-500 B.C.E.

Starting with the first Olympic games, This period is defined by glory and worship. Apollo's popularity in Greece increases exponentially, and this is only added to once he takes the reins of the sun chariot. He meddles in mortal affairs often during this time, growing into the persona we see of him today. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Niobe's kids are killed 2. Apollo falls in love with Cyrene, and gives her a city. 3. Tarquin purchases the Sibylline books. Sometime before this, Apollo curses the Sibyl of Cumae. 4. The Pythagorean cult is established, a group that religiously followed the teachings of Pythagoras. Alongside this, they mainly worshiped Apollo at Delphi. They used math to break down music, and believed "the universe as a whole was composed of harmony and numbers". 5. Phorbas, who is either a savage king of Elis or a giant, preys on travelers on the pilgrimage to Delphi. To put a stop to this, Apollo challenges the man to a boxing match, and kills him during the fight. Another Phorbas, this one hailing from Rhodes, is often confounded with this one. Apollo dated the second Phorbas, so I bet this was very confusing for a lot of poor Greeks. 6. The city of Megara fought for independence from Corinth, and claimed Apollo as their patron god.

"Classical" Apollo 500-300 B.C.E.

As Ancient Greece moves into it's classical age, and the height of it's glory, Apollo's worship continues to grow. In the 400's, Pericles and the architects of the Acropolis in Athens used the money held by the Delian league (An allied group of islands in the Cyclades, lead by Delos) to create their temple to Athena, which held the Athena Parthenos. This, alongside many other ways in which Athens attempted to take control of the rest of Greece, caused tension in both the mortal world and Olympus. Apollo begins to see cracks in the foundations of Greece, but can not do much about it at the time. Myths that occur during this time: 1. The Peloponnesian war breaks out. It lasts 27 years, with Sparta claiming victory over Athens in the end. Olympus continues to degrade as Athena and Ares spar. 2. Shortly after this, the Theban War starts. Sparta had won the Peloponnesian war and taken Athens place as the head of Ancient Greece, but many city-states took issue with this. Both Corinth and Thebes waged war against Sparta, with Thebes being victorious in this struggle. Thebes was Dionysus' city, and Corinth, Poseidon's. The Olympian council continues to splinter. 3. Apollo's first temple in Rome is built. The Temple of Apollo Medicus was constructed outside of the religious boundary in Rome, as Apollo was still seen as a foreign deity at this time, and so his worship was not permitted in the city proper.

Late Greece (300-146 B.C.E)

Greece is falling apart at the seams, with civil wars breaking out all over the region. Rome is growing stronger to the west, and eventually takes over Greece completely at the end of this period. Apollo attempts to ignore the signs of failure, keeping up a relaxed, even as the war begins to devour Greece entirely. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Dionysus journeys to India 2. Trophonius and Agamethus are killed.

Fall of Greece: 146-32 B.C.E.

Olympus falls, and will not come back together for a while yet. With each deity lost and unfocused, they all have to find their own way back to their former glory. Apollo is one of the last to return to the council, spending centuries wandering the ruins of Greece, burying his people and mourning the culture that had been lost. It is not until Augustus brings his worship to Rome that Apollo returns to Mount Olympus.

Rome 32 B.C.E.- 140 C.E.

Apollo is now one of the chief gods in Rome. Even though he is at the same level of power and popularity that he had during the height of Greece, it doesn't feel the same. Apollo drifts, going through the motions with very little passion behind it. It takes some time for him to warm up to his new civilization, which leads to:

Late Rome 140 C.E.- 392 C.E.

As Rome continues to grow and prosper, Apollo begins to grow fond of it's people. He interacts with them far more, and begins to once again meddle in their affairs, especially when it comes to the various emperors that ruled the nation. This trend continues until the eventual end of pagan worship in Rome. Myths that occur during this time: 1. Apollo meets, falls in love with, and eventually kills Commodus. 2. The Bacchanalia, which was a private cult festival of the Dionysian cult of Liber that was full of drinking and mingling of all social classes, becomes popular. This festival is obviously associated with Bacchus first and foremost, but there was a common rumour amongst members of the cult that you could meet Apollo at these celebrations.

And that's the whole thing! Hope you all enjoyed, this took a lot of time and research lol.

[khaire-traveler]

Random Greek Deity Facts

- Artemis has been associated with horses in the past.

- Ares has associations with owls.

- There are ancient gravestones with reliefs on them that historians still cannot tell if the art is of Dionysus or Jesus.

- It is common for historians to struggle identifying if a statue is of Artemis or Apollo because they often look so much alike.

- Hephaestus is a god of fire.

- Maia, the Mother of Hermes, was thought to assist in raising both Dionysus and Hephaestus.

- Hypnos is said to live in a massive cave, sleeping with thousands of his sons.

- Rather than blood, Greek gods are said to have something called Ichor running through their veins; no one is quite sure what "Ichor" actually is.

- Both Apollo and Artemis are deities of light; it is not just Apollo. Along with this, it is believed Leto may also be a goddess of light.

- It is commonly believed that the hyacinth flower is not actually the flower Hyacinthus was infamously transformed into; most sources seem to agree that it was likely either an iris or a larkspur.

- At one point in the Dionysiaca, Dionysus wages a war against India. The goddess Rhea is said to have gathered troops for him, and Zeus was said to have been the one to task Dionysus with going to war in order to allow him to join the gods on Mount Olympus.

- Demeter's chariot is pulled by two giant winged serpents; she has literal dragons pulling her around, and no one is talking about it.

- The Python was a child of Gaia, and before Apollo took up the Oracle in Delphi, there was actually an Oracle with Gaia in that location.

- The twins Castor and Pollux, who made up the Gemini constellation, were commonly worshipped throughout ancient Greece under the title of the "Dioscuri" or "Dioskouroi".

- Also regarding the Dioskouroi, the name "Castor" ("Kastor") may translate to "Beaver".

- The famous epithet "Paean" of Apollo was also listed on an ancient Mycenaean tablet that listed the names of separate deities. It is, therefore, possible that Paean was once a separate god who later became associated/merged with both Apollo and his son Ascelpius.

- Besides being an epithet, a Paean was also a type of devotional chant/song that was sung in honor of Apollo. Some ancient sources claim that the event of singing a Paean could actually be quite loud, involving clouds of stomping/banging and movement.

- The masculine version of Hekate's name, "Hekatos", was an epithet for the god Apollo; both names can be translated to "worker from afar".

- The first record of the more "traditional" view of a werewolf comes from the Greek myth about King Lycaon, when Zeus transformed into a wolf for ten years as punishment for tricking the gods into consuming human flesh (yes, you read that right).

- In the myths, Zeus and Hermes have a lovely Father-Son bonding trip of destroying an entire village (except for one home) for not showing either of the disguised gods hospitality as poor travellers.

- Both Apollo and Zeus were seen as gods who purified "blood-guilt" - a condition which was caused by the killing of another person and required immense purification.

- Cerberus is described as a fully sentient being who can communicate as other immensely powerful children of Gaia could, meaning he is akin to the gods in terms of intelligence rather than being like an overgrown dog.

- Hermes is said to be the inventor of offerings, specifically animal sacrifices.

- One origin of the Pegasus was Poseidon and Medusa doing the devil's tango.

- There is a tale that claims Hermes to be the one who granted Aesop his knowledge of fables.

- According to some ancient sources, Cerberus has as many as fifty heads, a mane of snakes, the claws of a lion, and a snake tail.

- Iris was not only the goddess of rainbows but was also the personal messenger of Hera and was prominently featured in The Iliad delivering many messages on behalf of the Olympian gods.

- Eros has been depicted as the child of Aphrodite and Ares, the child of Ouranos and Aphrodite, the child of solely Aphrodite, the child of Poros and Penia, the child of Ouranos and Gaia, the child of Zephyrus and Iris, and a primordial being who simply came into being. So, where did Eros actually come from? Your guess is as good as any.

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That's all for now! Let me know if y'all enjoyed these and would like more. 🧡

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|| Sources ||

- Theoi.com (of course)

- The Iliad by Homer

- Theogony by Hesiod

- The Dionysiaca by Nonnus

- Information from various museum trips in Athens and Delphi, Greece (sorry, I don't remember the exact sources 💀)

[ukelele-boy]

I was rereading some of my posts from 2021 and was reminded of how much meta I used to write so imma share my crazy headcanon/ theory which i thought up as plot for a revolution fic:

RR verse is on the "Olympus will fall" timeline and Zeus' actions are speeding it up.

In the recent decade there has been several great prophecies back to back. And people have remarked how weird it is that there have been so many. What if the reason is because of Zeus?

Remember, in greek mythology there is a major theme of how Your Fate Cannot Be Defied. And Zeus, king of Olympus, has a major Fate: being overthrown. However he managed to "defy" it by eating Metis.

My idea is that he has been forcefully clawing out a future where he is still king of Olympus. By doing this, he is literally changing the flow of fate. And obviously fate wants to correct itself, so the harder he fights it, the more counterforce he triggers. All prophecies meant to lead to his overthrowing are suddenly sped up. Olympus begins to lose power. Zeus is aware of this. He is also aware how people are becoming suspicious. And he needs a scapegoat. And who better than the god of prophecy who is also a threat to the throne?

Apollo mentions that Zeus blamed him for his oracle revealing a prophecy "too early" and therefore causing it to happen early. However, everyone knows it's not possible to actually cause a prophecy to happen early...so why would Zeus even have this weird line of thought? everyone probably dismissed it as Zeus being irrational, but there a juicier theory this ties into:

Apollo being the one to overthrow Zeus.

The idea of "fall of the sun, the final verse". What if this is the final prophecy that is meant to happen before Zeus is overthrown? And what if the fall this speaks of is actually when Apollo fell close to chaos? When he pulled himself together there?

What if he reformed different from his original godly form. He was literally almost gone, his body was disintegrating. Maybe he pulled himself together using the energies of chaos. Apollo himself isn't aware of this, due to a suspicious memory gap between him clawing up from the cliff and him waking up next to Artemis.

And this adds to another headcanon of mine, the fates choose Apollo to be the god of prophecy on purpose. At first glance, this is a horrible match. If they wanted a good servant, why would they choose someone so closely tied to his heart and so likely to fight fate? Someone who dares get them drunk just to extend a human's lifespan? UNLESS... they WANT him to eventually try and defy fate??

Imagine if fate was a compass and Zeus had forcefully wrenched the needle point at a bleak dark future where Olympus falls with him. And this river direction has been set so deeply in stone and run on for so long, it has worn a grove and become the mostly likely future.

you need someone willing to fight, someone to wrench the needle out. SOMEONE FAMILAR WITH FATE AND Prophecy. Someone who has the power to fight it and win. Someone who has the will. Perhaps a baby god who was willing to fight Python, and who would have likely died there. But if he successfully did take on the powers of prophecy, one day that same godling would fight Python again, would absorb the powers of chaos to recreate himself.

Perhaps not today and maybe not even for the next four thousand years

but one day that godling would stare down at that wretched compass hand and decide to yank the flow out of its place. And maybe, that godling means a chance for Olympus to have a different future.

Anyways that's my crazy theory i hope it wasn't too confusing. It also links up with my other story theme idea about fate, hope and apollo blah blah blah, which i rambled about in a different post.

Edit: just remembered my other crazy thought, what if ZEUS PURPOSEFULLY TRIED TO GET RID OF APOLLO NOT ONLY CAUSE HE IS A THREAT TO THE THRONE BUT ALSO BECAUSE AS THE GOD OF PROPHECY HE IS MOST LIKELY TO REALIZE SOMETHING IS WRONG AND THAT ZEUS IS MESSING WITH FATE?!???? Basically pulling a imma say you're the murderer before u realise im the murderer. (i cant remember the actual saying Lmaoo)

[nysus-temple]

Apollo & Dionysus [Part 1]

MAN. not sure if i know what i'm doing, they're very complicated and this won't be my only essay about them. But I've been delaying this essay for way too long, to a point in which I was close to crying about it.

Hope you enjoy, in any case, how i give you all the connections, both good and bad, of my favourite god figures from the Greek Folklore.

1. Karneia [Καρνεῖα].

One of Dionysus' main characteristics is how he's depicted with horns. It's part of his identity as a god, it's horns what (according to the Orphic hymns) made him look like Persephone's son. you can't take away his horns and pretend he's still Dionysus. Euripides knew that well.

