PJO: The Age of Heroes | Chapter 13 - The Battle of Bunker Hill
I'm sorry this took a little while to put out, but I got distracted by Weasley twins Harry Potter and various things associated with that. :D
So. Epic battle is... possibly not really all that epic. >>; I figured no one wanted to read pages and pages of fighting (fights are cool for movies, but not so much for writing unless you're really good at it), so I admit that there is a bit of skimming there. But hopefully it will still get the main points across. I guess this really isn't too epic a battle, anyway? That's for the next fic. Uh. Right. :D;
Rated PG-13 or so, maybe R but that would be just for a bad word or two.
Also, you guys love cliffhangers, right? XD;
“Nico...” Percy stood behind me, sounding a little like he wanted to say, “I told you so,” but more like he was too worried to gloat.
I took a deep breath, climbing up from hands and knees into a standing position - or at least something that I hoped approximated one. I tried not to look at the wet spot in the grass where I’d just tried to throw up and had instead just gagged on bile. I guessed throwing up was a problem when you haven’t eaten in at least a day.
“I’m okay,” I said, wiping my mouth on the back of my arm, but I wasn’t entirely convinced of that myself so it wasn’t entirely unreasonable that Percy didn’t look like he believed me in the least.
He glanced down at the wet spot in the grass and then my sword beside it, still planted blade-first in the soil. “Did it work?”
I nodded, then thought better of it and stopped when the world started tilting crazily around me. “Yeah,” I said, spitting into the grass and trying to get the horrible taste out of my mouth, “it worked.” I could feel, ever-so-distantly, that it was working. Right now, the dead were waking. And soon they’d be on their way.
Percy looked sympathetic. “Hey, when we get back, I’m taking you for burgers at McHale’s.” He stepped over to my side and slipped an arm around my waist; I wasn’t sure if he just wanted to be close or if he was afraid I was going to fall over otherwise. I didn’t mind the former, and the latter not have been too far off.
“Heh,” I tried to chuckle, slouching against him, “Yeah, okay.”
He squinted out over the river, where the lights of the city were just starting to wash out as the sky began to grow lighter behind us. “So... how long do you think it’ll take?” I knew what he was thinking - we didn’t know how much time we had. Kronos could be on his way here right now.
I shrugged as best I could. “I dunno. I’m honestly not sure how fast dead people can travel.” Ordinarily I would’ve said walking speed or less, but that was the funny thing about the dead - those that had come back from the other side perceived distances a lot differently than the living did. They could slip through cracks that live people couldn’t, just like I could slip through shadows by virtue of my blood.
“Hm,” Percy said, glancing at me and offering a bit of a grin. “Too bad. I would’ve figured if anybody’d know, it’d be you.”
I smiled in return, but my head was still pounding and I didn’t want to laugh for real. “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”
We just leaned against each other in the pre-dawn air and waited for our army to come. I was alternately feeling pretty awful and just plain tired, but the awful spells were getting shorter and Percy kept an arm around me every time it felt like the ground was going to give way beneath my feet. I could feel the presence of death floating up the street like a low, cold fog, and on it was the smell of bodies - lots of them. They were coming. I just hoped they arrived before Kronos did.
It took maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, but then it happened. Figures began to appear at the end of the road. Up the street they came, not so much in ranks or lines as in groups: massive conglomerations of bone and flesh and bits of hair and cloth. Shuffling up the road were bodies that had once been men, women, and children. Some were still wearing the rags of what had obviously once been fine clothing, but some were rotted down to the bones. Most still had bits of dirt and grass clinging to them, and a few were even carrying long, splintered pieces of wood that must have come from their coffins. All of their eyes - their eye-sockets, really, because none had actual eyeballs left - were empty, vacant, but somehow I knew all of them were looking for me.
It was really pretty gruesome. I was starting to see the appeal of just using skeletons, the way my father did. The smell wasn’t nearly as overpowering.
Now it was Percy’s turn to look sick, as his arm slipped away from me and he took a few steps forward, as if to get a better view. “Oh, fuck, Nico...” He stared at the mass of bodies coming toward us, his expression right down the middle between awe and horror.
“You said you liked zombies,” I said, trying to sound wry, but even I was a little unsettled. I’d never controlled this many corpses before - never even come close to it. Animating them had taken plenty of energy from me, but at least keeping them animated wasn’t as hard as getting them there. I wasn’t feeling a whole lot worse than I had when I’d called to them. But even if I had felt worse, it wouldn’t have mattered. We needed these corpses - these people. And so I stood my ground and watched them come.
Beside me, Percy whispered, “I think I changed my mind.”
I glanced over at him, swallowing the bitter taste in my mouth at the look on his face. “Percy...” I whispered, for the first time in a while actually worried about what his reaction might be, “this is who I am. This,” I spread my arms unsteadily as the legions of the dead shuffled into some semblance of order around us, “is what I do.” I’d known he wasn’t going to like this idea, but now I started to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have even suggested it, even if I did think it might be our only hope.
