Son of Kaos (PJO Chaos Gacha)

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER ONE
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I didn't know what woke me up first, the sun stabbing at my eyes or the crick in my neck.

For a moment, I was completely lost as I tried to sit up and gather my bearings. My entire body felt stiff, like I'd fallen asleep somewhere I absolutely shouldn't have and was now paying the price for it.

I was lying on a... park bench?

'Since when do I sleep on park benches? What the hell was going on?'

The questions chased each other around my skull as I slowly pushed myself upright and looked around. Trees stretched overhead in every direction, their leaves filtering the afternoon sunlight into shifting patches of green and gold. A paved path wound lazily between rolling lawns and clusters of granite outcroppings while joggers, dog walkers and tourists drifted through the distance entirely unconcerned by the fact that my brain appeared to have misplaced several important pieces of itself.

Central Park.

The realization surfaced immediately.

New York.

'I know that.'

At least I was pretty sure I knew that.

'My name is Ethan Creed.'

I knew that too. However, everything beyond those two facts became increasingly unreliable. As I tried to sort through the growing mess inside my head, a strange prickling sensation crawled across the back of my neck. Then the air above me shimmered, and I froze as something appeared overhead for the briefest of moments.

Not a symbol exactly, but a shape.

A vast circle of darkness suspended impossibly in midair, though darkness wasn't quite the right word either. It wasn't black. It wasn't empty. Looking at it felt disturbingly similar to staring into a hole punched straight through reality itself. Around that impossible void drifted countless pinpricks of silver light, swirling slowly around its edges like distant stars trapped in orbit.

The entire thing only existed for a heartbeat. One second it hung there above me, the next it fractured into drifting motes of gold and vanished.

I continued staring upward long after it was gone.

"... Right."

That seemed unlikely to be a concussion symptom.

Before I could make sense of any of it, shimmering motes of light gathered directly in front of my face. The air rippled as they coalesced and gathered into a scroll that unfurled itself in front of me.

This wasn't a metaphor or a trick of the light.

An actual parchment scroll appeared in midair and calmly rolled itself open as though magical office supplies manifesting in public parks was a perfectly normal occurrence. I gaped at the scroll. The scroll silently glowered back and briefly I found myself stuck in the world's most bizarre staring contest (one which I somehow yet distinctively felt I was losing… badly). The floating parchment, unfortunately, appeared perfectly comfortable staring back despite (or perhaps because of) its lack of eyes.

Golden lettering slowly burned itself across its surface.

[WELCOME, ETHAN CREED.]

I resisted the urge to look over my shoulder as the thing somehow addressed me by name (and then I had to resist the much harder urge to say "You talkin' ta me?"). The golden lettering lingered for several moments before slowly fading away, replaced by a fresh line of text.

[DIVINE HERITAGE AWAKENED.]

I frowned as more words appeared, before my eyes widened as I realized that I had somehow had been reading the Greek alphabet flawlessly without even questioning it.

[LINEAGE IDENTIFIED: CHILD OF KAOS.]

The name hit me with a strange sense of familiarity.

Not recognition exactly, the feeling was closer to hearing a word you knew you should understand while simultaneously realizing you had absolutely no idea what it meant.

The parchment, unfortunately, seemed determined to continue as a fresh line appeared.

[THE PRIMORDIAL ENTITY KNOWN AS KAOS CURRENTLY SLUMBERS.]

[THE LINK BETWEEN PROGENITOR AND DESCENDANT REMAINS ACTIVE.]

[DIVINE HERITAGE SUCCESSFULLY AWAKENED.]

The golden lettering pulsed softly.

[ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM UNLOCKED.]

[TRAITS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH GREAT SURVIVALS, TRANSFORMATIVE EXPERIENCES AND NOTABLE DEEDS.]

[ABILITIES MAY BE EARNED THROUGH THE COMPLETION OF QUESTS AND SIGNIFICANT ACCOMPLISHMENTS.]

[SKILLS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH MASTERY, EXPERIENCE AND REPEATED SUCCESS.]

[ITEMS MAY BE EARNED THROUGH NOTEWORTHY KILLS, DISCOVERIES AND ACHIEVEMENTS.]

The words vanished and before I could even try and comprehend what the waterfall of ancient Greek had tried to explain, new ones immediately took their place.

[AS A DESCENDANT OF KAOS, FRAGMENTS OF CREATION ARE AVAILABLE THROUGH THE ACHIEVEMENT SYSTEM.]

[DOMAINS, BLESSINGS, TALENTS AND POWERS ASSOCIATED WITH GODS, SPIRITS, MONSTERS AND CONCEPTS MAY BE ACQUIRED.]

[ALL THINGS ORIGINATE FROM THE SAME SOURCE.]

My eyes slowly tracked back up the parchment, to Central Park still brimming with life, oblivious tourists and preoccupied New Yorkers, then back down to the scroll again that apparently only I could see. I still wasn't entirely certain what any of its golden words meant as the scroll continued.

[AWAKENING REWARD GRANTED.]

[GOLD TRAIT DRACHMA 1]

A brilliant golden coin materialized in the air before me.

Moments later, a second followed.

[GOLD ABILITY DRACHMA 1]

For several long seconds I simply stared at the floating coins.

Then at the parchment.

Then back at the coins.

"... why the hell do I suddenly know what a drachma is?"

The parchment offered no response whatsoever, which was rather unfortunate, because I had roughly several thousand questions and the growing suspicion I was about to receive answers to absolutely none of them.

Actually, scratch that. I couldn't hope to understand it all, but my fragmented memories were slowly pulling together to fill in some of the blanks. The problem was that the part I did understand raised considerably more questions than it answered.

Kaos.

The name stirred something buried somewhere inside the tangled mess my mind had become. Not much, just fragments of Greek mythology that rose to the forefront of my shattered memories. A primordial void. The very first thing. The thing that existed before everything else.

A sort of 'Let there be light!' type of deal.

At least, that was how the stories went. Apparently the floating magical parchment hanging in front of my face had very strong opinions regarding those "stories" because it wasn't presenting Kaos as a myth or even as a god. The wording seemed almost deliberately careful on that front. Source. Origin. Wellspring. The thing from which gods, spirits, concepts and creation itself had emerged.

Not sure how literally I was supposed to take that though. Wasn't the point of most Greek myths that they were, like, parables or something? Stories that ultimately conveyed a moral, or a lesson? Though most of those often boiled down to (in the words of Kendrick Lamar Himself) "sit down, be humble".

However, if those myths were really just dressed up metaphors... what did that make me? According to the scroll, I was a direct descendent of Kaos, one of his sons. Her sons? Their? It?

And if Kaos was real, did that mean the rest of Greek mythology was real too? Was Zeus actually sitting on a fluffy cloud somewhere throwing lightning bolts at people? Did Poseidon genuinely rule the oceans? Was Hades managing an actual underworld full of actual dead people? Had humanity somehow stumbled across the greatest cosmic revelation in history several thousand years ago and collectively decided to file it under mythology?

And somehow, according to the magical parchment, I was the son of a primordial entity that may or may not have existed before reality itself, Greek mythology was apparently a great deal less fictional than advertised and I had just been rewarded for awakening my divine heritage with two glowing gold drachma whose purpose remained entirely unexplained.

That should have sounded completely ridiculous. Instead the knowledge settled somewhere in the back of my mind with an uncomfortable sense of familiarity, like I had stumbled across a fact I already knew and simply hadn't realized I'd forgotten. The sensation lasted only a moment before slipping away again, leaving behind the growing suspicion that my missing memories knew considerably more about what was going on than I did.

Just how many other important facts were currently buried somewhere inside my head?

"… what the fuck is going on? What even am I?"

The scroll remained every bit as helpful as it had been thus far, which was to say not at all. Honestly, I wasn't entirely certain what I had expected. A customer support department perhaps. A frequently asked questions section. Maybe even a convenient pamphlet titled So You've Just Discovered You're The Descendant Of A Primordial Cosmic Entity.

Instead I got silence.

"Right," I muttered, rubbing at my temple. "Fantastic."

Silence, two coins and an unhelpful mysterious piece of magical parchment-

Said parchment suddenly vanished as it dissolved into drifting motes of golden light that scattered into the afternoon air and disappeared.

I stared at the empty space where it had been.

"... Okay, scratch that." I muttered, frustrated.

My gaze dropped back toward the two drachma resting in my palm.

"Two coins and a fat load of nothing."

The words had barely left my mouth when a deep growl rolled across the park, causing every muscle in my body to tense. The sound immediately set off alarm bells somewhere in the back of my skull, partly because it was close and partly because it sounded absolutely nothing like the dogs currently being walked through Central Park. Those barked. They yapped. They growled at squirrels and occasionally at one another.

This sounded more like a bulldozer that had developed anger issues and was waiting for somebody to make the mistake of letting it off the leash.

Carefully, oh so very carefully, I dared to twist around on my park bench, glancing over my shoulder.

For a brief moment my brain attempted to convince me I was looking at a dog. A very large dog admittedly, the sort of animal that would immediately become the subject of several scientific papers and at least one very concerned phone call to the nearest zoo, but still technically a dog.

Then it stepped forward.

The illusion didn't survive the movement.

Dogs didn't have eyes that glowed like burning coals, nor did they stand nearly shoulder-high to a horse. More importantly, dogs possessed a certain familiarity to them. No matter how large or aggressive they became, there was always something recognizable lurking underneath. A dog was a dog.

This thing felt wrong.

Not sick, or injured. Wrong in the same way a shark would be wrong if you suddenly encountered one in a swimming pool. Every instinct I possessed seemed to recoil from the sight of it, as though some deeply buried part of my brain had taken one look at the creature and immediately began screaming that whatever stood between those trees was not supposed to exist.

The beast continued forward at an unhurried pace, its massive paws sinking into the earth with surprising quiet for something that looked capable of demolishing a small car through sheer enthusiasm. Black fur covered its body, though calling it black somehow felt insufficient. The sunlight seemed reluctant to touch it, the dark coat swallowing the afternoon light rather than reflecting it.

Then it growled again, the sound rolling through the park like distant thunder. Finally, somewhere inside the tangled wreckage of my memories, a single word surfaced.

Hellhound. Just as the name clicked into place, the massive beast moved.

One moment it stood there between the trees, staring at me with burning red eyes and enough teeth to make a shark feel inadequate. The next it exploded forward with terrifying speed, covering the distance between us so quickly that my brain barely managed to register what was happening before my body took over. I practically threw myself off the bench, hitting the ground in an undignified tangle of limbs as several hundred pounds of muscle, fur and bad intentions slammed into the space I'd occupied a heartbeat earlier.

The bench never stood a chance.

The impact detonated it.

Wood burst apart in every direction as the creature tore straight through it, showering the surrounding path with splinters and broken fragments. By the time the hellhound landed, there wasn't much left of the bench beyond scattered debris.

For a brief moment, I felt oddly disappointed at that. Sure, I probably should be more preoccupied with the massive monster that's apparently decided that I'm to be its next lunch, but still, that bench had been the only thing I'd encountered since waking up that had actually made sense. A park bench was normal. Familiar. Understandable. It sat there. People sat on it. It had even let me sleep on it for… however long I'd been out for until it felt like my spine more resembled a pretzel. The relationship was simple and required no consideration of primordial ancestry, magical parchments or monster dogs the size of small vehicles.

Now it was gone.

And in its place stood a living tank with glowing eyes and an attitude to match its appetite.

The beast lowered itself slightly as another growl rumbled from its chest, and whatever remained of my ability to think rationally finally collapsed under the weight of the situation. The hellhound outweighed me several times over, possessed enough teeth to stock a small museum and appeared entirely committed to the idea of eating me. Meanwhile I had no weapon, no plan and absolutely no idea what I was doing. In fact, the only things currently in my possession were two glowing gold drachma that I didn't understand the purpose of and a growing certainty that I was about to become an educational example regarding the dangers of sitting alone in public parks.

Neither of those seemed especially useful against several hundred pounds of supernatural predator. Still, the coins were the only thing I had… so I threw them directly at the creature's face.