Apollo, on the other hand, not many are aware that he sometimes was represented with horns, as well ! This festival, held mainly in Sparta, was to honor Apollo (and a couple of other gods but, he was the star of the show).

The reasons for why this festival was held vary; like Pausanias saying it was to calm him down so he wouldn't send a plague.

But, you see, the main reason this festival is mentioned here: the Spartans would stop any military activity to honor a horned Apollo, he resembled Dionysus during that time. And not only that, but he also was related with vines during it, and that's Dionysus sacred plant. Just like the laurel (or bay, i think it's called in English) is the sacred tree of Apollo.

Seeing Apollo with that plant, and harvesting grapes while having horns, has a strong conection to what Dionysus is.

2. Delphi's Oracle.

It's still Apollo's Oracle, wether Dionysus kept it while he was gone at Hyperborea or not. He killed Python, Gaia's big-ass snake, in order to get it.

But.

While Apollo had to leave during the winter time to go to Hyperborea, it was Dionysus OF ALL GODS the one who kept Delphi, and thus, his festivals were celebrated there.

On one side of the main temple, you could see Apollo with his twin sister, Artemis, and his mother, Leto.

And on the other side, it was Dionysus.

Dionysus wasn't related to prophecies, at all. Maenads did shenanigans during the time Apollo wasn't there.

But it's, you know... Interesting, that Apollo's most important oracle was kept by Dionysus during the time that he wasn't there.

With this, you should think "then, they're in good terms, right?" Yeah, well, they're supposed to be, there's nothing stating that they have a bad relationship, it's the other way around, actually !

But the next point... Is gonna leave us all confused.

3. Orpheus.

Or, as i like to call it:

And my favourite part of this essay, gotta say !

Orpheus brought many cults to the Greeks, according to Pausanias. Like the Eleusinian Demeter one, for example. And not to forget, Orphism gets his name from him, as well as the Orphic Hymns, obviously.

But, apparently, besides doing all that, at the end of his life, he claimed to not care about any gods, not even Dionysus, the main figure of Orphism, that weren't Apollo.

And his death was explained in a lost play of Aeschylus, one that two different writers describe; Eratosthenes and Pausanias, so pick your favourite:

P: 1. the maeneads saw Orpheus refusing to worship Dionysus, and killed him.

E: 2. Or, the interesting one: Dionysus saw that Orpheus devoted himself to Apollo and Apollo only, and got... Jealous. Jealous of his devotion to Apollo.

He was the one who started Orphism, the one who wrote many hymns for him. Seeing him being devoted to someone else than him apparently wasn't a good move. In this version he sent the maeneads to kill him, they didn't go for their own will, which makes it more peculiar.

I'm not writting down Ovid's version because it doesn't fucking count.

Plato also says some odd thingy, that "the gods imposed on Orpheus the punishment of dying at the hands of women for not having had the courage to die for love like Alcestis, daughter of Pelias, who had died in the place of her husband Admetus." ... Which, yeah, sure, I guess, whatever you say, buddy. We have to keep in mind Plato's texts are more related to philosophy than anything.

People always say it's Apollo the one who was envious of Dionysus' talents and parties, (for... some reason i guess) specially knowing how he had two of his muses related to him (tragedy and comedy) due to Dionysus being, after all, the god of theatre.

But, surprise ! It was the other way around. Dionysus was jealous of Orpheus' devotion to Apollo. "If you won't devote yourself to me, you won't devote yourself to anyone".

And, well, either because the sources didn't survive or because he wasn't considered his son in these versions, Apollo didn't do anything. In fact, we never see him doing anything towards Dionysus.

So, what now, Nysus? What was their relationship exactly, after all of this?

It's... Complicated !! Okay !!! This needs more research from my part, plus we all should keep in mind that, while all the authors mentioned here were Greek, they were different guys. You always need to keep in mind the place, person, era... All of that, before starting to judge how a dynamic between two gods work.

( If you enjoy my badly-written posts, please consider buying me a kofi ! You're not forced to, though, but please, reblog this post at least if you are gonna leave a like ! 💕 That's what will motivate me to keep working on my essays )

[kermitthesog]

All the series combined, (pjo, hoo, toa) I think Trials of Apollo might be my favorite. I’ve said Heroes of Olympus for a while, but after finishing toa, I was actually really sad in a way that I wasn’t with the other series. This is my reasoning: *TOA SPOILERS AHEAD*

Lester/Apollo’s narration and character development was top notch. In The Hidden Oracle, at first I thought the book series was gonna be full of arrogance and whining. Oh, how it was the complete opposite. He went through stuff that no other god will ever go through. Pain, and grief. The empty feeling of not being yourself anymore. And he finally realized how the gods are, how clueless they have been about mortals and demigods. Everything that happened in toa was just building up to the perfect Apollo, the Apollo that’s not in fact perfect.

The characters. Like, these characters are so good? First of all, they are so fleshed out. Meg McCaffrey, who saw her own father dead and got mentally abused by the emperor who killed him. “The Beast,” was just himself, but Meg was too scared of him to stand up for herself. And like, how is an arrow kind of making me empathize with it? The arrow of Dodona was supposedly the worst piece of wood in the forest, and so Lester needed to prove the others wrong, and I think he did. Especially in that final battle against Python.

The amount of different stories and adventures. Obviously you would have sooo many adventures, because you need to get a different oracle in each one! In every single one, we’re introduced to a new character and new goal. It doesn’t really start in the first one, as it’s just introducing the main characters. In the second one, it’s Emmie, Jo, Calypso, and Leo. In the third one, it’s Piper, Jason, and Grover. In the fourth one, it’s Lavinia, Reyna, Hazel, and Frank (a lot of characters from SoN). In the last one, it’s just a lot of chb campers. Will, Nico, the Troglodytes, and more. See what I mean? There are so many different stories in just one series.

And lastly, how powerful it is. The fact that it could make me cry is impressive, because I don’t cry at much (book and movie wise). Jason’s death, Lester’s misery, Meg’s abuse, and so much more. It’s just so sad but powerful at the same time. If you prefer a different series, (PJO, HOO, TOA) then tell me why!

[spiritually-a-blorb]

headcannons for Apollo and Meg after all the books beacuse all I've been doing for the past days are spinning these scrunkly guys around in my head at terminal velocity <3

- Meg always carries a pack of sunflower seeds with her when she goes to school.

- Whenever Meg takes ancient history and they cover Greece, she manages the worst grade beacuse Apollo tells her facts that the book literally dosent know and he thinks it's blasphemy that's she's failing.

- Apollo will literally never shut up about his kids now. he hears literally the smallest detail that reminds him of them and he talks for hours about them

- Artemis is around Apollo a lot more, and she's definitely more protective/worried about him. Apollo likes the extra time he gets with her.

- Apollo returned Paolo's bandanna, but definitely not before finding one for himself. he wears it everywhere, Artemis has tried to burn it like 20 times, but somehow it always returns to Apollo in one piece.

- Apollo cannot physically hear or look anything in a shakesperian accent without wanting to commit mass destruction/cry

- Meg never gets sunburnt. like ever. plus, her crops always manage to get the right balance of sun without her help.

- One day, Meg manages to teleport directly to Apollo. As it turns out, since Apollo got himself up out of Chaos, no one ever really broke the master/servant bond. Apollo conveniently does not mention this until the last moment possible, beacuse he likes feeling connected to Meg, even when he's away.

- Apollo kept his scars. In doing so, older scars seem to pop up, that he was definitely sure he didn't get while he was mortal. They cover his body, and he can't seem to get rid of them without the ones he got while being mortal going away too. So, he hides them, and only shows off the ones he got as a mortal.

- Apollo is allowed to visit Rachel, beacuse he wants to prevent something like Python from happening to his oracles again.Zeus buys this, but only beacuse he weighs in with Athena first. Athena was totally not bribed into this by Apollo with actual intellectual discussions, no sir.

- On a totally unrelated note, he tries to connect with Athena more. They have little discussions about different topics every week or two.

- Apollo likes trying to connect with all his Olympian family. He realizes that they all suffered under Zeus, and if they are closer, like an actual family, maybe it will lessen the blows.

- Meg somehow never gets sick. it is both a blessing and a curse, since she always has to care for her siblings when they are sick

- For some odd, very mysterious reason, whenever Apollo visits Rachel, his kids or Meg are ever-present, and after he visits for some time (some days he visits longer, others it is shorter) they just pop in. weird, but since he's here visiting his Pythia, and technically not his kids, Zeus isn't gonna pay that much attention to mortals

- Since Apollo's sacred animal (one of them, anyway) is a red cow, it's totally not far fetched that it falls within his duties to check on the herd at the Waystation. After all, what God wouldn't check on their sacred animal! some mortals might mistreat them, after all!! and since he needs to talk to the owners,, he might as well catch up with them, right?

- Camp Jupiter is totally in need of more renovations, right? and it makes sense that such a devoted group should deserve some kind of reward. plus, since Apollo made the mess with the whole war thing, it makes the most sense for him to go and help! and later, he needs to check that his work is top notch!

- Apollo always visits Meg on Sundays. Technically, he's visiting Herophile, since he needs to check on her too! she's an important oracle! but Meg lives there, so they are bound to run into each other, and it's totally not weird that these meetings take a day (or two) beacuse that's a mere blink in the eye, for a god, anyways.

[cynthiav06]

The biggest concern of all Perachel shippers and the most used argument used by anti Perachel shippers is that Rachel is an oracle and she took a vow of celibacy so no dating. That's not exactly how it works.

The reason they are made to make such a vow is to put serving their God Apollo first and foremost.

May Castellan had already had a child when she went to bond with the Oracle, and her not being celibate has nothing to do with that as we know .

Now, even in Ancient Greece, older women have been vessels for Oracles. They just had to put their family aside.

So, in conclusion, the vow of celibacy isn't an obligate condition.

Now for a bit of an history lesson The Oracle of Delphi is extremely unique as she has existed long before the Gods did as a spirit in Lake of Delphi and was often initially referred to as the Oracle of Gaia.

The titaness Phoebe used the powers given by the lake to divine futures. That was how Rhea knew where to hide and how to trick Kronos as she had gone to Phoebe for advice.

Now, for an even more interesting piece of fact after the Gods took control, the Lake of Delphi remained for millenias under the jurisdiction of Poseidon himself.

Priestesses used to come there to seek the power to be able to divine the futures. Only when it was attacked by Python himself and then saved by Apollo who killed the Python did the Spirit of Delphi choose to host itself in Apollos Priestesses thus abandoning the Lake.

The spirit of Delphi has no clear allegiances being able to change who she serves, and we know the Oracle spirit has some fondness for Percy given his own exceptionally prophetic dreams which is a power akin to an Oracle.

This means Rachel can probably choose to serve another God, maybe Poseidon himself, again, so he would revoke the no dating condition.

Or or this is my absolute favorite headcanon about Perachel, that given how many times Percy has managed to save her when Percy eventually ascends to Godhood Rachel and the Oracle spirit, swear fealty to him.

Take that Percabeth shippers. Your only viable argument against Perachel is no longer an argument.

[it-is-theatre-my-dudes]

No one ever talks about Rachel’s mental breakdown during HOO and the amount of trauma she faced in TOA, so I would like to be the one who breaks the ice.

So previously in PJO Rachel successfully takes over the role of the Oracle of Delphi. Not because she necessarily has to, but because she has nothing to lose anyways. She finally becomes a member of Camp Half-Blood, though some campers avoid her out of fear. She learns to deal with them by pretending to be nonchalant about it, but the words and conspiracy affect her enough that when Piper faints in TLO, Rachel immediately begins to panic and thinks that she killed her. But despite the mishaps, she genuinely believed that Camp Half-Blood was her home.

Then the main events of HOO happened, and Rachel realised how dispensable she really is. People at camp start turning on her for losing her powers. On the outside, she pretends to be fine, but internally she freaks out, loses control, and throws a tantrum in her cave, destroying the paintings she drew of visions because they were a taunt of what she used to possess in the past. She destroys the painting of Apollo because at her most vulnerable moment, the god she trusted the most wasn’t there. She was truly alone, with no Percy or Annabeth, no Nico, and no gods to help her.

