The Godly Pursuant (A Percy Jackson fan fiction)

Epilogue - Maggie Crowberry

I actually thought that I was going to lose my sense of humor. Thankfully I hadn’t. It’s still here to stay.

If I were going to cap the things that happened to me for the past three weeks, I’d rather not. Training with Lord Ares was a nightmare, literally. His insatiable desire for a bloodbath is unprecedented. He tried to instill in me that war is not about having mercy, it’s about the sole purpose of killing to be able to win… you know, the bloodbath stuff. I did field work with him in different places—I earth-travel, he appears and disappears— and mostly I didn’t like it. One time I had to kill three Cyclopes camping outside the mouth of a cave in a mountain.

“Why do I have to kill them? What bad did they do to me?” I protested feebly.

“No bad! Yes! Are you gonna wait for them to do something and try to kill you?! Stupid demigod. Go and end them!” He shouted at me. Eventually I did kill the Cyclopes even before they could make a sound. That was one thing Ares taught me as well. End your enemy as quick as they won’t be able to call for help.

The only field work with Ares that I liked was when I was deployed to a Laistrygonian-infested area just outside the lines of Connecticut. Honestly, saying that I had the time of my life was an understatement. I channeled my personal anger with Laistrygonians through Hello Kitty, who slashed and slashed until the monsters were no more.

“That’s for Dylan,” I muttered to myself.

Apollo’s archery classes were even worse than Ares’ training. Aside from the fact that I have ADHD so I can’t stay still for a second, his haikus were starting to root in me. Not the good root. More like the root that destroys everything else useful.

“Now, sweetheart,” he told me as I straighten up an arrow to my bow and aim at the bulls-eye almost a hundred meters away, “Whip me up some good haiku as you concentrate on shooting that immobile red target whatzamajigger.”

I took a deep breath and thought of every good memory that keeps me calm. They came to my mind flickering like a slide show—Percy’s laugh, chilling with the half-bloods in the meadow, Chiron’s smile, the camp in safety, my dad and Aunt Amphitrite, Percy’s mom Sally and her beautiful mortal middle-aged face, gourmet dinner at the dining pavilion. I held up the bow and the arrow in place. My aim on the target was getting good.

“Archery is hard,” I muttered as I stretched the string, “It gets me all cross-eyed,” The string reached the butt of the arrow, and I winked my other eye to aim at the hip, “I hate it so much.”

I released the string. The arrow wooshed and struck the target dead center. Apollo and I rushed to the target to look at my results.

The arrow struck the middle eye a few centimeters to the right. I smiled.

Apollo patted my shoulder. “Not bad, sweetie pie. Now, give me a haiku for your victory.”

I laughed at him. “Archery’s not bad.

But I’d rather be at home

Eating McDonalds.” I slung the bow and quiver on my shoulder and started walking home. Apollo caught up with me and talked about the girl from Sparta.

Sessions with Athena were mostly books and writing. It was terrible, what with having dyslexia so the words in the books just curl up and stuff. It always took me long horrible hours before fully understanding what it wanted to tell me. The Greek books were okay, but the history written in English was a massacre.

“Hurry with your essay, demigod, I want to read it,” she pressed on me impatiently. She told me to write an essay about the history of the Labyrinth that was engineered by his son Daedalus—Daedalus, not ‘delicious,’ as I first read it. I was okay with the topic. The time allotted for me to write the paragraph was impossible. Being able to write a word let alone a whole paragraph is impossible either. ‘Dyslexia’ is not a part of Athena’s vocabulary.