SILVER ◼percy jackson◼

💠TWENTY-ONE💠

EDITED NOVEMBER 20TH, 2018

"Does it look like that matters to me?" Hades sneered, smiling as he admired Zeus' master bolt in his hands, "I don't care who stole it, only that I have it. Now, you're no use to me anymore. Persephone, feed them to the souls."

"Shit!" I tried to block out Grover's screams as we backed away from the fireplace behind us, the metal cover caving in and the fire inside raging out towards us, the hungry souls flailing around and hoping to get a piece of our living flesh.

"Luna, there's hounds!" I whipped around, ignoring the dead souls behind me when Grover had called that out. I yelled out every command I knew, praying that they would stand down and back off, but they just continued to back us into the raging fire behind us.

"Luna, do something about them! Call them off already!"

"What the hell do you think I'm trying to do, Percy?" I screamed at him, glaring him down as I aimed the arrow in my bow at the hounds, "They're not listening to me! Persephone has them completely under her control!"

A hound advanced on Grover and I shot it down, quickly taking off my quiver and placing it on Grover's back and handing him my bow.

"Why the hell are you giving me this?"

"Because you need it more than I do! They keep advancing on you guys, but not on me! Now just stand there, aim, and shoot the damn arrows at them!"

Grover obeyed as I returned my attention to the hounds. They crept towards us, causing all of us fall back farther into the fire behind us. My head snapped towards Percy as I heard a shriek, seeing a hound lunge at Percy's mother's feet and cause her to lose her balance. I moved past Grover, grabbing her arm as quickly as possible and pulling her into me, hissing as the nails of a soul dragged along my arm.

"There's no burn," she whispered, grabbing my arm and examining it as I tried to move us away form the fire. I looked down at my arm, seeing the obvious marks of the soul's nails, but no burn like there should have been. My skin glowed orange before returning to it's normal color.

"Let's pretend that didn't happen," I told her, completely astonished at what I had just seen. She just nodded her head, clearly just as in awe as I was at the moment.

"You really are her..." I tried to urge her on, wanting her to complete her damn sentence, but other things caught out attention. The metal cover to the fireplace returned, locking the souls back in the depths of hell where they belonged, and the hounds finally disappeared.

"Why would you do that?" my focus shifted to Percy as he took a step towards Persephone, who was soon my new center of attention. She stood on the other side of the room, a gigantic smile on her face and Zeus' bolt in her hands as she kicked a passed out Hades on the ground.

"Why did I do that? Because he's cruel and abusive! If he were to start a war of the gods, it would just be me and him, forever. Now I can finally get out of here, go breath the fresh air for more than a few months. You can go. You can take the bolt, and your mother, as long as you have the pearls."

Percy dug them out of his pocket, showing us the three pearls in his hand.

"Only three, and there are four of you. The pearls only transport one person, which means one of you must stay behind.

"Listen, I'm staying behind. You guys go get the pearl to Olympus and-"

"Percy, I'll stay behind. My son, you have a life ahead of you that you must-"

"No, both of you are getting out of here, I'm staying," I interrupted them, only to get a glare from Percy almost immediately.

"What, is that part of this damn prophecy as well? Are you meant to stay behind to save me or is this actually something you're willing to do?"

"You are acting like an complete asshole," I sneered, getting up into Percy's face as his morphed to one of shock at my outburst. "My prophecy has weighed on my shoulders since I was a child. Daughter of the hunt, skilled on the battlefront, blessed with a curse that has the power to balance the universe. Love ingrained in her destiny, intertwined with the fate of the water. But all will end helplessly, the winter solstice proving to be a slaughter. That is my prophecy, Percy, something I have carried through my entire life, knowing that one day the fate of so many is going to rest in my hands. I wanted to spare you from that, not that you seem to care. But no where in there does it say that I was forced to be in love with you, Percy Jackson. So believe what you will, but I will not stand here and be criticized by you."

I shook my head, knowing that I wasn't going to break through to him right now, and walked away from him, grabbed my quiver and bow back from Grover.

"She's right, Percy," he said as he handed me my weapon back, "take a walk in her shoes. This prophecy has eaten her up since she was just a kid. Not just the fact that her destiny and yours are intertwined, but that she would have to stop whatever is going to happen on the night of this winter solstice. Now, let that all sink in while you take the bolt to Olympus with your mother and Luna because I'm staying behind."

"Grover, no I can't let you-"

"You don't get a choice. I'm the protector, and this is my job. I failed to protect Thalia all those years ago, and I'm not failing this time. Now go, you don't have much time to get to Olympus,"

Percy finally quit the stubborn act, allowing Grover to stay behind. I handed him a pearl and his mother a pearl, holding onto the third one for myself.

"You place the pearls on the floor, visualize where you want to go,and then step on the pearl with your foot," Persephone explained, moving to stand beside Grover as they both watched us.

"To Olympus," Percy said, placing the pearl on the ground by his foot as his mother and I did the exact same thing.

I imagined my mother, a woman I haven't seen in forever, sitting in the throne room with the other gods of the council. A picture of every god formed in my head as they all sat in their thrones, one word replayed in my head over and over again: Olympus.

I stepped on my pearl at the same time that Percy and his mother stepped on their's, letting the blue-green smoke envelop our bodies and whisk us away to Olympus.

Only when my eyes opened, I wasn't on Olympus, and Percy and his mother were no where in sight.