Chapter Text
For all the time I’ve been an immortal, waking up mid fall wasn't something that I wouldn't be used to. Usually.
Most of the time, it would likely be Hermes trying to play yet another practical joke on me, probably involving my sun horses or some well coordinated cloud acrobatics. This time, my free fall was accompanied by streams of smoke surrounding me.
That being said, I should have well been an expert at course correction.
I was falling at an alarming rate. My limbs felt hot. The wind rushing all around me roared in my ears. The blue sky and green hills were almost blindingly bright. I couldn’t pinpoint exactly where I was, which was unusual for someone with godly precise eyes such as my own. I could have been anywhere with an expanse of hillside, from places like Wyoming’s wilderness to the Austrian countryside.
But even before I could even attempt to even think of a solution to get myself out of this slippery situation, my fall was abruptly halted by red tiles hurtling into me.
Or rather, me hurtling into a roof.
The first couple seconds of consciousness and I’ve already been thoroughly disgraced. Transformation and teleportation was something any god over a thousand should be experts at! Why would I, the great god Apollo, fail at such basic use of divine abilities?
I impacted the roof hard, with such a sickening crunch and excruciating pain in my chest that I was certain there had to be several broken bones in various places of my body. My vision whited out for a second.
I cried out in pain, a warbly and scratchy noise coming from my throat.
The pain was unbearable, which surprised me, since normal roof shingles should not be enough to faze a god. If on the off chance that these were specifically anti-god enchanted roof tiles, I don't think that I would have enough energy to incinerate this house’s owner.
Wait a second, broken bones?
There was no way that could have been possible. I was a god, after all. Gods simply did not just get broken bones. We could withstand even the worst of punishment to our forms–
Unless.
He wouldn't have—
My head seared with pain.
YOUR FAULT, YOUR PUNISHMENT. The words echoed in my ringing skull (my now very fragile skull, mind you!) with such intensity that it could have been Zeus crouched down by my ears and speaking those words at me.
His face was quite fuzzy in that memory, but the rest of the memory wasn't. The words rang out loud and clear. YOUR FAULT , he had told me.
It was very clear what had happened to me.
My father had turned me mortal. Once again.
For the third time, I was one human among billions of others.
Meanwhile, I couldn't even remember what I had done. There was a war with the giants, but I, the bright and glorious Apollo, couldn’t have been at fault! We had been almost defeated, embarrassed beyond belief that within a few years of each other we had to be saved by a few ragtag demigods from multiple crises. We were gods, since when does that happen?
In any case though, I was only the messenger. When my Oracle speaks a prophecy, it has already been set into motion; I don't make the future, I see it, how hard is that to understand? And even then, I was giving them a warning, how was I the one doing wrong?
My new Pythia had given yet another prophecy, I had swiftly prepared a countermeasure, they didn’t use it, and then the second war and the schism between our Greek and Roman aspects went into full swing.
And of course, it was me who took the fall. Literally.
Out of all the gods on Olympus, it just had to be me, the great and handsome Apollo. He wouldn’t have punished anyone else on the council as hard. Why did I have to suffer through this tragedy, when clearly it had been someone else to entangle the Greco-Roman pantheon into this mess?
My head was already pounding from my undignified crash landing onto a roof, which made trying to retrieve my fuzzy memories all the more painful to do.
I tried to recall what he wanted me to do while mortal, anything I could do to gain Zeus’ favor back, even the length of my punishment, but all I succeeded at doing was make my splitting headache worsen, sharp jolts of pain coursing through my head with every second I spend trying to remember.
The situation had barely been processed in my head before my tumbling torment continued, and I rolled down the roof like snow during an avalanche.
In those few painful moments, I only had time to compose one line of a haiku before once again entering a free fall, this time considerably more winded and more bruised from tiles hitting me in the face.
A roof of red tiles—
This time, the fall wasn't as long. It was just as bad, however. I probably broke a few more of my bones in that spectacular fumble. I had managed to finish my haiku, though.
—Sits a godly pile of meat
My ribs are broken
Not one of my most complex works, considering the current state of said ribs, but is a poem by a poetry god ever bad?
My face met smooth tiled flooring, something that I would have appreciated if I was not currently a pile of mortal flesh and bone upon it.
The air was forced from my chest, which made it hard to scream in pain again. Not a fun experience, considering the fact I heard people milling around, meaning I’ve just been publicly embarrassed. Way to go, Apollo!