My aim wasn't especially good. At best I might have caught it in one of those glowing red eyes and mildly annoyed it before being eaten anyway.

However, halfway through their flight, both coins simply ceased to exist. There was no impact, no flash of light and no metallic clang as they struck the hellhound's skull. One moment they were spinning through the air toward the creature's face and the next they were gone, disappeared into a bloom of impossible darkness that suddenly unfolded around them like a tear in reality itself. The light around them folded inward, collapsing into a tiny point before that same impossible darkness I'd seen hanging above my head when I first woke up disappeared entirely and leaving behind only a handful of drifting silver and gold motes.

For several long moments both the hellhound and I stared at the empty space where the coins had been.

The fact that a giant monster dog appeared just as confused by the situation as I was somehow failed to make me feel any better.

Then something brushed against my thoughts. It wasn't a voice, not in the normal sense at least. The sensation felt more like meaning than language. A concept arriving fully formed inside my head without bothering to introduce itself first.

Recognition.

Acceptance.

The feeling carried no words, yet somehow I understood it anyway: The offering of the coins had been accepted, compensation was due.

Before I could begin unpacking what that sentence implied, the parchment abruptly reappeared at the edge of my vision, hovering well off to one side. Perhaps I was projecting, but I got the distinct impression it would have preferred to be hiding behind me if that wouldn't have made it impossible to read.

Golden lettering rapidly appeared across its surface, as if it was in a hurry.

[OFFERING GOLD TRAIT DRACHMA.]

Above me, a new symbol ignited.

The vast void that had briefly appeared when I awoke flashed into existence once more, only this time it was accompanied by the image of a closed fist forged from gleaming silver metal. The symbol burned brightly against the afternoon sky before dissolving into drifting sparks.

The scroll continued.

[Adamantine Fist]

Epic Trait

Your fists are like Adamantine, unbreakable and incredibly powerful. Your fists are incredibly durable, and the power behind all unarmed strikes is greatly enhanced. All fist-based abilities are easier to use and are more powerful.

I stared.

Even the hellhound stared.

The scroll, apparently deciding there was no time for questions, immediately continued.

[OFFERING GOLD ABILITY DRACHMA.]

Another symbol erupted overhead.

This one appeared as a chain of golden fistprints suspended in the air, each larger than the last. The first was small and unremarkable, the second noticeably larger, the third larger still, until the final imprint dwarfed the others and seemed to radiate enough force to crack the air around it. The sequence lingered for only a heartbeat before dissolving into drifting sparks. Fresh text appeared.

[Combo]

Rare Ability

Every time you connect a physical hit within a 3-second time frame, your next hit is 10% stronger. As long as you hit your opponent at least once every 3 seconds, you will maintain the combo and the multiplier will continue increasing. If you fail to land a hit within 3 seconds, the combo resets.

Maximum Multiplier: 999%.

I blinked, then blinked again, just to be sure.

The hellhound chose that exact moment to stop patiently waiting for me to finish reading. There was probably a warning somewhere in the shift of its posture, a tensing of muscles. Some subtle sign that an apex predator roughly the size of a compact car was about to attempt murder.

Unfortunately, I was busy reading a LitRPG equivalent of my own superpowers.

The result was that when the beast exploded forward, by the time my brain caught up with it, the hellhound was already on top of me.

I barely managed to throw myself backward as snapping jaws closed where my head had been a fraction of a second earlier. The creature's momentum carried it past me, claws gouging trenches through the grass as it skidded across the ground before immediately twisting around for another attack.

My heart attempted to achieve orbit as the hellhound lowered itself slightly. I didn't know much about fighting, but even I could recognize the universal body language of something preparing to launch itself directly at my face.

The beast lunged and I (naturally) panicked.

The punch that followed possessed all the grace and technical proficiency of a drowning man attempting martial arts. It wasn't a technique. It wasn't even a proper punch to be brutally honest. It was a wildly flailing haymaker fueled entirely by the very reasonable desire not to be eaten.

As my fist shot forward, however, something changed.

A strange pressure gathered around my hand. Not painful. Not even uncomfortable. Just... solid. My fist felt heavier than it should have, denser somehow and impossibly sturdy, carrying the same certainty a hammer probably felt right before meeting a nail.

Then my knuckles met the side of the hellhound's jaws.

The impact detonated.

Instead of my arm being torn off clean at the shoulder as it should've, the beast's head snapped violently sideways with enough force to twist its entire body off course. Several hundred pounds of monster crashed across the grass before tumbling to a stop a short distance away, carving an impressive trench through the earth along the way.

For several long seconds both the hellhound and I simply stared at one another across the torn-up grass. The creature's expression somehow managed to communicate profound confusion despite being attached to a giant supernatural murder-dog, which was fair because I was having similar difficulties processing the fact that I'd apparently just punched a monster through several yards of Central Park.

A strange sensation settled into the back of my mind, bringing with it an instinctive awareness of time passing. Three seconds. I couldn't explain how I knew that number, but I knew with a startling, absolute certainty that it was counting down.

The creature somewhat sluggishly began pushing itself upright while the strange sensation in the back of my mind continued its steady countdown. I watched it struggle back onto its feet and found myself focusing less on the hellhound itself than on the rapidly shrinking window of time attached to whatever I'd just triggered. The realization arrived a heartbeat later. If the feeling disappeared before I landed another hit, I'd be starting over from the beginning.

Just as the hellhound finally got its paws beneath it, I charged.

The decision wasn't brave. It wasn't fueled by some sudden sense of burgeoning heroism. If anything, it was probably one of the dumber things I'd done in recent memory, though admittedly my recent memory currently consisted of approximately twenty minutes and a park bench.

The important thing was that it worked.

The hellhound clearly hadn't expected me to be the one closing the distance. Its glowing red eyes widened slightly as I barreled toward it, throwing another messy punch before it had fully recovered from the first one.

The strike landed awkwardly against the creature's hindquarters. Under normal circumstances it should have been a terrible hit. The angle was wrong, my footing wasn't much better and punching a monster in the ass generally seemed like the sort of tactic employed by people who had completely run out of better ideas. Despite all that, the impact still carried enough force to make the hellhound stumble sideways, and the moment my fist connected, the strange sensation in the back of my mind immediately reset to its starting point.

Three seconds.

Another countdown.

'That's good enough confirmation for me. How did that song go? Right, 'just keep swinging, just keep swinging, swinging, swinging…'

The fight rapidly abandoned any resemblance to skill from there on out. There was no technique involved, no carefully practiced martial arts and certainly nothing that would have impressed an actual fighter. It was just me desperately throwing punches at whatever part of the hellhound happened to be within reach while the creature attempted to figure out why the bedraggled young man it had tried to eat was suddenly beating the shit out of it.

At first the beast tried to push through the blows and only hastily placing my literally unbreakable fists in between me and its chompers saved me from experiencing what it's like to be on the inside of a blender. It snapped at me whenever it found an opening, attempted to force its way back into the fight with a snarl, a lunge or a swipe of its claws, seemingly convinced that eventually I would tire before it did. That confidence began to erode surprisingly quickly, however somewhere around the point where my punches started blasting fist-sized holes through its hide. The more punches landed, the harder they became. The increase wasn't dramatic individually, but it accumulated frighteningly fast. Every successful strike fed the next one. Every reset of the timer pushed the number higher and before long the hellhound stopped trying to overpower me and started focusing on creating distance instead.

The sharp impacts of fist meeting flesh became explosive cracks that echoed through the park like gunshots. Golden dust burst from the creature wherever my knuckles connected, leaving behind small holes in its dark hide as though parts of the hellhound were being erased rather than injured.

Another punch blasted a chunk from its shoulder while the next drove into its ribs hard enough to spin the beast sideways. By the time a third hit (now at almost 200% power of that first punch) nearly folded one of its legs beneath it, the fight had stopped resembling anything remotely fair. The hellhound still snarled and snapped whenever an opportunity presented itself, but every attempt to fight back was now accompanied by an equally obvious desire to get away from me.

The realization almost caused me to miss my next punch.

'The thing is… scared?'

It had charged me without hesitation less than a minute ago, utterly convinced that I was prey. Now it was giving ground every time I advanced, trying desperately to create distance while I chased it across the torn-up grass. Somewhere along the way our roles had reversed, and judging by the panic beginning to creep into the creature's movements, the hellhound had noticed it too.

It began shrinking away from me, trying to create distance every time I stepped forward. Its snarls had lost some of their confidence, its movements had become hesitant.

And every punch I threw kept getting stronger.

By now they sounded less like punches and more like small explosions.

My arms felt like they were on fire. Sweat poured down my face. My lungs burned. Every muscle in my shoulders and chest screamed in protest each time I threw another wailing strike, but the timer kept resetting and the number kept climbing and somewhere along the way the possibility of stopping had ceased to exist.

The hellhound made one final desperate leap and exhausted as I was, I reacted on pure instinct.

With a yell that probably wasn't an actual word anymore, I raised both hands above my head and brought them down with everything I had left.

The impact landed squarely on top of the beast's skull and for a brief moment the hellhound seemed to compress beneath the blow, every muscle in its body tensing at once. The beast hung there beneath my clasped hands, suspended at the apex of its leap as though reality itself needed a second to process exactly how much force had just been introduced into the situation.

Then the monster just… came apart.

Honestly, I wasn't entirely certain what I had expected. Gore, probably. The thing looked like it had crawled straight out of somebody's nightmare and the word hell was literally part of its name. Fire seemed like a reasonable possibility too. Some kind of dramatic supernatural death throes perhaps?

What I wasn't expecting was dust.

The creature simply came apart beneath my hands, its dark fur, massive frame and excessive collection of teeth dissolving into an expanding cloud of fine golden particles that washed across the park like a sandstorm.

Unfortunately, the center of that sandstorm was me.

The resulting wave of monster remains hit me with all the precision and restraint of a hurricane. Golden dust filled my eyes, my nose, and my mouth.

I staggered backward, coughing violently as several pounds of what I sincerely hoped wasn't hellhound ash coated me from head to toe. Every attempt to breathe only succeeded in inhaling more of the stuff, which immediately triggered another coughing fit.

For several deeply unpleasant seconds I was less a victorious monster slayer and more a man actively losing a fight against airborne dog remains.

Somewhere in the distance people were screaming.

Meanwhile I was standing in the middle of Central Park, drenched in sweat and covered from head to toe in what appeared to be the powdered remains of a mythological apex predator.

'… I miss my bench…'

For a moment the only response was the sound of distant screaming, my own ragged breathing and the unpleasant sensation of discovering new places in which golden dust could apparently accumulate.

'Anakin Skywalker, you were right. Sand is the worst…' I thought as I tried to clear my sinuses while simultaneously trying to rub my eyes.

Out of nowhere the parchment reappeared, because of course it did. I was beginning to suspect the thing possessed a deeply unhealthy addiction to dramatic timing. I hadn't even noticed it leaving at some point, though to be fair I was just literally up to my wrists in Hellhound guts.

The scroll itself again offered no explanation of its own, instead hovering above the ruined remains of my late bench with what I was rapidly coming to interpret as entirely too much self-satisfaction.

Fresh lettering immediately began appearing across its surface.

[KILL CONFIRMED: HELLHOUND]

I squinted at it through a layer of monster dust.

"Thank you," I said. "I was there."

The scroll ignored me as more text appeared.

[First Monster Encounter Survived]

[Reward: Bronze Skill Drachma 1]

[First Hellhound Slain]

[Reward: Bronze Item Drachma 1]

The lettering lingered for a moment before another line emerged beneath it.

[Combat Achievement Recognized]

[Victory Achieved Through Unarmed Combat]

[Additional Recognition Recorded]

[Reward: Bronze Skill Drachma 1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

Golden motes immediately began peeling away from the dust still scattered throughout the park. Tiny particles of light rose from the torn-up grass, drifted free from my clothes and lifted away from the remnants of the hellhound before gathering together in front of me.

Three separate swarms formed.

They spiraled through the air like miniature galaxies before condensing into three bronze coins that dropped neatly into my open palm, as I caught them automatically.