Percy was quiet, looking at me for a long moment. The only sound was the clicking and creaking and shuffling of the corpses as they assembled themselves into an army that, I hoped, could counter whatever Kronos would bring with him. But suddenly I was more worried about the boy in front of me and what he saw when he looked at me and knew that the only thing I could ever reign over was the dead. Being sixteen had only made me stronger, but that in turn meant I was just that much more connected to the Underworld - to death.
Maybe he could never understand; after all, Percy had the sea - the pure, boundless waters that made life itself possible. I had the opposite - the horrible stench of death, everything dead and dying that no longer belonged among the living. Everything from monsters to pegasi and dryads could smell death on me, and I would never be rid of it. For the first time since that day my father had stopped us in the streets of New York, I wondered if maybe this just wasn’t possible. If maybe love just wasn’t enough.
But then Percy’s expression changed - he started looking less sick, and while the awe didn’t go away, the horror did. He nodded slowly and he started to smile, just a little. “I know it is,” Percy said quietly, just watching me and the dead bodies that had come to my - our - aid. “And I don’t think I’d want you to be any other way.”
I felt almost faint with relief; or that might have been the effect of exerting so much willpower over the corpses. All the same, I pulled my sword from where it was still lodged in the ground and shuffled over to Percy so I could stand shoulder to shoulder with him. “You do that a whole lot,” I admitted, even though it was clear from his expression that he didn’t know what I meant.
“Do what?”
“Nothing,” I said, and reached over to clasp his hand. Maybe I’d tell him later, but not right now. It was too big to explain, even if all I had to say was, You make me want to die when I think you don’t want me around. Now wasn’t the time to think about that.
His grip was dry and firm, and he stood steadily beside me. I looked around us as the army I’d created. The entire hill was filled with milling corpses shifting uneasily in the grass. The blue-black of the sky had started turning into streaks of white and orange in the east, but the sun still hadn’t broken the horizon. Overhead, there was still no sign of our reinforcements.
And what was when we heard it.
It started out as just a distant crashing sound and intermittent car alarms, but as the noise grew louder we could see something moving a couple blocks away. A large something. As it drew closer, the shadowy mass resolved into a legion of dracaenae archers, a large pack of telekhines, and at least fifteen figures in Greek armor that must have been half-bloods that Kronos had brought around to his cause. Bringing up the rear were four giants, and behind them was a red convertible - driven by Medea, with Kronos in the passenger seat. He was wearing golden armor and his scythe rested against his shoulder, the blade glinting wickedly off the brightening sky.
It might not have been quite an army, but it was no small task force, either. And it was definitely more than Percy or I could have taken alone, especially after what we’d been through in the past two days. But that was what we had our army for - the army of dead at our backs, ranging from colonists to slaves, Samuel Adams and John Hancock to Paul Revere and Mother Goose. I knew that most of the corpses wouldn’t last long in a battle, but what they lacked in strength they made up for in numbers. We had more bodies, but I still didn’t know if it would be enough.
“... You know, I’m not all that great at history, but didn’t the colonists lose the Battle of Bunker Hill?” Percy suddenly asked.
So he remembered that, too. I nodded grimly. “Yeah, but the British suffered their worst casualties of the entire war.”
Percy glanced at me, locking eyes for a moment. I knew we were both thinking the same thing: even if we weren’t ready to face Kronos, even if Kronos won this battle, we weren’t going out without a fight. We would hurt him. We would make a difference. And if the prophecy required that I die in this one last stand, then I guessed I would. But it would be with Percy at my side.
Just the same, I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Okay.” Percy grasped my hand for a moment, his grip on Riptide never wavering. He squeezed my fingers and I could hear, almost as though he’d said it out loud, exactly what he was thinking.
Let’s do it.
*
Of course, doing it was a great idea until one actually sat back and considered the feasibility of said action. After all, we were still just two half-bloods facing off against a Titan lord. Medea’s car slowed to a stop and Kronos stepped out onto the street. He strode up through the ranks of monsters and they parted for him so he could come to the front of the crowd and stand at the bottom of the steps leading up the hill.
“Well, what have we here?” he asked, and Luke’s mouth twisted into a gruesome approximation of a smirk. “I see you’ve decided to hold a party.”
“Yeah, well didn’t anyone ever tell you crashing other people’s parties is rude?” Percy called from beside me, but he didn’t move. We had the higher ground and we weren’t going to give any of it up without a fight. “This is strictly invitation-only.”
Kronos clucked his tongue. “So rude. You could have held a place at my side, Percy Jackson - you could have been the one with real power. And yet you threw it away for what? For gods that have forsaken you because you love a man. You know they fear you already.”
Percy’s eyes narrowed. I felt him tense beside me. “You don’t know anything about me,” he spat. “Or the gods.”
I knew he was thinking back to that day, not too long ago, when Poseidon had found us alone on the beach. He’d said we’d made a lot of the gods uncomfortable, which was pretty much saying they were mad at us and just couldn’t do anything about it. But Poseidon hadn’t been angry - in fact, he’d said that he would do what he could to support us. I didn’t know if he actually would or whether he’d be successful if he tried (the gods were notoriously bad listeners), but I knew how he felt and that was good enough for me. I knew Percy thought so, too.