At the same time, I felt someone’s shoe dig painfully into my arm, which was quickly joined by—you guessed it—someone tripping and landing on top of me. Me!
As an encumbering weight fell upon me, I felt cold metal on top of my poor abused back and my face drowned in purple cloth.
This amount of bad luck seemed especially targeted. I’ve never been this ashamed since that time Hermes swapped mine and Artemis’ steeds and I failed to notice until I was halfway across the Midwest.
“Praetor Zhang!” A few worried voices sounded out from the assembled crowd, muffled from my current predicament, of which the only thing I could make out of them was their scuffed up muddy sneakers. Do people these days not have any common decency to clean their shoes before stepping on polished tile?
“Don’t worry about me, I’m fine,” The now identified burly man and his cape finally got off me, which let me take a single wheezing breath for the first time since I crashed into the roof.
With that breath came another, which gave me enough energy to do a simple roll over onto my back, where the pressure on my chest lessened.
Before I was able to get a glimpse of my surroundings, a ray of harsh sunlight shone directly into my mortal retinas, making me clench my eyes shut tightly. See that? A sun god getting blinded sunlight? More likely than you think.
I heard some people shout, “Where’d he come from?” and, “He’s injured!” as I laid on the ground, trying to regain my bearings.
When the pain in my eyes finally subsided, I took a tentative peak into the world.
A large Asian man was crouched over me, concern visible in his expression. His crew cut and baby face was a very contradictory look–simultaneously a preteen and an uncle–and his polished armor and purple cape shone in my face almost as bad as the sun.
I nearly jumped again, purely out of surprise.
He eyed my sorry state with a scrutinizing gaze—probably because I just fell from his roof and tripped him—before opening and closing his mouth like a fish, likely confused because, well, I just fell from his roof and tripped him.
A small crowd had assembled around us by now, and even without seeing their faces I could tell they all were likely thinking something along the lines of Where in the world did such a handsome man fall from and why is he here being a professional banana peel?
The Asian guy seemed to have regained his composure by now, because he stopped making that uncanny fish impression.
“So, uh, where did you come from? Actually, who even are you? Do you even know where this is?” He asks me with a straight face.
My confusion must have shown on my face, since I heard snickers erupt from around me when I failed to answer.
“Uh, no, actually?” I managed to stammer, my voice even foreign to my own ears.
The man on top of me looked to the side. Some armored teenager beside him started to wave a spear in the air, all but forcing me to look at them.
I stared in shock.
Surprisingly, somehow I didn't make the connection the second I landed on that roof. Red tiling? White tile flooring? Praetor? Armor and pilum ?
The last time these were in style—
—was in Rome.
And unless my father had somehow figured out how to get into his father’s domain and send me back in time a millennium and then some, there could be only one place I could feasibly be at this moment.
I was in Camp Jupiter, California.
They must have noticed my stunned look at the weapon, most likely coming to the conclusion that I was just some random mortal guy sent conveniently plummeting into the Twelfth Legion Fulminata’s home base.
I didn't like how they looked like they were debating whether to leave me alive or not—not with those sharp weapons casually in the hands of teenaged Romans, so I thought to open my traitorous mouth and try to reassure them against that notion of murder on the front steps of the Principia, à la Caesar style .
I blurted, “This is Camp–”
“–Camp Jupiter. Right.” Praetor Zhang cut me off, surprised at himself as he said that. Then, he looked at me suspiciously, wondering how a random mortal could have possibly known that.
“So, who even are you?” He said after a pause, narrowing his eyes at me, which in turn caused the pilum to be pointed closer at my throat.
This was not going how I wanted it to at all.
I sat back, swallowed, and tried to pull that godly confidence over myself before I said something else stupid. Not that it worked well while stuck in this stupid mortal meat sack. Well, I like to believe it does.
“Why, well, it is I, the glorious A–” I broke off into a sudden coughing fit.
My lungs spasmed, my breath once again leaving me as I desperately clawed at my burning neck.
The inside of my throat felt hot, like sparking electricity was coursing back and forth through my windpipe and charring every inch of my squishy insides. It seared, worse than the flames emitted from my sun horses, gods, even the sun chariot itself.
I don’t know how long I was bent over myself, coughing with enough force to wrack my body with trembles. My vision swam in and out of focus. I could see blobs of color approaching me, laying steadying hands on my back, and yet I couldn’t make out who they were. My headache increased in its intensity, drowning out my wet coughs and the noise of the crowd with ringing, punctuated by timely echoes of my father’s booming voice and those words he had left me with. My fingers, now tightly clamped against my throat, were slick with sweat.