They felt noticeably different from the gold drachma. Lighter. Less... significant somehow. Or perhaps just less powerful.

'I guess beating a Hellhound to a pulp ranks as less impressive in the grand scheme of things than being the literal offspring of the primordial void at the beginning of creation itself... I mean, when I think about it that way...'

Actually, I really rather not think about my origin story right now, considering everything that had happened in the past twenty minutes. Trying to distract myself, I rolled one of the bronze drachma across my knuckles while studying the others. They were identical at first glance, each bearing unfamiliar symbols stamped into weathered bronze, though I couldn't shake the feeling that whatever was inside them differed considerably.

"I guess… I just… throw you in the air? Again?" I hazarded, even sneaking a peek at the scroll from the corner of my eye, but frustratingly (and predictably) it gave no answer.

Sighing, I took one of the bronze coins and casually flipped it in the air with a flick of my thumb, the 'ping!' surprisingly pleasant until that same void twisted itself into existence to whisk the coin away. Again that sensation came from deep within me, of acceptance of a bargain, or perhaps a transaction as the sparks (bronze this time) left behind by the tear in reality coalesced into a new symbol over my head.

This one resembled a staff wrapped with a serpent, rendered in shimmering bronze light that cast strange shadows across the torn-up grass before slowly fading from view.

The parchment immediately updated.

[OFFERING BRONZE SKILL DRACHMA.]

[Novice Medicine]

Common Skill

You are about as skilled as a doctor in training. You know how to perform first aid, how to apply medicine, what most medicines do, and in a pinch improvise medical tools to perform basic surgery.

The knowledge hit a second later. Not exactly painful in the physical sense, not as the fight with the Hellhound had been. Just… overwhelming. One moment I was staring at the parchment and the next I suddenly knew approximately seventeen different ways to clean and dress a wound, could identify a disturbing number of faults in over-the-counter medications by sight and possessed entirely new opinions regarding proper field sanitation.

"... That's… actually really useful." I mused as I looked down at my scraped knuckles.

The realization surprised me almost as much as the magical knowledge download itself.

Considering recent events, I'd half expected the System to reward me with something like Advanced Basket Weaving or Competitive Bird Watching. Instead I'd apparently become medically competent enough to recognize that my right hand was beginning to swell slightly and that I should probably avoid punching additional supernatural monsters with it for at least several hours.

That seemed fair.

The second coin was considerably more interesting. The moment I activated it, another symbol ignited above me. A long black coat appeared suspended in the air, its silhouette outlined in bronze light before the image slowly descended and solidified.

The coat itself followed a heartbeat later and I barely managed to catch the surprisingly heavy leather before it hit the ground.

[OFFERING BRONZE ITEM DRACHMA.]

[Father Garcia's Trenchcoat]

Common Item

Faith the Unholy Trinity - "True faith looks forward, not back."

An iconic black trench coat worn by Father Garcia. It is fairly durable and has the property of warding off curses and negative energy from the wearer.

"... I have absolutely no idea who Father Garcia is."

Honestly, after the day I'd had, receiving a mysterious magical coat from an equally mysterious priest ranked surprisingly low on the list all things considered. With the shrug, I pulled on the trenchcoat, only mildly surprised at this point to find it an absolute tailor-made perfect fit.

The final bronze drachma rested alone in my palm. Part of me hoped for something combat related. Monster lore would have been nice too. A map even. Some explanation regarding why giant hellhounds were apparently roaming around Central Park.

I activated the coin. A final symbol appeared above me, suspended in the air like all the others before it. Unlike the others, however, this one didn't immediately inspire thoughts of combat or ancient cosmic significance. Instead I found myself staring upward in growing confusion before eventually arriving at the only explanation that made any sense.

"... Is that a steering wheel?"

The parchment immediately informed me that it was, in fact, a steering wheel.

[OFFERING BRONZE SKILL DRACHMA.]

[Novice Driving]

Common Skill

You know how to drive most vehicles, you are no expert but you won't fall off your bike or start driving into pedestrians.

The knowledge arrived instantly, bringing with it an understanding of traffic laws, road signs, how to check your mirrors, parallel parking, vehicle operation and the proper procedure for navigating a four-way intersection. I stood there for several long moments while my brain attempted to reconcile the fact that I now possessed practical driving knowledge despite not remembering how I'd ended up asleep on a park bench twenty minutes earlier.

Eventually I looked down at the parchment, then around at the cratered battlefield surrounding me before returning my attention to the scroll.

"... I just beat a hellhound to death with my bare hands, and your reward was teaching me how to drive."

If parchments had shoulders to shrug, it would've.

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AN: If you want, you can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon (same name over there)

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER TWO
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Mentally cussing out a piece of floating mystical parchment was not especially helpful, but it did give my brain something to focus on besides the fact that I was currently standing in the middle of Central Park wearing a magical priest jacket, coated in golden monster dust and suddenly capable of whatever the hell punching a demonic wolf into powder through repeated blunt-force trauma counted as.

Well, that and the unexpected ability to perfectly parallel park, which I was still not letting go by the way.

I looked down at my hands. The swelling around my knuckles had already started setting in. Nothing serious according to the part of my brain that now apparently contained basic medical training, but enough to make itself known whenever I flexed my fingers.

The parchment remained hovering nearby.

I narrowed my eyes at it.

"You know," I said, trying to make a fist and immediately regretting the decision, "for something that just taught me first aid, you could have included a first aid kit."

The parchment offered no apology.

Naturally.

Before I could continue arguing with enchanted stationery, the sound of distant screaming dragged my attention back to the rest of the world. People were still running scared throughout this part of Central Park. Not all of them, because New Yorkers apparently possessed a survival instinct that operated on a slightly different scale than the rest of humanity, but enough. Several joggers had stopped a safe distance away and were staring in my general direction with the horrified fascination of people witnessing either a violent crime, or performance art that had escalated beyond anyone's comfort level.

A woman clutched a small dog to her chest as it barked furiously at the empty crater where the hellhound had been. The dog, having somehow missed the part where its significantly larger relative had tried to eat me, appeared convinced it could take the situation if given half a chance. I, however, had had my fill of demigod-on-canine violence for the day.

So I walked away. I would've run, but first of all, running felt suspicious, and after everything that had just happened, drawing even more attention to myself seemed like a terrible idea.

Also my legs were beginning to realize what the rest of me had been doing for the last few minutes and were starting to protest in earnest.

I pulled the trenchcoat tighter around myself, partly because it concealed the worst of the monster dust and partly because wearing it made me feel slightly less exposed. The coat was ridiculous, sure, but it was also the only object I currently owned that claimed to ward off curses and negative energy. Given my recent introduction to reality had involved a hellhound, primordial ancestry and the universe handing me a driver's manual through magical gambling currency, I was not about to dismiss curse protection on aesthetic grounds.

Behind me, the parchment dissolved into golden motes without so much as a goodbye.

"Of course," I muttered.

I walked for a while without paying much attention to where I was going. The park paths blurred together as I moved south and east, guided more by the general flow of people than any actual knowledge of Manhattan geography; sidewalks, storefronts, traffic and pedestrians all melting into background noise while I tried and failed to figure out what exactly I was supposed to do next.

Waking up on a park bench with half my memories missing and discovering I was apparently related to the primordial source of creation had left me somewhat short on long-term goals.

A few blocks later I spotted a subway sign and found myself heading toward it almost immediately. I didn't actually have a destination in mind. That was a problem for future Ethan. Present Ethan was mostly concerned with putting some distance between himself and the giant crater he'd accidentally left in Central Park.

The subway went somewhere at least, which as far as both present and future Ethan were concerned, currently put it several steps ahead of here.

'Might as well.' I thought to myself as I ducked down the stairs to the subterranean station, one hand brushing against the wall to steady myself as the sounds of the city shifted around me.

Horns and distant sirens faded behind concrete and metal. The air grew warmer, heavier, stale in that particular underground way that suggested millions of people had been breathing the same exhausted breath for decades.

The station was busy.

Not packed, thankfully, but busy enough that I immediately felt less visible. People moved around me in overlapping streams, eyes forward, headphones in, bags tucked close. Nobody wanted to make eye contact. Nobody wanted to ask why I looked like I had gotten into a fight with a golden sandblaster and lost.

For the first time since waking up, I appreciated New York and the fact that for once, I wasn't at the centre of attention. The realization eased something in my shoulders I hadn't even noticed was there.

'Maybe I'm not completely screwed after all.' I even dared to think.

Then (of course, since apparently demigods can't have nice things) I spotted the ticket machines.

I stared at the turnstile kiosk for a few seconds, then checked my pockets again. Nothing, not even a magical drachma, not that it would've helped much. I doubt these things give chance for ancient currency.

A crowd surged toward the turnstiles as a train announcement echoed through the station.

'Good enough.'

I waited until the thickest part of the throng reached the gates, then slipped alongside them and caught one of the turnstiles just as it tried to swing shut. Adamantine Fist made the metal protest loudly for the briefest moment, but it stopped moving long enough for me to step through with the rest of the crowd.

Considering the day I've had so far, I felt only slightly bad about fare-skipping, though that was largely overshadowed by the relief I felt as I wandered onto the nearest platform.

For some time, perhaps more than was prudent, I ambled across the station while examining maps, route diagrams and anything else that looked remotely informative. In hindsight thought, I was mostly stalling in the hopes one of the displayed maps would reveal a genius plan of some sort, considering I was having difficulties coming up with one of my own.

I had almost nothing to anchor myself, or to orient myself towards. No home. No destination. No explanation for why half my memories felt like someone had dropped them down a flight of stairs.

That made it bloody difficult to just pick a platform and run. Eventually, after several minutes of accomplishing absolutely nothing productive, my attention drifted away from my increasingly circular thoughts and toward the people sharing the platform with me.

That was when I noticed the kids.

At first, they barely registered. A lean boy, almost wiry, with messy blond hair and a thin scar running down the right side of his face that sat strangely on somebody that young. A black-haired girl, her face marked by pale skin, bright blue eyes and a dusting of freckles across her nose. There was a sharpness to her features that made her look older than she was at first glance, right up until the freckles reminded you she was still just a kid.

They stood protectively near a little blonde girl with stormy grey eyes who looked far too young to be navigating the subway without an adult, clutching a baseball cap in a small hand. Near them, leaning on crutches, stood an older teenager with a scruffy patch of reddish facial hair that looked more aspirational than successful. His clothes hung loosely from a thin frame and there was something vaguely dishevelled about him, as though he'd slept in them, travelled in them and possibly spent the last several weeks being chased across the country in them.

My eyes would've looked past them if my subconscious (and my newly gained medical knowledge) didn't latch onto the fact that they displayed something I was currently all too familiar with.

They were exhausted.

It was a particular kind of weariness that went beyond simply being tired. Tired people slouched. Exhausted people became sharp in strange places. Their eyes moved too quickly. Their shoulders held too much tension. The blonde boy stood slightly ahead of the others like he had decided, consciously or otherwise, that anything coming for them would have to go through him first. The black-haired girl watched the tracks with the kind of suspicion most people reserved for dark alleys and poor life choices. The little blonde girl had a backpack hugged against her chest and a face that looked too serious for someone who should have been worrying about cartoons, scraped knees and whether adults were lying about vegetables.

The teenager with the crutches kept adjusting his stance, and something about him bothered me, though I could not have said why.

Then again, plenty of things bothered me at the moment, so I decided to just mentally file the group under unfortunate but unrelated and turned my attention back toward the station maps instead.

That lasted all of three seconds.

Movement caught my eye. Not from the children themselves, but from somebody watching them.

The woman watching them stood near a pillar.

Older, like a grandma, but more evil somehow. Grey hair pulled back into a tight, no-nonsense bun. Thick leather jacket despite the warmth of the station. She looked ordinary enough at first glance, which was exactly the problem. After the hellhound, my tolerance for ordinary-looking things behaving oddly had dropped considerably. She wasn't watching the tracks. She wasn't checking her phone. She wasn't impatiently shifting from foot to foot like every other person waiting for a train.

