Chapter Text
Perseus could live a thousand years and struggle through every single dictionary in Annabeth’s collection, and he still would not be able to find the words to describe what godhood feels like. They might not even exist.
It’s like Percy is taking a test that he’s crammed all night for. And after looking at the first question, he's going to bubble in one of the letters. Which one he bubbles in doesn’t matter (probably C), and why he bubbles that one in doesn’t matter either (probably because he has no idea what the question is even asking), just that he does. It’s not about the anxiety before the test or the sense of relief after — he simply took a test that day and he bubbled in a letter, and in about a week he’ll figure out how much he regrets that decision.
That made no sense. Let’s try this again.
It’s like Percy ascended (is ascending?) and suddenly there’s a director who just yelled cut!, pulled him aside, and started dressing him down: so that scene where you yelled at your uncle was a little dramatic but it’s fine, we can use it. Next you’re going to swim to Atlantis and we’re going to let the cameras roll from there, okay? Try to stick to the script. Except there’s no camera and no director and no script, just this weird awareness of every single action Perseus has ever taken and is currently taking. Like it matters. Like somebody— something — has started tuning in and keeping score.
There’s a part of Perissei that goes, duh, of course it matters. You’re a god. That part needs to shut up.
That's also another thing. Percy feels like he just sees things now. Not like his eyes got falcon-levels of vision, or that he’s catching glimpses of the future; like he sees a thing and suddenly has this… something like understanding?... of how it got there. Like when Hades had said, in that principal-giving-detention way of his, You are Erosion personified, Perissei's first thought was a stunned, Dude, what is he talking about?
Then: How could I be the god of Erosion?
Then: Oh shit.
Because once he thinks on it — really thinks on it — it seems like Perissei has been going in and out of divinity for a long time now, and the events after the fountain are showing themselves to be by far the least of it.
You see, five years ago (Percy time. Please ignore the rest of the world for a moment) Percy was mortal. His greatest titles were probably something along the lines of “Son of Sally Jackson” and “Destroyer of Ships and School Buses.” Relatively small stuff that doesn't register on the divinity meter. Even when he blew up a volcano or got himself bulletproof skin, that wasn't really his power. It’s not like he’s the Earthshaker— just the son of one. And he sure as Hades wasn’t the Styx.
And then came Prometheus. Who knows if the guy did this on purpose, but it turns out having ownership of the most important pithos in all of Greek history and a Titan naming you the guardian of Hope with a capital H does mean something. And not something that can be brushed off as being his dad’s son again. That was Percy’s burden to bear. Or not bear, as shown when Percy later transferred the ownership away.
There was a reason why Aunt Hestia (favorite, undisputed) didn’t offer to hold Hope for him on her own. Gods don’t mess around with symbols of power that don’t belong to them.
But wait, someone with common sense might say. You weren’t a god then!
To which Percy can only answer: Yeah! You’re totally right! If only this stuff made any sense!
Because later, the King of the Gods — still a strong contender for least favorite despite all the grief his other uncle puts him through — would try to ascend him. And then suddenly it all mattered. Suddenly it's a much bigger deal that Percy skinny-dipped in a river and exploded a volcano and got legal guardianship over a sealed jar. Suddenly all those events born of either complete desperation or total circumstance start to mean something, because it turns out that once godhood is on the table, it’s always been on the table, and now the universe (Universe?) is starting to tally up the totals.
Let it be on record that Perseus did turn it down, and it even sort of worked. Percy actually ended the year (or one coma and one dip in the Little Tiber later) more mortal than he started it. Everything was looking up, world-ending Giants aside, and Percy even got a glimpse of a future where he could be both alive and a demigod at the same time! Crazy!
Then a month later, he fell into the Pit and choked out the Primordial of Misery.
“Perissei, what are you doing here?”
Perissei blinks, and suddenly Triton is there. His brows are furrowed and his eyes are pinched in a way so reminiscent of his dad while fishing for wild trout that it stops Perissei dead in his tracks. His swim. Whatever.
