Climb (Percy Jackson x Reader)

nine

brief edit: 11 oct '22
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✺ A FADING WORLD ✺

Grover didn't know how it happened.

One moment he was facing the Laestrygonian, the giant growling with hunger as he tried to keep both Annabeth and Clarisse safely away—and the next, the monster was encased in purple-black flames, barely given the chance to voice its pain before becoming nothing but golden dust.

The air hums around the satyr, his periphery bright with light. Trembling with the weight of his breaths, he looks to the side.

He is met with the overwhelming rawness of divinity.

Golden light swirls around the figure he cannot see, emulating the destructive beauty of a supernova. The air pulses with rhythm, a heartbeat of power and energy. Everything seems to fade into silence, leaving only the reverberating hum of celestial essence.

The divine form of a god can easily kill a mortal. Grover doesn't know why he can't look away.

Maybe he was going to die. Maybe this god is offering him some last moment of comfort before his awe takes his life.

The nova shrinks into itself, becoming a star. Light gradually dims, retreating into the figure who stays shielded behind it. Their form grows clearer, sunrays of power pushing out from them. A god, taking the form of a regular mortal.

Shadows flock to her, slinking around her legs to await her command. Smoke trails along her hands, a remnant of midnight-violet hellfire. Darkness gathers as an echo of her form, the shape of large wings illuminated by the light of her power.

Here stood a reflection of Hades with eyes of purest starlight.

A god who wasn't a god at all.

And all Grover can think about is how—once everything is finished—he's going to kill her.

— x —

It creates a sense of drunkenness and delight when the shadows at her shoulder blades tingle with solidity. Energy trickles through her skin, muscles flexing from the added weight of her wings. The misty darkness cradles her back, fluttering gently with the urge to cast everything into a sunless void.

She entertains them, allowing the shadows to wrap her in a cocoon as they meld into her body. Twisting and formless, herself nothing but darkness, she travels the distance to the Golden Fleece, snatching it into her mass of umbra before turning to grab the startled Cyclops who had been attempting to near it. Barely a moment passed, she returns to her place near Grover, easing Tyson out of nothingness and handing him the Fleece.

Kronos, horrified at the loss of eternal invincibility that he suddenly feels, turns to face his sarcophagus. Bare-topped and lackluster, it presents the Titan with an unfamiliar sense of foreboding. Darkness arcs in his periphery, and he whirls to follow it, his wary breaths impressively quiet. His gaze lands on a patch of sand, a dip just large enough to hold a human body now empty of the demigod who had lain there before. The air around him sparks with electricity, everything slowing and slugging to a near-halt.

An impact at his side prompts him to swivel, and his hold on time releases, resuming its normal state.

All Kronos finds is an empty space of air.

Darkness once more flashes in the edge of his vision, and he moves to face it. Nothing. Again.

The cave rumbles with a low, frustrated growl, and Kronos's anger ripples as he searches the cave. "Where are y—?" he halts mid-sentence, his power thrumming with more force as he faces a certain half-blood.