Blessings from Khaos

|Do Small Things With Great Love|

Hermês in a side courtyard of the palace. He was staring at an Îris-message in the mist of a fountain. The goddess of rainbows had them playing over all the screens in Olympos while Hḗphaistos coordinated with Athḗnē to begin laying out their plans to fix the infrastructure of the country. Twas wonderous that Krónos only kept his plans to the western planes instead of the Old World where their power was the strongest.

Still, he kept his attention on it, ignoring Martha's whispers about Perseus' approach. Mortal newscasts from all over the country flashed by: scenes of Typhôeus's destruction, the wreckage our battle had left across Manhattan, the president doing a news conference, the mayor of New York, some army vehicles riding down the Avenue of the Americas.

"Amazing," Hermês murmured. He turned toward the halfblood. "Three thousand years, and I will never get over the power of the Mist . . . and mortal ignorance."

"Thanks, I guess."

"Oh, not you. Although, I suppose I should wonder, turning down immortality."

"It was the right choice."

Hermês  looked at him curiously, then returned his attention to the Iris-message. "Look at them. They've already decided Typhôeus was a freak series of storms. Don't I wish. They haven't figured out how all the statues in Lower Manhattan got removed from their pedestals and hacked to pieces. They keep showing a shot of Susan B. Anthony strangling Frederick Douglass. But I imagine they'll even come up with a logical explanation for that."

"How bad is the city?"

Hermês shrugged. "Surprisingly, not too bad. The mortals are shaken, of course. But this is New York. I've never seen such a resilient bunch of humans. I imagine they'll be back to normal in a few weeks; and of course I'll be helping."

"You?"

"I'm the messenger of the gods. It's my job to monitor what the mortals are saying, and if necessary, help them make sense of what's happened. I'll reassure them. Trust me, they'll put this down to a freak earthquake or a solar flare. Anything but the truth." He knew that he sounded bitter. Mártha and Geōrgios curled around his kērū́keion, but they were silent, grieving too for the child that he lost.

Perseus said, "I owe you an apology."

Hermês gave him a cautious look. "And why is that?"

"I thought you were a bad father," Perseus admitted. "I thought you abandoned Luke because you knew his future and didn't do anything to stop it."

"I did know his future," Hermês said miserably.

"But you knew more than just the bad stuff—that he'd turn evil. You understood what he would do in the end. You knew he'd make the right choice. But you couldn't tell him, could you?"

Hermês stared at the fountain. "No one can tamper with fate, Percy, not even a god. If I had warned him what was to come, or tried to influence his choices, I would've made things even worse. Staying silent, staying away from him . . . that was the hardest thing I've ever done." And yet, it still felt like nothing more than an excuse. Thousands of years for this same lesson which children, legacies, and cousins alike and no god still had a reasonable answer. But that was the way of Fate. The Moirai were independent, at the helm of necessity, directed fate, and watched that the fate assigned to every being by eternal laws might take its course without obstruction; and Ζεύς, as well as the other gods and man, had to submit to them.

"You had to let him find his own path," the demigod said, "and play his part in saving Olympos."

Hermês sighed. "I should not have gotten mad at Annabeth. When Luke visited her in San Francisco... well, I knew she would have a part to play in his fate. I foresaw that much. I thought perhaps she could do what I could not and save him. When she refused to go with him, I could barely contain my rage. I should have known better. I was really angry with myself."