“You cannot be here right now. What are you doing so far from Delphi?” Triton glides closer with a powerful and lazy swipe of his finned tail, and the water flows easily around him because these are his waters. Because these are his father’s waters.
Their father. That’s Perissei’s father, too.
“Perissei?”
“Because it was so much safer for me at Delphi?” Perissei blurts out. “In case you didn’t know, I ended up fighting a giant anyway. Two, even! Then I got knocked out on green fumes for basically three months, which cannot be good for me.”
Triton’s face looks even more pinched, if possible. Now that’s a face their dad hadn’t made before. Or maybe Poseidon has, and Perissei wouldn’t know. It’s not like he’s spent all that much time with his dad, considering. “As it happens, we are aware,” says Triton, sternly. “And someone will certainly answer for it when the situation is no longer so dire. That someone may very well be Apollon, who is supposed to make sure you remain hidden in Delphi until the war concludes itself. But more than that, you cannot be here right now, Perissei. It’s not safe for you.”
It’s almost enough to make Perissei laugh. “Apollon sent me out the first chance he got. I dragged a stupid dead giant all the way to Athens, tried to drown another giant, and then my uncle tried to lock me in his prison for the rest of my life. I think we’re pretty far from places that are safe for me, actually!”
“Perissei, you need to calm down,” Triton says. He drifts closer with his hands raised like Perissei is some skittish colt. “And this is different. You cannot be near Atlantis right now, you — wait, what do you mean Lord Hades tried to —” Triton pauses, brows furrowing deeper. “You ascended? When?”
Something about the shock on Triton’s face made Perissei feel like dirt, but it was Triton's words that sealed the deal. “Yeah, guess I did,” he says. And of course, his voice cracks. “So can I finally join the club or what?”
“‘Club’? Now?” Triton repeats. He frowns. “The moment is inopportune. There will be time to plan the festivities later.”
“No, not like a party — ” Perissei cuts himself off. “You know what, forget it. Can I come home now?” And Perissei must sound like a whiny brat, because Triton’s face actually softens a bit into an expression Perissei saw a lot back when he was still trying to convince all of Atlantis that he was in fact a fully-grown teenager. The thought of it makes his throat constrict, and his nose feel suspiciously hot.
But still Triton hesitates. “Mother will be delighted to hear of your ascension. She had been worried when the walls again stopped glowing,” he says, finally. Perissei doesn’t even have the energy to ask about the glowing walls. “We will hold a proper celebration as soon as the conflict ends. But it’s best for you to remain at Delphi. I will also send a missive to Lord Hades shortly clarifying the matter of his actions against you —”
“Why bother,” Perissei interrupts. His voice comes out thin and strained. “I mean, you clearly already know what Ha— Lord Hades was thinking. You think I’ll end up killing our dad, too, don’t you. But I wouldn’t. Why would I ever do that?”
“You? Kill Father?” Triton scoffs in disbelief. “Perissei, it’s far likelier Father will end fading you. Did you think you were sent to Delphi just to party in the overworld? If you were in Atlantis, feeding her walls with blessings, with Father in the state he is now, there’s no telling what Father divinity might have done in his instinct to recover.”
Perissei clenches his fist. “Quit it with the partying thing. That wasn’t what I meant!”
Triton, honest to gods, rolls his eyes. “And now you’re raising your voice. You and Rhodes are quite similar. Reach maturity and you suddenly think you’re too good for your elders. At least Kymopoleia was clear about her distaste of authority from the start, and Rhodes eventually came back around when she wanted to learn how to be queen. Why can’t you all be more like Benthesikyme?”
Perissei honestly doesn’t know what conversation he’s having anymore. This is actually a first after his supposed ascension, when so far he’s been feeling like he just got injected with self-confidence steroids. “How am I supposed to be like someone I haven't even seen since I got here?”
Triton pauses. “Oh, right.”