“And you - what do you think, son of Hades?” Now Kronos trained those horrible golden eyes on me. Those eyes weren’t human, and they didn’t look right staring out of a human face. “I see you’ve weakened yourself to make a stand you will ultimately lose.” His eyes swept over the hill before he looked back to me. “Do you even know why you did this? Do you truly know the person beside you? Do you know what he wants, what he’s willing to give you - and more importantly, what he isn’t?” He spread his arms, holding up his scythe like a flag. “You know what I can give you - you know what I have already given you. Are you sure you wish to throw it all away?”
Mostly I was sure that I wanted to spit in his face. I knew what Percy was willing to give me, because he’d already done it. Percy had been willing to give up his life for mine, and there was no higher price a mortal could pay. There was no question in my mind as to what he was or wasn’t willing to do. Sure, there were times - like there had been, a few minutes ago - where he held more power over me than my father or any other god ever had. There were times when I worried that I wasn’t what he wanted, that I could never be good enough for him. But those times had all passed, and he was still here beside me. He understood me in a way that Kronos never could.
“I don’t see how I’m throwing anything away,” I finally said, staring down the Titan in mortal’s clothing. This close to him, I could feel Luke Castellan’s own life force clearly - he was still alive, somewhere inside his own body, trapped. But he was dying. There was less of him left every time I encountered the Titan, and I knew Kronos could feel it, too. He knew he was running out of time just as much as I did. That was why he’d asked me for help.
Well, he wasn’t going to get it. Not from me. “All I can see is you, throwing away your chance to surrender before we make you do it.”
Kronos’ eyes narrowed, and I could almost feel the anger rolling off him in waves. “We shall see,” he said lowly, “just which of us does the surrendering today, little godling. And we shall see,” he finished, as he turned and retreated back through his lines, “how much you come to regret your decision.”
He wasn’t even going to fight us, I realized. He was going to let his monsters do the dirty work, while he and Medea sat prettily in the rear and let us wear ourselves down - or better yet, watched us die as we were overwhelmed by monsters. We might have most of Boston’s dead at our backs, but they were nothing compared to living, breathing half-bloods, who still weren’t here yet -
“Oh.” Almost as if he sensed that thought, Kronos stopped in place and turned to face us again. “And don’t worry about your little ‘reinforcements’. I’ve seen to it that they have a... party of their own to attend.”
Percy and I stared open-mouthed at each other for a moment, stunned. How had he known? Had Cephissus been spying on us when we’d gotten the Iris Message from Annabeth? I felt my stomach drop. If we weren’t going to get help - if they needed our help...
But there was no more time to think about it. Kronos turned and made his way toward the back of his company again. As he walked, he raised his hand in a gesture to his troops, and the attack began.
The best laid schemes of mice and men, I thought, and lowered my sword in front of me as the first line of telekhines came charging up the hill and arrows rained down on us as the dracaenae archers took aim.
Things got crazy pretty quickly. You know how battles always look so organized on TV and in movies? Well, they’re really not. There are people (well, in our case make that corpses and monsters) all over the place, and half the time you turn around expecting to come face to face with an enemy only to find out it’s a friend - or, at least, a corpse that’s supposed to be one of the good guys. I could feel it as the dead began to move forward and engage the enemy, as they were hacked to bits or shot through with arrows until they collapsed into piles of dust and bone and cloth, unable to move any longer.
The telekhines got caught up with the corpses, and while they tried to fight their way through I saw several of the figures in armor slide around the line and come charging up the hill. I tried to direct corpses in their direction, but there were too many for me to concentrate on and I had problems of my own as the first half-bloods made their way toward us and decided to try to cut Percy and me down to garner the Titan’s favor.
Percy and I got separated pretty quickly, though we were never all that far apart. I would catch glimpses of him as we spun and ducked, trying to avoid getting hit by arrows and swords and clubs and teeth as, all the while, the dead ambled around us and down the hill in wave after wave. Even from the top of the hill it was hard to tell how things were going because there were just so many bodies everywhere.
But we were at a disadvantage - Percy and I were tired and we had no armor. I’d gotten grazed by at least two arrows, and it was getting hard to avoid more with so many distractions all over. I was used to fighting without a shield, but even though I was faster without the heavy Greek armor the enemy half-bloods wore, I was a lot more vulnerable without it. My arms were sore and tired from blocking blows meant to be taken with a shield or bracers, and my legs were in agony.
What was more, dawn was finally breaking - but there was no sign of reinforcements, either by flying horse or shadow traveling dog. I was really worried now - I mean, there were a lot of campers back at Camp Half-Blood, but we didn’t know what Kronos had sent to keep them busy. What if they hadn’t been ready for an attack?
A sword whooshing barely over the top of my head brought me back into the present and reminded me that if my mind started wandering in earnest, that would be it. That’s the weird thing about being ADHD, though - your mind can’t help but be in a million places at once, and while it’s usually really helpful when you’re fighting for your life, it can also be a big disadvantage if you can’t figure out what’s important to concentrate on and what’s not.