She was watching the kids.

I mean, so was I, but I was simply observing out of a mild sense of concern. This woman though, the way she didn't even fucking blink… she wasn't staring, she looked like she was hunting.

Her fingers flexed at her sides, and in the dim light of the platform, they seemed oddly longer than they should have.

The more I stared, the more they seemed to stretch, joints bending in ways that made my stomach tighten. Her nails scraped lightly against the leather of her jacket, and what I'd initially dismissed as an unfortunate manicure suddenly looked a lot more like claws, her fingertips curving into awful hooks.

Then the old woman shifted her weight and started moving and my stomach immediately sank. That hungry stare never left the children, and as she slipped away from her hiding spot, those wicked claws seemed to inch closer and closer to their backs with every step.

My body moved before I could even decide whether that was a good idea.

In hindsight, there were probably better ways to handle the situation. A warning might have been useful. A shout. A thrown bottle. Literally any form of intervention that did not involve madly sprinting up to an older woman in the middle of a crowded subway station and delivering an absolute mega-ton punch to the back of her head.

Unfortunately for the both of us, my instincts had spent the last half hour learning a very specific lesson: when in doubt, punch first.

'Man if turns out she's human after all, this is gonna make me look so bad on the security footage!' I winced as my Adamantine Fist slammed into the back of the woman's head.

She had almost reached the children when I completely blindsided her. For a fraction of a second her face twisted, skin stretching tight over something beneath it that was not remotely human. Her mouth stretched wider than it should have, her eyes flashing as a hiss tore its way out of her throat.

Then she burst into golden dust.

'Oh thank God! …or, uhm, gods, I suppose? Thank Kaos? Dad? Mom?'

I was drawn from my musings as the station erupted much like Central Park had done, though of course with much more immediate pandemonium. People screamed as a bag hit the floor somewhere nearby with a jarring thud. A man near the vending machines shouted something I didn't catch. The little blonde girl vanished from where she'd been standing so completely that for a second I thought I'd imagined her, while the black-haired girl produced a spear from absolutely nowhere, a shield on her arm that was surprisingly difficult to look at directly and the blonde boy had a sword out before I even realized he was armed.

The teenager with the crutches yelped and swung one of them in a frantic arc that came nowhere near me, the children, or anything useful, though I respected the spirit of the attempt if nothing else.

"Whoa!" I said, raising both hands before I froze as a sharp point suddenly pricked at my back.

Very slowly, I looked over my shoulder to find the little blonde girl somehow standing behind me.

The same little blonde girl who had been in front of me half a second ago was now at my back with a dagger pressed between my ribs and a glare that suggested she was considering using it.

The kids clearly hadn't been oblivious to their evil grandma stalker. Judging by the wide-eyed looks they were sending me, however, my involvement had come as something of a surprise. Before the children could decide whether or not I represented a threat as well and before I could ask why kids these days apparently conceal-carried swords and spears around, the next metro arrived with a rush of wind and screeching metal.

Perfect timing too, as its doors slid open just as a howl echoed down from the platform stairs. It wasn't a single voice but several, overlapping into a chorus that sent a chill through the station and drew every head in our little circle toward the sound.

The blonde boy swore under his breath and immediately shifted his stance, one hand tightening around the hilt of his sword as he turned toward the stairs. The movement was so immediate it felt practiced, as though he'd heard that exact noise before and had already learned to fear what followed it. Beside him, the black-haired girl's entire posture changed. The spear came up instinctively and whatever uncertainty she'd felt about me vanished beneath a much more immediate concern as she instinctively placed herself between the youngest child and the station entrance, that oddly disquieting shield raised as a barrier.

I saw movement at the top of the stairs, too many figures pushing into the station at once and moving far faster than they had any right to. People were shoved backward as something came down through them, not caring who it knocked aside. As the crowd scattered, I caught flashes of glowing eyes and bared teeth, along a collection of claws that immediately confirmed my growing suspicion that we were dealing with something considerably worse than an aggressive commuter. The first monster hit the platform on all fours, followed by another behind it, and behind that something taller forced itself through the crowd with a sound like stone scraping against bone.

"Guys, quick, the train!" I said, pointing at the open doors.

Nobody moved.

In hindsight, that was probably fair. From their perspective I was a dust-covered stranger in a trenchcoat who had appeared out of nowhere, punched a pensioner into powder and was now loudly offering tactical advice. Still though…

"Unless your plan involves staying here and finding out how many of those things there are, I'd strongly recommend we get on it." I pressed, my warning punctuated by a monstrous howl ripping through the station.

That did the trick more than my urging and we quickly piled into the nearest carriage in a rush of limbs, weapons and panicked breathing. The blonde boy hauled the little girl inside while the black-haired girl backed through the doors a step behind them, spear raised and shield angled toward the platform. Something about the thing made my eyes want to slide away from it and judging by the sudden hesitation that rippled through the approaching monsters, I wasn't the only one. The horde visibly slowed, several creatures faltering mid-charge as though they were struggling to focus on her long enough to close the distance. Others slowed, claws scraping against the concrete as they fought some instinctive reluctance to get any closer. It didn't stop them entirely, but it bought us a few precious seconds.

The teenager with the crutches stumbled as he tried to hurry through the doors, one of the crutches catching awkwardly against the lip of the carriage and for a split second his balance disappeared entirely.

I caught the back of his jacket before gravity could finish the job.

Unfortunately, the motion was apparently enough for my Adamantine Fist to activate and what had been meant as a quick tug turned into me hauling him bodily off the platform and into the carriage with enough force to make him yelp. He landed several feet inside the metro, staring at me with wide eyes.

"Sorry," I said.

"What was that?" he squeaked.

"Honestly? Still figuring that out myself." I muttered as I glanced down at my fist, clenching and unclenching it as I felt that unmistakably solid feeling of the Adamantine Fist fade away.

The doors had almost closed when one of the monsters finally forced its way through whatever hesitation the shield inspired. A clawed hand shot between them and the narrowing gap immediately shuddered as the creature tried to force the doors back open.

I grabbed both sides on instinct and pulled them together as hard as I could, earning an immediate shriek from the monster outside. Even through the narrowing gap I could tell the creature was monstrously strong as it tried to brute force its way inside, even throwing its weight against the closing panels with enough force to make the entire carriage shudder, but my Adamantine Fists, once wrapped around the handles, were the very definition of unyielding.

For however long though, I couldn't say. I had no idea whether subway doors were designed to resist supernatural invasion.

'Probably not. Most civic engineers probably don't include "potential monster breach" in their stress-tests.'

Still, between adrenaline, Adamantine Fist and the fact that I was becoming increasingly tired of being attacked by mythology, I managed to hold the doors together long enough for the metro to finally pull away from the platform.

The monster's clawed hand remained trapped between the doors as the carriage lurched forward, dragging the beast along the platform. It shrieked and slammed into the side of the station hard enough to crack stone. A moment later the hand tore free, dissolving into golden dust as the rest of the creature vanished behind us.

The metro pulled away just as the rest of the monsters reached the edge of the platform. Several skidded to a halt near the now empty tracks while others continued pouring down the stairs, arriving only in time to watch us disappear into the tunnel. The sudden silence inside the carriage felt almost surreal after everything that had happened.

For several seconds, nobody spoke.

The carriage rattled through the tunnel while the five of us stood there breathing hard, surrounded by ordinary passengers who were very deliberately pretending not to understand what they had just seen. Some stared at the floor. One woman clutched her purse to her chest. A man in a suit had gone completely rigid, eyes fixed on the advertisement above my shoulder as though it contained the answers to life itself.

The little blonde girl continued pointing the dagger at me, which felt slightly excessive given that I'd just helped save their lives. I looked from the blade to her face.

"Are we still doing that?"

She responded by narrowing her eyes suspiciously.

The blonde boy, on the other hand, relaxed fractionally. His sword dipped a few inches, though not nearly enough to make me comfortable.

"Who are you?" he asked.

"Ethan."

He continued staring.

"Ethan Creed." I elaborated with a shrug.

The black-haired girl stared at me like she was evaluating potential stabbing locations.

"What are you?"

Ordinarily I would've considered that a remarkably rude question. Unfortunately, it was also a complicated one and, under the circumstances, an alarmingly fair one.

I wiped some of the lingering golden dust from my face and immediately regretted it when some of it got into my eye.

"Judging by your fancy weapons and the fact you didn't act surprised that Hell's Angels grandma got dusted, literally, I'm kind of hoping you guys can tell me."

The teenager with the crutches made a strangled sound. "You punched Alecto."

"Right in the schnozz, yeah." I agreed, before I blinked.

"Also… who?"

The blonde boy stared at me. "You don't know who that was?"

"I knew she was watching you, had claws and seemed generally murder-adjacent." I looked toward the dark tunnel beyond the window before I shrugged. "That was pretty much the extent of my decision-making process."

The black-haired girl's expression shifted slightly. Not enough to qualify as friendly, but at least a step removed from actively considering my murder. The blonde boy studied me for another long moment before lowering his sword another inch.

"I'm Luke."

"Thalia," the black-haired girl said after a brief hesitation.

The little blonde girl kept her dagger exactly where it was.

"Annabeth."

"And I'm Grover," the teenager with the crutches added weakly. "Please don't punch me."

My eyes drifted from the crutches to his face and back again. Something about him still felt off, though I couldn't have explained why if asked.

"Wasn't planning to."

"Great," Grover said. "Good. Love that."

Luke didn't respond immediately. He just kept watching me with a thoughtful look, as though trying to fit several pieces together and not entirely liking the picture they were forming.

"That woman you punched. She is called Alecto. One of the Furies straight out of Hades. The Underworld?" he probed as he saw the lack of recognition on my face.

"Could've guessed. Figured she wasn't a kindly grandmother, not with those nails of hers." I just shrugged instead.

"You saw through the Mist. You saw what she really was."

"The what?"

The question earned a brief silence as the look that passed between the four of them suggested I had somehow managed to give the wrong answer.

"You don't know what the Mist is?" Thalia asked, incredulous.

"Should I?" I raised an eyebrow, increasingly aware (and somewhat embarrassed) that I seemed to be the least informed person in a group whose oldest member was barely fourteen.

Another look passed between them before Luke was the first to speak, apparently having come to some sort of conclusion.

"You're a demigod." He said simply.

The word hit harder than it should have.

Demigod.

Something about it felt familiar. For a brief moment, I had the distinct feeling that I'd just been handed the edge piece of a puzzle. Monsters hunting children through New York. Swords and spears appearing from nowhere. Ancient names attached to things that should not have existed. Somehow all of it felt connected, as though I'd stumbled into the middle of a story I already knew.

The frustrating part was that every time I tried to follow that thought any further, it simply... stopped. Like reaching the end of a bridge that should have continued and finding empty air instead.

The sensation was maddening. I knew these things. Knew them well enough that none of this should have been surprising, yet every time I tried to grasp the memory directly it seemed to slide away from me.

What remained was a growing certainty that the children in front of me mattered to whatever story my missing memories were trying and failing to reconstruct.

"That… does explain some things. And immediately raises even more questions." I hesitantly reply, before sighing as I drop down in one of the free seats in our suddenly vacated carriage, most of the other travellers having rapidly relocated when they saw me tear off a creature's arm using a subway door.

"What questions? How come this is news to you? You're the oldest demigod I've ever seen. I don't think anyone reached past thirty for the last… eighty years. Maybe more than a century." Luke prodded as he took a seat across from me, the other children following his lead.

"Oi, I'm barely past my twenties, you brat. At least… I'm pretty sure I'm barely past my twenties…" I trail off in a mutter as Talia blinks.

"What do you mean, 'pretty sure'?" she presses.

I rubbed at my face, which mostly just succeeded in spreading monster dust around. "I woke up on a bench about half an hour ago with no idea how I got there. Then a symbol appeared above my head, a magical scroll told me I was the child of Kaos and a hellhound tried to eat me, in that order."

For the first time since meeting them, all four went completely still.

Even Annabeth's dagger dipped slightly.