“Right,” Perissei exhales roughly, the bubbles coming out in a plume. It makes him think of a scantron which makes him think of the last B- he got (in Math, even!) which makes him think of his mom’s celebratory cookies afterwards which makes Percy so violently homesick the currents start thrashing. “Fine. I know where I’m not wanted. I’ll go back to Delphi. Feel free to visit if Ha — Lord Hades throws me in prison again.”
“It’s not that you’re not wanted,” says Triton, exasperated, and his long tail follows with an equally exasperated swing as he thinks. “Okay, fine. Wait here. I’ll go consult with Mother on how stable Father’s condition is. As a god, you'll have more defenses against others encroaching on your divinity. Do you know your domain?”
“Yeah,” says Perissei. “Erosion.”
Triton stops swinging his tail. “... Anything else?”
“Nope,” Perissei says, because it's easier than saying, did you know I almost became a Lieutenant of the Seas once? Or, one time I choked a goddess on her Despair and then had to face down my own when the Pit itself came to fight me.
He's pretty sure something else catastrophic would happen if he tried. Statistically speaking, he's two for two.
Triton visibly contemplates this, face scrunched again. “You should refrain from acting inside Atlantis,” he says, finally. “Do as Kymopoleia does and head out to nearby shores if you must. Atlantis is currently in an uncharacteristically weakened state with Father so heavily injured, and we cannot afford to experiment with your domains right now.”
The shift from “new guy” to “problem kid” is something Percy is unfortunately very familiar with, and Triton doesn't help it at all with how he speaks like some of Percy's best and worst teachers. But the final strike is the realization that Hades wasn't the exception. Because clearly Triton also thinks Perseus can go around tearing down Atlantis’ walls for fun.
Thousands of years into the past, with company that's more god than mortal, and Perseus still can't stop bringing danger to the people around him.
Great. Fantastic, even.
“Perissei? Where are you going?”
“It's Percy,” he grits out. “Per-cEE!” And after that moment of intense deja-vu, he picks a direction and storms off, ignoring Triton's alarmed calls behind him.
•••••
The Athenian son of Poseidon comes to find him soon after Herakles makes his intention to depart known, which works well as there are matters Herakles desires to discuss with him, too.
When he finishes briefly explaining the events of the past few days, Herakles gestures towards ravaged shores and steam hissing through the crackled sandstone and says, “You're one of Lord Poseidon's favored children. This is your kingdom. Why did you hide away instead of fight? Perhaps we would have ended this battle long before.”
Theseus looks out at the shore, assessing the damage grimly. “I regret to inform you, my abilities are not nearly to this scale. Mortals who haven't suckled divine milk tend to be much more mundane.”
Herakles snorts, and he scans the ‘mortal’ king up and down, but his eyes come back to his face. Theseus’ eyes are blue where the visage of his Lord Father at Solstice were green, and his hair is a sandy brown where his Lord Father was black. “Now seeing you two one after another, it seems to me that you don’t take after the Lord of the Seas all that much.”
“You think so?” Theseus makes a half-aborted motion with his hands, as if wanting to touch his face, but then lowers them. “I must say most of the other heroes I’ve met don’t resemble their divine parent much either. But I have been told I rather resemble his granddaughter.”
“And who may that be? A second-generation cyclops?”
Theseus shrugs. “Perhaps a nymph. The Lady of Wisdom did not say much more and I had not thought to ask.”
If it were a nymph, then Theseus’ inaction would be all the more stark by the contrast. But Herakles does not say so — in that moment the earth renews its rumbling, and the cracks on the beach widen and shut once more. Notably, the tremors do not appear to reach into the ruins of Pallene, but the deme was already so ravaged that it would hardly make a difference.
“Do you know what has happened to the land?” Theseus asks. “These shocks have echoed throughout all of Athens, and birds from our neighbors in Thebes report similar.”
Herakles says, “Perhaps you can ask that divine brother of yours.”
“Triton?”