When she finally sees Apollo again he is banished into the mortal world and she‘s too tired to even be angry at him. She had just seen someone sacrifice themselves to save her, and she couldn’t bring herself to worry about Apollo. But then he mentions his oracles. Multiple of them. Once again she realises just how dispensable she is, and this is one of the rare occasions where we actually see Rachel being genuinely angry, though Rick passed it off as a comical scene.

Rachel opts to go with Apollo on his quest. She wants to take the risk despite knowing that she’d likely be kidnapped and used as bait. Apollo rejects her volunteer, and once again she is shunned by both the greek and mortal world. She spends the next few months in a constant state of restlessness, worrying about her fate if Python wins, anxious that he has already taken over her mind.

Six months. Rachel Elizabeth Dare spent six months leaning on the edge of her sanity, maniacally painting drawings so she wouldn’t lose her mind. And when asked about her trauma, 80% of the fandom would only say “She was hated by Annabeth because she liked Percy”.

Bruh.

[misterbardman]

The ending for trials of Apollo could have been so much longer. Like, I like it but just imagine Apollo waking up back on Olympus like in the canon, but instead of going out to the meeting he just stays in his room, a bit longer than he should’ve. Maybe he would’ve heard the other gods talking about him again, maybe someone like Artemis or even Hera would’ve gone to see why he hadn’t left yet.

In truth, he just doesn’t want to deal with his family. He’s seen how mortal families should be like, in Sally Jackson’s home, at Camp Half-Blood, with Coach Hedge, with Piper. Yet he also saw how they could be, like with Nero. Apollo knows who his family more represents and it’s not Sally Jackson.

Can’t really fault him for the oracles being taken, how was he supposed to deal with that between being stuck on Delos then fighting alongside the other Olympian’s at the end of Blood of Olympus? I seriously doubt he knew what the prophecy would entail, and that it would even affect him in the future, especially since Hera hastened the prophecy of the seven.

Literally, the only thing Apollo did wrong was give Octavian his blessings because of the praise. Which is really not seen enough in Trials of Apollo, which could’ve been so interesting to read how his progeny had played a role in a war that could’ve been prevented.

If Apollo is being blamed for the prophecy solely, like why? Was it because it was a prophecy that foretold the possible end of them? He could’ve been punished during the Last Olympian then, or prior to that. Was it the oracles because he wasn’t even given a chance to face Python as a god, since he was stuck on Delos. I think it was more of causing the war between the demigods, how he told Octavian he had his blessings and to go along with it. It’s been a bit since I reread HoO so I could be completely missing the point. Regardless, it was his fault, and his punishment. The punishment is made worst since he’s the only one who got punished. Not Hera for her actions during the war, nope, just him.

We are also sorely missing Apollo seeing Leto again, would’ve loved to see that.

This is why I headcanon that after TOA he just splits part of his essence so he’s typically at CHB or Camp Jupiter because at least there he knows he’s part of the family. I also just really love the idea of Artemis having her Hunters while Apollo watches over the remaining demigods kind of like an older brother.

[apollosgiftofprophecy]

i love thinking about apollos anatolian origins 😵‍💫

It stews in the back of my head too :3

There was this really good podcast on Spotify I found about Ancient Greece, and I listened to his Apollo episode first (because I honestly can't stomach the ones who paint him as 'terrible assaulter'/'epitome of the patriarchy'. Can't stand it. Seriously, there was this so-called 'feminist' mythology podcast i found and I Noped out of there as fast as I could - she didn't even mention Eros's involvement in the Daphne myth! She immediately went 'Apollo: the man who doesn't know the meaning of No' and I was like I'M OUTTA HERE.)

(It's very hard to find good Apollo content out there when you have educated yourself on what he's actually like :( )

(At least you immediately know those people didn't do their research shrug)

Thankfully, this one had a really good, really in-depth discussion about Apollo; his origins, his domains, his myths, ect!

COMPLETELY FREE OF BIAS TOO! HE JUST GIVES YOU THE FACTS, THE SYMBOLISM OF THE MYTHS, HOW THE CULTURE INFLUENCED THEM, ECT!

On my first (and only rn) listen I was like "damn i need to take notes on this sometime" that's how in-depth it is!

Here's the episode link if anybody is interested, btw!

What's cool is that he said that before Apollo came along, oracles and the like weren't as common in Greece - they existed, because Gaea was a thing - however, when he was imported in (possibly also with Leto! She has Anatolian origins too!), oracles became more of a thing as Apollo's popularity skyrocketed!

If you look at the number of Oracles Apollo had, you'd also notice that a lot of them are in Anatolia (Turkey today)!. Didyma, Miletus, Claros, ect ect! I think this just adds to the theory that Apollo's main origins come from Anatolia! When he moved to Greece, oracles came with him!

Which is so cool because in my drafts I currently have a picture of a webchart I made of Apollo's (many) domains, and I narrowed down the ones I think are his Big Ones - and Prophecy is one of them.

Very cool that Prophecy has always been part of him <3

Also, Apollo has many cities he is the patron of in Anatolia - Troy is obvious, but the island of Tenedos was his too (his son Tenes founded the city there), and he was the patron of Miletus (the city where he met Branchus btw for my Branchus fans out there)!

And going to Leto real quick, her migration from Anatolia religion to Greece's is probably represented in the Hymn to Apollo! Sometimes myths about wandering from place to place were meant to symbolize the importation of a god (Aphrodite floating ashore of Cythera, for example), and Leto...well, she was doing a lot more than the typical wandering in the hymn, but it still fits!

Some versions say she was guided to Delos by wolves from Hyperborea, others say Boreas helped her escape Python, still others claim a rooster was present when she finally was able to give birth and thus became her sacred animal (also she apparently gave birth to Apollo as a wolf? I don't quite remember which version says that but it's something I've heard XD).

Also Delos was very self-conscious about Apollo being born on it because it was afraid he would judge it for not being up to typical island standards XD

Moving to Apaliunas now! He's a Hittite god, but I haven't been able to find out of what :( The main piece of evidence we have of his relation with Apollo is Troy - Apaliunas was the god of Wilusa, who has been found out to be another name for Troy! There was a treaty signed between Wilusa and another city, and the representative of Wilusa's name was commonly translated to "Of Ilios" - and Ilios was another name for Illium, aka Troy.

(Fun fact: The son Apollo had with Ourea was named Ileus, after Troy! They are but a footnote in mythology but I made them Important in my Troy fic XD)

Plus, Apaliunas's name was connected to the Hittite reflex of Apeljōn, which scholars have theorized to be an early form of Apollo's name - remember Apollon? :D

Apollo also has connections to various other deities - the Italian Etruscan god Apulu (Aplu), the Celtic god Grannus, his Egyptian equivalent is Horus and his Phoenician one is Resheph! He's also been identified with Baldur from Norse mythology.

Apollo be wearing that trenchcoat, and he is wearing it well XD

[tsarinatorment]

Hey I was totally randomly wondering what you thought about Will and Apollo’s relationship? :D

This took me a while to get around to, so sorry about the delay! I just love this relationship so much so I needed to make sure I had the time to delve into it properly and give it the acknowledgement it deserves!

Why? Because Apollo and Will's relationship is simultaneously so wholesome and beautiful, and also so sad, because they both love each other so much - but they don't often get the chance to show it, and indeed when they do get the chance, they get a little bit awkward and shy.

We might as well start chronologically here, with the first massive sign that this is a positive relationship, and not a neutral or negative one, and that's BOO. BOO is actually a goldmine for getting Will's unfettered and unbiased thoughts on Apollo, because once we hit TOA we're seeing it all through Apollo's unreliable narration, where he can't possibily believe that his kids might not actually hate him, and also the aforementioned awkwardness.

Will actively worries about Apollo. Before the idea of him being mortal enters the equation, back when he's a fully fledged god and surely there shouldn't be anything that could hurt him - Will is worried about him.

‘We don’t know what’s going on at Delphi,’ Will continued. ‘My dad hasn’t answered any prayers, or appeared in any dreams ... I mean, all the gods have been silent, but this isn’t like Apollo. Something’s wrong.’

"Something's wrong", Will says, after acknowledging that for most gods this degree of silence isn't weird at all - but that it is, for Apollo. That Apollo not dropping in on his kids' dreams is a massive red flag that something is wrong.

I'm just gonna dip into a secondary thing here because it's also occurred to me that there's an obvious fear running through Will here - "we don't know what's going on at Delphi". Delphi, the home of the oracle (hence this conversation coming up in the first place), but also the place of Apollo's greatest mythological battle. At this point it doesn't seem like the campers know that Python is definitely back, but they know something is wrong, that somehow the prophecies are blocked which means something's happened to one of Apollo's core seats of power, and with no signs that Apollo is trying to fix it - there's a high chance that at this point Will is terrified that his father has actually been defeated. And it's a logical jump to make - after all, gods are not exactly known for just letting control of their domains disappear, and with the double-whammy of him also going silent as one of his sacred places stops working...

I really, really, would not want to be in the shoes of an Apollo kid right then.

But anyway, back to the main point of this, which is their relationship. This section also gives us some great little pieces of insight into Apollo's relationship not just with Will, but also with the rest of his kids. Firstly, Will calls him dad, which is not super unusual amongst campers when referring to their godly parents, but also not overly common - they tend to call them by name. Small detail but a cute one.

Secondly, if Apollo not appearing in dreams or answering prayers in unusual, then that means that Apollo almost always (if not straight-up always) answers his kids when they call on him. Definitely, he must answer them when they're upset/panicked - which they would be at this point, and getting more and more upset and panicked as he doesn't answer, etc. And it's not just answering prayers, which could be done in any variety of nebulous forms, it's also actually dropping in on their dreams.

Apollo kids probably see their dad frequently, certainly compared to the other kids, most of whom seem to never, ever see their godly parent, or once in a blue moon (when their parent wants something from them). Is it likely that these dream visits are probably just Apollo dropping by and being his pre-TOA daft self with lots of posturing and probably many, many recitals of bad haikus? Probably - in fact, given how they treat him in THO, I'd say it's likely that they only see Apollo in goofy mode. Does that mean these visits aren't something to be cherished? Absolutely not. Will isn't pleased or relieved that Apollo's stopped bothering his dreams, he's worried.

He's also furious.

"I wish I was a better archer ... I wouldn’t mind shooting my Roman relative off his high horse[...]"

Octavian is claiming Apollo is supporting what he's doing. According to Octavian, Apollo wants this war. Will explicitly wants to kill him for this. He's not even subtle about it; he straight up says "I wouldn't mind shooting the guy" - and that's before we actually get the face to face confrontation with Octavian:

"[...]The god Apollo has shown me the future –’ ‘No!’ Will Solace shoved Nico out of the way and got in Octavian’s face. ‘I am a son of Apollo, you anaemic loser. My father hasn’t shown anyone the future, because the power of prophecy isn’t working. But this –’ He waved loosely at the assembled legion, the hordes of monstrous armies spread across the hillside. ‘This is not what Apollo would want!’ Octavian’s lip curled. ‘You lie. The god told me personally that I would be remembered as the saviour of Rome. I will lead the legion to victory, and I will start by –’

I love Will for this moment so, so much. He is furious with Octavian for even daring to suggest he has Apollo's support. He knows Apollo well enough to be able to confidently tell not just Octavian, not just Nico and Lou Ellen and Cecil, but also everyone in earshot, that Octavian is wrong. That Apollo would not want this, that he's so, so wrong and how dare he desecrate Apollo's name like that.

And the kicker is - Will is right. Will doesn't know it (yet - we'll come to that later) beyond simply his pure, unadulterated faith in his father, but we, the readers, already do, because Apollo has already bemoaned this whole mess to Leo. Will's absolute and utter faith in Apollo here is right and that sort of faith isn't blind, can't be blind. The only other time we see kids so adamant in their belief is the Athena kids - and by now we've had the absolute whopper of a confession that the Athena kids are like this because they're indoctrinated, because they're scared not to, because "Mum's always right".

The Apollo kids aren't indoctrinated. Maybe in BOO we don't know that for certain, but the moment TOA hits and we get his kids ribbing him and treating him like a person rather than someone to be afraid of, it's clear as day. This faith comes from Apollo earning it - we know he's gifted his kids stuff before. Percy tells us that Michael's sonic arrows are straight from Apollo in TLO. It's just a logical progression from there that his kids at the least have enough faith in their father to know that he wouldn't throw them into another war. And that's what Will gives us here, in BOO.

And then we reach TOA.

