Work Text
“Hey, Kronos?” Percy said after a while.“Yes?”“Thanks for not squishing me when we first met.”
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I sighed.‘Today’s the day,’ I thought bitterly to myself.Today’s my birthday.Today’s the day I should have been celebrating that I would be getting my divers license.Today’s the day I should have spent with my mom and Paul, Rachel, Grover, Annabeth, maybe even Nico or Thalia could have stopped by. Maybe even my dad, though that was unlikely as Triton and Lady Amphitrite probably stopped him.But unfortunately no.Today’s the day I (probably) will day because I (probably) will make the wrong choice.Maybe all those other stuff I get to experience in an alternate universe where the divine world doesn’t exist and we’re all normal teens or maybe instead Kronos isn’t rising and monster don’t hunt us every second of every day of every year and that stupid “no interference” rule didn’t exist.If only…Last night me, Grover, Thalia and Annabeth had camped near the Throne room on Olympus, with the maybe forty demigods left either mostly stationed in the lobby of the Empire State Building or near the entrance of the elevators in case the demigods in the lobby fall.Nico, his father, stepmother and Lady Demeter were holding ground on the streets of Manhattan, keeping out reinforcements and trying to take down as many monsters near the lobby as possible. Unfortunately, Kronos had gotten onto Olympus before we could stop him.He seems to have been bidding his time all night, cause randomly, an explosion somewhere on Olympus would happen, slowly getting closer to the throne room. He was probably waiting for us to let our guard down, strike and kill us, then access the throne room to destroy the thrones, rendering the gods useless and powerless to Typhoon.I don’t know if Kronos had a plan for defeating Typhoon or not, but hopefully I’m dead before that happens if the gods lose.Sorry, did that sound suicidal? I’m not anymore thankfully, I just don’t want to be around for the destruction of the world that happens when either Typhoon or Kronos take over. I’m good, thanks. That’s not a spectacle I would want to watch. No sir.Anyways, last night was somber.We took turns keeping guard, two of us sleeping while the other two were awake. One person walking the perimeter and checking the half burnt bushes and the other person writing out a note.There were four note’s in total. Each note was written by one of us and it was what we wanted, for ourselves and for a better world, and who our stuff would be going to.Now, none of us knew who was gonna read the notes or even if the notes were going to survive. The gods could read them, Kronos could read them, or they could be destroyed by Typhoon’s storm. We didn’t know and we didn’t care. I don’t know what the others put but here’s mine.
“Dear whoever or whatever is reading this (Idk, Idc),
I hope this letter finds you in good health(unless you’re Kronos and his brothers (not his sisters tho), Zeus, Ares or Triton, you guys can go fuck yourselves).
If for some odd reason this letter has any bite marks on it, I’m blaming Grover.
Olympus has probably either fallen to Kronos or Typhoon, or the gods won even though the odds seemed hopeless for us. You’re probably reading this at my funeral if the gods won or you’re some random immortal, mortal or monster that found this lying in the ashes of what used to be Olympus.
If you have no clue what’s going on, here’s the summary. My name is Perseus Odysseus Helen Jackson (Percy or Helody for short {ask my friends[if they’re still alive], they mashed the three first letters of my two middle names together}), greek mythology is real, I’m a demigod and the only demigod child of Poseidon, there was a prophecy that stated that a child of the big three would make a choice that would either preserve or raze Olympus on their sixteenth birthday, the big three made an oath to not have any more demigod children but Zeus and Poseidon failed, Kronos is rising and he awoke Typhoon (using me unwilling), and it’s my sixteenth birthday - August 18th, 2009 CE.
If the gods won, then Tyson can get all my plushie sea animals (they are hidden underneath the floor boards under my bed in the Poseidon cabin, Thalia can get my hunting knives that she gave me after the quest to save Artemis, Annabeth can get the money I was saving for college so she can fulfill her dream of becoming an Architect, the stolls can get my slingshots and the only copy of the book “For the Scars of Heaven” that I wrote (it’s hidden along with the sea animal plushies, treat it well, that is my pride and joy), Nico can have my sweatshirts and hoodies and any of my other clothes that he would like, Dad can have the “you’re the only person who knows of it’s existence” thing and Bessie (please keep him safe, I don’t want him to get hurt), Aunt Hestia can get Riptide and Diafýlaxi as I know you don’t have a weapon of power, and Mom and Paul can my the rest of my money and anything else I haven’t mentioned.