“Or you can ask yours truly!” Between one moment and the next, Hermes is there, slipping into the space between breaths. The wings on his helmet flutter as he sweeps his arms out in open gesture. “Hail, heroes!”
Theseus starts, but quickly recovers. He inclines his head. “Lord Hermes. Thank you for gracing my city with your divine presence. I do apologize for its current state, and my inability to host you.”
Hermes waves him off, briskly. “Nothing to sweat about, just a quick stop. I don’t have much time to linger, however. We need to head to Argos.”
“Argos?” Herakles lifts up his makeshift bag stitched from skins and leathers, and slings it over his shoulders. “Why Argos? Was I not summoned to Olympus?”
Hermes shrugs, a quick, brisk motion. “Change of plans,” he says. “Dear Persephone convincingly argued that an Olympic effort needed more muster, and now we’re to fetch Aunt Demeter back. Last I’d sensed, Hecate — or, more accurately, her Gigante bane — had been in Argos thereabouts, and so to Argos we go.”
Herakles waits for a further explanation on the connection between the two, but Hermes does not seem inclined to provide one. Instead, the god starts tapping his feet, so Herakles just asks, “And will there be a giant to fight?”
“If not two,” Hermes offers.
“And are they like Alcyoneus?”
“Oh, not at all!” Hermes waves his hands. “There’s only one other like Alcyoneus, and Lord Father is handling him. The others should be quite easier to bleed.”
That’s all Herakles needs to know. He takes a step towards Hermes to indicate his readiness, but before he does, Theseus speaks up. “Lord Hermes, did you say you have an answer to the land tremors? We will have difficulty rebuilding if they are not resolved.”
Hermes pauses, as if confused, but then understanding dawns on him. “Oh, that! Aphrodite will be by shortly, she’ll sing the earth back to sleep and it should stop for a while.”
“Singing?” Herakles asks, confused. “What can singing do?”
Hermes shrugs, again. “A bit more than your dear old dad can,” he says, gesturing his chin towards Theseus. The king frowns in puzzlement. “This reminds me, might I offer you an early congratulations? It appears there’s some complications, given the whole connection with the sea, no matter how diluted, but Artemis has already answered their prayers. I expect we’ll have good news any day now! Quite a relief in these awful times, no?”
Theseus looks as if he would like to ask quite a lot more, but he holds his tongue. Herakles does not blame him; it hadn’t been very obvious before, but now the god before him seems quite… undone.
Without their prompting, the god continues anyway, “But of course, what could be a greater relief than to know there are still more gods being tasked to roam about! Hephaestus is bringing an entourage of minor gods and captured prisoners westward to fashion prisons out of mountains, Apollon is sitting in a cave, and Lord Hades demands not to be disturbed for at least a month! And Dionysus sits as King and Athena allows him to do anything he wants because she is convinced that Eros will be the savior of us all! What has this world come to!”
“What?” is all Herakles manages to say before Hermes simply whisks him away.
•••••
He doesn’t swim so much as he throws himself blindly through the water, hitching jet streams towards no particular end goal except away. He moves through the water the same way a bull in a china shop would, and plumes and plumes of sand flurry up in his wake. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees a crab spinning wildly as he speeds past her.
He should probably just find a place to hide out for the next thousand or so years. Some place like this nice deep cave right here, with a nice, sturdy boulder to block entrance — or sturdy until his stupid domain erodes it away or something.
Hi!
Gods, Annabeth is never bringing him along with her to work again.
Here! Over here!
He’ll just destroy everything she’s ever built.
Baby Lord! Here! Here!
He freezes, and then hesitantly turns away from the cave he found. And he’s not as surprised as he should be to see the round form rapidly approaching through bubbly waters. Though not as round as it used to be — deep-sea hippocampi take a bit longer to shed their baby fat compared to seals and their land counterparts, but they still grow into their limbs and tail with a vengeance.
The round form is much, much bigger and much, much faster now. He braces.