But right now all I could concentrate on was how well this was not going. All around us, corpses were dropping like flies as they were battered past all recognition by Kronos’ forces. Percy and I were fighting for our lives, but we were tired and getting moreso by the second. I didn’t know if we could outlast the monsters, and there was a very real chance that help wasn’t coming. All I could think was that I hated Kronos so much, hated how he wasn’t even a part of this battle, how Percy and I were going to die without even getting close to him. This wasn’t what we needed to be doing. We had to get to the heart of the matter - the heart -
Realization suddenly swelled within me; and with it, a new sense of determination. I knew what I had to do, if only I could get close enough to do it. “Percy!” I shouted; he was fighting with a telekhine not ten feet from me, and as I watched he swung his sword in a downward arc that severed the beast’s arm from its body - seconds before said body exploded into a shower of dust, adding to the layer of grime already sticking to Percy’s sweaty skin. I could see the various nicks and cuts from when he hadn’t been fast enough, but there was still determination in his eyes and I knew he’d fight until he couldn’t fight anymore. I just hoped that it would be long enough.
“You’ve got to hold here!” I said, trying to get to him through the crowd, pushing away corpses as they shuffled onward towards the enemy. “I know what I have to do!”
He frowned, not understanding. “What - you have to... what?” he panted, even as another enermy half-blood charged him. They hit, swords clanging, and Percy looked wildly at me. “What are you going to do?” he called, even as I turned around and started making my way down the hill.
“What I should’ve done before,” I told him, and then I concentrated on getting to the base of the hill. I took a deep breath, calling on all the dead near me to help - they began crowding around me, forming a human shield of sorts that surrounded me as I pushed my way to the steps and began descending them.
Most of the monsters were on the hill now - there was only a group of dracaenae left on the street, along with two of the giants standing guard around Medea’s car. But the half-lizard women had bows and arrows, which weren’t all that great against a close-in attack. I sent the corpses stumbling ahead of me and into the archers, who screamed in frustration and tried to bat them away as I passed through the line, leaving the chaos behind me.
The giants flanking the car grunted and made to move, but Kronos held up a hand from the backseat, where he was perched on the headrests, watching me intently. He grasped his scythe loosely in one hand, the blade glinting wickedly and I tried not to look at it.
“Magnificent.” Kronos looked at me, his golden eyes almost glowing. His mouth stretched into a wide, horrific grin. “You’ve come so far, son of Hades. I’ve given you such power, and it gladdens me to see how you’ve embraced it, futile though your attempts may be. You will have the honor of dying on my blade.”
I looked at Kronos, and I saw him for what he truly was - a tired, once-defeated Titan occupying a mortal body that was withering with every breath he took. I saw the faintest flicker of Luke - the real Luke - scrabbling away at the prison that held him, with no hope of release except for that of death. And that I could give him.
“I don’t think so.” I didn’t have any more time to think. I only had time to act, and so I followed my gut before my brain could decide it wasn’t a good idea. I barreled toward the Titan in the half-blood’s body, sidestepping the giants and ignoring the arrow that grazed my upper arm from behind. I had to make it to him before he slowed time, or I’d never even be able to touch him.
Suddenly I was on top of him, too close to stop, and I went crashing into the Titan before he’d even realized what had happened. I toppled him out of the convertible and we hit the pavement with a thud. Golden eyes stared at me from Luke Castellan’s scarred face, but I was too close for him to hurt with the scythe, too near for him to stop time without stopping it for himself as well.
“What - ?”
I only had seconds before someone stopped me - before a giant simply swatted me off his lord or before Medea clawed me off of him. Only seconds to do what no one else could.
He’d given me new power, yes. And with that had come the realization - if I could control death, then why couldn’t I urge it in the direction that I wanted? If the only way out for Luke was to die, I now had the power to grant him that wish. I could see him there, in Kronos’ hold, and I had the power to give his soul the rest it finally deserved. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I felt that I could do this more strongly than I had felt anything in my entire life, save maybe the way I felt toward the half-blood boy still fighting up on the hill. I really hoped that hunch was right, or I was about to die for nothing.
And so I reached into Kronos, past his armor and his skin. All it took was enough concentration, and my hands sunk right into Luke’s body like he was a hologram. I pushed my fingers past metal and skin and beating heart and bone like they weren’t even there. My vision blurred and shimmered, and still I reached -
There.
I grasped what I was looking for in my hands, held on tight, and I pulled.
Something silver-gold and sharp hit me square in the chest, igniting a fire that started at my breastbone and seemed to spread to every part of my body. I felt my body fly backwards, my head cracking against the steps leading up the hill. Fireworks exploded behind my eyes as pain blossomed along my spine, but I fought unconsciousness with every shred of strength I had left. I cracked my eyes open, needing to see it -
And there it was. Glowing, soft-edged and white between my fingers, was Luke Castellan’s soul.
It was roughly half the size of his physical body, human-shaped but without any real features. But in my mind I could see his features where a face would have been, and the same way you can look through someone’s eyes and see their soul, I looked at his soul and all I could see were his eyes, wide and pleading. And I said what Luke needed to hear.
Go, I told him. Go now.
There was a fizzle of light, and as the thing slipped out of my fingers and away into the morning air, I felt my body give out and I fell back against the steps as I lost consciousness for what I knew might be the last time.