Grover swallowed. "Kaos? Are you… are you sure?"

"That was the word."

Thalia and Luke exchanged worried glances while Annabeth looked at me like I had just said something impossible and she was furious at the universe for not explaining it to her first.

"That's not a god," she said.

"I gathered."

"No," she said, with the intensity only a very serious child could bring to correcting an adult. "Kaos came before the gods."

"Also gathered."

"So, you can't be a child of Kaos."

I opened my mouth, thought better of whatever I had been about to say and glanced toward the empty space where the parchment had spent most of the day appearing and disappearing.

A thought occurred to me.

So far nobody had reacted to the thing. Then again, nobody else had reacted to Alecto until she stopped pretending to be an old woman either. If seeing through whatever supernatural camouflage monsters used, this so-called Mist and being able to see the parchment were related, then...

'Well, one easy way to find out.'

"Would you like to explain that to the scroll?"

As if offended by the small child's stubbornness and eager to prove her wrong, the parchment immediately reappeared at the edge of my vision.

The reaction was instantaneous. Annabeth made a small sound. Luke visibly stiffened. Thalia's spear came up and Grover emitted something halfway between a squeak and a strangled yelp.

'Interesting. And good to know.'

The parchment ignored all of them and calmly displayed a fresh line of text.

[KILL CONFIRMED: ALECTO, THE UNCEASING ONE]

[Combat Achievement Recognized]
[Named Monster Defeated]
[Victory Achieved In Single Unarmed Strike]
[No Damage Sustained]
[Additional Recognition Recorded]
[Reward: Silver Item Drachma ×1]
[Rewards Dispensing]

The final line vanished.

A moment later a swirl of silver light gathered beneath the parchment, spinning faster and faster until it condensed into a single metallic shape.

A silver drachma dropped neatly into my palm with a surprisingly gratifying 'clink!'.

For a few seconds nobody spoke.

The coin looked similar to the bronze and gold drachma I'd already received, though noticeably larger and stamped with a far more intricate design. It also carried a strange sense of weight that had absolutely nothing to do with its actual mass.

Luke was the first to recover as he looked at the coin with the kind of expression people usually reserved for loaded weapons. "That's a drachma."

"Yeah, I got that part. Not even sure how though."

Annabeth frowned.

"It's because we're Greek."

That did not clarify anything.

"I don't think I am, Annabeth. I mean sure, I may look handsomely Mediterranean-"

"Not Greek Greek. Demigod Greek." The little girl interrupted with an impressive eyeroll.

Somehow that clarified even less.

"Our brains work differently," Luke explained as Thalia placed a calming hand on Annabeth's shoulder. "We understand ancient Greek because that's where our godly side comes from. Most demigods can read it without even trying."

He pointed at the parchment.

"Your scroll uses Greek letters. If it didn't, you'd probably be stuck on every word."

"Wait. Really?"

Annabeth nodded decisively, then paused, almost embarassed.

"Lots of demigods have trouble with normal reading too."

"Why?"

"Because our brains are built for ancient Greek instead." Annabeth explained, though she sounded distracted.

"That seems backwards."

"Welcome to being a demigod."

Grover also looked distracted, though apparently for different reasons.

"I've never seen monsters drop cold hard cash before, not even in drachma form. Stuff made out of gold, sure, golden scales, swords, armor, but never just straight up money." He said, sounding both awed and slightly greedy.

Luke's attention shifted between the silver drachma and the floating parchment.

"So what happens now?"

"Not entirely sure." I mused as I turned the coin over in my hand.

The coin felt familiar in a way I was struggling to explain. I'd gone through this three times already. Gold. Bronze. Bronze again. Every time the process had ended the same way.

"The last times I got these, I sort of just… threw them up in the air. They disappeared and I got my rewards."

"That almost sounds like offering drachma up to Iris. Don't suppose your special drachma summon rainbows as well?" Thalia questioned and I blinked at her for a moment.

"Do yours regularly summon rainbows?"

"Only when we can't find a phone and got the drachma to burn." The demigod said with a shrug, as if that's supposed to explain everything.

"Right… no, these don't do that. Or maybe they can, they just haven't so far. They get swallowed up by what I'm beginning to think is Kaos itself, or an aspect of it at least. The offering is accepted and I get the reward. In this case, the reward will be an Item of some kind, similar to this magical jacket."

Grover pales even further at that.

"You… y-you can summon a piece of the Void into existence? How… h-how does that even work, He predates existence itself-"

"Show us." Luke said surprisingly intently.

"Please." Thalia added, elbowing Luke in the side and shooting him a reproachful glare.

"Fine." I sighed.

I tossed the silver drachma into the air.

The same impossible darkness unfolded around it, swallowing the coin in a brief flash of silver and black. The sensation brushed against my thoughts again. Recognition. Acceptance. Transaction.

Above my head, a symbol ignited.

The symbol looked nothing like the previous ones.

The bronze rewards had been straightforward enough. A staff wrapped in a serpent. A steering wheel. Simple images that immediately conveyed what they represented.

This thing looked like somebody had started drawing a star and then become distracted halfway through.

Silver lines spread outward from a central point, weaving through one another in an intricate pattern that vaguely resembled thread. More and more of them appeared, twisting together until they formed the outline of a school uniform suspended within the star.

Annabeth's eyes widened as she stared at the slowly fading symbol overhead.

"That looked like being claimed."

Thalia frowned.

"Not exactly."

"The symbol appeared over his head," Annabeth insisted. "That's what happens when a demigod gets claimed."

"Yeah, but it felt different," Luke said. His gaze remained fixed on the spot where the sudden darkness had swallowed the coin. "When a god claims someone, you know who's doing it. That's sort of the point, after all."

Grover shifted uneasily in his seat.

"This felt... bigger."

Nobody seemed particularly happy with that observation.

"That's not exactly reassuring," I noted.

"That's because we don't really have better words for it." Luke grimaced.

Silence immediately fell as the parchment updated itself.

[Goku Uniform 1-Star]

|Uncommon Item|

Kill la Kill — A school uniform made of 10% Life Fibers, granting its wearer superhuman physical abilities strong enough to break walls and flip cars. The uniform itself is also extremely durable, surpassing even carbon fibre.

A second line appeared beneath it.

[Please Select Coloration]

The silence lasted another few seconds.

Then:

"...A school uniform?" Luke asked.

"Apparently."

Annabeth frowned.

"What are Life Fibers?"

"I have absolutely no idea."

Thalia stared at the floating text.

"The weird paper just gave you armour."

"I think it technically gave me a school uniform."

"It says it's stronger than carbon fibre." she shot back with a roll of her eyes.

"...Fair."

The parchment remained hovering nearby, the request for a colour choice still displayed beneath the description.

That was new.

Up until now the process had been almost completely automatic. Throw coin. Receive reward. End of transaction. The magical parchment had never once cared what I thought about medicine, driving or suspiciously durable trenchcoats.

Apparently magical school uniforms was where it finally decided my opinion mattered.

'Right. Bright colours seem like a terrible idea.'

I had already spent the day attracting the attention of monsters, primordial entities and apparently at least one immortal spirit of vengeance. The last thing I needed was clothing that made me look like a radioactive crossing guard.

Besides, it had to match the priest's black trenchcoat.

"Charcoal grey." I intoned clearly.

The symbol overhead immediately shattered into hundreds of silver threads.

They spiralled downward and gathered in front of me, weaving together into actual fabric before my eyes, until a neatly folded uniform hovered briefly in midair before dropping into my lap.

The material felt strange beneath my fingers. Smooth, almost silky, yet far denser than ordinary fabric had any right to be. Almost… alive.

"Are you going to wear it?" Annabeth asked as she pointed at the strange uniform.

"Well, considering I've been involved in no less than two monster deaths in the first hour since I woke up, I figure I can use all the help I can get. Soon as we get to a station that has cubicles so I can change in private, that is."

Annabeth looked disappointed by that answer.

"You were hoping I'd put on the mysterious magical outfit immediately, weren't you?"

"...Maybe."

"You'll just have to wait and see. I know I don't look it, but underneath all of this monster-grime, I do still have some dignity left… somewhere."

I refolded the uniform as best I could and rested it across my lap. For a few moments nobody spoke. The metro rattled through the tunnel while the adrenaline slowly bled away, leaving behind sore knuckles, exhaustion and entirely too many unanswered questions.

Across from me, Luke kept glancing toward the darkness beyond the windows, idly spinning his sword on its axis as its sharpened tip dug a small groove in the carriage floor. Thalia sat with her spear resting across her knees, though she had thankfully stored away that creepy shield of hers. She explained it was called Aegis, a replica of the thundershield her father had wielded when he first overthrew his father and apparently a Quest reward she'd gotten for when she followed a magical goat of all things into a haunted mansion. Annabeth had finally lowered her dagger, though she still looked suspicious of me (then again, that seemed to be her default state regarding pretty much everything). Grover meanwhile seemed to be working himself steadily toward a nervous breakdown (which also seemed to be his default state to be honest).

Looking at them now, it was difficult to remember that the oldest among them couldn't have been much older than fourteen.

Eventually curiosity won.

"Okay," I said eventually. "Let's start with the obvious. Why are half of New York's monsters trying to murder you?"

Thalia snorted.

"Because of me."

There wasn't any self-pity in her voice. If anything, she sounded annoyed by the inconvenience.

"That is not reassuring." I frowned.

Luke rubbed a hand across his face.

"Thalia's father is Zeus."

I blinked.

"As in, Zeus Zeus? Lightning-slinger Zeus? That Zeus?"

"There's another one?"

"Fair."

For a while, they explained. Not all at once. The story came out in pieces as the metro rattled through the tunnels beneath Manhattan, each answer raising two more questions and every explanation somehow making the situation worse.

"...the Big Three swore an oath," Luke was saying. "No more children."

"The Big Three?" I asked.

"Zeus. Poseidon. Hades." Thalia said, sounding less concerned than the others. There was a faint defiance in her voice when she spoke her father's name.

"Thalia!" Annabeth hissed reproachfully as she and Grover looked fearfully at the ceiling.

"What's the matter? You guys look like you're about to be struck with lighting." I chuckled, though it died off as the three demigods (and one satyr) shot me a reproachful look.

"Don't even joke about such things." Grover said with a small tremble in his voice, though he seemed to relax a bit when it became clear our subway would remain unsmote... for now.

"Saying their names tends to attract attention," Luke explained. "Usually."

"Usually?"

"Well since we're underground, we have less to fear from Pops, especially with me here. Though being underground, we would normally have to be more careful with saying Hades' name, though that's common sense most of the time. Since he already wants me dead though… meh, fuck him." Thalia said challenging, but I could see the tension in her shoulders, the bravado in her expression.

"Why on earth would your own Uncle try to turn you into monster-chow?" I ask baffled.

"Because of the Oath. The Three swore it on the Styx, no more kids. Thalia is proof Zeus broke it. You can't just break your word once you've given it to the Styx. That carries… consequences…" Grover explained nervously.

"Alright... breaking a magical pinky promise gives you bad juju, kinda like breaking a mirror by throwing a black cat through it or something. I get that. What I don't get is why it seems as if the entire Underworld has got it out for you, specifcially. You didn't ask to get born, it was Zeus who couldn't keep it in his fucking pants-" "Ew, gross..." "-sorry Thalia, so why isn't it his ass on the line? It was Zeus who broke his promise to Hades, so why doesn't Hades fucking take it up with Mr. Oathbreaker then, instead of beefing with a fucking twelve year old?" I asked, talking more and more heatedly.

Judging the child for the sins of the father sat wrong with me on a deep, personal level that surprised me, considering I was basically just half a day old at this point. Either this was something Ethan Creed felt very strong about before he went to sleep on that park bench before I woke up, or (slightly more worrying) this visceral reaction was prompted more by my divine/primordial side, influencing my thoughts without me even realizing it.

"Hades can't directly move against Zeus." Grover interrupted weakly, shrinking away from my rising anger.

That caught my attention.

"Why not?"

He shifted uneasily.