Kelp barrels into him like a wrecking ball into a brick wall, and knocks out the oxygen in his lungs with one solid hit. Hi, Baby Lord! Hi! You were fast! But I’m fast too, so I caught up!
He grunts, and then when the oxygen returns to his lungs he says, “You’re a long way from Atlantis, little guy.”
Yeah! Kelp whinnies. Young Lord said that you were here so I followed! But I was good and waited until the Lords were done talking! Want to see a cool thing?
“Now’s maybe not the time, Kelp —” the hippocampus backs up, then slaps the water hard with his tail and goes spinning the same way the crab from earlier did. Except then the hippocampus slaps his tail again mid-spin, and his body twists back upright. “Oh, hey, that was pretty cool.”
This clearly delights the hippocampus. Yeah! I practiced! Wanna see it again?
“Er,” he says. “Maybe later. I’m kind of in the middle of something, Kelp.”
Noooo. Kelp’s ears flick back in dissatisfaction, but then they perk up again. Want to pet my head?
He sighs. “Sure, Kelp. Not for too long, though.” And he scratches Kelp behind the ears until the hippocampus starts wriggling. “Okay, that’s it. You should head back before your mom gets worried. Triton says it’s dangerous right now, so don’t stray too far from Atlantis, okay?”
Okay! says Kelp cheerfully. Let’s go!
“... No, Kelp. I’m not going with you.”
The hippocampus cocks his head, confused. Why not?
He swallows, hard, and says, “No particular reason. It’s just a bad time right now. I’ll come back later, okay?”
Then I’m not going too, the hippocampus declares, and immediately darts away, perpendicular to the direction where Atlantis is.
The bubbles left in the hippocampus’ wake slaps him in the face, obscuring his vision for a moment. “What the — Kelp! Where are you going! That’s the wrong way!” When the hippocampus deliberately ignores him, he sighs and follows. “Go home, Kelp!”
There’s a moment when he considers leaving Kelp to it since the hippocampus is getting closer to Atlantis, just very slowly and in a very roundabout way, but then he senses Kelp suddenly stop and sink down to the sea floor. Worry overtakes him and he finds himself speeding up.
He finds Kelp perched on the edge of a sea cliff, nibbling on… seaweed? The hippocampus perks up, thumping his tail on the nearby rocks. Baby Lord! Over here!
“Kelp,” he says, a little exasperated, “what are you doing?”
This is the best spot! Kelp explains. That’s the tastiest seaweed!
And sure enough, right in front of the rocks that Kelp wants him to sit on, is a clump of seaweed with several chomps taken out of it. There’s still enough left for the algae to keep growing, which is kind of intriguing because he never knew hippocampi understood the concept of sustainability.
Actually, now that he’s looking, all the strands of seaweed nearby have had bite marks taken out of them.
He can’t help but feel amused. “And what am I supposed to do with this seaweed?”
Eat it and wait for mom, advises Kelp solemnly. That’s what I do when I’m scared and lost.
He frowns. “Are you scared, Kelp? Do you need me to show you the way back?”
Not me, denies Kelp. You are!
And the breath punches out of Percy in one go.
“You thought I was like Luke.”
“What?”
“Shoot. Never mind, it just slipped out. I didn’t mean to say anything.”
“No, wait. That was… I heard what you said.”
“...”
“Sorry. Let me gather my thoughts. Say what you want to say.”
“It's just. The way you looked at me, after the… You kind of looked like you… you know what, Annabeth, never mind. This is ridiculous. It doesn't even matter anyway.”
“Did you overhear me when I was talking to Piper?”
“No? What? You said something to Piper?”
“It’d be easier to list what I didn’t say to Piper — you’ve got that look on your face. Curious?”
“Whaaat. No, of course not. You girls can keep your privacy. It’s none of my business.”
“You think you’re fooling me with that?”
“Okay, yeah, a little. …What’d you say?”
“...”
“...”