Will (tragically) only appears in the first and last books of the series, although Apollo does think about him occasionally, but even just from THO and TON we get so much depth to their relationship.

And it starts the very first time we see Will.

“You’re Will Solace,” I said. “My, ah...erm—” “Yeah,” Will agreed. “It’s awkward.” My frontal lobe did a one-eighty inside my skull. I listed sideways. “Whoa, there.” Will steadied me. “I tried to heal you, but honestly, I don’t understand what’s wrong. You’ve got blood, not ichor. You’re recovering quickly from your injuries, but your vital signs are completely human.” “Don’t remind me.” “Yeah, well...” He put his hand on my forehead and frowned in concentration. His fingers trembled slightly. “I didn’t know any of that until I tried to give you nectar. Your lips started steaming. I almost killed you.���

There are some major things in here that really stand out to me. Firstly, and I've mentioned this before in a meta about names and nicknames - Apollo calls him Will. He goes from explicitly not recalling his name (which is a whole other kettle of fish I have an entire theory on), to not just getting it right first try with no hesitation, he also calls him Will. Will, not William.

And that's not because Will's full name isn't William - we get that canon titbit in TON when Nico fullnames him. Apollo would have been correct to call him William, and given the pattern of most gods to call demigods by their full names rather than their preferred nicknames, the fact that Apollo not only gets his name right straight after his mental blank, he also defaults straight to Will's preferred name rather than his full name, is telling. It proves that Apollo has at the very least been paying close enough attention to Will during his life to know this - and combined with Will's own words in BOO, it's a straight up smoking gun that Apollo has interacted with Will often enough before this to instinctively get his name right.

Then we have the confession. Not just one confession, either - we've actually got two. The first one is a confession of I don't know what's wrong, from the kid whose primary inherited ability (that we know of at this point) is healing, which by itself is pretty impressive. Hi dad, I know I got all this healing stuff from you but sorry I still don't understand things is not something I'd be willing to say to a god I didn't know for certain wouldn't get mad at me - even if said god was temporarily mortal. And of course, there's the big one, the "I almost killed you" confession. That's definitely not something you admit to someone you're scared of.

But there's more to it than that, too - the trembling of his fingers, the way he goes back to check Apollo's vitals again (the way he's concentrating then, he's definitely using his vitakinesis). That's all fear, a need to reassure himself that actually no, he didn't kill his dad, that Apollo is awake and on the mend - as much as he can mend from the issue that is being mortal.

This is all the interactions of someone who cares - who cares so much.

And then the scene continues...

“Gee, thanks....” I got the feeling that he almost said Dad but managed to stop himself. It was difficult to think of this young man as my son. He was so poised, so unassuming, so free of acne. He also didn’t appear to be awestruck in my presence. In fact, the corner of his mouth had started twitching. “Are—are you amused?” I demanded. Will shrugged. “Well, it’s either find this funny or freak out. My dad, the god Apollo, is a fifteen-year-old—” “Sixteen,” I corrected. “Let’s go with sixteen.” “A sixteen-year-old mortal, lying in a cot in my cabin, and with all my healing arts—which I got from you—I still can’t figure out how to fix you.”

Most of this just affirms what I said already - the acknowledgement that it's abilities Will got from Apollo that he's failing to use to help Apollo completely, the way Will is completely at ease talking with Apollo (for the most part), the way Will opens up to Apollo about being worried - but also we get to see Will from Apollo's perspective, here.

We got the physical description earlier, which I didn't bother to include, but there's more here - Will's "poise", the respectful words he uses ("young man"), and also the fact that Will isn't at all scared or awestruck by him. That's not just a background detail, it's something Apollo specifically mentions. Will's scared, he's upset, he's trying very hard not to visibly panic - but he's still not on edge around Apollo. And when he calls Will out on this, Will shrugs him off.

I also mentioned earlier that one of the sad things about their relationship is the awkwardness between them, and that's something that this scene also manages to show, somewhat paradoxically given Will's general openness with Apollo about what's going on.

It's a very clever detail in THO, which is then mirrored in TON - there is only one occasion in THO that Will calls Apollo "Dad", and that's during a conversation where they're talking about other stuff and it just slips out. The rest of the time, we get scenes like this, where Will pauses, where he's gonna call Apollo "Dad" but then doesn't, because he doesn't know if he should, because this is his dad but it's also not, Apollo's a scared teenage boy himself right now and is it right to call him Dad? Skip ahead to TON and Will never, ever, calls Apollo by name when addressing him - it's 100% Dad, after he's got used to this new status quo.

And Will is the only one with this issue - Austin and Kayla call Apollo "Dad" right from the start. It's a very clever little piece of narration to show how Will's not quite confident in what's going on, how he's worrying about things that the other two maybe haven't fully registered yet. The way he wants to call him Dad but he doesn't actually know if he should, because things are different now. The way he almost slips here because calling Apollo Dad is natural, the way he does slip later on, at dinner.

The word smacked me in the face like Ares’s body odor. I turned to Austin. “The Labyrinth? As in Daedalus’s Labyrinth?” [...] “During the war with Gaea,” Austin said, “the maze reopened. We’ve been trying to map it ever since.” “That’s impossible,” I said. “Also insane. The Labyrinth is a malevolent sentient creation! It can’t be mapped or trusted.” [...] “It’s different now,” Austin told me. “Since Daedalus died...I don’t know. It’s hard to describe. Doesn’t feel so evil. Not quite as deadly.” “Oh, that’s hugely reassuring. So of course you decided to do three-legged races through it.” Will coughed. “The other thing, Dad...Nobody wants to disappoint Harley.”

I love this little scene (Apollo's extra descriptions removed from the quote for ease of length because they don't add anything to the Will&Apollo focus here) because it's Apollo being an actual dispairing father with the oozing sarcasm of "well of course it's safe so you can do dangerous things in there", and this is where Will has his one, single slip re: "Dad" in THO - a reaction to Apollo's super-parental vibe here. Where Apollo really just fell into worried dad mode and Will instinctively responded to it.

But despite this, for a lot of THO, Will is the one almost taking the parental role - he tells Apollo off when he's being an idiot (we'll get to that in a bit), but he also fills the softer sections, like here:

A blanket was draped over me. Will said, “Sleep well, Apollo.”

It shouldn't be the child tucking the parent in, it should be the parent tucking the child in, and it's heartbreaking that this happens but also the fact that Will does it, steps up to be what Apollo doesn't even realise he needs right then, is so precious in its own way. As for telling Apollo off...

I would have ignored Chiron’s warning and run into the forest except for Will’s panicked shout, “Apollo, I need you!” At the far end of the field, he had set up an impromptu hospital where half a dozen campers lay injured on stretchers. He was frantically tending to Paolo Montes while Nico held down the screaming patient. I ran to Will’s side and winced at what I saw. Paolo had managed to get one of his legs sawed off. “I got it reattached,” Will told me, his voice shaky with exhaustion. His scrubs were speckled with blood. “I need somebody to keep him stable.” I pointed to the woods. “But—” “I know!” Will snapped. “Don’t you think I want to be out there searching too? We’re shorthanded for healers. There’s some salve and nectar in that pack. Go!” I was stunned by his tone. I realized he was just as concerned about Kayla and Austin as I was. The only difference: Will knew his duty. He had to heal the injured first. And he needed my help. “Y-yes,” I said. “Yes, of course.” I grabbed the supply pack and took charge of Paolo, who had conveniently passed out from the pain. Will changed his surgical gloves and glared at the woods. “We will find them. We have to.” Nico di Angelo gave him a canteen. “Drink. Right now, this is where you need to be.” I could tell the son of Hades was angry too. Around his feet, the grass steamed and withered. Will sighed. “You’re right. But that doesn’t make me feel better. I have to set Valentina’s broken arm now. You want to assist?” “Sounds gruesome,” Nico said. “Let’s go.”

A long quote here but a necessary one because this scene is so, so good. @fearlessinger has already written about this in depth, but there's something so powerful here about the way Will snaps at Apollo in front of the entire camp, and Apollo backs down, admits he was wrong, and meekly does what he's told.

We see Will's own fear for his siblings here as well, of course - that glare he gives the woods is fierce, the defiance that the woods will not steal his (remaining) siblings from him is such a powerful image - but also it's just the way he channels it into doing what he's trained to do, how he's a battlefield medic first and foremost and the trauma that comes with it - and that Apollo respects this. Apollo understands what Will's saying, what Will needs from him. He understands that they're actually on the same page, re: Austin and Kayla, but that Will knows no-one would forgive them if they abandoned the injured to go after them - least of all themselves, or the missing kids.

Apollo's sheer respect for Will shines through here, the first time it's so blatantly explicit as respect as well as just love; it's also one of the first times we properly see Apollo respect someone else so openly (when you dig into his narration, you see it everywhere, because despite the unreliable narration he throws in our faces, Apollo is very much a god who loves and respects humans), and then he even takes it one step further, because then we get this:

I found my mortal healing skills were passable. Will Solace far outshone me, but that didn’t bother me as much as my failures with archery and music had. I suppose I was used to being second in healing. My son Asclepius had become the god of medicine by the time he was fifteen, and I couldn’t have been happier for him. It left me time for my other interests. Besides, it’s every god’s dream to have a child who grows up to be a doctor.

This is deliberate. This is so, so deliberate on Apollo's behalf. Here we have Will, confirmed earlier in the book to be fifteen, in direct comparison to Asclepius, at the same age, and in the same position - a better healer than Apollo. Of course, there's the fact that we are comparing Will to mortal!Apollo at this point, but the overall message is still the same: Apollo loves and greatly respects Asclepius, and is proud of him for surpassing him - and he's praising Will in the same breath, with this comparison right there. This is Apollo telling us "so you know that famous healer son of mine? Well here's another one, look at him, isn't he amazing?" No holds barred, pure and simple praise.

The painful thing is that Will doesn't realise this. Because Apollo also makes an absolutely massive mistake in THO when it comes to Will - and that's that he abandons him when he needed him the most.

“That’s an order,” she said. “No going into the woods until I say so.” The command sent a shudder from the base of my skull to my heels. I dug my fingernails into my palms. “Meg McCaffrey, if my children die because you wouldn’t let me—” “Like Chiron said, you’d just get yourself killed. We’ll wait for daylight.” [...] I scowled at Meg. “I’m staying out here tonight, in case Kayla and Austin come back. Unless you want to forbid me from doing that, too.” She only shrugged. Even her shrugs were annoying. I stormed off to the Me cabin and grabbed a few supplies: a flashlight, two blankets, a canteen of water. As an afterthought, I took a few books from Will Solace’s bookshelf. No surprise, he kept reference materials about me to share with new campers. I thought perhaps the books might help jog my memories. Failing that, they’d make good tinder for a fire. When I returned to the edge of the woods, Meg was still there.

It's never explicitly mentioned in the books - it's hardly even referenced - but Apollo doesn't even think about Will here, except as an owner of storybooks (that Apollo threatens to burn, although I highly doubt he ever would've done, not when they belong to Will) and a good head counsellor. He's so frantic for his missing kids, and so angry with Meg for (rightfully) banning him from going straight after them, that he storms off and doesn't pay Will any attention. He even uses the word "afterthought" here which technically references the action of taking the books, but also tells us what Will was here.

And it was wrong of Apollo. It no doubt hurt Will, although being Will he also probably brushed it off, understanding why Apollo was more desperate for news of his missing kids - after all, Will, too was desperate to go into the woods, and I wonder if Nico had to stop him from the same vigil, too.

I rested my hand on Will’s shoulder. “Don’t worry. We’ll be back by dawn.” His mouth trembled ever so slightly. “How can you be sure?” “I’m the sun god,” I said, trying to muster more confidence than I felt. “I always return at dawn.”

Apollo does, however, remember to reassure Will before he leaves - this isn't prompted by anything Will does, the presentation of the ukulele (which Will wholly attributes to Harley but given that Will is the one presenting it, heavily implies that Will was highly involved during its creation - I like to think that Will's the one that tuned it!) is several lines earlier, and several other non-Will interactions take place before Apollo does this. We see Will's fear come back again, in that little tremble that indicates he's not all that far short of crying, which Apollo notices (but doesn't call out directly, not even to the readers) and does his best to mitigate, even though he knows there's only so much he can do.

And Nico confirms for us that it didn't really help:

Nico rested his hand on Will’s shoulder. “Apollo, we were worried. Will was especially.”

