Percy Jackson: The Blessing of Hecate

Prologue

Percy's POV

I sat on the wooden porch steps of the Poseidon cabin, solemnly overlooking the glistening water that lapped at the shore. A little pool of murky brown water churned and mixed like a mini hurricane with mud at my feet. In my mind, I went over what had happened in the final battle against the giants. What went wrong. The prophecy had promised that only one person would die -- yeah, right. As a glistening tear began to trickle down my cheek, my thoughts drifted to the last moments of battle in Athens.
--
"Where's Annabeth?!" I cried, coughing under the smoke and heat that plagued the arena, covering everything in a haze of grey.

"I'm here!" Came her response from far away.

"Are you okay?" I called, squinting my eyes. I still couldn't see her.

"Yeah!" She replied, sharp sounds of her drakon-bone sword clashing against a giant ringing through the haze of smoke.

I turned back to the advancing monsters leering at me, and charged forward, swinging Riptide in a deadly arc that sliced through the mixture of giants, gemini, and who knows what else. The monsters disintegrated instantly, but before I could react, my foot tripped over a heavy lump sprawled across the ground, and I tumbled onto the dirt, Riptide skidding out of my hand. Groaning, I glanced back at the thing that had sent me flying. When I realized what it was, my blood went ice cold.

Piper's vacant, glassy eyes stared up at me, looking but unseeing. Her body lay crumpled and contorted, unmoving. "Piper!" I screamed, "Oh, gods, Piper!"

She didn't reply, and as I crawled over to her limp body, a sob escaped me. From her back, droplets of ruby blood poured down, staining the ground with reddish-brown. The droplets trickled from the gaping wound that tore through her back, and down the broken wooden shaft of the spear that had shot through the daughter of Aphrodite's body.

I roared with rage at the unfairness of it all. Piper had been forced to do this -- she had had no choice in her destiny at all, thanks to Gaea. Gently closing her eyes, I rose from Piper's lifeless body and scooped up Riptide from where it lay abandoned. In a single motion, I cut through the salivating monsters that were inches away from slicing at my soul. Earthborns, gemini, giants of all sizes -- they all disintegrated within seconds. Led by a blur of fury and madness, Riptide slashed and whirled, biting monsters before they even knew I was there. Before long, I reached the edge of the arena, where the towering wall of stone that encircled the arena stopped me in my wake. One more Cyclopes fell to the earth, defeated, and then I saw what the monster had been standing in front of.

A mess of limbs and blood with no beginning or end. No way to tell which arm belongs to whom. But the faces; oh, yes, you can see the faces.

Frank, his mouth open in the middle of an empty scream, his chest caved in from a fatal blow by a giant's club.

Leo, his body contorted and his neck twisted too far to be alive, after being slammed brutally against the stone wall.

Hazel, given a painless death when she was knocked unconscious and then didn't wake up.

The back-breaking emotions I'd felt by Piper's death came hurtling at me, multiplied ten times. It was so unjust -- I'd literally stared Tartarus in the face before, but these innocent demigods were the ones who'd pay the price. I let out a horrible sound that would rival Grover's call of Panic, a maelstrom of fury, loathing, and lust. Lust for revenge.

They say that before you die, time slows down. Each second stretches into a minute, and each minute streams by infinitely. I'd almost died plenty of times, but now, I felt more alive than ever. Like the lost lives of Hazel, Frank, Leo, and Piper had thrown the world off balance, and their souls were pouring into me. Time didn't slow down; it sped up. After the war, I would say I couldn't remember a single individual moment during the battle. I only remembered the effects it had.

My fury became a single beacon of light for me, and I followed it to the end. Riptide cut through monsters like they were wisps of air; cuts blossomed across me, but I felt nothing. Giants fell at the touch of my sword; they were buildings collapsing to the ground, cities buckling under the pressure, empires crumbling to ruin as I fought viciously. I couldn't see through the rising dust, and I didn't need to. Whatever came near me was killed instantly. I laughed at Enceladus' terrified looks as my face was the last thing he saw, sobbed as I leaped over Piper's fallen body to impale Riptide into Periboia's knee, screamed in anger as Porphyrion's blade swiped across my back.

Eventually no one dared to approach me, and I stood in the middle of the arena, alone. Gasping for breath, I held Riptide at arm's length, ready to kill anything that came near me. One stupid gemini attempted, though, slithering towards me on her snake legs. Her green scales glistened as she walked towards me, slowly, a weirdly familiar dagger in her hand. She was limping, streaks of blood all over her body. Her blonde hair looked like it had been pulled up in a ponytail, but the curls had begun to slip free and the hair sagged down.

"Percy?" She whispered.

I aimed Riptide at her. "Stay away, or you're gonna get the great experience of this sword through your chest."

Her eyes widened. "Percy? Do you .. do you know who I am?"

I blinked, confused. Suddenly she came into clearer focus, and I saw Annabeth standing in the snake women's place, her hair pulled back in a slumping ponytail and Luke's dagger in her hand, an ugly gash on her knee and blood all over.

I dropped Riptide. "Annabeth!" I half-whispered, rushing to meet her. We embraced tightly, cherishing the moment.

Frank's horrific face loomed into my mind. I pulled away from Annabeth. "Do you know what happened?"

Her grey eyes searched my face, and she nodded, no need for anything else.

"We'll get through this." I promised in her ear.

"We will." She replied. "We'll move on."

--

Down at the beach four graves, freshly buried, contain the rotting corpses of my friends, a constant reminder of my failure. Athena had told me that to save a friend, I would sacrifice the world. I have no more friends to save. And the world is fresh out of threats.