“Nothing… kind, I think. To me, or to you. But I needed to… get that feeling out there, I guess. Even if, in retrospect, it wasn’t all true.”
“... Okay?”
“I did tell her about Luke. And about what happened… down there. Some of it. And… I… I…”
“Hey, let’s forget it. It’s okay, Annabeth. You don’t have to say it.”
“No, I do. Give… Give me a moment. I need to think about how to word it.”
“...”
“...”
“You did remind me of Luke then. And I thought it was… I thought it was how cruel you were being. How much you reveled in causing her pain. How much you reveled in your power.”
“...I’m not —”
“I had a lot of nightmares of that moment, but it must have taken me months before I finally looked at your face in the dream and… gods Percy. You didn't look pleased. You didn't even look angry. You looked terrified. You looked like Luke when he… when he agreed to host the Titan King. It was… I was conflating too many things at once, I think, and if you reminded me of Luke in that moment it was because you both looked so scared that what you were doing couldn’t have been anything good.”
“Do I look scared?” Percy asks, finally.
You smell, Kelp explains helpfully. It’s okay! Eat!
Percy feels like he’s having an out-of-body experience as he sinks down, settling himself down on the rock. He doesn’t, however, touch the three-fourths-eaten seaweed. Even if saltwater is pretty good at sanitizing things, Percy’s not sure he can get over the principle of the matter.
I like to watch the little fish too! It’s like a game!
He looks out over the cliff. It’s a peaceful spot, and there are even some relatively small reef systems below, complete with tiny little colorful fish darting around. It’s surprisingly deep for where reefs usually grow, but the rocky cliffs circling it were too barren to grow much algae. As such, limited sunlight is still able to make it to the bottom. The cliffs also block the low sweeping-currents, allowing the nutrients to stay on the seafloor.
Percy never expected coral to grow here. He’s glad it does though. This is the kind of thing they should make gods for. Kelp’s backflips, coral growing in the deep. Small, cool things. There’s already so many big, bad domains like War and Plague and Fear — no need to add more world-ending stuff to the mix.
Atlantis still calls insistently to him. This time, instead of ignoring her, he reaches back for her. She immediately warms to his attention, but it’s a far cry from how vibrant she was before he left for Delphi. It’s a ghostly imitation of her past self, and just like with the waters, he can see why.
There’s a gaping hole where the massive swell of his father’s divinity should be.
Something Triton said echoes in his mind. What a coincidence. It looks like Percy’s got some divinity to spare.
Baby Lord?
It’s not like Atlantis knows what she’s taking from him. But even now, even like this, he’s still one of her own and she’s more than willing to accept all of him. She belongs to his father, and his father, apparently, loves him. And that’s enough for her.
Offering up his domain is a weirdly familiar feeling. Now that Percy thinks about it, he might have done this before. With the fountain.
You bleed!
Or maybe it’s just that all descension feels the same.
Hades had said that if Percy descends, the next time he ascends he will either die or end the world. But there’s actually a third option that both Hades and Percy ignored — Hades, because he didn’t have the full story, and Percy, because he knew better than to expect it, given his abysmal luck:
Percy could ascend to be something smaller. Something kinder. He’d done it once before, after all, when he went from being total despair to just a neat little fountain.
Young Lord!!!
“Perissei? What are you — Perissei! Stop! Peri-PER-SEE!”
… Man, what they say really is true. Nothing kills you quite like hope.
Smile, Percy Jackson. The Universe is watching you.
•••••
Before the Giants first rose, most of the Council were generally familiar with the sound of divine might. These days, the flashes of lightning and booms of thunder were so commonplace as to be able to count the seconds by them.
Four months have passed since the defeat of Alcyoneus, seven since the reveal of the prophecy, and nearly ten since the gods first learned the existence of their Earthly banes. Perhaps most alarmingly, it has been three months since the barest speck had been spotted on the horizon by Artemis, soon after corroborated by her brother.