(This is also one of my favourite THO Solangelo moments but that's a rabbit hole for a different post, this one is getting quite long enough I think, and we haven't even got near TON yet...) This is a sad moment, because while Will has spoken in this scene, it's all been purely medical, telling Apollo about his injuries, what they know - but not opening up even for a moment about how he's feeling. So Nico does it for him, letting Apollo - and us, the reader - know just how worried Will has been, that Will can't even admit it himself despite all the admittances he's made to Apollo about worries and mistakes and fears earlier in the book - and Apollo's delighted for Will, in that moment, that he has someone there to support him so whole-heartedly, even though his narration spends more time talking about his own woes than addressing his son's clear distress over him - likely because we're still at the point in the series where Apollo can't actually bring himself to realise that other people do, genuinely, care about and like him. He still thinks he's unworthy of his own children's affection, especially right now, when two of them are missing and not only did he just fail to bring them back, but he lost another child (not his, but bound to him nonetheless) in the process.

This is the moment where we realise that, despite how much both of them love each other, something that has been made abundantly clear on both sides by BOO and THO up to this point, there's still an emotional gap there, an uncertainty that when things get serious they can actually turn to each other and accept help from each other - expect help from each other. Despite the fact that we've already been seeing that happen all book.

In my humble, Apollo&his kids loving, opinion, there is nowhere near enough Will in THO, so the next time we actually see him is near the end, when we get this little moment:

“Hey!” called Nico di Angelo. He and Will scrambled over the dunes, still dripping from their swim in the canoe lake. “What’s the plan?” Will seemed calm, but I knew him well enough by now to tell that inside he was as charged as a bare electrical wire.

Apollo misleading us nicely here "I knew him well enough by now" - the way this is written, it makes it sound like he's talking about just since being Lester, but that doesn't fit. For starters, we've not actually seen Will pull this calm exterior frantic interior display - whenever he's been frantic on the interior, it's come across in his body language, whether it was biting his lip, fighting a smile or even being outright snappy. Or rather, Apollo's always taken the time to pick up on Will's tells even from the start. This isn't a sudden realisation of "oh now I can tell Will's not calm" when he's been doing the same thing subtly all book, this is Apollo pretending he's only just realised, holding up his self-inflicted narrative of "I'm a bad father", but given that he's been picking Will's tells apart all book already... this is actually more evidence that Apollo knows Will well and has done for a long time - definitely longer than the span of the couple of days Lester is in camp.

Apollo, please stop trying to convince us and yourself you're a terrible father. It's not working on us and you need to stop doing yourself that disservice.

And to wrap up THO, we have Apollo once again being a proud dad:

Will Solace and I spent the evening caring for the wounded. Will took the lead, which was fine with me; I was exhausted. Mostly I splinted arms, distributed cold medicine and tissues, and tried to keep Harley from stealing the infirmary’s entire supply of smiley-face stickers, which he plastered all over his flamethrower. [...] Thanks to Will’s healing and a hot dinner, the demigods I had rescued from the woods quickly got back to full strength.

Apollo and Will work on healing everyone together - Apollo even lists all the things he did - but when it comes to everyone getting better, he only credits Will. Gotta love some proud dad moments!

Now we're onto TON, which gives me so many feels about Apollo&Will. Yes, I know this is long already. No, I am definitely not done I just love these two so much okay.

Compared to the camp’s Greek temples and amphitheatres, the four-storey sky-blue Victorian known as the Big House looked quaint and homey. Its white trim gleamed like cake frosting. Its bronze eagle weathervane drifted lazily in the breeze. On its wraparound front porch, enjoying lemonade at the card table, sat Nico di Angelo and Will Solace. ‘Dad!’ Will shot to his feet. He ran down the steps and tackled me in a hug. That’s when I lost it. I wept openly. My beautiful son, with his kind eyes, his healer’s hands, his sun-warm demeanour. Somehow, he had inherited all my best qualities and none of the worst. He guided me up the steps and insisted I take his seat. He pressed a cold glass of lemonade into my hands, then started fussing over my wounded head. ‘I’m fine,’ I murmured, though clearly I wasn’t.

Look at this greeting. Look at how delighted Will is to see Apollo, that Dad! and the tackle hug and the open fussing and just all of it, especially compared to six months earlier, in THO where Will's always just a little reticent, a little shy to fully let himself be Apollo's son. Even here he's still falling a little into healer mode, but only after he gets to be the delighted, relieved son, and it makes you wonder just how much worse his worry got while they were separated, that he's managed to lose all those inhibitions and just be so openly, frantically, delighted, to see Apollo.

And of course, Apollo reciprocates in his narration. He's likewise so happy to see Will, can't not let this moment pass without letting us know that this is his son and he's so, so proud of him, look how amazing Will is. He's half delirious and about to pass out (much to Will's horror), but he's still got to find the time to tell us all about just how beautiful and talented and amazing Will is.

Then we get a beautiful, amazing little character detail, which makes me keysmash just thinking about it.

‘Oh, you’re awake!’ My son Will emerged from the bathroom in a billow of steam, his blond hair dripping wet and a towel around his waist. On his left pectoral was a stylized sun tattoo, which seemed unnecessary to me – as if he could be mistaken for anything but a child of the sun god.

The sun tattoo. The tattoo that is so clearly a sun that Apollo can't even pretend to mistake it for anything other than not only a sun, but also an acknowledgement of him, that he is Will's father and that Will is proud enough of that fact to have it tattooed over his heart (at fifteen and who the hell was willing to tattoo a fifteen year old boy but I'm glad they did). Is this tattoo just an homage? Was it a potential memorial in case something went wrong and Apollo died? So many questions, so many potential answers, and all of them are so, so pro-Apollo. We only see one other demigod with something so permanent representing their parent and that's Butch's rainbow tattoo in TLH. Whatever the exact reason, Will loves Apollo enough to permanently etch that into his skin and I think that's absolutely beautiful.

And Apollo makes a small enough deal out of it that it's clear even he can't escape the implications, although he hurriedly moves on in his narration rather than focus on this visual representation that he can't be a bad father, in Will's eyes, otherwise Will would never have got that tattoo.

Here’s all you need to know about Will Solace: he had clothes waiting for me. On his last trip into town, he’d gone shopping specifically for things that might fit me. ‘I figured you’d come back to camp eventually,’ he said. ‘I hoped you would, anyway. I wanted you to feel at home.’

Will Solace you beautiful child. And the way Apollo bursts into tears at this kindness, too, trying to attribute it to Naomi when we've just had four and a bit books of Apollo being kind to a world he thinks hates him. Maybe Will learned kindness from Naomi as well, but he definitely inherited at least some of it from Apollo. By this point in the series it's impossible to claim otherwise.

Also Will being so desperate to help Apollo feel at home, the little implication there that he doesn't want him to leave again, or at least doesn't want to be left behind again - and he isn't. Not until the end, when Apollo has to leave everyone, including Meg, behind. Apollo lets him come with them to the trogs, lets him join in and help, this time, for all that they get separated too soon, because Apollo doesn't want to be separated again, either. He definitely doesn't want his son (or any of the demigods) in danger, but he's learned to accept help, and the help of the two demigods who have been trying from the start (Will and Nico) is the help he accepts first.

I wanted to tell them that they were all so young. Their lifespans were a blink of an eye compared to my four millennia. I should be wrapping them all in warm blankets and giving them cookies rather than expecting them to be heroes, slay monsters and buy me clothes.

Some yearning to be a proper dad, too, just in case anyone missed how much Apollo doesn't want to put them in danger.

I won't dump the whole passage here, but I also just wanna mention how much Will trusts Apollo, that he's willing to give an overview of Nico's problems to him (no doubt with permission from Nico as well - we saw Nico speak for Will in THO, so this is a neat reversal here). He also confides in his own worries about Nico here, too, because while he's definitely not shy about telling Nico he does not want him going back to Tartarus, he also doesn't load Nico up with all his panics about the situation - so he offloads on Apollo, instead, once again showing us just how much he loves and trusts his dad.

Will developed a sudden interest in his bran muffin’s wrapper. Nico seemed to realize, at the same time I did, that Will hadn’t shared all the lines of the prophecy with him. ‘William Andrew Solace,’ Nico said, ‘do you have something to confess?’ ‘I was going to mention it.’ Will looked at me pleadingly, as if he couldn’t make himself say the lines. ‘The son of Hades, cavern-runners ’ friend ,’ I recited. ‘Must show the secret way unto the throne .’ Nico scowled with such intensity I feared he might make Will wither like the apple. ‘You think that might have been good to mention sooner?’ ‘Hold on,’ I said, partly to spare Will from Nico’s wrath, and partly because I had been racking my brain, trying to think who these ‘cavern-runners’ might be, and I still had no clue.

In fact, we get a lot of this in this scene, with Will actually treating Apollo like his dad, looking to him for reassurance and help and even to handle the difficult conversations (he's a fifteen year old boy he's allowed to want to hide behind an adult occasionally. If he was a normal mortal child he would absolutely be doing so most of the time at his age). It's a great evolution from THO, where he's almost still too in shock to actually treat Lester like his dad - to now, where he's completely and utterly embraced the fact that this is still Apollo, and that he can treat him like Apollo.

TON gives us many small moments of Will appreciation, because Apollo spends a lot of time with him and loves his son so very much, so I'll skip over all of those because they don't actually add anything new to this answer. But I'm not going to skip over the big ones.

Will Solace, healer, The hero we don’t deserve, He has Kit Kat bars.

Firstly: Will gets his own haiku. By name. Absolutely no misinterpretating who this could possibly be about - it's right there in the first three syllables of the first line. It also highlights his healing (at this point, Will's biggest point of pride), and calls him a hero. Massive honours right there (and reasons why I, personally, am gonna be voting this haiku all the way to top haiku in TOA in @ferodactyl's haiku tournament).

Then... anyone who has heard me talk about Apollo&Will has no doubt been waiting for me to bring this up, because oh boy do I think this was some beautiful, subtle, writing that showcases just how much Apollo's word means to Will.

The glowing.

Firstly, I love that Will can glow, anyway. It fits his character so well.

Secondly, the way it's used to showcase his and Apollo's relationship is masterful.

‘You guys stay behind me,’ Nico said. ‘Will, can you do your thing? The barest minimum, please.’ ‘Wait,’ I said. ‘What is Will’s “thing”?’ Will kept his focus on Nico. ‘Do I have to?’ ‘We can’t use our weapons for light,’ Nico reminded him. ‘And we’ll need a little bit more, because the trogs don’t need any. I’d rather be able to see them.’ Will wrinkled his nose. ‘Fine.’ He set down his pack and stripped off his linen overshirt, leaving just his tank top. I still had no idea what he was doing, though the girls didn’t seem to mind letting him do his thing . Did Will keep a concealed flashlight in his undershirt? Was he going to provide light by rubbing lichen on himself and smiling brilliantly? [...] Will took a deep breath. When he exhaled ... I thought my eyes were playing tricks on me. We’d been in near-total darkness so long, I wasn’t sure why Will’s outline suddenly seemed clearer. I could see the texture of his jeans, the individual tufts of his hair, the blue of his eyes. His skin was glowing with a soft, warm golden light as if he’d ingested sunshine. ‘Whoa,’ Meg said. Rachel’s eyebrows floated towards her hairline. Nico smirked. ‘Friends, meet my glow-in-the-dark boyfriend.’ ‘Could you not make a big deal about it?’ Will asked. I was speechless. How could anyone not make a big deal about this? As far as demigod powers went, glowing in the dark was perhaps not as showy as skeleton-summoning or tomato-vine mastery, but it was still impressive. And, like Will’s skill at healing, it was gentle, useful and exactly what we needed in a pinch. ‘I’m so proud,’ I said. Will’s face turned the colour of sunlight shining through a glass of cranberry juice. ‘Dad, I’m just glowing . I’m not graduating at the top of my class.’ ‘I’ll be proud when you do that, too,’ I assured him.

Contrast Will in this scene, with Will here:

On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light.

and here:

Will, still glowing like an overachieving night light, had propped Nico against the wall and was now tending to his wounds.

(I will get to the rest of this scene later)

I love, love, love, love, love this. The first time we're introduced to Will's new ability, he's hesitant about it. He's embarrassed. Nico has to talk him into using it even though they need light and it's the best way to give it without offending the trogs. He dismisses the banter and the praise because he thinks it's a pretty boring ability - after all, it's just glowing, Dad, it's not like it's anything special, right?