So. Epic battle is... possibly not really all that epic. >>; I figured no one wanted to read pages and pages of fighting (fights are cool for movies, but not so much for writing unless you're really good at it), so I admit that there is a bit of skimming there. But hopefully it will still get the main points across. I guess this really isn't too epic a battle, anyway? That's for the next fic. Uh. Right. :D;
Rated PG-13 or so, maybe R but that would be just for a bad word or two.
Also, you guys love cliffhangers, right? XD;
“Nico...” Percy stood behind me, sounding a little like he wanted to say, “I told you so,” but more like he was too worried to gloat.
I took a deep breath, climbing up from hands and knees into a standing position - or at least something that I hoped approximated one. I tried not to look at the wet spot in the grass where I’d just tried to throw up and had instead just gagged on bile. I guessed throwing up was a problem when you haven’t eaten in at least a day.
“I’m okay,” I said, wiping my mouth on the back of my arm, but I wasn’t entirely convinced of that myself so it wasn’t entirely unreasonable that Percy didn’t look like he believed me in the least.
He glanced down at the wet spot in the grass and then my sword beside it, still planted blade-first in the soil. “Did it work?”
I nodded, then thought better of it and stopped when the world started tilting crazily around me. “Yeah,” I said, spitting into the grass and trying to get the horrible taste out of my mouth, “it worked.” I could feel, ever-so-distantly, that it was working. Right now, the dead were waking. And soon they’d be on their way.
Percy looked sympathetic. “Hey, when we get back, I’m taking you for burgers at McHale’s.” He stepped over to my side and slipped an arm around my waist; I wasn’t sure if he just wanted to be close or if he was afraid I was going to fall over otherwise. I didn’t mind the former, and the latter not have been too far off.
“Heh,” I tried to chuckle, slouching against him, “Yeah, okay.”
He squinted out over the river, where the lights of the city were just starting to wash out as the sky began to grow lighter behind us. “So... how long do you think it’ll take?” I knew what he was thinking - we didn’t know how much time we had. Kronos could be on his way here right now.
I shrugged as best I could. “I dunno. I’m honestly not sure how fast dead people can travel.” Ordinarily I would’ve said walking speed or less, but that was the funny thing about the dead - those that had come back from the other side perceived distances a lot differently than the living did. They could slip through cracks that live people couldn’t, just like I could slip through shadows by virtue of my blood.
“Hm,” Percy said, glancing at me and offering a bit of a grin. “Too bad. I would’ve figured if anybody’d know, it’d be you.”
I smiled in return, but my head was still pounding and I didn’t want to laugh for real. “I guess we’ll just have to find out.”
We just leaned against each other in the pre-dawn air and waited for our army to come. I was alternately feeling pretty awful and just plain tired, but the awful spells were getting shorter and Percy kept an arm around me every time it felt like the ground was going to give way beneath my feet. I could feel the presence of death floating up the street like a low, cold fog, and on it was the smell of bodies - lots of them. They were coming. I just hoped they arrived before Kronos did.
It took maybe fifteen or twenty minutes, but then it happened. Figures began to appear at the end of the road. Up the street they came, not so much in ranks or lines as in groups: massive conglomerations of bone and flesh and bits of hair and cloth. Shuffling up the road were bodies that had once been men, women, and children. Some were still wearing the rags of what had obviously once been fine clothing, but some were rotted down to the bones. Most still had bits of dirt and grass clinging to them, and a few were even carrying long, splintered pieces of wood that must have come from their coffins. All of their eyes - their eye-sockets, really, because none had actual eyeballs left - were empty, vacant, but somehow I knew all of them were looking for me.
It was really pretty gruesome. I was starting to see the appeal of just using skeletons, the way my father did. The smell wasn’t nearly as overpowering.
Now it was Percy’s turn to look sick, as his arm slipped away from me and he took a few steps forward, as if to get a better view. “Oh, fuck, Nico...” He stared at the mass of bodies coming toward us, his expression right down the middle between awe and horror.
“You said you liked zombies,” I said, trying to sound wry, but even I was a little unsettled. I’d never controlled this many corpses before - never even come close to it. Animating them had taken plenty of energy from me, but at least keeping them animated wasn’t as hard as getting them there. I wasn’t feeling a whole lot worse than I had when I’d called to them. But even if I had felt worse, it wouldn’t have mattered. We needed these corpses - these people. And so I stood my ground and watched them come.
Beside me, Percy whispered, “I think I changed my mind.”
I glanced over at him, swallowing the bitter taste in my mouth at the look on his face. “Percy...” I whispered, for the first time in a while actually worried about what his reaction might be, “this is who I am. This,” I spread my arms unsteadily as the legions of the dead shuffled into some semblance of order around us, “is what I do.” I’d known he wasn’t going to like this idea, but now I started to wonder if maybe I shouldn’t have even suggested it, even if I did think it might be our only hope.
Percy was quiet, looking at me for a long moment. The only sound was the clicking and creaking and shuffling of the corpses as they assembled themselves into an army that, I hoped, could counter whatever Kronos would bring with him. But suddenly I was more worried about the boy in front of me and what he saw when he looked at me and knew that the only thing I could ever reign over was the dead. Being sixteen had only made me stronger, but that in turn meant I was just that much more connected to the Underworld - to death.
