Chapter Text
I tried to wrap my head around what was happening, but it just wouldn’t stick. I knew this wasn’t a dream. My brain could never come up with something this weird on its own.
My mom made a hard left. The car fishtailed, tires screaming, and suddenly we were on a narrow road, flying past dark farmhouses and wooded hills that blurred in the rain.
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“The summer camp I told you about.” Her hands were white on the wheel. “The place your father wanted to send you.”
“The place you didn’t want me to go.”
“Percy, please,” she said. “This is hard enough. Try to understand. You’re in danger.”
“Because some old ladies cut yarn.”
“Those weren’t old ladies,” Grover said. “Those were the Fates. They only show up if someone is going to—”
Mom yanked the wheel hard to the right. Grover and I slammed into the sides of the car. Through the rain-streaked window, I caught a glimpse of a dark, fluttering shape on the road, something she’d swerved to avoid, already lost behind us in the storm.
“—die,” Grover groaned.
“Please. Please.” Mom checked the mirrors, hands shaking on the wheel. “We’re almost there…”
“So… all that stuff about me imagining it?” I asked.
“It was real,” Grover said quietly. “I’m sorry I lied, Percy, but we had to.” He kept glancing out the window, tense, like he expected something to leap out at any second. “The more you knew, the higher the chance they’d find you.”
My head was spinning, trying to grasp everything at once. Mrs. Dodds turning into a leathery monster. Mr. Brunner handing me an actual sword.
That had all been real.
I had nearly died.
The delayed shock hit all at once, and my limbs went numb.
I was about to ask Grover more, but the hairs on the back of my neck stood up.
A blinding flash and screaming boom.
Then pain.
I came to with my face smashed against the dashboard. My head rang. The world tilted as I pushed myself upright. The car had gone straight into a ditch. Mud and rain streaked the windows. When I twisted around, my stomach dropped. A boulder was lodged in the trunk, crumpling the back end like a soda can.
“Grover!”
He was a mess. His right leg was bent at the wrong angle. I don’t think goat legs were supposed to bend that way.
“Percy… go…” he whispered. “Head down the valley. Get help…”
“I’m not leaving you!”
“Go… take your mom and go…” Grover weakly tried to push me away.
I froze and looked at her. She was slumped forward, face down.
“Mom! Mom!” I shook her shoulders. She groaned, and relief punched through me so hard my knees almost gave out.
She was alive. Hurt, but alive.
I turned back toward Grover, and then I froze.
Through the mud-splattered rear windshield, I saw something moving on the shoulder of the road. A huge, bulky figure, too big to be a person. Lightning flashed, and for a split second, I saw horns.
What do I do? I froze as I looked between Mom and Grover.
A hand closed around my shoulder.
“Percy, look at me.” Grover’s voice was soft, steady. He even managed a small, calm smile. “I’ll be okay. So go.”
Tears blurred my vision. I knew it was a lie. We both did. But my body moved anyway. I hauled my mom out of the car. She staggered, dizzy, leaning her weight on me. I wrapped an arm around her and forced my legs to move.
Even as we ran, I looked back.
The monster tore the car's roof open like it was made of paper.
“You want some of this?!” Grover yelled. Rain poured down, lightning flashing again. I could see his face, twisted into one of those exaggerated, terrified expressions he always made, only this time it wasn’t a joke.
A massive arm grabbed him by the neck and lifted him out of the car.
“Come and get some!” Grover shouted.
I saw a stick extend from his hands, snapping out like a whip.
The towering figure roared in pain.
Then—
A sharp, dry crack, like a thick branch breaking. Grover’s body jerked violently as the monster’s grip twisted. His head snapped to the side at an impossible angle.
“GROVER!”
An iron grip closed around my head.
“Percy, don’t look. We have to go!”
Mom was pulling at me, terrified and determined, dragging me away from the road. I fought it for half a second, then my legs gave in. I let her pull me, even though every part of me was screaming to turn back.
But they were still too far. The pine tree loomed uphill, at least a hundred yards away through slick mud and driving rain.
Another screech ripped through the storm.
Mom yanked me down, forcing me to duck.
Something screamed past overhead. A split second later, the Camaro exploded in a burst of fire and twisted metal, the shockwave thundering through my chest.
“Move!”
She grabbed my arm and ran. I stumbled after her, my legs moving on instinct alone. This wasn’t real. It couldn’t be. It had to be a nightmare. Any second, I’d wake up, soaked in sweat, heart pounding, with Grover teasing me about it.
It had to be…
Another bellow rolled across the hill, deep and furious.
I finally saw him clearly. A wall of muscle and coarse brown fur, thicker toward the shoulders, his neck so massive it barely seemed to exist. A massive bull’s head loomed above it all, snout dripping with rain, a brass ring gleaming in its nose. Black eyes locked onto me with pure hate.
The bull-man started charging uphill.
“Go, Percy!” My mom shoved me forward. “I’ll lead him away.”
That finally cut through the fog.
“What?” I spun on her. “Come with me!”
“I can’t, Percy—”
“No!” I grabbed her arm. “We can make it. We’re almost there.”