"Because they're gods. The Olympians aren't just a family. They're part of... everything." He tried as he struggled to find the words.

"The structure of the world," Annabeth supplied.

Grover nodded gratefully.

"If Hades and Zeus actually went to war with each other, it wouldn't stay a family argument." Luke added.

"Their domains are woven into reality itself," Thalia continued. "The sky. The sea. The dead. The foundations of Western civilization. Everything is connected."

I frowned.

"And if they start tearing at those connections?"

Nobody answered immediately.

"Bad," Annabeth said at last.

"How bad?"

The seven-year-old met my eyes.

"End-of-the-world bad."

The carriage fell quiet again as I sat there for several seconds digesting that.

"So Hades can't strike at Zeus."

"No."

"But Thalia..."

Grover nodded miserably.

"Thalia isn't protected by the same rules."

"Hades is taking it out on her." Luke finished bitterly as Thalia glanced outside the darkened windows without a word.

For a moment, I couldn't even talk as I tried to grapple with that statement.

"Wait. If Hades opened the gates of the Underworld to get at Thalia here, why are we on a subway? Shouldn't we try to stick to above ground? Maybe try and book a cross-country flight and stay up in the air?"

"Because this will take us most of the way to Long Island. We're trying to get to Camp Half-Blood," Grover said immediately.

The name tugged at something buried deep in my mind.

Camp Half-Blood.

I knew that name, it stirred that same frustrating sense of familiarity I'd been wrestling with all evening. The memory slipped away before I could catch it, though I felt a slight... almost push towards it. Or perhaps more like a magnetic pull. Something within me was subtly trying to tell me I should go there and once again I wondered about the influence my divine half had on my thoughts.

"And Camp Half-Blood is...?"

"Safe," Grover said.

Luke winced.

"Safer," he amended.

"That's not the same word."

"It's the best one we've got."

"Fantastic." I sighed. "We're fleeing a murderously angry god toward a safe haven that isn't actually safe."

"When you put it like that—"

"I feel like there is no other way to put it, Grover."

"If you-… if you want to leave… I've tried telling these guys as well, but they're too stubborn for their own good…" Thalia began haltingly, before taking a deep breath and fixing me with a startlingly blue gaze.

"If you want to leave, none of us will blame you. Hades is on a murderous rampage, but only because Dad's breaking of the Oath allows it. You get out of his way, stay away from me, and Hades won't even care about you. It sounds like you already got attacked by one of the monsters that follow behind me everywhere I go when it found you instead. If you don't want to become monster-food, then do yourself a favour and put as much distance between yourself and me as you can." she said firmly.

It was a surprisingly logical and selfless argument for one so young and clearly under so much pressure. I was touched. But more than that, I was pissed. These three demigods (and one nervous wreck of a satyr) were only children and yet, just because of a brotherly spat between two ancient beings who really should've known better because one of them couldn't keep it in their pants even after a magic pinky promise, these kids were forced to grapple with death and self-sacrifice. Even if Hades failed in taking Thalia's life, he had already made sure he had taken away her childhood and the same went for the other children.

"Thanks for the offer Thalia. But truth be told, unless the scroll somehow gives me a drachma that gives me my memories back, I've got nowhere else to go. I'll stick with you guys, see this Camp Half-Blood for myself, if you'll have me." I replied strongly.

I could tell part of Thalia wanted to press the issue, but the larger part of her let it go and settled for a weak smile instead.

Demigods or not, they were still kids. Tired kids at that. Whatever confidence they'd managed to project since I'd met them had begun to crack around the edges as the adrenaline wore off, revealing the exhaustion underneath. For the first time since we boarded the metro, the trio didn't look seconds away from leaping into battle.

The realization sat with me for a while as the metro continued rattling through the tunnel. Eventually I turned toward the window, watching darkness flash by beyond the glass.

"By the way, where does this subway even go?"

Luke glanced over.

"Brooklyn."

The name snagged on something buried deep in my head, like standing in front of a locked door and realizing the key was somewhere in your pocket, if only you could remember which one. It felt important somehow. The kind of important that made my missing memories stir restlessly in the back of my skull.

"Brooklyn," I repeated slowly.

Thalia frowned. "Problem?"

I was already preparing to say no when I hesitated. The question had touched something buried deep in the mess of missing memories rattling around inside my head. Brooklyn meant something, I was sure of that much. Unfortunately, certainty and understanding were turning out to be two very different things.

"I don't know," I admitted.

---

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Patreon.

 

[To-be-hero-X]

Ohh ok son of kaos that would absolutely not cause pantheon wide panic no siry nah I'm looking forward to see more

 

[Arkon]

Welcome dude. Are you going to post the Mizuki story here too?

 

[Retalom]

since there is a son of khaos running around would it mean the big three will make the most totally reasonable and well thought out decisions as a result of having this information? No way they would be like this is official demigods are meant to replace us and we are daddy chronos now.... right?>.>

 

[Count Dragulia]

Really interesting start. Looking forward to more!

 

[Opossum89]

lol, as a son of Khaos, hes Gais's sibling. Hes Zeus's and his siblings great-uncle.

 

[Venyr4434]

Interesting start.

Watched.

Tho, I hope it won't take 10 or more chapters to get to Camp Half-Blood.

 

[Bakkughan]

Welcome dude. Are you going to post the Mizuki story here too?

Click to shrink...

Yeah, I was still figuring this site out, but it really is remarkably similar to SB and SV. Since Stripes and SoK are my only currently active stories, I'll be posting both here for now. SoK has a backlog to work from, so for now at least it'll update once a week (though I am on holiday in Peru for pretty much all of August so I may need to find a solution to that… somehow). In the meantime, I'm working on Stripes and trying to build up a backlog for that too. So far every arc, prison escape, chimera technique and the hero water, has taken 5 chapters, which is way to long, so I'm trying to shave it down to 2 or 3 at most for this next one, then make a beeline for the rest of the powerups. The action/tempo in Stripes has been too low I think, causing people to drop the fic. That's part of the reason I began this PJO fic. With a chaos gacha system, you can have a power up pretty much every chapter. Hopefully that'll keep this story from dragging like both Stripes and SoS have done.

 

[Bakkughan]

CHAPTER THREE
​

---

We got off in Brooklyn.

Considering I'd just punched a Fury, torn off a monster's arm with metro doors, and paid the primordial void for a magical school uniform, simply stepping onto a platform without being attacked felt like a refreshing change of pace.

Naturally, I did not trust it.

The station was quieter than the one near Central Park, though that was not saying much. The air still smelled like old concrete, hot metal and the faintly damp breath of underground places that had never once known the touch of sunlight. A handful of commuters hurried past us, doing their best not to look too closely at the group of heavily armed children, the satyr with crutches, and the dust-covered twenty-something in a priest's trenchcoat carrying a folded magical school uniform under one arm.

To their credit, they mostly succeeded.

I was beginning to appreciate that about New York.

Luke led us toward the stairs with the confidence of somebody who knew where he was going, or at least knew better than to stop moving while monsters were hunting him. Thalia followed near the back, spear gone again but shoulders still tight, her eyes constantly flicking toward exits and shadows. Annabeth stayed close to her side, which would have been more adorable if she hadn't still looked ready to stab anything that moved too suddenly. Grover brought up the middle, muttering nervously under his breath as his crutches clicked against the floor.

I made it about three steps before realizing there was one problem I should probably solve before we went any farther.

"Guys, bathroom break," I said.

Everyone stopped as Thalia gave me a flat look. "Now?"

"Well, unless you'd prefer I change in the middle of the platform?"

Luke looked at the uniform like he still hadn't decided whether it was armour, clothing or a practical joke from whatever cosmic force had decided to sponsor my survival.

"Make it quick," he said.

"Yes, sir." I mock-saluted with a faint grin that saw him rolling his eyes, though none of the children were very successful in hiding their small smiles.

The station bathroom was about as glamorous as expected. It had a single flickering light, two cramped stalls, and a sink that looked like it had seen unspeakable (or at the very least, illegal) things. On the bright side, the door had a lock, and at that moment privacy ranked higher than hygiene.

I shrugged off the trenchcoat, unfolded the uniform and quickly changed.

Just like the trenchcoat, it fit perfectly.

I probably should've been more concerned about that, but at this point perfectly fitting supernatural clothing barely cracked the top five weirdest things in my day. The charcoal-grey fabric settled comfortably against my skin, lighter than I'd expected despite how unnaturally dense it had felt in my hands only moments ago. I buttoned it up, adjusted the collar and stared at my reflection in the scratched mirror.

Nothing happened.

No sudden surge of power or dramatic transformation, and certainly no helpful scroll appearing to congratulate me on successfully dressing myself.

Well, almost nothing. There was something there, faint but unmistakable.

Not strength exactly. More like a sleeping muscle I'd never had before, resting just beneath the surface and waiting for me to call on it. I clenched my fist experimentally and felt the sensation stir for a heartbeat before settling again.

"Huh."

Between this, Adamantine Fist and whatever Combo turned out to be, I was beginning to suspect my fighting style was going to involve an unhealthy amount of punching.

I pulled the trenchcoat back on over the uniform, gave my reflection a quick once-over and decided I looked reasonably normal, provided one ignored the monster dust, tired eyes and general impression of an overly dedicated cosplayer at an anime convention.

Good enough.

When I stepped back out, Annabeth immediately looked disappointed.

"What?"

"I thought it would look different."

"It's a school uniform, not a fireworks display."

"It can flip cars." She said and I could distinctly hear the unspoken "duh".

"Only if I'm the one wearing it, apparently, and I am making the mature adult decision not to test that inside a public transportation facility."

She considered that with visible dissatisfaction.

Luke, meanwhile, gave the outfit a quick once-over and nodded toward the stairs.

"We need to move."

That was hard to argue with.

We emerged onto the street a few minutes later and Brooklyn greeted us with traffic, old brick buildings, narrow sidewalks and the kind of ordinary city noise that almost felt comforting after everything that had happened underground. The sky above was already beginning to shift toward evening, the light turning thin and dull between the buildings.

"We need to get out of the city," Luke said quietly, keeping his voice low enough that only our little group could hear. "The longer we stay in New York, the more monsters catch our scent."

"So, we make for Long Island," I said.

Grover nodded quickly. "Camp is on the North Shore. We just have to get there."

The problem, as it turned out, was 'just' transportation. None of us had money in any useful amount, unless ancient Greek drachma suddenly became legal tender in Brooklyn. None of us had a car. One of us had recently acquired the ability to drive, which would have been more impressive if it had come with the ability to summon a vehicle or legally acquire one.

"Could steal one," Thalia muttered.

I looked at her.

She looked back at me with the expression of somebody who had expected judgment and was prepared to be annoyed by it.

"I'm not saying no," I said carefully after a moment. "I'm just saying that if our plan involves grand theft auto, I'd like it to be at least plan C."

Annabeth frowned. "What's plan B?"

"Finding someone who already has a car and convincing them to help."

Grover perked up slightly.

"That might actually work."

Everyone turned toward him.

He shrank a little under the collective attention.

"There's, um, there's supposed to be another satyr around here," he said. "Or near here. I think. He helped me once before, a few years ago."

Luke's expression sharpened. "You know someone in Brooklyn?"

"Maybe. I mean, I knew someone who lived on the outskirts of Brooklyn. He had a place where satyrs could hide for a while if they were moving through the city. Sometimes he helped with transportation."

"Transportation as in a car?" I asked hopefully.

"Maybe."

"That is the most beautiful maybe I've heard all day."

Grover managed a weak smile, clearly relieved to have contributed something useful. "He knows the area better than I do. If he's still around, he might be able to get us out toward Long Island without using the main roads."

Thalia still looked wary, but less immediately opposed to the idea. "You sure you can find him?"

Grover hesitated.

That hesitation was not comforting.

"I think so."

"Grover."

"I said I think so! It's been a while, ok, and you know how cities are disorienting to a child of Pan!"

Luke sighed, but not cruelly. More like this was a familiar argument and exhaustion had worn all the sharp edges off it.

