[DanMachi/Percy Jackson] Prytaneum

Chapter 53: Blanching part 1

Ryuu stopped in the midst of cleaning her dish, expression twisting abruptly, but falling smooth before I could even tell what kind of expression she was trying to form, eyes focused on the sink instead of me.

I took it that she had heard of them.

"What do you ask, Mr. Jackson?" She said after a long moment, voice normal.

"I'm cynical and suspicious," I said. "I heard that there used to be an organization of evil gods and adventurers who caused a lot of trouble in Orario before they were defeated and never heard from again. Thing is, I tend to hear a lot from bad guys that are defeated and never heard from again. I thought you might know something, is all."

Ryuu looked at me out of the corner of her eye, standing in front of the sink as I sat on the counter, my makeshift dishwasher still at work above us.

"...Why ask now of all times?" She asked, making me shrug.

"I have a friend who got hurt really bad by Evilus, back when it was still a thing," I said, watching her. "Welf and I are going to visit him, actually, and I guess that made me think of it. Apollo is throwing a big party for all the gods and their guests and I'm invited, so I figured it was a better idea to ask now than when I was already there. Since you're a Level 4, I guess I figured you might know something about it."

Ryuu closed her eyes for a few seconds to long to pass it off as a blink.

"Certainly, I know something of such things," She replied. "However, I don't believe it necessary for you to concern yourself with them anymore."

"See, you say that, but that's never how it works out," I said. "Either they're not really did or they come back or—"

"—They were eliminated, root and branch," Ryuu said. Her tone didn't change so much as it seemed to sharpen, the words commanding me to be silent. "Not just every member of the Familia involved, but everyone connected to them. From the adventurers to the merchants, smiths, and townspeople, even the least bit of suspicion was enough, until they were eradicated completely."

I was taken aback by that, left wide eyed and stunned for a long moment.

"...Wow," I said, a shiver going up my spine and a feeling of familiar uncertainty settling in my gut. "I guess the Guild took things pretty seriously, huh?"

"It wasn't the Guild," She replied before falling silent long enough that she surprised me by continuing. "It was someone who was out for revenge. In the end, even though Evilus was stopped, the destruction grew so out of hand that the Guild blacklisted the one responsible and even put a bounty on their head, as even groups that were only distantly related were destroyed."

"Oh," I said, the sinking feeling in my gut intensifying. Perhaps I was just seeing things that weren't there, but I liked to think I was decent at seeing things right in front of my face and at reading people—not that I though Sherlock Holmes was going to give me a medal for seeing that Ryuu's hands were nearly shaking, that her grip on the plate was so strong I thought it might shatter, or that her eyes were avoiding mine.

The thing is, I knew something about revenge, too. After Ethan killed Annabeth, I'd slaughtered every demigod and monster within reach, spilling their blood in a rage. I wasn't under any delusions—I'd known even then that it wouldn't change anything. It wasn't even like everyone there was guilty of the crime; Ethan had killed her, slipping a blade that was meant for me through her chest. Everyone else had just been there, most probably not even realizing that anything had happened or changed until people started dying. Pretty much all of them had just been kids like me, some of them even younger, who'd just had less reason to fight for the gods than I had.

I mean, I thought that the gods were a better choice than Kronos in a general sense, even if they were still...themselves, but the reasons I'd fought? For my mom, who'd done so much for me. For my dad who, sure, was there once in a blue moon, but who I was still close to and cared about. For the friends I'd made at Camp that I wanted to protect. Most of them probably hadn't had that, whether parents that cared, close friendships they'd forged through shared experiences, or anything else; they'd just been kids who'd been chased away from everything they might have had because one of their parents was a god who probably didn't even care. I knew that.

But after Ethan took Annabeth away, I'd wanted him and everyone involved to die. I think everyone has thoughts like that at some point, wanting completely disproportionate retribution for something bad that happens to them.

Most people aren't demigods. Most people can't make it happen.

