Ch.17

The cops grabbed me immediately after the fight, but luckily they had gotten everyone else.

According to the L.A. news, the explosion at the Santa Monica beach had been caused when a crazy kidnapper fired a shotgun at a police car. He accidentally hit a gas main that had ruptured during the earthquake.

This crazy kidnapper (a.k.a. Ares) was the same man who had abducted me and two other adolescents (a.k.a. Percy and Grover) in New York and brought us across country on a ten-day odyssey of terror.

The poor little Jackson boys weren't international criminals after all. A concerned employee at Oklahoma McDonald's had seen the man threatening his abductees outside, gotten a friend to take a photo, and notified the police. Finally, brave Adrian Jackson (I was beginning to like this kid) had stolen a gun from his captor in Los Angeles and battled him shotgun-to-rifle on the beach. Police had arrived just in time. But in the spectacular explosion, five police cars had been destroyed and the captor had fled. No fatalities had occurred. The Jackson boys and their friend were safely in police custody.

The reporters fed us this whole story. We just nodded and acted tearful and exhausted (which wasn't hard), and played victimized kids for the cameras. While mom cried and said she'd followed us cross country to try and save us.

"All I want," I said, choking back my tears, "is to see my loving stepfather again. Every time

I saw him on TV, calling me and Percy delinquent punks, I knew ... somehow ... we would be okay. And I know he'll want to reward each and every person in this beautiful city of Los Angeles with a free major appliance from his store. Here's the phone number." The police and reporters were so moved that they passed around the hat and raised money for four tickets on the next plane to New York.

I knew there was no choice but to fly. I hoped Zeus would cut me some slack, considering the circumstances. But it was still hard to force myself on board the flight. Dying in Yharnam I can do but dying here... That's a whole other story, one that ends with that death.

Takeoff was a nightmare. Every spot of turbulence was scarier than a monster or beast. I didn't unclench my hands from the armrests until we touched down safely at La Guardia. I flew a lot in my past life so now having something I had to scared of kinda upset me.The local press was waiting for us outside security, there was no real way to avoid them so we had to power through, we answered questions here and there but tried to keep it short.

We split up at the taxi stand. I told Grover to get mom home and the hurry to Half-Blood Hill and tell Chiron what all had happened.

Me and Percy hopped in a taxi and headed into Manhattan.

Thirty minutes later, we walked into the lobby of the Empire State Building.

We must have looked like a homeless kids, with our tattered clothes. I personally hadn't slept in at least twenty-four hours.

I went up to the guard at the front desk and said, "Six hundredth floor."

He was reading a huge book with a picture of a wizard on the front. I wasn't much into

fantasy, but the book must've been good, because the guard took a while to look up.

"No such floor, kiddo."

"We need an audience with Zeus."

He gave me a vacant smile. "Sorry?"

"I swear to gods I'll use this master bolt right now and rummage through your ashes for the key." I said while showing the bolt.

"No! No!" He scrambled out of his seat, fumbled around his desk for a key card, then handed it to me. "Insert this in the security slot. Make sure nobody else is in the elevator with you."

I did as he told me. As soon as the elevator doors closed, I slipped the key into the slot. The card disappeared and a new button appeared on the console, a red one that said 600.

I pressed it and we waited, and waited.

"This is fun isn't it," Percy said.

"What is? The stress of meeting the person most pissed at us right now?"

"Sure, but we get to see dad."

"I thought you hated him?" I responded.

"That's a strong word, more like I disliked him. But I understand why he couldn't be there, ua know?"

"Yeah I guess. To bad I didn't get a cool magic item like you."

Finally, ding. The doors slid open. I stepped out and almost had a heart attack. Even if I knew it would be this way still.

We werw standing on a narrow stone walkway in the middle of the air. Below us was Manhattan, from the height of an airplane. In front of us, white marble steps wound up the spine of a cloud, into the sky. My eyes followed the stairway to its end, where my brain just could not accept what I saw.

