Chapter Text
Look, if I got to choose any possible career to be my “dream job”, I probably wouldn't have chosen “glorified mercenary”. But adulthood has a way of not going the way you expected, especially when you're a literal child of a death god.
My name is Luciano Ainsley, or Lux to my compatriots. I'm a 21 year old child of Thanatos and somehow, the most surprising thing about that sentence is that I managed to get to 21 without dying some gruesome death. Us demigods, we aren't really good at that whole “surviving” thing. Especially lately. In the past decade, there have been about five different major wars “whose outcomes will shape the fate of the world forever” across like four different pantheons? Stakes that high mean that battles tend to have high casualties. That, combined with the fact that most of our “adult role models” tend to be horrible at their jobs and/or dead, has caused child mortality rates among demigods to be exceptionally high.
Are there systems in place to keep demigods safe? Sure. Most pantheons have SOME kind of camp, organization or support group to house the people unfortunate enough to be related to the divine. The issue is that most of those support networks are designed with children in mind. Take for example, Camp Half-Blood, the place I grew up in when I was a kid. It’s a great summer camp; you can even stay year round if you need to. But once you turn 18, it’s kinda weird to stay there unless you sign up to be a camp counselor or something. No, most people who survive that long usually leave for college. A few move to New Rome, which itself is a nice enough place for older demigods but it has gotten a bit overpopulated lately. Most of us try to make it in the “real world” with very mixed results.
In my defense, I did give college a try when I turned 18. I figured it wouldn't be as bad as grade school because monsters rarely ever target adult demigods. Sadly, I never developed any good study habits as a kid (most likely due to those aforementioned grade school monster attacks) so it didn't take long for me to drop out.
By this point, any human family I had died years ago, so I couldn’t go to them for help. Of course, I could’ve gone back to Camp Half-Blood if I really wanted to, Chiron always welcomes his old students with open arms, but deep in his heart, he’d be disappointed. Chiron only expects the best from his students, and no self respecting Greek would ever want to disappoint him. Besides, at the time, it had only been a few months since… it had happened. So even if Chiron was willing to accept me back with open arms, I wasn't ready to face all those memories.
I spent the next 5 or 6 months living on my own, traveling from town to town, leaving a bloody path of slain monsters behind me. I was at a pretty low point when Father Dearest found me. Most demigods never get to meet their godly parents, even after Percy Jackson got them all to start paying child support a few years ago. Thanatos however, he's the god of peaceful death. So when you start leaving a path of monsters not so peacefully slain, he starts to check in to make sure that there’s no unexpected disaster in the area that he needs to report to anyone. Despite what people think, Death isn’t callous. At the very least, he’s a bit kinder than most of the other gods. When he found me, living off scraps, admittedly not exactly looking my best, he offered me a job, complete with a competitive benefits package and overtime pay.
Long story short, death is an enterprise, and there are so, so many different individuals responsible for making sure that it happens smoothly and on time. I accepted a position in my Father’s “company” and worked my way up the ladder until I became his first Reaper in centuries. Reapers are tasked with the job of finding people who cheat death or cause unreasonably high levels of unnatural deaths and apprehend them by any means necessary, usually by killing them.
The work, much like life itself, tends to be a lot less interesting than it sounds and involves a lot of alone time. Today however, is a rare exception to both of those cases, as I was working on a collaborative mission. Every now and then, there was a target foolish enough to earn the ire of multiple Pantheons. In this case, it was an Egyptian magician.
“Lux! So glad you could make it!” Walt Stone greeted me as I made my way to the front of the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, DC. Around him, a small team of magicians, presumably from the DC-based nome, looked at me with suspicion.
“Walt. Anubis. It’s a pleasure to see you both again,” I politely responded. I suppose I should note that Walt is the Avatar of Anubis. Unlike Greeks and Romans, who got dragged into the realm of mythology by being related to some god, most people who dealt in the world of Egypt’s pantheons weren’t directly related to the gods, but instead came from long lineages of magicians who could trace their bloodlines back to the time of pharoahs. That does mean that they aren’t as individually powerful as proper demigods, but it also means that it probably has one of the most comprehensive support networks out there. Of course, much like the others, many Egyptians don’t ever meet the divine beings that they are fighting for, especially now that the Egyptian gods have decided to leave the Earth for the time being. All but Anubis.