But if the titans or Typhoon or anybody won(I have no idea who that would be), hear me out for a second. If you care, get rid of all the mortals who will end up in the fields of Punishment, through them into Tartarus. There are too many and they are slowly killing off the world and whatever is left of Pan’s domain. I don’t pretend to not know what they do to innocent people, they kill, they enslave, they abuse, and they rape innocents. Innocent people who could have been leaders, geniuses, saviors or artists, but instead they fell into the hands of monster-made-man all because Fortuna couldn’t care enough for our race. Because we are merely puny mortals who don’t deserve the luxuries of the gods such as happiness and freedom? Please, save those in need of saving and rid the world of those monster-made-men who litter the wilds and pollute the waters. If they are innocent, be them human, demigod or even those children of Echidna that we demigods so ruthlessly call monsters, spare them. You don’t have to grant them immortal, you don’t have to give them everything, just give them what they need to survive and make sure that everyone gets the kindness and the respect and the love they deserve and that everyone is treated fairly.
I need to stop before I start crying so I won’t worry Thalia or wake Grover.
Maybe me and mom can get into Elysium and see Charlie and Silena. Maybe I’ll try for the Isles of the Blessed.
Goodbye, I hope the world is in good hands, Percy Jackson.”
…
I wasn’t even sure my handwriting was even remotely readable and I think I kept switching between English, Ancient Greek and High Atlantian, but I didn’t care. Most likely, no one would care because it doesn’t look like the gods are going to win.By 5:00 am, the four of us put our notes in a box and hide it under a loose floor tile so it will at least stay safe. I heard a distant clock tower somewhere on Olympus as it marked the time.Honestly afterwards, we just sat there crying and hugging. Today was the last day we might see each other, today might be the last day we have alive.While it hurt to think about, I could stop thinking about how young we are. Me and Annabeth are both sixteen, Thalia is fifteen and while Grover is thirty-two, he still is technically only a teenager in satyr standards.Oh gods, we’re only teenagers.I can only hope that are deaths will be swift and as painless as possible. My mind went to the pile of unfinished homework on my desk, to the open recipe book that was left open on the kitchen counter of mom’s apartment, of the half eaten shrimp on my desk in the Poseidon cabin.Would I ever see my family again, would I ever get to experience the luxuries of living? Oh dad, I hope you know I never hated you, even if I made it seem like I resented you for leaving us.”Hey, we have incoming trouble,” Thalia said, pointing down the corridor.Sure enough, there was Kronos.
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I had never been particularly fond of surprises.
As the son of Poseidon, sure, I was used to them and I knew the world was full of them, BUT they usually involved monsters trying to eat me or gods giving me impossible quests for the hundredth time that month. (I’m “totally” not exaggerating)
So when I suddenly shrank to the size of a speck of dust in the middle of the most important battle of my LIFE, I didn't quite know how to react.
Should I explain things? Probably, I mean, I’m writing about my past hoping someone in the future will read it and save me from what happened, but first, I have to explain how I got here and I’m not good at summarizing, only good at storytelling thanks to my mom. (Mom, if you are somehow reading or hearing about this, I’m sorry but I’m trying to make my way home–somehow)
I’m literally craving this all down on a stone tablet that I’m going to hide in the underworld near the entrance of Tartarus and then trying to get back home without breaking my mortality, as that is something I have been told to worry about because the process contains a lot of divine power to do.
So...
One minute, I was swinging blows at Kronos, Annabeth and Grover to my right and Thalia to my left.
The next, everything went blurry, and it felt like my whole world was tilting. I think I hit my head on the marble floor but everything was numb, like I was merely spectating the fight and my internet connection was bad.