From the top of the clouds rose the decapitated peak of a mountain, its summit covered with snow. Clinging to the mountainside were dozens of multileveled palaces—a city of mansions—all with white-columned porticos, gilded terraces, and bronze braziers glowing with a thousand

fires. Roads wound crazily up to the peak, where the largest palace gleamed against the snow. Precariously perched gardens bloomed with olive trees and rosebushes. I could make out an openairmarket filled with colorful tents, a stone amphitheater built on one side of the mountain, a hippodrome and a coliseum on the other. It was an Ancient Greek city, except it wasn't in ruins. It was new, and clean, and colorful, the way Athens must've looked twenty-five hundred years ago.

"Shit," Was all I said.

"Holy shit," Percy responded.

Our trip through Olympus was a daze. We passed some giggling wood nymphs who threw olives at us from their garden. Hawkers in the market offered to sell us ambrosia-on-a-stick, and a new shield, and a genuine glitter-weave replica of the Golden Fleece, as seen on Hephaestus-TV The

nine muses were tuning their instruments for a concert in the park while a small crowd

gathered—satyrs and naiads and a bunch of good-looking teenagers who might've been minor gods and goddesses. Nobody seemed worried about an impending civil war. In fact, everybody seemed in a festive mood. Several of them turned to watch us pass, and whispered to themselves.

We climbed the main road, toward the big palace at the peak. It was a reverse copy of the palace in the Underworld.

There, everything had been black and bronze. Here, everything glittered white and silver.

Hades built his palace to resemble this one. He wasn't welcomed in Olympus except on the winter solstice, so he'd built his own Olympus underground. I felt a little sorry for the guy. To be banished from this place seemed really unfair. It would make anybody bitter.

Steps led up to a central courtyard. Past that, the throne Room.

Room really isn't the right word. The place made Grand Central Station look like a broom

closet. Massive columns rose to a domed ceiling, which was gilded with moving constellations.

Twelve thrones, built for beings the size of Hades, were arranged in an inverted U, just like the cabins at Camp Half-Blood. An enormous fire crackled in the central hearth pit. The thrones were empty except for two at the end: the head throne on the right, and the one to its immediate left. I didn't have to be told who the two gods were that were sitting there, waiting for us to approach. I came toward them.

The gods were in giant human form, as Hades had been, but I could barely look at them

without feeling a tingle, as if my body were starting to burn. Zeus, the Lord of the Gods, wore a dark blue pinstriped suit. He sat on a simple throne of solid platinum. He had a well-trimmed beard, marbled gray and black like a storm cloud. His face was proud and handsome and grim, his eyes rainy gray.

As we got nearer to him, the air crackled and smelled of ozone.

The god sitting next to him was his brother, without a doubt, but he was dressed very

differently. He reminded me of a beachcomber from Key West. He wore leather sandals, khaki Bermuda shorts, and a Tommy Bahama shirt with coconuts and parrots all over it. His skin was deeply tanned, his hands scarred like an old-time fisherman's. His hair was black, like mine. His face had that same brooding look that had always gotten us branded a rebel. But his eyes, seablue

like mine, and then seagreen like Percys, were surrounded by sun-crinkles that told me he smiled a lot, too.

His throne was a deep-sea fisherman's chair. It was the simple swiveling kind, with a black

leather seat and a built-in holster for a fishing pole. Instead of a pole, the holster held a bronze trident, flickering with green light around the tips.

The gods weren't moving or speaking, but there was tension in the air, as if they'd just

finished an argument.

Percy and I approached the fisherman's throne and knelt at his feet. "Father."

To our left, Zeus spoke. "Should you not address the master of this house first, boys?"

We kept our heads down, and waited.

"Peace, brother," Poseidon finally said. His voice stirred my oldest memories: that warm

glow I remembered as a baby, the sensation of this god's hand on my forehead, "The boys defers to their father. This is only right."