Maybe he could never understand; after all, Percy had the sea - the pure, boundless waters that made life itself possible. I had the opposite - the horrible stench of death, everything dead and dying that no longer belonged among the living. Everything from monsters to pegasi and dryads could smell death on me, and I would never be rid of it. For the first time since that day my father had stopped us in the streets of New York, I wondered if maybe this just wasn’t possible. If maybe love just wasn’t enough.
But then Percy’s expression changed - he started looking less sick, and while the awe didn’t go away, the horror did. He nodded slowly and he started to smile, just a little. “I know it is,” Percy said quietly, just watching me and the dead bodies that had come to my - our - aid. “And I don’t think I’d want you to be any other way.”
I felt almost faint with relief; or that might have been the effect of exerting so much willpower over the corpses. All the same, I pulled my sword from where it was still lodged in the ground and shuffled over to Percy so I could stand shoulder to shoulder with him. “You do that a whole lot,” I admitted, even though it was clear from his expression that he didn’t know what I meant.
“Do what?”
“Nothing,” I said, and reached over to clasp his hand. Maybe I’d tell him later, but not right now. It was too big to explain, even if all I had to say was, You make me want to die when I think you don’t want me around. Now wasn’t the time to think about that.
His grip was dry and firm, and he stood steadily beside me. I looked around us as the army I’d created. The entire hill was filled with milling corpses shifting uneasily in the grass. The blue-black of the sky had started turning into streaks of white and orange in the east, but the sun still hadn’t broken the horizon. Overhead, there was still no sign of our reinforcements.
And what was when we heard it.
It started out as just a distant crashing sound and intermittent car alarms, but as the noise grew louder we could see something moving a couple blocks away. A large something. As it drew closer, the shadowy mass resolved into a legion of dracaenae archers, a large pack of telekhines, and at least fifteen figures in Greek armor that must have been half-bloods that Kronos had brought around to his cause. Bringing up the rear were four giants, and behind them was a red convertible - driven by Medea, with Kronos in the passenger seat. He was wearing golden armor and his scythe rested against his shoulder, the blade glinting wickedly off the brightening sky.
It might not have been quite an army, but it was no small task force, either. And it was definitely more than Percy or I could have taken alone, especially after what we’d been through in the past two days. But that was what we had our army for - the army of dead at our backs, ranging from colonists to slaves, Samuel Adams and John Hancock to Paul Revere and Mother Goose. I knew that most of the corpses wouldn’t last long in a battle, but what they lacked in strength they made up for in numbers. We had more bodies, but I still didn’t know if it would be enough.
“... You know, I’m not all that great at history, but didn’t the colonists lose the Battle of Bunker Hill?” Percy suddenly asked.
So he remembered that, too. I nodded grimly. “Yeah, but the British suffered their worst casualties of the entire war.”
Percy glanced at me, locking eyes for a moment. I knew we were both thinking the same thing: even if we weren’t ready to face Kronos, even if Kronos won this battle, we weren’t going out without a fight. We would hurt him. We would make a difference. And if the prophecy required that I die in this one last stand, then I guessed I would. But it would be with Percy at my side.
Just the same, I really hoped it wouldn’t come to that.
“Okay.” Percy grasped my hand for a moment, his grip on Riptide never wavering. He squeezed my fingers and I could hear, almost as though he’d said it out loud, exactly what he was thinking.
Let’s do it.
*
Of course, doing it was a great idea until one actually sat back and considered the feasibility of said action. After all, we were still just two half-bloods facing off against a Titan lord. Medea’s car slowed to a stop and Kronos stepped out onto the street. He strode up through the ranks of monsters and they parted for him so he could come to the front of the crowd and stand at the bottom of the steps leading up the hill.
“Well, what have we here?” he asked, and Luke’s mouth twisted into a gruesome approximation of a smirk. “I see you’ve decided to hold a party.”
“Yeah, well didn’t anyone ever tell you crashing other people’s parties is rude?” Percy called from beside me, but he didn’t move. We had the higher ground and we weren’t going to give any of it up without a fight. “This is strictly invitation-only.”
Kronos clucked his tongue. “So rude. You could have held a place at my side, Percy Jackson - you could have been the one with real power. And yet you threw it away for what? For gods that have forsaken you because you love a man. You know they fear you already.”
Percy’s eyes narrowed. I felt him tense beside me. “You don’t know anything about me,” he spat. “Or the gods.”
I knew he was thinking back to that day, not too long ago, when Poseidon had found us alone on the beach. He’d said we’d made a lot of the gods uncomfortable, which was pretty much saying they were mad at us and just couldn’t do anything about it. But Poseidon hadn’t been angry - in fact, he’d said that he would do what he could to support us. I didn’t know if he actually would or whether he’d be successful if he tried (the gods were notoriously bad listeners), but I knew how he felt and that was good enough for me. I knew Percy thought so, too.