Walt is the exception that proves the rule. Egyptian gods are one of the few to avoid having children with mortals. Instead, if they ever need to directly intervene, they take willing mortals as hosts. As I understand it, to survive a curse, Walt let Anubis use him as a host body, but the two were compatible enough to become one, which is supposedly rare for them. I’ll admit that I’m not the biggest expert on the Egyptians, so I don’t know all the details, but it sounds like they make it work, so that’s all that really matters. All I knew was that Walt and Anubis were very helpful allies during the Ankara Incident, so I was glad that if I had to work with other people, they were led by a duo I could trust.
After greeting me, Walt/Anubis decided to introduce me to their team. “This is Luciano, Thanatos’ Reaper. He’ll be helping us with today’s operation given the nature of our target.”
A hand shot up in the back. “Why is he the only one here? Could the Greeks not spare anyone else?”
Another voice spoke up, “Yeah, I thought Greeks always traveled in threes? How understaffed are they?”
Chuckling spread across the team as I sighed. Before I could retort, Walt spoke up. “Lux is more than enough help. Trust me when I say that if anything, we might slow him down.”
It was clear by how quickly they stopped their chuckling that they respected Walt as a leader. He continued. “Anyway, just to make sure that everyone is on the same page. Today, our target is Andras Alabaster. He was one of ours, an Egyptian magician, but disappeared mysteriously during the whole incident with Apophis. A few months back, he was spotted in the area. Turns out, he’s made a bit of a name for himself, becoming a bit of a dealer in weapons, information… whatever people need. He’s been trading with Egypt’s enemies, as well as those who oppose Greeks, Romans and even the Norse, being indirectly responsible for gods know how many lives.”
“Is that why he’s here?” asked another magician, gesturing at me. Walt/Anubis nodded.
“One of the groups that Andras has been known to conspire with is Triumvirate Holdings. While the organization is far weaker than it used to be, anyone known to currently be aiding or abetting them is an enemy of the Greek and Roman gods. Thanatos and Anubis have discussed it and it was decided that while this will be an Egyptian-led operation, Andras’ fate is to be decided by Hades. Pooling together our resources, we were able to determine that Andras is using this museum as his base of operations. He’s hired a few magicians and monsters to protect him and the horde he’s accumulated over his years of being an arms and goods dealer. Any monster or enemy in that museum is fair game, but leave Andras to Lux. Are there any questions?”
There were none, so Walt continued the meeting to explain everyone’s roles and responsibilities. I listened half heartedly but mainly analyzed my coworkers. The oldest couldn’t be older than 14. Many of them had staffs and wands that were brand new, having never seen battle before. These were rookies. As the meeting was adjourned, I even overheard one saying that “they never get to do anything fun.” I pulled Walt aside to speak with him in private.
“These operatives of yours. They aren’t seasoned, are they?”
“Come on, Luciano,” he sighed, “You know just as much as I do that death is a bit of a taboo. We don’t have “seasoned operatives”.”
“Even so, Andras is a criminal. Why are you bringing children to this fight?”
“Surely, you jest, Reaper? You’re from Camp Half-Blood. Don’t lecture us about child endangerment.” Walt’s voice got colder. It seemed that I had inadvertently offended Anubis. “Andras’ lackeys are nothing compared to Apophis, Kronos, Gaea or any of the major threats that the pantheons have had to deal with in recent years. We need the next generation to be prepared for the next big threat, and the only way they can be is with experience.”
I hated how that line of reasoning made sense.
“Besides,” Walt continued, his voice back to its regular tone, “Both of us are here. There are few places safer than at the side of two harbingers of death!”
I sighed, but relented. It’s true that the wars were, for the time being, over, but it was rather foolish of me to assume that anyone stuck in our world could have a normal life. I took out the pocket watch from my pocket and clicked it open. It turned into a kusarigama, a chain sickle, my weapon of choice. As the Stygian Iron of my blade glistened in the moonlight, I silently prayed that the only souls reaped tonight would be those that deserved Tartarus.