Except it is, and Apollo makes sure he knows it is. Apollo, god of poetry, goes speechless he's so proud, and then methodically dismisses all of Will's attempts to downplay his ability because Apollo is so, so impressed that Will can do it - in fact, he later directly contrasts it against actual godly divinity:

His glow was getting brighter as he approached the fasces – like Will, like me in my own godly moments of rage...

because Apollo thinks it is that impressive.

And here we have the second glowing scene - in a brightly lit building, with floor to ceiling windows and plenty of light, certainly no need for more light, we have Will glowing brightly, of his own accord. No hesitation, no embarrassment, just a sheer status symbol, almost: I am the son of Apollo, and I will oppose you with everything I am.

This seems at such odds to his original feelings, where he keeps it as minimal as possible and dismisses any attempts to make it seem good - and the only reason that could possibly exist for this u-turn, is Apollo's praise.

Apollo told him, unreservedly and completely honestly (late enough into his mortality that Will understands that Apollo is sincere, and also that this isn't Apollo loving something completely cringe, like we know Apollo can do) that his power is impressive, that Apollo is proud of him for it. And just those words from his dad are enough to completely change Will's opinion on this power.

That's absolutely beautiful writing, and such a fantastic way to show without ever telling us, just how much weight Apollo's words have for Will. Just how much Apollo's praise means to Will.

Jumping back to an attempt at chronology, remember how I said (way back at the start of this, when I was talking about Will's faith in BOO, probably a couple of hours' of reading ago at this point whoops) that Will had faith that Apollo didn't want to put them in danger but that he didn't actually know for certain outside of that faith? And the yet I tacked on to that?

Well, this next scene I'm gonna mention notably has zero Will interaction in it. Absolutely none, despite the fact we know he's there, in earshot. And that's very interesting to me, because it's a scene entirely about validating Will's belief, especially when we reach this little interaction between Apollo and Rachel:

‘Rachel, I’m scared,’ I admitted. ‘It was one thing thinking about putting myself in danger. But the entire camp? Everyone?’ Strangely, this comment seemed to please her. She took my hand. ‘I know, Apollo. And the fact that you’re worried about other people? That’s beautiful. But you’ll have to trust me. That secret path to the throne ... the thing I am supposed to show you? I’m pretty sure this is it. This is how we make things right.’

An entire pentalogy later, we get it straight from the horse's mouth, without all the airs and posturing and blaming Octavian we got accompanying it in BOO: Apollo does not like putting demigods in danger. At all. Rachel has to convince him it's the only way - and it's interesting, because she views this as progress, on Apollo's part, that he's learned to worry about the others.

But Will and Meg, who are both in earshot but say nothing this entire conversation, already know better. Meg's been with him for (most of) his time as a mortal, at this point she knows him better than arguably anyone else, including Artemis, because she's seen him at his lowest, most vulnerable points. Meg knows he'll do anything to keep others safe - she's seen it, over and over and over again, been the one he's tried to protect more than once. It's not a surprise in the slightest that she's completely silent during this scene - she has nothing to add.

Will, on the other hand - this validates the faith he showed ten months earlier, on the battlefield between two armies loudly declaring that this war is not what Apollo wanted, that Apollo would never put them into the firing line like that. It's not a validation he needed - if he did, we wouldn't call it faith, anyway - but it's one he gets, and in a way it's a shame Apollo didn't look at him, didn't tell us how Will reacted to this, because I bet he was absolutely delighted (and also feeling very smug about being right, take that Octavian!).

Sadly we once again lose Will for a while, but then we get this glorious scene which easily competes for #1 Most Badass Will Solace Moment (and honestly, imo competes for simply the Most Badass Moment in Riordanverse, but I acknowledge my pro-Will bias here)

Behind me, a familiar voice roared, ‘STOP!’ The tone was so commanding even Nero’s guards and family members turned towards the broken blast doors. On the threshold stood Will Solace, radiating brilliant light. At his left was Luguselwa, alive and well, her stumps now outfitted with daggers instead of silverware. At Will’s right was Rachel Elizabeth Dare, holding a large axe wrapped in a golden bundle of rods: the fasces of Nero. ‘No one hits my boyfriend,’ Will thundered. ‘And no one kills my dad!’

Again, the wording here is so perfectly chosen. Will radiating light, the way the whole passage, despite also introducing Luguselwa and Rachel and even Nero's fasces into the scene - still frames and focuses on Will in particular. Beautiful.

But what I so, so love about this moment is Apollo's very careful use of the word thundered. We know that Apollo hates Zeus' lightning bolts - we know he's terrified of them. The sound of thunder is, to Apollo, the sound of pain, the sound of loss, the sound of abuse.

And he chooses to use that description here, when Will comes to his defence. When Will barges into the scene, unapologetic and determined, and manages to take over everything, scare the germani (I wish I could also include Nero in this but Nero is obviously actually too worried about Rachel and his fasces), Apollo calls his voice thunder. Coincidence? I think not.

Now, this doesn't mean I think Apollo is scared of Will - Will is his son, Will literally just saved his life. I think this was Apollo's way of driving home to all the readers just how much of a force of nature Will Solace can be when he wants to be. I think this was actually a mark of respect, a comparison literally to the king of the gods, but also how Zeus should be, not the abusive asshole he is.

It's such a powerful description. And that's also what Apollo keeps reminding us Will is - powerful.

And I love it.

The last bit I really wanna talk about here is the scene before Apollo goes to fight Python, when he gets a few minutes with frantic demigods whilst getting patched up just enough to hopefully not die immediately the moment he reaches Delphi, starting with this bit:

‘I have no choice,’ I said. ‘Nectar, please? And supplies. More arrows. My bow.’ [...] Will pressed a vial of nectar into my hands. ‘Drink this. And this.’ He passed me a Mountain Dew. ‘And here’s some salve for those wounds.’

Remember Will almost killing Apollo with nectar back in THO? You'd think he, out of everyone, would be most reluctant to let Apollo near nectar again, even on Apollo's own request, and yet he doesn't even hesitate here. I don't think it's just blind trust in Apollo - Apollo's also proven he's not great at the self-preservation thing, and Will is used to dealing with idiots with no self-preservation (see exhibit A: his boyfriend) - but I think it's faith, again. Faith, and hope, because he just saw Apollo revoke Nero's divinity, he just saw his father do something gods do. Apollo's getting his own divinity back at this point, clawing it back all by himself, and this little moment proves that Will saw this. He might not understand the nuances behind it, he might not realise that this is literally Apollo remaking himself as a god rather than being part of Zeus' own machinations, but he sees that Apollo is returning to godhood - and yet he still doesn't actually change how he treats Apollo. Apollo is still one of his patients here, he will take his medicine exactly as prescribed and treat those wounds before he bleeds to death.

And Will still frets a little, at the end:

Will did some last-minute bandaging.

This is the last moment we see with Will before Apollo reascends to godhood, and really it's too little to encompass everything that this means to the two of them - but also it leaves it open, tells us that this was never a goodbye for Apollo, no matter how scared Will had been, that despite never promising any of his children that he would come back from this, he didn't feel the need to detail out whatever words of farewell/comfort/etc. were uttered in this moment, when Apollo let Will fuss over him for just that last moment before he went down to face Python.

It tells us that while their time together as Lester and Will has come to an end, because one way or another Lester was never coming back, their time as Apollo and Will, as father and son, isn't over. There's no closure here, no final moment.

Because, actually, while they learnt a lot about each other while Apollo was mortal - especially Will learning about his father - this was only ever a single chapter in their relationship. Apollo has been Will's father since birth, he's been checking up on him, however goofily he may have dressed up those visits, at least since Will arrived at camp and probably since long before that, and he's not going to stop now. In fact, given the character arc Apollo went through during TOA, Will's probably in for even more parental interaction than he already had.

We get a little of this in the epilogue, of course, where Apollo returns to camp to open the next chapter of his life - and his relationship with his children - as a god once more. We know Apollo isn't planning on fading out of their lives again. And why should he?

So yeah, I have a lot of feelings about Apollo&Will; I love their relationship so much. I haven't even touched on further extrapolation like how Will will always react better to Apollo-Apollo than Lester-Apollo, because Lester-Apollo needed help and healing, and for Will to step up, while Apollo-Apollo is simply his father, and the version Will's known at least his whole demigod life, if not longer because this is already so long, whoops.

If you've made it to the end of this... congrats! And sorry again that it took me so long to answer.

[gingermintpepper]

I don't want to bother you while you're in your art challenge, take your time to answer! I just loved your analysis and opinion of Branchus, and i saw in the post you said we could ask you for others Apollo's lovers... I want to know (they're not lovers, they're grandfather and grandmother lol, but i would like to see your thoughts) of Koios and Phoebe 👀 Not in relationship with Apollo, just your opinion of them...

We don't know so much about Koios, we know a bit more about Phoebe because of her tie to Delphi and the Oracle.

Oh, how sweet! Thank you so much for the consideration and hey, no worries at all on asking about his grandparents rather than a lover, I'm always ready to ramble about Apollo's genealogical line since I find it extremely interesting!

Since information on a lot of the older Titans in terms of how they were worshipped and seen is scarce (Phoebe does have mentions in her mantic right but very little is mentioned in reference to Koios or her daughters apart from establishing genealogy and Koios himself seems to have been more of an abstract establishment, the way a lot of Hesiod's old gods were) I won't go out of my way to quote or base my opinions here in any literature that I've been exposed to, so just keep in mind that what I'm going to say is very much my own opinions mixed with things I understand and very influenced by my own love of familial and romantic parallels in god-pairs being symbolic of various natural and abstract relationships!

I see Koios and Phoebe, like a lot of the older Titan pairs, as abstractions of the original pair of Gaia and Uranus. Power often originates with and is exerted by women in these older pairs while glory is what is passed on, and consequently fought over, by the men - in Gaia and Uranus' case, it is Gaia who is older and it is from Gaia that Uranus is born. Uranus is her match but is also her subservient and so when Uranus is unable to love his children and seeks their destruction, it's Gaia who bestows the power and means by which to silence him. This 'equal but subservient' dynamic is definitely alive and well with Koios and Phoebe and I even think they mirror their parents from a symbolic standpoint as well.

Koios and Phoebe are the knowledge duo. They represent the two sources of knowledge/wisdom in the old world - that of heavenly (male) knowledge which pertains to the nature of the physical world and its realities and earthly (female) knowledge which pertains to the nature of intangible and unobservable reality such as time and space. I like having them mirror each other; what with them both being associated with their respective world axes (Koios as the heavenly axis if you syncretise him with the Roman Polos, Phoebe as the earthly axis if you take Delphi as the centerpoint of the world), having serpent symbolism (Koios with the hundred-headed star-serpent Drakon who guards the Hesperides which is sometimes said to be located in the land of the Hyperboreans and Phoebe with Python who guards the fount of knowledge at Delphi) and splitting their essence equally across their descendants (Their children and grandchildren perfectly embody one half of their partnership - Asteria with her heavenly magic and night-prophecies and Leto with her earthly power and wisdom and their grandchildren following likewise; Hecate who works beneath her grandfather's skies and has her grandmother's wisdom but who has chosen to reside neither in the sky nor on the earth, Artemis who could not be more of a daughter of the soil and Apollo who has his place among the brightest of stars).

It all leads back to that really fun dichotomy of equal but subservient honestly! Knowledge (and wisdom/intelligence) in general in Greek myths are female in nature so already that kind of puts Koios in an interesting position as a direct male descendent of Gaia and Uranus who didn't represent some physical, tangible element (in contrast his brothers all had some level of physicality to them - Oceanus the oceans, Cronus the harvest, Crius the winds, Hyperion the light, so on and so forth) but there's also that element of Koios' glory also being female! After all, his only male descendent is two generations removed and what should be his seat of power - Hyperborea - became Leto's the moment she was born there.