“I can’t go any further!”
The monster burst from the rain.
She shoved me back with everything she had. I slipped, hit the mud hard, breath knocked out of me. By the time I scrambled up, my body shaking, I was too late.
My mom was lifted off the ground by her throat.
Blood streaked her face as she kicked helplessly, hands clawing at the massive arm holding her. The monster roared, fists tightening.
And then she dissolved.
Light swallowed her body. A flash of light, and she was just gone.
“Ah… ah…”
The sound tore out of me without permission.
It wasn’t a scream at first. It was just noise, ripped straight from my chest. Grief hit immediately after.
Mom was dead. Grover was dead.
Then something else surged up and burned through the grief like fire.
Rage.
It flooded my veins, hot and violent, so sudden it almost knocked the breath out of me. Strength followed it, like my body had been waiting all my life for this moment. Something churned in my chest, answering the fury, while the patter of rain sounded impossibly loud in my ears.
The bull-man turned toward me, rain slicking down his massive shoulders, and roared.
I roared back.
The sound ripped out of my throat, louder than anything I’d ever made, and the world answered. I felt it everywhere at once. My anger bled outward, soaking into the ground, the puddles, the rain. Every drop falling from the sky felt close, like it was listening.
The rain stopped.
Each droplet froze midair, suspended inches from my skin, hanging above the mud, hovering around the monster like a cloud of marbles. The storm went silent except for my breathing and the pounding of my heart.
I didn’t know how I was doing this. I didn’t care.
“Die.”
The suspended rain exploded forward.
Water slammed into the monster from every direction, not flowing but striking, droplets fusing into staggering gouts that hit like hammers. The bull-man reeled, hooves gouging deep trenches through the mud as each impact hammered into his chest and shoulders, driving him back by sheer, relentless weight.
Still, it wasn’t enough. I wanted it to hurt.
Faster.
Sharper.
The water answered.
The droplets compressed, hardened, accelerating beyond anything normal. Rain became blades. Each drop was a sword that punched into flesh, dug through hide, tore muscle apart in bursts of red mist. I felt every strike through my bones.
More followed. Thousands. Then millions. They carved him open piece by piece, ripping lines through his arms, his torso, his neck. Blood sprayed outward, mixing with the rain as the monster howled in pain and rage.
“Die.”
The water surged again, thicker now, denser, moving like a living thing. It flayed him. Sheets of blood poured down his body as the towering figure buckled, dropping to one knee, then both. His skin sloughed away in strips, his massive frame riddled with holes, strength bleeding out into the mud.
I walked toward him.
His eyes still burned with fury, even as his body failed. I thought of my mom’s last breath, the way her hands clawed uselessly at his arm. I thought of Grover, broken and unmoving in the rain. The way this monster had killed them as if they were nothing.
I reached up and grabbed its horns.
They were hot under my hands, slick with rain and blood. I dug my fingers in and pulled with everything I had.
They tore free with a brutal crack.
“Die.”
I planted my feet in the mud and drove the broken horns forward, ramming both jagged lengths into his chest as I screamed. The rain surged in around us, crushing, cutting, tearing, every drop joining in as water and horn worked together to finish him.
He thrashed wildly, hooves tearing at the ground, hands clawing at me as if he could still escape.
Then his body began to come apart.
Golden light spilled from the wounds as his flesh broke down into drifting dust, scattering into the air like ash. Piece by piece, the monster unraveled until there was nothing left but mud and rain.
He was dead.
I stood there, staring at my hands, still clutching the blood-slick horns that suddenly felt so heavy.
The rain stopped. Yet water continuously streamed down my face without stopping.
My heart hammered like it was trying to tear free of my ribs. Heat burned through my chest, my arms, my legs. Something was wrong inside me. I could feel it, almost see it. A golden light in my chest, cracked like shattered glass, draining away with every breath.
Whatever I’d just done had broken me.
I coughed.
Blood splattered onto the mud.
I swayed, knees buckling.
I’m going to die.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. “I’m sorry, Mom. I’m sorry, Grover.”
My knees gave out. My eyes felt heavy.
“Hm hm hmm.”
The humming cut through the haze.
Boots crunched nearby. I could hear someone walking toward me, each step clear in my ears.
Someone stood in front of me.
“How pitiful, Percy. It seems this world’s Fate has chosen a different champion.”
Fate. Grover had said the Fates appeared when someone was going to die.
Were Mom and Grover fated to die?
Did they do this? All of this?
“Do you wish to change your fate, child? Do you wish to bring back your best friend and mother? Do you want Revenge?”
Red-hot anger flooded his veins at the idea that Fate killed the only people who mattered to him.
“Yes.”
“Good answer, Percy.”
Color exploded through my mind, a kaleidoscope of shifting light. Something solid formed within it, changing shape and hue, but I knew what it was without knowing how.
The offer slid into my thoughts.
Give everything in return, and Order will bar nothing from your grasp.
I didn’t hesitate to take it.
Space cracked and shattered around me, and somewhere beneath it all, I could have sworn I heard quiet laughter.
***
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