"You still claim them then?" Zeus asked, menacingly. "You claim these children whom you sired against our sacred oath?"

"I have admitted my wrongdoing," Poseidon said. "Now I would hear them speak."

"I have spared them once already," Zeus grumbled. "Daring to fly through my domain ... pah! I should have blasted him out of the sky for his impudence."

"And risk destroying your own master bolt?" Poseidon asked calmly. "Let us hear them out,

brother."

Zeus grumbled some more. "I shall listen," he decided. "Then I shall make up my mind

whether or not to cast these boys down from Olympus."

"Boys," Poseidon said. "Look at me."

I did, and I wasn't sure what I saw in his face. There was no clear sign of love or approval.

Nothing to encourage me. It was like looking at the ocean: some days, you could tell what mood it was in. Most days, though, it was unreadable, mysterious.

I got the feeling Poseidon really didn't know what to think of us. He didn't know whether he was happy to have us as sons or not. In a strange way, I was glad that Poseidon was so distant. If he'd tried to apologize, or told me he loved me, or even smiled, it would've felt fake. Like a human dad, making some lame excuse for not being around. I could live with that. After all, I wasn't sure about him yet, either.

"Address Lord Zeus," Poseidon told us. "Tell him your story."

So I told Zeus everything, just as it had happened, with Percy filling in any details I missed. I took out the metal cylinder, which began sparking in the Sky God's presence, and laid it at his feet.

"I swear on The River Styx what we have said is true." I finished.

There was a long silence, broken only by the crackle of the hearth fire.

Zeus opened his palm. The lightning bolt flew into it. As he closed his fist, the metallic points flared with electricity, until he was holding what looked more like the classic thunderbolt, a twenty-foot javelin of arcing, hissing energy that made the hairs on my scalp rise.

"They clearly tell the truth," Zeus muttered. "But that Ares would do such a thing ... it is

most unlike him."

"He is proud and impulsive," Poseidon said. "It runs in the family."

"Lord?" I asked.

They both said, "Yes?"

"Ares didn't act alone. Someone else planned all this. Percy tell them of your dreams."

"I have been hearing a voice," Percy began. "It sounds old, deep within the ground. At first I thought it to be uncle Hades, but now I know that's not true."

Percy described his dreams, and the feeling he'd had on the beach, while I described that momentary breath of evil that had seemed to stop the world, and made Ares back off from killing me.

Poseidon and Zeus looked at each other. They had a quick, intense discussion in Ancient

Greek. I only caught one word. Father.

Poseidon made some kind of suggestion, but Zeus cut him off. Poseidon tried to argue. Zeus held up his hand angrily. "We will speak of this no more," Zeus said. "I must go personally to purify this thunderbolt in the waters of Lemnos, to remove the human taint from its metal."

He rose and looked at us. His expression softened just a fraction of a degree. "You have

done me a service. Few heroes could have accomplished as much."

"To show you my thanks, I shall spare your lives. I do not trust you. I do not like what your arrival means for the future of Olympus. But for the sake of peace in the family, I

shall let you live."

"Um ... thank you, sir." Percy said.

"Yeah, thanks uncle man." I said with a smile.

Zeus grunted at me.

"Do not presume to fly again. Do not let me find you here when I return. Otherwise you shall taste this bolt. And it shall be your last sensation."

Thunder shook the palace. With a blinding flash of lightning, Zeus was gone.

We were alone in the throne room with our father. "Your uncle," Poseidon sighed, "has always had a flair for dramatic exits. I think he would've done well as the god of theater."

"That's funny," I laughed out.

Poseidon smirked.

"Sir," Percy said, "what was in that pit?"

Poseidon regarded him. "Have you not guessed?"

"Kronos," I said. "The king of the Titans."

Even in the throne room of Olympus, far away from Tartarus, the name Kronos darkened the

room, made the hearth fire seem not quite so warm on my back.