"We don't have a better option," he reminded Thalia wearily.

Which, unfortunately, was true, and after a brief, collective hesitation that said none of us liked it but none of us had anything better either, we fell in behind Grover and let him lead the way.

Brooklyn shifted around us as we walked. Storefronts gave way to row houses and older homes squeezed together behind fences and narrow yards. Grover kept checking street signs, muttering to himself, occasionally stopping at corners to peer down one road before choosing another.

At first, he seemed confident.

Then less confident.

Then very much less confident.

"Grover," Thalia said sharply, "are you sure this is the right neighbourhood?"

Grover scratched nervously near one of his concealed horns.

"I'm pretty sure."

"That's not a yes."

"It's... almost a yes."

I glanced at Luke, who looked like he was trying very hard not to say anything that might make Grover more nervous, which was either impressive restraint or proof that the boy had spent entirely too much time managing group morale.

Grover stopped near the corner of a narrow street lined with particularly old houses. Some still looked (barely) maintained, others looked like they were losing a long, slow war against time, weather and possibly property taxes.

He glanced up and down the block, his brow furrowing.

"Though..."

Luke turned. "Though what?"

Grover's voice dropped until he was mostly speaking to himself.

"I could've sworn the outskirts looked different than this."

That was hardly comforting. Before I could ask the obvious follow-up, something moved behind a window in one of the old houses across the street.

It was brief, just a blur of a pale shape behind dirty glass.

There and gone so quickly I couldn't tell whether I had seen a face, a hand or just some curtain shifting in a draft. The window itself was small and smudged, tucked beneath the roofline like an attic window. For a second I stared at it, waiting for the movement to repeat.

Nothing happened.

"What?" Luke asked, spotting the tension in my posture as Thalia and Grover got into an increasingly heated argument.

I kept looking at the house.

"Not sure."

That was becoming another dangerously common answer.

From the outside, the house looked abandoned. The paint was peeling off in strips, showing grey wood underneath. The windows were dark with grime, making it impossible to see inside, and a crooked fence leaned haphazardly into the yard. The front porch sagged in the middle like it was tired of holding itself together. There were weeds growing through cracks in the path and something about the shadows near the doorway seemed a little too thick.

I was just starting to decide that I did not like it one bit when a voice called from inside.

"Grover?"

The satyr went perfectly still as the voice reached him. It was old and rough, but unmistakably warm, carrying a note of recognition and relief that seemed to settle something deep in his chest. Grover's face changed immediately.

"Leneus?" he asked desperately.

A pause.

Then the voice came again, louder this time, carrying through a cracked window near the front of the house.

"Grover! Thank Pan, boy, get in here!"

Grover lit up like someone had handed him hope itself with both hands.

"I knew it," he said, already hurrying toward the gate as fast as his crutches allowed. "I knew he was still here!"

"Grover, wait!" Thalia snapped.

He did not wait.

To be fair, I understood. The poor kid had been terrified since the moment I met him. If the voice belonged to someone safe, someone older, someone who knew what to do, then of course he wanted to believe it.

That did not make the house any less creepy.

Luke moved after him immediately, Annabeth close behind. Thalia cursed under her breath and followed, which left me with the unpleasant choice of either staying outside alone like an idiot or entering the obvious murder house alongside the armed children.

"Fantastic," I muttered, stepping through the gate.

The front door opened before Grover reached it. Not all the way, just enough for a warm yellow light to spill through the gap as Grover slipped inside.

Luke reached the door seconds later and glanced back at us, his expression tense but hopeful. Annabeth slipped in after him. Thalia lingered half a heartbeat longer, eyes scanning the windows, the porch, the roofline.

Then the voice called again.

"Hurry now. Quickly."

Something about it made my skin prickle. It wasn't even because it sounded wrong or anything. Because it didn't. It sounded perfectly right, almost too perfect even. I opened my mouth to say something, to slow us down or at least question it, but the door widened before I could, and from inside came Grover's voice, bright with relief.

"It's okay! He's here!"

At that, Thalia went in, and after the briefest hesitation I followed her across the threshold, the door easing shut behind us with a soft, final click.

For one brief, hopeful moment, the inside of the house looked almost normal. Dusty, yes. Old. Dimly lit by lamps that should not have been working. The air smelled stale, like closed rooms and old wood and something faintly sour underneath, but I could see a hallway, a staircase, wallpaper peeling near the corners.

Then we walked ten steps and the hallway kept going.

The outside of the house had not been large.

The hallway did not care.

It stretched farther than it should have, past too many doors on either side, each one closed. The wallpaper changed halfway down, from faded green to yellow stripes to something red and floral that made my eyes ache if I looked at it too long. The floorboards creaked beneath our feet in uneven rhythms, like the house was shifting its weight around us.

"Grover?" Luke called.

No answer.

The hallway ahead turned left, where it should have led toward the side of the house. Instead it opened onto another staircase that descended into darkness. I glanced back over my shoulder and saw the front door still there, solid and reassuring for all of two seconds before the lights flickered. When they steadied again, the door was gone, replaced by yet another stretch of hallway that hadn't existed a moment before.

Nobody moved.

Annabeth's hand tightened around her dagger, Thalia slowly raised her spear, and Luke drew his sword. I stared at the wall where the exit had been, then at the impossible corridor now occupying its place.

"Right," I said quietly. "I'm starting to think we may have taken a wrong turn."

Somewhere deeper in the house, Grover screamed. The scream echoed through the house before cutting off so abruptly it was almost worse than if it had continued.

"Grover!" Luke shouted.

No answer.

He took off at a run.

"Luke!" I barked.

He skidded to a halt just before the first corner, turning back with a look somewhere between panic and frustration.

"We have to—" Luke started.

"I know," I cut him off.

"No, you don't. We have to find him!" Luke snapped.

"And we will. I promise," I tried to soothe him, to no avail.

"Then what are we waiting for, let's move!"

"We will. Slowly." I replied.

He stared at me like I'd completely lost my mind.

"The monsters—"

"The monsters already have him."

That finally stopped him.

"The only thing sprinting blindly into a haunted house accomplishes is giving them more people to grab." I insisted.

Nobody liked hearing that, but that didn't change the fact that it was true. Luke took a slow breath, forcing himself to calm down before giving a reluctant nod, and together we advanced.

The hallway twisted again after only a few yards. It should have taken us toward the back of the house.

Instead we found ourselves standing on a wide landing that overlooked another staircase, one that stretched both above and below us, each direction disappearing into darkness. I frowned.

"Didn't we already go downstairs?"

"I think so," Thalia said uncertainly.

Annabeth had gone strangely quiet, her attention drifting away from the stairs as she studied the walls instead.

"The rooms don't fit." she said in a distracted tone.

Luke blinked.

"What?"

"The outside."

She pointed toward one wall.

"This should be the edge of the house."

"It is the edge."

"No." She shook her head. "It should be."

She walked over and pressed her palm against the faded wallpaper.

"The hallway is too wide."

I looked around again.

Now that she'd said it...

"She's right." Thalia growled, electric blue eyes scanning the hallway.

Even accounting for the staircase, there was simply too much hallway. We'd already walked farther than the house should have physically allowed.

"That's impossible," I muttered.

Annabeth looked at me like I'd missed the obvious.

"We're in a monster's lair."

"...Fair enough."

Somewhere below us a door slammed.

Then another.

Then another.

The sound echoed up through the haunted house until it became impossible to tell where any of them had come from. It was something straight out of some horror slasher flick, the one that was inspired by events so disgustingly horrific, the History Channel would happily be making documentaries about it for decades.

Despite this, I should've felt more scared by this creepy murder mansion with a ghost in its impossible walls, but for some reason the rising panic I felt never managed to actually become overwhelming. I probably had Father Garcia's coat to thank for that.

Unfortunately, the frightened children didn't have such protection.

"Grover!" Luke yelled again.

"I'm here!" the answer came immediately from somewhere ahead.

"I can't find the way back!"

Luke started desperately toward the hallway the voice had come from, but I managed to grab the back of his jacket before he took off again.

"Where do you think you're going?"

"He's right there!"

Before either of us could continue, Grover called again.

"Luke!"

"I'm coming!"

"No!"

The shout came from behind us.

We all spun as Grover's voice echoed down the hallway we'd just walked through.

"Don't go that way!"

Luke's face drained of color as the realization hit him all at once: there hadn't been enough time for Grover to move, not that fast, not through this maze.

"That's..." Thalia whispered.

"...impossible?" The first voice laughed.

Not Grover.

Something pretending to be him.

A low chuckle drifted through the corridors before disappearing somewhere inside the walls.

"That," Annabeth whispered, "wasn't Grover."

"No." Thalia said, knuckles white around her spear, "but which one?"

Luke's jaw tightened.

"We split up." He decided.

I looked at him incredulously.

"What?"

He pointed his sword down one corridor.

"Grover's voice came from there."

Then he pointed down another.

"And there."

His eyes met mine.

"Whatever's copying him is trying to draw us away from… wherever it's keeping Grover. Fine. It draws some of us away, but we're not leaving our friend." He turned toward Annabeth. "You and Ethan keep looking for Grover. Thalia and I will deal with the monster."

I stared at him for a long second.

Then cuffed him upside the back of the head with a rather gratifying 'whack!'.

"What was that for?!" Luke yelled as he rounded on me.

"DnD rule number One: never split the party."

"I don't even know what that means!"

"It means we're not splitting up."

Luke rubbed the back of his head, looking equal parts offended and incredulous.

"Ethan, think about this. If Grover's in one direction and the monster's in another, we don't have enough time to check both." He pleaded desperately.

"We don't have enough people to split up either."

"One group finds Grover-"

"The other gets eaten."

"The other kills the monster!"

"You don't know which group is which."

Luke opened his mouth but found he didn't have an answer.

I stepped closer, lowering my voice.

"Listen to me. Whatever's in this creepy ass house has had exactly one goal since we walked through that front door."

I gestured at the branching hallways.

"Separate us."

Luke glanced between the two corridors.

"It's a maze. Stumbling through it means we're playing its game."

"No," I said. "Splitting up is playing its game."

He hesitated.

"What if Grover really is down one of those halls?"

"Then we rescue him."

"And the monster?"

"We deal with that too."

"How?"

"Together."

For a long moment, Luke just looked at me, before with a weary sigh, his shoulders slumped.

"...Fine."

"We stay together," I ordered, turning towards the girls. "We don't lose sight of each other unless they're physically dragged away."

Annabeth nodded immediately.

"I think he's right."

Luke muttered something under his breath that sounded suspiciously like, "I still think this is a bad idea."

"Good," I said. "That means we're all equally miserable."

We'd barely made it another twenty yards before another voice drifted toward us. It was unmistakably (and therefore probably not) Grover again, quieter this time, calling my name from behind an old wooden door on our right.

"Ethan? Ethan, I'm in here. I tried the door, but I can't open it."

I shot Luke a warning look. He looked back in frustration and desperation, hand curled tight around the hilt of his trembling sword. Neither of us moved.

"Guys?" There was genuine panic in Grover's voice now. "I think... I think it's coming back. It's coming back, oh gods, oh please-"

Thalia stepped forward, eyes wide as she heard the pain and panic in her friend's voice.

"Grover?"

"Oh thank the gods." His relief sounded painfully real. "I thought I'd lost you."

Almost on instinct, Thalia reached for the handle.

"Thalia, don't!" I roared, cursing myself for focusing too much on Luke while forgetting Thalia was also just a teenager, one equally as impulsive and concerned as her friends.

It all happened in a matter of seconds.

The door swung inward into a room that lay in complete darkness.

"I can't see anything," Thalia muttered.

"Further in," Grover called desperately.

She took one cautious step through the doorway.

"I still can't—"

A massive hand shot out of the blackness, bloated, its skin a sickly pale sheen of grease, and seized her ankle. For a split second, Thalia's eyes went wide, her mouth opening in a soundless gasp.

Then the darkness swallowed her whole, and she vanished as the door slammed shut hard enough to shake dust from the ceiling.

