Chapter Text
Chapter One: The Beginning of the End
March 29th, 2018
Kate scoffed. "Leo, you can't just—"
He cackled. "Sure I can!"
It was a mild, temperate day. Kate and Leo were hanging out in the Hephaestus Cabin for lunch. They were munching on some smuggled Subway sandwiches, which Kate had used her influence as a Hero of Olympus to secure. They were playing Monopoly in the loud, industrial room, where hissing steam and groaning metal were as endemic to Cabin 9 as thunder was to the Zeus Cabin.
Of course, being Leo, he'd tricked out the game board and pieces to an absurd degree—the pieces physically moved themselves around the board in a way fitting to itself, and he'd expanded the bank into a full-fledged financial system with recessions, inflation, robberies, and foreign investors. His additions sometimes made the game go on for days… or end within five minutes.
He pulled his chance card, and clicked his tongue. "Yep. Sorry, sunshine. Says here that my real estate company forged an iron triangle with the Banking, Housing, and Urban Affairs Committee, so we've got a constant money stream, baby! I get fifty bucks at the end of every turn!"
Kate groaned. "Seriously? Gods dammit. Okay, hold on. Lemme roll. Maybe I'll pull that Great Depression card and kill everything."
She rolled the dice, a six and a three. Her battleship moved nine spaces, and landed on Leo's Park Place.
He whooped, as she swore. She demanded, "You haven't rigged this thing, have you?"
Leo was scandalized. "How dare you!" he dramatically fanned himself, clearly mimicking Hazel. "I—I do declare!"
The two of them doubled over laughing. Kate forked over his cash, and grumbled about greedy corporations.
He smirked. "And that is precisely the last of your money, isn't it?"
Kate glared accusingly at the red stamped Mortgaged on all of her properties, and sighed. "Yes, Leo. You win."
He leapt up in the air, whooping as confetti fell from the ceiling. Colorful lights flashed, and he said, "I win! You lose! Booyah!"
She shook her head in disbelief. "Really went all out, didn't you? How long did it take you to set this up?"
"An hour. I really—uh..." he trailed off, a strange expression on his face.
Kate frowned, and Leo shut off the lights and confetti. He looked ill, or surprised.
She asked, "Leo, what's up?"
He opened his mouth. "Something just..."
And then, to Kate's horror, his curly brown hair darkened into black flakes of ash, spreading through his head and radiating throughout his body. He collapsed into a flurry of dust, which was already wafting through the vents.
Kate stumbled back. "Leo? Leo, what the hell was that?"
No answer. Save for the humming of the cabin, it was eerily silent...
No. Dry thunder echoed from nowhere. She wasn't sure how she could hear it through the thick walls of the cabin, through the drone of the machinery, but it was there. A dry, empty thunder, rolling across the universe.
Kate stood slowly. "Leo... if this is a practical joke, I'm going to smack you in the mouth. This isn't funny at all."
Again, there was no response.
A deep anxiety settled into Kate's bones. Something weird was happening. She opened the door of the Hephaestus cabin, and stumbled out to find a nightmarish, confusing scene.
Across the central green, campers were disintegrating into columns of ash. There was no fire, no smoke, just brown, earthen ash. She stood in bewildered shock for a moment.
What on Earth...?
She sprinted towards the cabins, and bumped into Jason. "Dude! What the hell is happening?"
His eyes were wide and baffled, his glasses askew. "I have no idea! Piper just vanished into thin air! Are they... are they dying?"
"I... I..." Kate stammered as she watched people vanish without a trace. Even the ash was being dispersed by wind, as if something was intent on leaving nothing for those who remained.
Jason gripped her arm. "Kate, if Piper just died..." he swallowed. "I don't know if I can think about that right now."
Kate wiped her brow. How had this day gotten so bad, so quickly? "We, um... we need to find Chiron. He'll know what to do."
The two of them sprinted to the Big House, where an array of panicked campers were standing before the porch, upon which an exhausted Chiron was trying to keep order. "Heroes, please! I know no more than any of you! Mr. D has been summoned at Olympus, which is closed down—"
"Olympus shut down?!" Lou Ellen gasped. "They haven't done that since the Giant War!"
Every few seconds, a random camper among the crowd would crumble away into nothing, which only made them more agitated. Everyone was pale and clammy, looking around at this new world with wide eyes and a desperate fear.
Kate stepped onto the porch with Jason, hoping to leverage her reputation among the campers to calm them down. She needed to look like she had it together, even though she absolutely did not. "Everyone! Please, we're trying to figure out what's happening. At the very least, Camp Half-Blood is under attack."
A murmur ran through the campers, and Kate hurriedly added, "But we have weathered storms before! All of us. We have to stick together, remain rational and calm—"
Jason stumbled suddenly, and the crowd gasped in terror. Kate whirled, just in time to see a horrified, panicked look cross Jason's face as he fell apart into motes of free-floating brown ash.
He was gone.
Kate shook her head in disbelief. No, no, no, no, no. That didn't just happen. That did NOT just happen.
But the crowd was panicking once again, stunned by the sudden loss of one of the heroes of prophecy. They started yelling at Chiron, fear infusing their voices like a sickness.
He waved his hands placatingly. "Please, everyone—"
He stopped, and his face went slack. It was almost instantaneous. Like a row of dominoes, from his tail to his face. He burst into dust, brown and innumerable, all of which floated off the porch and into the air.
Kate's eyes threatened to pop out of her face, they were so wide. It was a sight she couldn't comprehend, the sudden loss of her mentor, her father figure. No longer did they have a three-thousand year old hero-trainer to guide them through this unparalleled catastrophe.
It was a riot. Panic and terror overtook the camp, and Annabeth muscled her way through the inconsolable crowd to reach Kate, standing silently on the porch, her mouth agape.
Annabeth looked haggard and strung out, her nerves frayed, but she swallowed. "Kate, this thing isn't an attack on camp. This is happening everywhere. Global. I just Iris-Messaged Camp Jupiter. Reyna's dead, and the Roman Senate—what's left of it anyway—just declared martial law and appointed Hazel as Acting Praetor."
Kate fell backwards as if physically punched. "Jesus Christ... what the hell is happening?"
”It’s hitting the mortals, too. New York, London, Beijing, Sydney…” Annabeth took a shuddering breath.
"Is this the gods?" Lou Ellen asked.
Annabeth closed her eyes, and a single tear rolled down her cheek as she set her jaw. "If it is, I'll burn them to the ground myself.”
Kate mumbled, “Right now... now, we need to organize burial shrouds."
"How many?"
"How many do you have?"