When my vision cleared and I finally felt my body again, everything was 20x my size!
My
swords, now impossibly large, had clattered to the marble floor with a deafening crash that no one seemed to hear.
No one. Even. Fucking. Noticed.
I couldn’t blame them—it was chaos. The gods were in Kansas fighting Typhon, Camp Half-Blood was scattered across New York, and Kronos had the upper hand.
Annabeth kept fighting, her dagger flashing as she ducked under Luke-Kronos’s swings. Grover was using his magic to try and hold Kronos down with vines, and Thalia fired arrows as fast as she could nock them.
But I had always been at the center of things, even when the odds were stacked against him. Me, their supposed best fighter, had just
vanished
. This was different. This felt like I had been forgotten.
"Where's Percy?" Annabeth shouted over the clang of weapons and the faint roars of monsters somewhere on Olympus.
“ANNABETH! I’M DOWN HERE!” I tried to yell, but my voice was too faint for anyone to hear.
Well shit.
No one would ever see me again.
It was ironic, really. Ihad fought so hard to stop Kronos, to save the world, to protect myfriends. And now, here I am, a tiny, invisible version of myself, stuck in an impossible situation where no one could help me. My only hope was either Thalia, Grover and Annabeth somehow defeat Kronos without me when I’m the prophecy child because Thalia didn’t want the role, or to somehow do it himself.
Kronos’s booming voice echoed in the throne room, oblivious to the speck of a hero that had once been his greatest foe. “
The child of the prophecy is gone,
” Kronos said, speaking to Luke’s body as if I had never existed. “
I sent him through time. He will never return.
”
But I had absolutely
no
intention of accepting defeat, especially when Kronos is trying to weaken my friends. I am still Percy Jackson, after all, even if I am barely the size of an ant at the moment.
Kronos, ever the dramatist, wasted no time in twisting the narrative
even more
. “Your hero is gone,” he boomed, voice crackling with divine power. “I have cast him beyond time itself. His fate is lost to the void! He practically begged me to do it in his head, all because he was given a role by those pathetic gods that he never wanted.”
Annabeth’s face went pale, and for a brief, terrifying second, I saw real fear in her eyes. She thought I was
gone
. Annabeth, who had always been brave around me, Annabeth who had always came up with a plan in the toughest of dangers, Annabeth who had stood up to a sphinx because the ‘riddles’ were too easy… was afraid.
Great.
Well, there was no way to tell them otherwise. I had tried yelling, waving my arms—heck, even trying to stab through Thalia’s boot, but nothing worked. The battle raged on above me, giant figures moving in blurs of steel and flame. If I didn’t figure out what to do, I was going to get
squished
before Kronos even needed to realize he needed to defeat me.
I still need to do this, it’s my duty as the prophecy child, even if it’s a role I never wanted to play…
Except there’s no way to defeat Kronos by killing him because of the Curse of Achilles… wait a damn fucking moment…
An idea flashed through my mind like a bolt of lightning.
How could I have been so stupid to not see it before? But then again, I’ve been running around on the floor trying to, ya’know, not get stepped on.
The only way to kill Kronos is to hit him where his Achilles heel is, and the only people who would know where that is would be Luke and Kronos who share a body and similar twisted motives. There’s no way anyone
normal
size would be able to hit when guessing where they need to hit when Kronos was deflecting their swings like he was simply eating take out. But if there’s one thing Kronos wouldn’t suspect, is that there is someone the size of a grain of sand climbing his body looking for his Achilles heel.
It wasn’t going to be easy. Kronos’s body was... well, it wasn’t exactly inviting. But if I could get close enough, find that one weak spot in Luke's mortal body, then I could end this bloody war once and for all. And in my new size, no one would even notice me, which means there is no one who could stop me.
In a way, this could be the best chance for me, and everyone else on the gods’ side, to survive. I am practically invisible now, an unnoticed shadow in the midst of the gods’ epic struggle.
My heart raced with renewed determination. I set my sights on the towering form of Kronos, who was battling against Annabeth and Thalia with the force of a storm, with set determination burning in my eyes.