“And you - what do you think, son of Hades?” Now Kronos trained those horrible golden eyes on me. Those eyes weren’t human, and they didn’t look right staring out of a human face. “I see you’ve weakened yourself to make a stand you will ultimately lose.” His eyes swept over the hill before he looked back to me. “Do you even know why you did this? Do you truly know the person beside you? Do you know what he wants, what he’s willing to give you - and more importantly, what he isn’t?” He spread his arms, holding up his scythe like a flag. “You know what I can give you - you know what I have already given you. Are you sure you wish to throw it all away?”
Mostly I was sure that I wanted to spit in his face. I knew what Percy was willing to give me, because he’d already done it. Percy had been willing to give up his life for mine, and there was no higher price a mortal could pay. There was no question in my mind as to what he was or wasn’t willing to do. Sure, there were times - like there had been, a few minutes ago - where he held more power over me than my father or any other god ever had. There were times when I worried that I wasn’t what he wanted, that I could never be good enough for him. But those times had all passed, and he was still here beside me. He understood me in a way that Kronos never could.
“I don’t see how I’m throwing anything away,” I finally said, staring down the Titan in mortal’s clothing. This close to him, I could feel Luke Castellan’s own life force clearly - he was still alive, somewhere inside his own body, trapped. But he was dying. There was less of him left every time I encountered the Titan, and I knew Kronos could feel it, too. He knew he was running out of time just as much as I did. That was why he’d asked me for help.
Well, he wasn’t going to get it. Not from me. “All I can see is you, throwing away your chance to surrender before we make you do it.”
Kronos’ eyes narrowed, and I could almost feel the anger rolling off him in waves. “We shall see,” he said lowly, “just which of us does the surrendering today, little godling. And we shall see,” he finished, as he turned and retreated back through his lines, “how much you come to regret your decision.”
He wasn’t even going to fight us, I realized. He was going to let his monsters do the dirty work, while he and Medea sat prettily in the rear and let us wear ourselves down - or better yet, watched us die as we were overwhelmed by monsters. We might have most of Boston’s dead at our backs, but they were nothing compared to living, breathing half-bloods, who still weren’t here yet -
“Oh.” Almost as if he sensed that thought, Kronos stopped in place and turned to face us again. “And don’t worry about your little ‘reinforcements’. I’ve seen to it that they have a... party of their own to attend.”
Percy and I stared open-mouthed at each other for a moment, stunned. How had he known? Had Cephissus been spying on us when we’d gotten the Iris Message from Annabeth? I felt my stomach drop. If we weren’t going to get help - if they needed our help...
But there was no more time to think about it. Kronos turned and made his way toward the back of his company again. As he walked, he raised his hand in a gesture to his troops, and the attack began.
The best laid schemes of mice and men, I thought, and lowered my sword in front of me as the first line of telekhines came charging up the hill and arrows rained down on us as the dracaenae archers took aim.
Things got crazy pretty quickly. You know how battles always look so organized on TV and in movies? Well, they’re really not. There are people (well, in our case make that corpses and monsters) all over the place, and half the time you turn around expecting to come face to face with an enemy only to find out it’s a friend - or, at least, a corpse that’s supposed to be one of the good guys. I could feel it as the dead began to move forward and engage the enemy, as they were hacked to bits or shot through with arrows until they collapsed into piles of dust and bone and cloth, unable to move any longer.
The telekhines got caught up with the corpses, and while they tried to fight their way through I saw several of the figures in armor slide around the line and come charging up the hill. I tried to direct corpses in their direction, but there were too many for me to concentrate on and I had problems of my own as the first half-bloods made their way toward us and decided to try to cut Percy and me down to garner the Titan’s favor.
Percy and I got separated pretty quickly, though we were never all that far apart. I would catch glimpses of him as we spun and ducked, trying to avoid getting hit by arrows and swords and clubs and teeth as, all the while, the dead ambled around us and down the hill in wave after wave. Even from the top of the hill it was hard to tell how things were going because there were just so many bodies everywhere.
But we were at a disadvantage - Percy and I were tired and we had no armor. I’d gotten grazed by at least two arrows, and it was getting hard to avoid more with so many distractions all over. I was used to fighting without a shield, but even though I was faster without the heavy Greek armor the enemy half-bloods wore, I was a lot more vulnerable without it. My arms were sore and tired from blocking blows meant to be taken with a shield or bracers, and my legs were in agony.
What was more, dawn was finally breaking - but there was no sign of reinforcements, either by flying horse or shadow traveling dog. I was really worried now - I mean, there were a lot of campers back at Camp Half-Blood, but we didn’t know what Kronos had sent to keep them busy. What if they hadn’t been ready for an attack?
A sword whooshing barely over the top of my head brought me back into the present and reminded me that if my mind started wandering in earnest, that would be it. That’s the weird thing about being ADHD, though - your mind can’t help but be in a million places at once, and while it’s usually really helpful when you’re fighting for your life, it can also be a big disadvantage if you can’t figure out what’s important to concentrate on and what’s not.