In this way, I admittedly find that a lot of comfort in Koios and Phoebe's partnership. There's a lot of respect both ways between them with Koios' respect and regard of Phoebe reminding me a lot of Uranus' original adoration of Gaia (and his return to said quiet, constant adoration after his castration) while Phoebe's overseeing of her mantle being very reminiscent of Gaia's own kingmaking both for Cronus and later for Zeus. For me, theirs is a pair without ego. A lot of the friction and instability in the younger generation of gods comes from the battle between intelligence and power - toes are constantly stepped on, glory is constantly being sought and the efforts made to counteract these moves results in conflict. Koios and Phoebe seem to have it all figured out by comparison. They've both handily passed their mantles down to their children, they've both overseen and instructed them and can rest easy knowing that they will not misuse said mantles and they've both just kind of retired now, content to spend their time in the evergreen Hyperborea, wrapped up in each other's arms like their father and mother before them and like, honestly? Good for them.

[aroeddiediaz]

20 questions for fic writers

Tagged by @cal-daisies-and-briars , @jesuiscenseedormir , @diazsdimples

How many works do you have on ao3?

27!

What's your total ao3 word count?

61,537

What fandoms do you write for?

Currently I’m pretty much exclusively a 9-1-1 writer, but in the past I wrote a lot of Flarrowverse (do they still call it that?). I also have published fics for Fantastic Beasts and a few anime (Given, Haikyuu, Saiki K). Given the number of Bnha wips i have locked away in the vault it’s amazing I don’t have anything published for that.

Top 5 fics by kudos:

(I am omitting all the Flarrowverse fics in my top 5 on the basis that they were written in high school and I’ve changed as a person, and they probably only beat out on the numbers due to being up for years longer)

1. Kabe-Do’s and Kabe-Don’ts (Given, 861 kudos)

2. You’re Not Special (Saiki K, 598 kudos)

3. How Eddie Learned To Stop Worrying And Embrace The Kitten Life (9-1-1, 327 kudos)

4. The Boy Formerly Known As Miracle (Haikyuu, 277 kudos)

5. Under The Hood (9-1-1, 275 kudos)

Do you respond to comments?

Yes!! As many as I can!

What is the fic you wrote with the angstiest ending?

This probably has to be The Crimes of Queenie Goldstein, in which Queenie is put on trial for her actions during the war. Don’t @ me but Queenie turning traitor was bu far the most interesting part of the Crimes of Grindelwald (the only interesting thing, really). There could be such an interesting story between her and Tina if only JKR would let the movies out of her grasp.

What's the fic you wrote with the happiest ending?

Fuck, idk if I have a happiest ending fic, a lot of them tend to not have that much story arc. (A lot of established relationship fluff or smut lmao). I guess if I had to pick one it would probably be How Eddie Learned To Stop Worrying and Embrace The Kitten Life.

Do you get hate on fics?

Not since that one anti-olicity fic that I wrote while deep in the trenches of Flarrowverse discourse, which I totally deserved :/. I have regrets. Also I should probably orphan/delete that one if I haven’t already. In my defense, high school. I have learned.

Do you write smut?

Yea lol. I think my 9-1-1 stuff has been almost exclusively smut. Idk how it happened. (I do know how it happened smut is fun to write)

Craziest crossover?

I haven’t published any of my crossover fics :( none of them have been complete enough. I have many many unfinished RotBTD wips that have never seen the light of day though.

Have you ever had a fic stolen?

Who would steal my stuff? Lol

Have you ever had a fic translated?

One time someone offered to translate one of my fics into Russian but idk if that ever actually happened.

Have you co-written a fic before?

Nope

All time favorite ship?

Right now definitely Buddie! Percabeth holds a special place in my heart though <3

What's a wip you want to finish, but doubt you ever will?

Ok. After the end of the Heroes of Olympus Series, but before Trials of Apollo was announced, I tried my own hand at writing the sequel that was clearly coming based on all the loose threads in the final book. It was going to be a Solangelo quest to save the Oracle of Delphi from Python, while Akhys tries to poison Percy to turn him into an evil god(?). Half the details have been lost and I desperately want to remember them, because I haven’t attempted anything nearly as cool or ambitious since then. The first 5 chapters are posted on my ao3 (Will Solace and the Oracle’s Cry) and I still think high school me had the most interesting characterization of Will out of everyone else on the internet at the time. Even if it is still very 2015.

What are your writing strengths?

I think I’m good at getting into the heads of different characters. Understanding their motives and weaknesses.

What are your writing weaknesses?

Editing.

Lmao I have a lot of weaknesses but I definitely struggle the most with trying to look back on or change things I’ve already written, even when it’s necessary.

Also my tendency to just drop fics if I stop working on them for too long. Rip to my wip graveyard.

Thoughts on dialogue in another language?

That’s a minefield I’m not willing to play in. Unless it’s Chinese. Very limited amounts of Chinese. Or like, a pet name or phrase that’s already ubiquitous in fandom so I’m not risking anything.

First fandom you wrote in?

Percy Jackson!! That Will Solace quest is the first thing I ever wrote! I definitely had a tendency to jump into the deep end with new hobbies lmao. Like my first ever cosplay that took me 3 years to complete.

Favorite fic you've written?

I think my favorite fic is always going to be the one I’m currently working on writing. But I am very proud of the silly little dramatic ironies in In Hindsight, which I wrote entirely over one long lunch the day after 7x04 broke me. Also I have to shoutout Teacher’s Pet, that one ruler spanking fic nobody ever reads because it’s Eddie/Ana lmao. I enjoyed putting in a bunch of tiny incompatibilities between them. So, uh, I guess my favorite thing in my own writing is dramatic irony?

Tagging: @aspecbuddie @pirrusstuff @jesuisici33 @steadfastsaturnsrings @lemonzestywrites @your-catfish-friend @inkmortal-trash389 @evanbegins s @wildlife4life @eddiebabygirldiaz @epicbuddieficrecs @kitteneddiediaz @alliaskisthepossibilityoflove @coatedpanda16 @nicotinewrites @estheticpotaeto @babytrapperdiaz @snowviolettwhite @wikiangela

[kore-pythia-hayashi]

How do you think your life would have been different if you ended up at Camp Half-Blood instead of here? And… if you would have never met us, obviously.

-Chris.

Part of the nonsense associated with the oracle is the opportunity to very well and excessively irealistic magine "what could have been", you can compare this with seeing a possible future that could well have happened. [Kore looked at Chris with a calm, slightly cool gaze]. For example, you had a high chance of being an ordinary mortal, your father could have been your mom's ex-boyfriend and he would have been better at fatherhood than Hermes, at least he would have remembered your existence.

As for sending me to Camp half-blood, Apollo decided to keep me on a short leash and under surveillance and I... [Kore wrinkled up as if she had eaten a lemon]. With her hair cut off to the chin and a few pretty accessories - bracelets on her wrist and ankles made of python skin, as a warning, I went to camp with a group of swans who were aggressively determined to protect me. They were nice, but still not my type.

It was very good in the camp - Apollo immediately claiming me and the seventh cabin was sweet and loving, I had several good friends - Valentina, Travis and Clovis, who loved sleeping on me, only Chiron "secretly" looked after me at the request of my father. I hid most of my abilities and was at first just an assistant, and then a healer.

But my fate didn't change much, it was the same equally good and bad - I hid my abilities and couldn't help even when I could, I suffered because of it, but I had my brothers and sisters...

Lee would have died because of me, during the attack on the camp from the labyrinth, I got a dose of visions and just wandered around the battlefield like shell-shocked... he saved me from the giant by sacrificing himself, his brain fluid mixed with blood got on my face. Michael is the Head Counselor, I'm his assistant.

I can be said to be a maternal figure for the younger ones and the last living bulwark of support and understanding for the last elder, - I hold Will's hand, I hug Kayla and do not sleep at night because of Austin's nightmares, Michael sometimes clings to me and repeats my name like a prayer "Kore" sounds twisted and bitter.

I also die during the Battle of Manhattan-only a dagger in the stomach is an accident. A fatal stray accident. Will sobs and begs not to leave him. I'm trying to say I'm sorry.…

[Kore's face was calm and bitter, humble and her voice sounded even, almost monotonous]. I was doomed in any case, it's just that in this case I would have been next to my siblings and one of them would have been next to me on my deathbed.

[twoidiotwriters1]

Almighty (Leo Valdez xFem!Oc)

A/N: You get fluff, as a treat -Danny Words: 3,057 Series' Masterlist Previous Chapter // Next Chapter Listen to: 'It's Time' -by Imagine Dragons

XIX: Serendipity

Ara and Rachel walk out together from the Big House. "Nothing yet?"

"Completely constipated," Rachel pushes her bushy hair back in frustration. "And you? No funny dreams?"

Ara had no dreams at all because she didn't sleep. "None."

Percy joins them and then points at the hill. "What's he doing up there?"

"Probably feeling sorry for himself," Ara sighs. "Let's get him before Peleus eats him."

The three walk uphill to meet Apollo. Rachel talks first. "I know what you're thinking. Don't do it."

"Can you read my mind, Miss Dare?" The boy asks sarcastically.

"I don't need to. I know you, Lord Apollo."

"Don't call me Lord," he makes a face. "I am just a mortal teen. I do not belong at this camp."

Percy sits next to him. "Yeah, I used to think I didn't belong here either."

"It's not the same. You humans change and grow and mature. Gods do not."

"You sure about that? You seem pretty different."

"You look sadder," Ara crosses her arms and examines him playfully. "But if you don't want to be addressed as a lord, that's fine. So what now, Lester?"

"The other Oracles must be found and secured," he hugs his knees. "I cannot do that unless I leave Camp Half-Blood. And I cannot risk anyone else's life."

"Yeah well, luckily for you I'm legally obliged to do what I think necessary, and considering you're a sorry excuse of a demigod, I can't turn my back on you. You got a prophecy, right?"

Rachel sits next to Lester. "Ara said you were talking to an arrow yesterday. I'm guessing it's wood from Dodona?"

Percy tilts his head. "You found a talking arrow that gave you a prophecy?"

"Don't be silly," Apollo rolls his eyes. "The arrow talks, but I got the prophecy from the grove itself. The Arrow of Dodona just gives random advice. He's quite annoying."

"Right, and Percy's statement made no sense," Ara teases him.

"I must leave the camp," Apollo ignores her. "The Triumvirate means to possess all the ancient Oracles. I have to stop them. Once I have defeated the former emperors... only then will I be able to face my old enemy Python and free the Oracle of Delphi. After that... if I survive... perhaps Zeus will restore me to Olympus."

"We've got a good head-start," Ara shrugs. "We can do it."

"Are you sure you wish to come?" Apollo raises a brow. "Nero said they want you as much as they want the oracles. You have a whole life going on."

"As if you care," Ara snorts. "Like it or not, Lester, we're a team now, so you better embrace it."

"Ara is the closest you'll get to the gods helping you," Percy agrees. "She's got nine blessings, and one is from your dad. You need her and Ara needs you to get this right so she can have an easier time looking after us."

"Besides," Ara adds carefully. "Nero wanted me to kill Meg, she's not safe with him. I think I almost got to her, she just needs to feel like she's standing on solid ground with us. She needs us, Lester."

"Meg doesn't want to be found," he keeps his gaze down. "She's under the influence of her stepfather."

Percy fidgets with his pen. "I've lost too many people to bad influence: Ethan Nakamura, Luke Castellan... We almost lost Nico, too... No. No more. Listen to Ara, you can't give up on Meg. You guys are bound together. Besides, she's one of the good guys."

"I've known many of the good guys. Most of them got turned into beasts, or statues, or— or trees..."

"She's just like I was at her age," Ara places a hand on his shoulder and absorbs some of his anguish. "And look at me now, I have a great sense of humor and I'm so pretty."

"I hate you," Apollo says weakly.

Rachel chuckles. "Things can turn out differently, Apollo. That's the nice thing about being human. We only have one life, but we can choose what kind of story it's going to be."

"It's all about who's there with you," Ara nods. "And I've been exceeding expectations since I was ten."

"I hope you're right," he sighs.

"Well, for starters, I need a prophecy," Ara straightens her posture. "So let's hear it."

Lester wrinkles his nose, but he replies.

There once was a god named Apollo

Who plunged in a cave blue and hollow

Upon a three-seater 

The bronze fire-eater

Was forced death and madness to swallow

Rachel covers her mouth. "A limerick?"

"I know! I'm doomed!"

"Why? What does that mean?" Ara frowns.

"Birdy," Percy speaks suddenly in alert. "Those lines... Do they mean what I think they mean?"

"Well," Apollo looks at him, "I believe the blue cave refers to the Oracle of Trophonius. It was a... a very dangerous ancient Oracle."

