Home Is Where The Heart(h) Is (Rewritten)

Chapter 5: Dissent

Annabeth dreamt of a crumbling Olympus. She stood on the edge of a cliff sliced into another nearby mountain that towered over the Olympus like an eagle to a pigeon. The air was choked with smoke and ozone. It was morning; Annabeth didn't know how she knew, for black clouds swamped the sky like heralds of destruction. Raging infernos blazed the home of the gods, casting bright yellow and dark red against the dark sky. If anything, it looked like a scene from an apocalyptic movie.

As she watched, a lightning bolt, larger than the natural world should ever have been able to conjure, tore into the foundation of marble. It lashed out in blinding white tendrils, striking other places with an uncontrolled fury. The courtyard was sundered, the foyer ruined. Screams were cut up beneath the roar of the flames.

The lightning was only the first part.

CRACK. The force of the thunder, like a hundred drums slammed in unison whilst amplified by a thousand magnitudes, sent shockwaves through the mountain, tearing huge chunks of stone from it and sending them rolling down the side. Dust and debris scattered everywhere as the pillars of Olympus cracked and shivered under the godly force.

Worst of all, it was her Olympus. The redesign she had made painstakingly. Somehow she knew the statues and the pillars she had spent hours on were being sliced through like a knife through butter.

She choked back a sob. She knew what this scene was. She had read about it so many times, yet seeing it in what seemed like a horrific parallel universe first-hand made her wish she had never read about it.

A flash in the clouds, as bright as a supernova, illuminated the being causing this destruction. His muscular silhouette contrasted against the exploding white light as he held another bolt of utter destruction in his hand.

Zeus.

He struck again, the bolt shattering the dome of the throne room. Glass flew into the air, iridescent crystal blades shooting down, shredding banners, killing denizens and tearing down the palace further. Another boom rattled the mountain like it was made of paper.

A sickly feeling grew in Annabeth's stomach. This was wrong, all wrong. Zeus had destroyed Othrys, not Olympus, not his own home. She knew it was a dream. Just a dream, she told herself, over and over.

Then her vision became pure white, lasting almost three seconds. Her eardrums practically burst from the thunder. When she blinked the spots out of her eyes, she sobbed at the sight of what remained of Olympus.

Smoke billowed from the impact zone. Debris tumbled down the broken slopes of the mountain. The rest had been vaporised by the lightning. When the smoke cleared, she saw the blackened crater the blast had created, straight into the heart of the mountain. Its sides fell away, till Olympus was nothing more than a meagre mockery of its once magnificent height. Zeus had destroyed half of it.

The god of the sky's wrath was appeased, and silence trailed in his wake as he departed. However, the clouds only darkened, this time to a midnight black. A freezing gale creeped over Annabeth's skin. She shivered.

Then she saw a new figure, one rising over the clouds, cast in shadow, but two glowing beams of light illuminated the darkness. They were pink.

She laughed, her voice deep and rich, as though the cosmos itself were laughing alongside her. It was nothing like the thunder that Zeus had created.

The beams fixated on her and flared up, as though they had spotted something interesting. Every hair on Annabeth's skin shot straight up, not just in repulsion and fear, but it was as if she was gravitating towards the being that rose over the entire planet. Physically, that would make sense. But nothing seemed to. Her mind struggled to comprehend the view before her; it was like seeing a distorted kaleidoscope underwater.