Poseidon gripped his trident. "In the First War, boys, Zeus cut our father Kronos into a

thousand pieces, just as Kronos had done to his own father, Ouranos. Zeus cast Kronos's remains into the darkest pit of Tartarus. The Titan army was scattered, their mountain fortress on Etna destroyed, their monstrous allies driven to the farthest corners of the earth. And yet Titans cannot die, any more than we gods can. Whatever is left of Kronos is still alive in some hideous way, still conscious in his eternal pain, still hungering for power."

"He's healing," I said. "He's coming back. We should start preparing for war, and we need real training with our abilities."

Poseidon shook his head. "From time to time, over the eons, Kronos has stirred. He enters

men's nightmares and breathes evil thoughts. He wakens restless monsters from the depths. But to suggest he could rise from the pit is another thing."

"Would you chance that he isn't?" I asked.

Poseidon was silent for a long time.

"Lord Zeus has closed discussion on this matter. He will not allow talk of Kronos. You have completed your quest, children. That is all you need to do."

Silence rung again for even longer.

"Your mother is a queen among women," Poseidon said wistfully. "I had not met such a

mortal woman in a thousand years. Still ... I am sorry you were born, children. I have brought you a hero's fate, and a hero's fate is never happy. It is never anything but tragic. Even now I wonder why you two were born, I was so in love that I didn't prevent the birth of twins in time."

"Hey I don't mind old man," I said with a laugh. "Not like I plan on dying anytime soon, and I definitely won't let handbag here die."

"Still... Your fate is tragic even if you don't realize it yet."

"Well I guess it's time for us to go, bye dad see ya later." I called out.

We were five steps away when he called, "boys."

We turned.

There was a different light in his eyes, a fiery kind of pride. "You did well. Do not

misunderstand me. Whatever else you do, know that you are mine. You are the true sons of the Sea God. Adrian stay back for a minute."

Walking back I looked at him, "What's up boss."

"I realized that I never left you a gift like I did Percy."

"Ah I see, oh well. I don't blame ya." I was honestly feelin pretty cheeky, had just massively changed the quest even if nobody knew.

"Well I'd like to reward you for doing so well. What would you like."

"Let's see... I got a pretty good weapon right now so I guess I could use some armor, like a sweat shirt that says Poseidon's kid that won't let me get to hot or cold and when you oull the draw strings it turns into a chest plate and forearm guards." I said in a rushed voice.

"Look for it when you get back to your cabin," He responded with a smirk.

Percy was waiting for me right outside.

"So what did he want?" He asked me.

"Oh uh, you'll see when we get back to the cabin." I said with a wink.

As we walked back through the city of the gods, conversations stopped. The muses paused their concert. People and satyrs and naiads all turned toward us, their faces filled with respect and gratitude, and as we passed, they knelt, as if we were some kind of hero.

Right as we were about to get on the elevator someone called out,

"Adrian Jackson, wait right there."

"Go on Percy I'll see you at the apartment." I said while pushing him into the elevator.

"You sure?"

"Yeah man, make sure mom is all good."

Turning around after he had nodded to me I saw who had called out.

She was a beautiful woman, with bronze skin and red eyes kind of like Ares. She had long black hair and radiated an aura of bloodshed.

"I am Enyo, Goddess of war, destruction, conquest, bloodlust, and blood." She said as she walked up to me.

"Um... Hello milady." I said while looking confused.

_____________________________________________

Welp that's a cliff hanger... I wonder why.

What did you all think of this chap? I really tried but honestly this one felt really hard to write, I don't know why.

It's currently 22:27 so I'm about to sleep, for everyone that has asked about the pimp can webnovel dislikes the use of the word pimp and will delete your comments. Please don't swear in the comments if you want me to respond as again webnovel deletes any comments with swears in it... I can say it all I want though, shit man.