"No. The other lines. Three-seater, bronze fire-eater, yadda yadda." Ara feels something swelling in her chest the more her brother says, something tightly bound and almost impossible to contain, but she tries to, because she hates disappointment. "Harley's beacon." Percy stands and looks around. "He said you gave it a tuning adjustment? I guess that did the trick."

Ara's pulse is racing. "But we never got a response, we thought—" her throat closes up suddenly, tight with emotion.

"Were there any other lines?" Percy demands, staring at Apollo. "Like, except for the limerick?"

"Several," Apollo starts to catch up, his eyes set on Ara. "Just bits and pieces I didn't understand. The fall of the sun; the final verse. Um, Indiana, banana. Happiness approaches. Something about pages burning."

Percy squeezes Ara's shoulders, and it's great that he does that because otherwise Ara would've doubled over and fainted. "There you go! Happiness approaches. Happy is a name—well, the English version, anyway." 

"Oh gods," Ara knows exactly where to look, spotting a tiny shape in the distance. "Oh, gods!"

"Apollo," Percy says with a huge smile. "Your escort is on the way."

Festus is spiraling down to the beach. Ara bolts downhill without saying anything, her voice is gone, her entire body buzzes with excitement and all she's thinking is a three-lettered name with huge exclamation points at the end of it. She can't remember ever being angry at Leo for leaving, can't remember being angry about the magic scroll having no messages for her. All she wants is to see him, to make sure he's alive, and most importantly, free of curses.

People call after her as she passes them running, but she doesn't stop, her soul light is glowing brighter than it's done in months, and everything around her is a blur of color and noises. She has a single goal in mind, and she reaches it the moment Festus crashes by the shore, a mix of sand and mud jumping everywhere, a large cloud of dust and smoke elevating from the collision obscuring her vision. Ara stumbles to a stop and surveys the cloud, eyes wide and lightheaded. Lily, Connor, and Nico are the first to reach her. 

"No way..." Connor whispers.

"The crazy elf did it," Lily mumbles in Italian. "Lucky bastard!"

Someone grunts as they make their way out of the cloud, and suddenly, there he is. "Holy crap!" Leo coughs. "I'm so tired of crashlanding everywhere..."

It feels like she's been holding her breath for longer than a few seconds, Calypso comes out of the mess right after the boy, but Ara doesn't notice her at first. The campers gather around them, throwing nervous glances at their General, waiting to see what her reaction will be after months apart.

Leo locks eyes with her, blinks, and so abruptly it knocks the air right out of her lungs again, he smiles. That amazing, crooked grin she's begged the gods to see for six full months. "Leo..." she speaks hoarsely, but her joke dies without even starting. 

"I know," he smirks, knowing what she's trying to say. "It's been three years and you're married to a fireman who looks like Apollo?"

Ara rushes forward and crashes against him, tightly wrapping her arms around his neck while crying. "You're here..." 

Leo holds her with the same amount of emotion, he's shaking. "Gods, I missed you." He breathes, sounding just like her.

"Ara, c'mon you have the power to stop this!"

"I really don't," she mumbles against Leo's neck. "They're doing it for me, because they know I can't do it."

"They're not my girlfriend so I don't see why they get to punch me!"

"The line starts to the left! Orderly queue, guys!" Nico walks past handing out tickets. Ara's pretty sure he's given at least three to Lily.

"You scared my best friend and she cried for months, so man up and take the punishment," Lily punches his arm, doing little to hold back the impact.

"Ouch!"

"For what is worth, I don't think you deserve to be punished," Ara tilts her head so she can look at him, pressing her cheek on his shoulder.

Percy's eyes widen in disbelief. "You wanted to sink his head down the toilet for not leaving any sappy messages on the scroll!"

Leo snorts. "That scroll was for camp, though. I sent one just for you!" He looks at her. "You didn't get it?"

"What? I never got a scroll!" 

"Ah, bummer, I was really proud of it, there were some Mr. Darcy-level bars in it," Leo shakes his head. "I'm sorry."

"I didn't know you sent one for me," she softens. "I'm sorry."

"That's—ow!"

"You're a jerk, and we all hate you," Miranda Gardner briefly kisses his cheek and pats his head. "If you ever disappear like that again, we'll line up to kill you."

"Okay, okay!" Leo huffs, leaning closer to Ara. "I'm not sure I'm happy to be back." But Ara's clinging to him and can feel his emotions. He's delighted with the attention, even if they're all punching him.

Percy shakes his head. "Six months, dude, you had my sister all worried. We're friends and everything, but I was seriously considering to go out there and hunt you down myself—"

"Do you think I wanted to leave Ara?" Leo scoffs, tightening his grip around her. "We tried sending more holographic scrolls. We tried Iris messages, dream visions, phone calls. Nothing worked. Ow! Hey, Alice, how you doing?" He smiles, rolling his shoulder to ease the pain. "Anyway, we ran into one crisis after another."

Calypso sighs. "Albania was particularly difficult."

"Please do not mention Albania!" Nico raises his voice. "Okay, who's next, folks? One line."

Ara scowls. "That only makes me wanna go there even more..."

"Typical." Leo kisses her forehead, then winces when another camper punches him. "Hey, Saggio, why are you holding five tickets? Girl, count your freaking days!" He goes back to the conversation. "So, like I was saying, if Festus hadn't picked up on that homing beacon yesterday, we'd still be flying around, looking for a way out of the Sea of Monsters."

"Oh, I hate that place," Percy makes a face. "There's this big Cyclops, Polyphemus—"

"I know, right?" Leo gawks. "What is up with that guy's breath?"

"Boys," Calypso speaks quietly, "perhaps we should focus on the present?"

Since the landing, Calypso has had trouble meeting Ara's eye, but the girl can tell she's no longer immortal, mostly because the moment she saw Percy there was a brief flash of bright pink coming out of her. Talking about awkward.

Ara doesn't hate the goddess, but it does make her slightly uncomfortable that she won't speak to her. Leo told her once that Calypso wanted to meet her, so she'd sort of, perhaps vainly, assumed that the goddess would rush up to her rambling out questions, but instead there she is, sitting stiffly next to Rachel Dare.

It could also have to do with the fact that Percy is here and she very much threw a curse at Annabeth without thinking and Percy totally knows of it since he spent time in Tartarus. Talking about awkward.

"So the communication issues..." Percy continues. "Rachel Dare thinks it's got something to do with this company, Triumvirate."

"Man, why does it not surprise me that modern corporations are run by zombie Roman emperors?"

"They are not zombies," Lester replies, eyeing the way Leo's holding Ara almost like a disapproving father. "And I'm not sure they run all corporations—"

Leo dismisses his comment. Apollo being here doesn't sit well with him, especially after hearing Ara spent the last two days alone with him in the woods. "But they're trying to take over the Oracles."

"Yes."

"And that's bad."

"Very."

"So you need our help. Ow! Hey, Sherman. Where'd you get the new scar, dude?"

While Sherman talks, Ara untangles herself from Leo, trying to lock eyes with Calypso, she glances at Lester, noticing he's doing the same. He's probably thinking the same she's thinking. Another immortal stripped down from her powers, that's gotta do something to the status quo, right?

Calypso does an odd movement on the table and her face falls when nothing happens, then she realizes Ara and Apollo are looking and blushes, fixing her eyes on Ara as she explains. "Since leaving Ogygia, I have no powers. I am fully mortal. I keep hoping, but—" 

"You want a drink?" Percy offers offhandedly.

"I got it." Leo reaches across the table and pours the lemonade promptly. Ara scowls, no girl is ever amused when her boyfriend goes out of his way to serve another girl so earnestly. "Here you go."

"Thank you, Leo."

"No problem," he smiles sympathetically, then sits down and wraps his arm around Ara's shoulders and she feels the guilt coming out of him.

Ara observes him intently, Leo is looking slightly down at her and not up like six months ago, the rough environment and the physician's cure granted him seven or eight additional inches of height. Now he's taller than Nico and Ara, but not tall enough to reach Percy's—or Lester's—nose. Still, he came back to a lot, and Calypso is out here with nothing to her name, he's probably stressing about doing right by her.

They may not be doomed by a curse anymore, but Ara suspects that they'll never grow out of this awfully inconvenient habit they both have of helping people no matter what. They've changed entirely, but most of their hearts remain.

Harley gets to the front and punches Leo, then squeezes him in a tight hug. "Hey, brother." Leo says affectionately, patting the boy's head. "You brought me home with that beacon of yours, H-Meister. You're a hero! You know I never would've left you hanging like that on purpose, don't you?"

"Birdy helped me," Harley points out. "I love her."

Leo turns to look at her, delighted to see her flushed. "That makes two of us, buddy."

"So," Calypso continues, looking uncomfortable, "these problems with the Roman emperors—how can we help?"

"You will help me, then?" Lester blushes. "Despite... ah, well, I always knew you were kindhearted and forgiving, Calypso. I meant to visit you at Ogygia more often—"

"Spare me." Calypso wrinkles her nose. "I'll help you if Leo and Ara decide to help you, and they seem to have some affection for you. Why, I can't imagine."

"He's okay," Ara says, "if you look past the whining."

"I'm grateful," Lester decides to focus on Leo. "Leo Valdez, you have always been a gentleman and a genius. After all, you created the Valdezinator."

The boy beams. "I did, didn't I? I suppose that was pretty awesome. So where is this next Oracle you— Ow!"

Nyssa completely runs over Leo both verbally and physically in quick angry Spanish, something about his butt and Jesus. Ara is still in the early stages of learning the language and she hasn't reached the angry-mom-scolding level of fluency.

 "Yeah, okay, okay." Leo raises his hands in surrender. "Dang, hermana, I love you, too!"

"Don't leave him out of your sight, Birdy," Nyssa points at her.

Ara smiles, snuggling against him and kissing his cheek. "Wouldn't dream of it."

Leo presses his cheek on her hair, hugging her tightly. "So this next Oracle, you said it was where?"

Percy taps the table to call for attention. "Chiron and I were talking about this. He figures this triumvirate thingie... they probably divided America into three parts, with one emperor in charge of each. We know Nero is holed up in New York, so we're guessing this next Oracle is in the second dude's territory, maybe in the middle third of the U.S."

"Oh, the middle third of the U.S.!" Leo exaggerates his joy. "Piece of torta, then. We'll just search the entire middle of the country!"

"Still with the sarcasm," Percy smiles a bit.

"Hey, man, I've sailed with the most sarcastic scalawags on the high seas."

"He's talking about you," Percy looks at her, then high-fives Leo.

Ara ignores that particular nightmare and thinks about Lester's prophetic lines. "Didn't the grove say something about Indiana?"

"I was just thinking that," Lester agrees. "Good place to start, isn't it? Relatively close when you have a flying dragon."

"My boy, I am so pleased to have you back," Chiron arrives in his wheelchair, pushed by Lily. Everything about that image screams danger. "And you freed Calypso, I see. Well done, and welcome, both of you!" He offers to hug Leo, which is extremely rare.

"Uh, thanks, Chiron." Leo hesitates before leaning into it.

In a flash, Chiron's hoove kicks Leo's belly making him grunt. "Mr. Valdez," he continues quietly, "if you ever pull a stunt like that again—"

"I got it, I got it!" Leo coughs, holding his stomach. "Dang, for a teacher, you got a heck of a high kick. Also, why am I getting kicked when Ara has done a lot more crazy things than I have?"

"I've never died," Ara disputes. "You did. Also, Chiron can't touch the gods's valuables."

"She's right, though that doesn't mean I don't know my way around the rules," he looks at her gravely. "General, if you do something foolish during the quest, I will have you repaint the Big House." Chiron gets taken away by Rachel, and Lily gets back to the front of the line. 

Leo sighs in defeat. "Do it quick, ghost-face."

Lily punches him right on the spot she knows will numb his entire arm. Leo curses loudly in Spanish. "Yo, Nico!" He groans. "Please tell me that's it for the physical abuse!"

"For now." Nico comes to stand next to Lily. "We're still trying to get in touch with the West Coast. You'll have a few dozen people out there who will definitely want to hit you."

Leo scoffs. "Yeah, that's something to look forward to." He leans to whisper in Ara's ear. "Too late to run away and build a life in México?"

Ara chuckles and kisses his cheek. "Too soon."

Next Chapter –>

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