Something people don't really tell you about wars—people run, even demigods. There were exceptions, of course, but not really. People say a lot about being fearless or never backing down, but I think just about everyone has a point where they start to think 'this is a bad idea,' even if it takes long for some to get there than others. Some people are brave, up to a certain point, at which point they get scared. There's no shame in that; everyone has something they'll balk at. If I'd known at the beginning that fighting against Kronos would have meant the deaths of everyone I cared about, I probably would have just stayed away. I'd have tried to avert destiny, stuck myself in the Lotus Casino or stayed on Calypso's Island, crossing my fingers and hoping that Nico, or whoever came next, wasn't as big a screw up as me. And some things just aren't worth the cost; what's worth a black eye probably isn't worth a bullet wound. That's normal.

On the other hand, a lot of people can be cowardly, up to a certain point—though maybe cowardly wasn't the right word. Cautious, careful, afraid, whatever. That's normal, too; maybe even more so. You don't really have to be brave to fight, after all; you just have to be more scared of what you might lose than you are of dying.

If I had to say, Kronos' side was mostly the former and we were mostly the later, the difference being mainly what we fought for. They fought for what they didn't have—freedom, companionship, respect, lives—and we fought to keep what we had from being taken away. I didn't fight because I was brave or because I wanted to and I don't think anyone else, either. If anyone had wanted to run and escape the battle before it started, I didn't blame them; if anything, I hoped they'd succeeded. But I don't think anyone did, because by that point, everyone who'd wanted to leave had had their chance—and everyone who'd stayed, stayed for a reason. Some had people they wanted to protect, some had nowhere else to do, everyone knew what could happen. What probably would happen, after we realized we were fighting alone; what had happened, in the end.

It just didn't matter. When you already expecting to die, but you're afraid of something worse and you can't expect mercy anyway, it's hard for the threat of death to scare you.

As a general rule, though, when someone slaughters a tenth of your army without a scratch, most people start getting scared. When someone slaughters half of your army without a scratch, morale tends to shatter pretty hard. Things like promises of justice and fairness and freedom are beautiful and have power, but they can seem a bit distant when you're missing an arm or being disemboweled.

They ran from me.

Or, at least, they tried to run. But none of them made it off that bridge alive.

I'd slaughtered them all. I could have stopped after I routed them, after they ran and screamed, but I didn't. It hadn't been about anything like justice or making things better; I'd killed them because I'd wanted to—and because they couldn't stop me. Achilles had gotten in trouble for something like that, I remembered, but I couldn't blame something like that on a Curse. That was me. I did that. And I knew they were the enemy, that they'd have killed me if they could, but they couldn't lay a hand on me and I'd torn them apart with mine.

I wasn't proud of it. It was something I hadn't thought I was capable of and part of me regretted finding out. But the rest of me accepted it, as something I had but shouldn't have done. Maybe it being in a war meant it wasn't as bad as it could have been, but it didn't make it good, either. But I couldn't change it or go back to before it happened and do better, so the only real thing I could do was live with it—which had been easier at the time, when I'd expected to live with it for about a day, but that was neither here nor there. All I could do was accept that it was my responsibility, just like it was my job to decide who I wanted to be.

It was almost enough to make me reconsider saying anything else. But...I wasn't the only one who had to decide stuff like that.

"The day I Leveled Up, I got attacked by a plant monster on the upper floors," I said. "It was at least Level Four and it broke through the ceiling of the sixth, coming down to get me. Shortly after, I had bigger things to worry about, but it attacked a street, too, before some adventurers stopped it. However...my friend in the Guild said that someone had put it there deliberately and hiding it in the sewers. After some of the stuff I heard...I guess Evilus was my first thought. Ryuu, I—"

She turned towards me, but I knew at once that she wasn't listening. Ryuu looked at me with eyes so wide I could see the whites all around them, hands releasing the plate she held as if she'd forgotten it existed. Darting out reflexively, I grabbed it as it fell—but Ryuu was gone. Looking up, I saw her figure waver with each step, slipping between one and the other so fast she seemed more like a sequence of images than anything alive. Before my hands caught the plate, Ryuu was at the door, even though she just seemed to be walking in a daze.

After she opened it, though...

Ryuu ran.