It felt like an eternity, sitting there on that tiled flooring trying to get my bearings.
I had gone through countless punishments in my millennia of life, but surely, even the sting of Zeus’ lightning bolt was not as painful as the pain I had felt in this moment. (I suppose, this would likely be this mortal body’s harshest experience of pain. Only in a godly form would one be able to physically withstand the force of the Master Bolt. Luckily for me back then, I was a god. I doubted this meatsack would not be incinerated into ash if I had to face that specific punishment again. Not that I was willing to, father, don’t start to get the wrong ideas.)
When the lightning in my respiratory system had calmed down to only a few jolts of mild static electricity by my trachea, the coughing slowly subsided. My body felt numb, as if my whole body were all asleep and pins-and-needles were dancing under the surface of my skin.
My ears still rang, but my vision focused enough for me to see the once hostile, now concerned faces of the Camp Jupiter legionnaires.
Such a sight was enough to get me to somewhat calm down. They would surely help me, right?
I slowly released my hands from their chokehold on my neck, which prompted the person next to me—When did they get here?—to also drop theirs, likely ready to intervene if I had indeed started to choke myself. My fingers were white and clammy, a testament to how hard I had squeezed. I likely had a set of matching hand prints on my neck as well, but I didn’t want to think about that too hard as I came out of my momentary stupor.
A few healers emerged from the growing crowd. It looked like I was becoming the next great spectacle for the whole camp to ogle at—I usually wouldn’t have minded, since I was bound to be a sight to behold due to my sheer brilliance and splendor, and for that I was well used to it, but currently I would have preferred to keep my vulnerable mortal state a little hush - hush , if you know what I mean—from what I could tell judging from the growing crowd. I could feel someone quickly take my wrist in their hand and check my pulse, before dropping that and feeling my forehead. Someone else supported my back as I tried to keep sitting up.
I tried to regulate my breathing, but my uncomfortable wheezing kept persisting.
I let my hands sit in my lap for a bit, limp, as I tried to piece together what had just happened. What even was that that just happened, anyways? Where did—
I froze in shock. It was a good thing that I was still being propped up, since I likely would have fallen flat on my face again upon my realization. I don’t think attempting to break my nose that often is a good thing, after all. Not for my facial structure (or what was left of it) nor for my now busted self esteem.
Only I could have suffered this many injustices at once. It could only be me.
The healer looked at me in concern.
I nearly barked out a laugh at that, until I belatedly realized I was reaching up to clean the area around my mouth, which had been steadily dripping for the short while I was not coughing.
I don’t know what compelled me to look, but I felt as if I had to drop my gaze to the back of my hand.
“Red,” I breathed.
Smeared over my shirt and hand was a crimson liquid. It couldn’t have been, it shouldn’t have been, in fact, but somehow, it was.
Someone tensed. I couldn’t tell if it was me or the person supporting my stiff body.
In all my time existing on this planet, Zeus had never gone this far to punish me. Not once.
I couldn’t focus on a single thought as I sat and stared at the blood. My thoughts rushed at a speed unlike that of one of my arrows whizzing sharply through the air.
It was blood, not ichor, the golden life giving liquid that flowed throughout the bodies of all immortals.
I really, really wanted to laugh. I doubt it would have helped much.
Despite it all, I kept staring at the liquid. I felt it steadily continue to drip from my chin to my lap. Multiple dark splotches joined the puddle slowly forming on my pant leg.
It felt so unreal.
I was waiting for Zeus to quickly pause this moment in time. To take me back to Olympus. Floating high up through the clouds, he would give me back my immortality. Say it was all just a big misunderstanding.
That could not be farther from what happened.
Instead, I sat there, simply just bleeding. I ignored the steely gazes of many crowd members. I could vaguely hear someone call for something to transport me to a proper healing bay. I said nothing.
I couldn’t keep track of my surroundings. My vision once again blurred.
Red was all that I could see.
I didn’t want this to be true. This couldn’t be happening, not ever, not to me, specifically.
Was Zeus satisfied at his handiwork yet? Barely a few minutes into my sentencing, and here I was, already overwhelmed?
My grasp on consciousness was slipping. My already dulled senses got somehow worse. My limbs felt as heavy as lead.
I felt my eyes roll back up into my head, and I once again fell backwards.