But right now all I could concentrate on was how well this was not going. All around us, corpses were dropping like flies as they were battered past all recognition by Kronos’ forces. Percy and I were fighting for our lives, but we were tired and getting moreso by the second. I didn’t know if we could outlast the monsters, and there was a very real chance that help wasn’t coming. All I could think was that I hated Kronos so much, hated how he wasn’t even a part of this battle, how Percy and I were going to die without even getting close to him. This wasn’t what we needed to be doing. We had to get to the heart of the matter - the heart -
Realization suddenly swelled within me; and with it, a new sense of determination. I knew what I had to do, if only I could get close enough to do it. “Percy!” I shouted; he was fighting with a telekhine not ten feet from me, and as I watched he swung his sword in a downward arc that severed the beast’s arm from its body - seconds before said body exploded into a shower of dust, adding to the layer of grime already sticking to Percy’s sweaty skin. I could see the various nicks and cuts from when he hadn’t been fast enough, but there was still determination in his eyes and I knew he’d fight until he couldn’t fight anymore. I just hoped that it would be long enough.
“You’ve got to hold here!” I said, trying to get to him through the crowd, pushing away corpses as they shuffled onward towards the enemy. “I know what I have to do!”
He frowned, not understanding. “What - you have to... what?” he panted, even as another enermy half-blood charged him. They hit, swords clanging, and Percy looked wildly at me. “What are you going to do?” he called, even as I turned around and started making my way down the hill.
“What I should’ve done before,” I told him, and then I concentrated on getting to the base of the hill. I took a deep breath, calling on all the dead near me to help - they began crowding around me, forming a human shield of sorts that surrounded me as I pushed my way to the steps and began descending them.
Most of the monsters were on the hill now - there was only a group of dracaenae left on the street, along with two of the giants standing guard around Medea’s car. But the half-lizard women had bows and arrows, which weren’t all that great against a close-in attack. I sent the corpses stumbling ahead of me and into the archers, who screamed in frustration and tried to bat them away as I passed through the line, leaving the chaos behind me.
The giants flanking the car grunted and made to move, but Kronos held up a hand from the backseat, where he was perched on the headrests, watching me intently. He grasped his scythe loosely in one hand, the blade glinting wickedly and I tried not to look at it.
“Magnificent.” Kronos looked at me, his golden eyes almost glowing. His mouth stretched into a wide, horrific grin. “You’ve come so far, son of Hades. I’ve given you such power, and it gladdens me to see how you’ve embraced it, futile though your attempts may be. You will have the honor of dying on my blade.”
I looked at Kronos, and I saw him for what he truly was - a tired, once-defeated Titan occupying a mortal body that was withering with every breath he took. I saw the faintest flicker of Luke - the real Luke - scrabbling away at the prison that held him, with no hope of release except for that of death. And that I could give him.
“I don’t think so.” I didn’t have any more time to think. I only had time to act, and so I followed my gut before my brain could decide it wasn’t a good idea. I barreled toward the Titan in the half-blood’s body, sidestepping the giants and ignoring the arrow that grazed my upper arm from behind. I had to make it to him before he slowed time, or I’d never even be able to touch him.
Suddenly I was on top of him, too close to stop, and I went crashing into the Titan before he’d even realized what had happened. I toppled him out of the convertible and we hit the pavement with a thud. Golden eyes stared at me from Luke Castellan’s scarred face, but I was too close for him to hurt with the scythe, too near for him to stop time without stopping it for himself as well.
“What - ?”
I only had seconds before someone stopped me - before a giant simply swatted me off his lord or before Medea clawed me off of him. Only seconds to do what no one else could.
He’d given me new power, yes. And with that had come the realization - if I could control death, then why couldn’t I urge it in the direction that I wanted? If the only way out for Luke was to die, I now had the power to grant him that wish. I could see him there, in Kronos’ hold, and I had the power to give his soul the rest it finally deserved. I didn’t know how I knew it, but I felt that I could do this more strongly than I had felt anything in my entire life, save maybe the way I felt toward the half-blood boy still fighting up on the hill. I really hoped that hunch was right, or I was about to die for nothing.
And so I reached into Kronos, past his armor and his skin. All it took was enough concentration, and my hands sunk right into Luke’s body like he was a hologram. I pushed my fingers past metal and skin and beating heart and bone like they weren’t even there. My vision blurred and shimmered, and still I reached -
There.
I grasped what I was looking for in my hands, held on tight, and I pulled.
Something silver-gold and sharp hit me square in the chest, igniting a fire that started at my breastbone and seemed to spread to every part of my body. I felt my body fly backwards, my head cracking against the steps leading up the hill. Fireworks exploded behind my eyes as pain blossomed along my spine, but I fought unconsciousness with every shred of strength I had left. I cracked my eyes open, needing to see it -
And there it was. Glowing, soft-edged and white between my fingers, was Luke Castellan’s soul.
It was roughly half the size of his physical body, human-shaped but without any real features. But in my mind I could see his features where a face would have been, and the same way you can look through someone’s eyes and see their soul, I looked at his soul and all I could see were his eyes, wide and pleading. And I said what Luke needed to hear.
Go, I told him. Go now.
There was a fizzle of light, and as the thing slipped out of my fingers and away into the morning air, I felt my body give out and I fell back against the steps as I lost consciousness for what I knew might be the last time.