Devour

Chapter 8

Despite the friendly face he showed to the Camp, Luke Castellan was anything but friendly.

Sure, he grinned and joked and helped the younger campers with anything they asked, he cleaned the cabin and made sure every demigod in the Hermes Cabin had everything they needed, anything they wanted.

He strategized with the Athena Cabin, did first aid with the Apollo kids, helped garden in the berry fields with the Demeter and Dionysus kids, played dress up with the Aphrodite Cabin, and practiced dueling with the Ares kids. 

He played the part of a good son, a respected and favored son of Hermes. He was the Perfect camp counselor. 

And Luke Castellan hated it.

He was a modern Prometheus, in all but blood. 

Prometheus, the god-titan, the betrayer of the god-king to bring fire to mankind.

And now, Luke Castellan, The Demi-god, the beloved son, left alone by the gods and left to pilfer through life to survive, to make it to the very camp he will bring ruin to, he would be the one to bring the gods destruction. And they wouldn't know it until they were dead.

Olympus would burn, and Luke Castellan would be holding the matches. 

Luke Castellan was a boy of prophecies, a boy of feathers and smoke, someone bright like the sun on the outside, and a burning, kindling fire on the inside. 

It burned like an inferno, that hungry furious thing inside him. Taking blood and ash and let free only in the darkest of nights, when he'd leave the camp for a quest and slay every foe in his path, human, monster, demi-god, it didn't matter who or what, only that they fall by his hands and the thing in him took pleasure in every death, every anguished and bloody foot taken in his path. Even with his hiding of the rage, the furious, starving thing, that kindled like smoke in his chest, the fates were watching, the gods? 

They didn't see a thing.

They didn't see his mother, who in his early childhood was driven mad by the sight of prophecy, her vacant and out-of-touch existence tethered to a prophecy that Luke had no say in. He knew how it went; he had heard his mother's grief and wailing, her begging him not to stray down the path. 

The path he was currently on. A path of his own making. 

Luke Castellan felt cold without that fiery beast in his chest, his mind a sluggish, almost lifeless thing without the sway of the burning beast, pulling him into the only way forward, his lord, his savior. Who finally made that furious heat and frigid cold sooth, who made his mind finally able to comprehend anything but his reckoning, his plans, his revenge. 

He wasn't always like this; he'd once only had a timid fire in his chest, a controllable, occasional moment where he'd bent to the sadistic joy of a meal. He had been more real, more human, once he'd really believed the gods to be good. 

Once, he'd really cared about people. 

He still did, sometimes. When he was younger, naive, when he'd had Blond hair and grey stormy eyes curled into his side, a tiny body wrapped in muscled arms, and piercing blue eyes that were like lightning. Gentle calls from the small sleeping child, bird-like and happy. Luke had the hairs on his arms on end, electricity curling the length of his spine, when they were together. When they were running and fighting for their lives, killing monsters and running from the authorities, who genuinely wanted to help. But they were mortals. They couldn't protect them. Not like Luke and Thalia could.