"THALIA!" Luke roared, voice cracking as he slammed bodily into the door, just a fraction of a second too late to pull back his friend.

It didn't even so much as shudder underneath his assault. Desperate, he hacked at it with his sword, cutting shallow grooves and sending splinters flying before my hand engulfed his shoulder, my face grim.

"Luke, move."

I didn't bother with the lock. A sense of absolute immutability settled into the flesh of my hands while a comforting heat spread from my uniform throughout my body and with a grunt, I punched the entire door clean off its hinges. Luke was already through the opening before it hit the floor, but he stopped dead as soon as he crossed the threshold.

The room beyond was empty: no furniture, no windows and most of all, no Thalia. Just another stretch of hallway disappearing further into darkness. Tears of frustration began to well at the edge of Luke's eyes while besides me, Annabeth had slipped her small hand into mine, gripping with a strength born of fear and desperation.

"How… what… what's even going on?" the wiry boy gasped, struggling to keep some measure of control, wide eyes flitting through the dilapidated corridor.

"It's herding us." I realized.

Annabeth frowned.

"What?"

"The voices."

I looked at both of them.

"It either copies voices..."

Another scream echoed through the house, this one sounding exactly like Thalia.

"...or it can make us hear whatever it wants."

Luke's expression hardened.

"So, what now?"

I reached out without taking my eyes off the hallway.

"Hands."

"...What?"

"Nobody lets go of anybody."

Luke understood quickly, grabbing Annabeth's hand as I took his free one.

"If one of us gets dragged away," I said quietly, "it'll have to take the rest of us with them."

Somewhere deep inside the house, Grover began crying.

Then Thalia started screaming.

A heartbeat later Grover joined her, the two voices echoing through the impossible corridors before, impossibly, both screams dissolved into the same ugly, wheezing laugh.

None of us spoke after that. We simply tightened our grip on one another's hands and continued deeper into the maze.

Luke's hand stayed locked around Annabeth's while I held onto his. It made moving through the narrow corridors awkward, especially whenever they twisted sharply or the floor dipped beneath our feet, but I wasn't about to let whatever lurked in the walls peel us off one by one.

For a while, nothing happened.

That somehow managed to be worse.

The house groaned around us. Floorboards creaked in rooms we never entered. Doors opened and closed somewhere beyond the walls, each sound seeming to come from a different direction than the last. Every few seconds the wallpaper changed again, faded flowers giving way to cracked stripes before becoming bare plaster stained with dark patches that looked unpleasantly organic.

Then Grover cried out again.

"Ethan!"

The voice came from somewhere above us.

"I'm up here!"

We ignored it.

A few moments later it came from below.

"Luke!"

None of us answered.

"You have to hurry!"

Still we kept walking.

The silence that followed lasted perhaps ten seconds before Thalia's voice echoed down a side corridor.

"I'm over here!"

Luke slowed instinctively.

"I found the exit!"

He stopped, not because he believed it, but because just for a heartbeat he wanted to.

"Please!" The voice came again, this time edged with panic.

Annabeth squeezed his hand.

"Don't."

Luke shut his eyes for a moment before nodding once, and without another word we moved on, leaving the voice behind us as the corridor stretched ahead. The house did not take the rejection well. A heavy crash echoed somewhere nearby, followed by another. Dust drifted from the ceiling as something massive slammed into the walls beyond our sight.

Then the voices changed.

"Luke!"

Grover again.

"I can't breathe!"

Another corridor.

"Ethan!"

Now Thalia.

"It took my spear!"

A third voice, that sounded like... Annabeth.

"I'm scared..."

The little girl's cry nearly stopped me in my tracks, the pain in that seven-year-old's voice going straight through me with a deadening chill, before the actual little girl at my side gripped my hand, grounding me and reminding me she was still here as she stared up at me with determined stormy grey eyes.

"Don't fall for it, I'm right here."

I clenched my jaw as I nodded and forced myself to keep moving.

The voices became angrier after that.

"Are you deaf?"

"What are you doing?"

"Help me!"

Then...

"You left us!"

Luke flinched.

"You're letting us die!"

The words echoed through the corridors from every direction at once.

"You coward!"

"You're too late!"

"You should've come!"

The accusations followed us through the impossible house until they blurred together into one endless chorus, each one chipping away at our composure.

"They're not real," I said quietly, though at this point I wasn't sure whether I was reminding them, or myself.

The next door almost killed us.

As we rounded a corner, the door burst open to reveal another stretch of hallway beyond, and Luke had barely taken a step toward it before Annabeth yanked him backward so hard he nearly lost his footing.

"There isn't a floor!"

She was right.

The hallway continued exactly as before, with its faded wallpaper, identical doors, and dim ceiling lamps stretching ahead in a way that felt almost reassuring... until, about six feet in, the illusion broke completely. The floor simply ended. Beyond the threshold yawned a black shaft that dropped into darkness so deep I couldn't even see the bottom, while the hallway on the opposite side carried on as though nothing was wrong.

Luke swallowed.

"I didn't even..."

"You weren't supposed to," Annabeth whispered.

I looked down into the darkness, adrenaline from the near-death stampeding through my veins, mixing with the rage that had steadily been building as the monster kept trying to trick us and hurl abuse at us.

"Fuck this." I said from somewhere deep in my soul.

I stepped back from the doorway and turned toward the nearest wall, surprising my remaining companions.

"Ethan?"

"Annabeth."

She looked up quizzically.

"If you had to guess..."

I tapped the wall with my knuckles.

"...where's the middle of this place?"

Her eyes wandered over the corridor.

She frowned, lips moving silently as she pieced together distances only she seemed capable of visualizing.

"We've crossed ourselves."

"I noticed."

"No..." She shook her head, "We've crossed ourselves three times."

I blinked as I glanced down at the little girl at my side.

"How do you even know that?"

She ignored the question.

"The stairs can't exist where they do."

She pointed somewhere beyond the wall.

"If the house still has a center..." Her finger shifted slightly, "...it's that way."

I looked at the faded wallpaper.

Then at my fist.

Luke caught on almost immediately.

"...You're kidding."

"You know what, I'm sorry Luke. You were right about one thing."

"Of course I was right. ...about what, specifically?"

I rolled my shoulders.

"The whole point of a maze is walking it from end to end, turn after turn, find your way back to the exit through trial and error, clever reasoning if you can. Except once you introduce impossible geometry, you start playing an unwinnable game..."

My right hand tightened into a fist.

"...so I'm done playing by its rules."

Adamantine Fist flared to life beneath my skin, and somewhat to my surprise, the dormant strength sleeping inside the uniform answered immediately.

The wall exploded.

Bricks, splintered timber and centuries-old plaster erupted inward as my fist punched straight through the impossible hallway. Dust filled the air while chunks of masonry crashed into whatever room had been hiding beyond.

For the first time since entering the house... everything went silent.

Luke stared through the hole.

"...You can do that?"

"I was honestly hoping so, yeah."

Somewhere deep inside the mansion something let out a furious, inhuman bellow. The walls trembled, and then every voice in the house began shouting at once.

"No!"

"Stop!"

"Wrong way!"

"You'll die!"

"TURN BACK!"

Grover.

Thalia.

Annabeth.

Luke.

Voices we'd never heard before.

Old men.

Children.

Women.

All screaming over one another until the corridors shook with the noise.

"We're getting close." I smiled despite myself.

The next wall came down even easier.

Then the next.

Each punch carved a straight path through rooms, corridors and stairwells alike, reducing the impossible geometry to a series of gaping holes. Furniture exploded into kindling. Rotten beams snapped. Wallpaper fluttered through the air like dead leaves.

Behind us the house screamed. It came through the walls themselves now, an agonized howl that rattled my teeth.

"LEFT!" Annabeth shouted over the noise.

I adjusted course and drove my fist through another wall.

A dining room.

Another punch.

A bedroom filled with broken furniture.

Another.

A corridor.

Another.

I must've punched through half a dozen more walls as Annabeth kept shouting rough directions (at one point even calling out "STRAIGHT DOWN!") before the scenery finally changed. The final wall shattered outward into a cavernous chamber lit by the orange glow of a roaring fire.

Heat washed over us as the screaming abruptly stopped, leaving behind a room that reeked of old blood, damp fur, and rotting meat. Rusted cookware hung from blackened rafters. Piles of junk filled the corners—broken furniture, smashed carts, tarnished shields, cracked pottery and bones.

Far too many bones.

Only then did I notice the polished brass horns jutting from the walls around the chamber. Some had been crudely patched together with newer lengths of copper pipe, others were bent or dented from years of abuse. At first I took them for oversized gramophones until I noticed the thick brass pipes disappeared into the walls and ceiling in every direction, branching through the house like arteries.

Speaking tubes.

The kind old manor houses had used before telephones so the family upstairs could summon servants from anywhere in the house.

Except somewhere over the decades, this monster had turned the entire system into its own hunting tool. Every corridor we'd walked, every room we'd passed, every voice that had echoed through the walls had been funneled through those pipes before being perfectly mimicked by whatever obscene talent the Cyclops possessed.

Every single one ended within easy reach of the absolutely massive firepit and above it, suspended from thick ropes hanging from the ceiling, two figures struggled.

Grover and Thalia.

Grover was openly sobbing.

Thalia had apparently skipped fear altogether and gone straight to murderous rage.

"I AM GOING TO SHOVE THAT POKER SO FAR UP YOUR—"

She stopped as her eyes found us.

"Luke?!"

Across the fire, something enormous slowly rose to its feet.

The room had felt massive when we'd entered. Now, it suddenly (and worryingly) didn't.

The Cyclops unfolded from a mound of filthy blankets and scavenged junk until its head nearly brushed the rafters. Its skin was a sickly, bloated white stretched over obscene layers of fat, while swollen purple lips glistened wetly beneath a single enormous eye fixed squarely on the hole I'd just punched through its masterpiece.

I was about to shout something (maybe a simple "let them go!" or perhaps a cool battle cry) when out of the corner of my eye, something cautiously drifted into view.

The parchment.

I hadn't even noticed it had summoned itself again. It didn't float out in front of me this time however. Instead it hovered just behind my shoulder, exposing only enough of itself for the writing to be visible while leaving the rest hidden behind my back.

"...Are you seriously hiding behind me?"

It, as always, declined to comment and remained stubbornly tucked just behind my shoulder as fresh golden lettering bled across the page.

[Survival Achievement Recognized]

[Successfully Navigated A Monster's Deadly Lair]

[Labyrinth Cleared Through Unconventional Means]

[Reward: Silver Trait Drachma ×1]

[Rewards Dispensing]

"Seriously?" I hissed under my breath. "Now's the time for magical paperwork?"

Again, the parchment managed to somehow shrug despite having no shoulders to do so. With a sigh, I tore my eyes away from the infuriating thing and looked back at the Cyclops.

It still hadn't moved. For several long seconds it simply stared, the cyclops' single eye fixed on the parchment, me and the me-sized hole in its wall in stunned disbelief before its lips slowly peeled back.

"You..."

Its voice rumbled through the chamber, its own voice ringing out for the first time. It sounded like two boulders grinding together in passionate, hateful, break-up sex.

"...BROKE..."

One massive hand wrapped around an iron fireplace poker almost the size of a telephone pole, its tip a deep molten orange.

"...MY HOUSE!"

---

AN: You can read up to 5 chapters ahead over on my Pa Treon (same name)

 

[To-be-hero-X]

Of course it's always angry cyclops it can't be greek quest without them pop up

 

[Wonderbread16]

Thank you for the chapter

 

[Arkon]

Of course it's always angry cyclops it can't be greek quest without them pop up

Click to shrink...

This one is canon, Annabeth hated Tyson in book 2 because of this. Delayed them in NY enough that the Furies caught upto them at Camp.

 

[Ink]

Author you the same bakkughan that used to post on fanfic app?

 

[Bakkughan]

Author you the same bakkughan that used to post on fanfic app?

Click to shrink...

I never used the app myself but yes I did make my start on ff.net. Unfortunately, the site's file uploading system doesn't work anymore and it's been overrun by bots, so I'm making the move to different websites.