Now the speck has gained the form of arms and legs visible even through the massive squall that envelopes him. There may be no more than a week before the giant reaches shore; less if the King of the Gods doesn’t force the Giant to retreat every so often with a deafening blast from the Master Bolt.
Dionysus slips out of his throne with a chalice held in hand to walk to the edge of the Council Room, the one that overlooks the Aegean Sea. He comes before the dark, flashing skies and stands next to his contemplative sister. He’s stopped asking her for reports after the first twenty-or-so such trips, and instead waits.
“We must hold a bit longer,” says Athena, without so much as sparing him a glance. But Dionysus does not proceed to walk back to his throne as he normally would have. But neither does Athena seem to regard this as strange.
When Herakles had finally been brought onto Olympus, a frazzled Hermes and a furious Demeter besides him, Dionysus had wanted to know what plans Athena had for hero who had, at that point, vanquished three giants.
(When Hermes and the hero arrived, Demeter and Hecate was locked in battle with not one but two giants. The second Giant, Aristaeus, was a four-legged beast with an aptitude for confusing time. Demeter was outraged to learn her week of combat was in fact four months, and was further provoked when the sluggish giant they encountered on the return journey was suddenly taken out by a portal to the Underworld. Even Persephone’s admittance that it was she who contacted her husband for aid failed to assuage her mother’s fury. Quite the opposite.)
But in response to Dionysus’ question, Athena had only shook her head. “To send Herakles into the fray with Lord Father now will only spell his death. The sea does not welcome mortal sons of our Father, and currently, the sky does not welcome mortals at all. We must at minimum force the giant to land.”
Dionysus had sipped at his chalice. “Pity Lord Uncle is so weakened,” he had said. If there was perhaps one benefit of placing Dionysus at helm, it would be that he could not succumb to hysterics — it was tacitly agreed not to acknowledge the volume of wine he’d consumed in this time. “Otherwise a good wave should do it.”
“Perhaps,” Athena had replied, and from there commenced the waiting game.
Waiting for what and for how long, no one is very certain. But right now, four months in, there is an electrifying feeling in the air — and not necessarily cultivated by their father’s powers.
They were on a precipice.
The sun suddenly sparks through the mass of clouds, and Athena straightens up. “The twins have conveyed that the giant is within range. Eros, come here.”
The young god in question startles, and then startles again when he suddenly glows with the sheen of his fellow archers' blessings. “Are you mad?” Eros shouts, shrill. He is so wrong-footed he does not even think to look towards his mother. “That's a creature not even Grandfather can defeat! You must think me a fool to provoke him!”
Athena turns to look back at him. “If you fire now, you'll be able to flee before the Giant identifies what has struck him.” Then a thought occurs to her, and she adds, “But of course, you can flee now, too. My only advice, Eros, is this: if you run, then go with your dearest companions and do not come back. There will be no Olympus left for you to return to.”
The resulting silence lingers for a moment, then two, before another blinding flash casts deep shadows onto the carved splendor of the Olympian council room.
Finally, after the accompanying thunder rumbles its way through the stone, Eros flies forward. He tensely nocks one of his lead arrows, only for Athena to say, “Not that one.”
Eros purses his lips, and then switches it out for one of his golden arrows. He draws the string and then goes unerringly, predatorily still.
A breath later, he lets go. The arrow flies.
But though the path flies true, something alerts the distant figure. A roar crosses the distance, and the giant flings up a wall of water so large the glinting arrow encounters it and promptly disappears.
It's unknown how many are surprised when Eros does not proceed to retreat. Instead, the young god quickly nocks another arrow, and his trembling arms go still again when the string is drawn.
The wall of water falls to reveal a second figure, much smaller and glowing, has descended besides the giant.
“POSEIDON!” the new figure bellows, and the wrath in her voice carries it across the waters. “Can you be counted upon… for ONCE in your unbearable existence!”
Startled, Eros’ fingers slacken and the arrow rips out of his bow along the same path as its brethren.
But when the Giant spots this new arrow and reaches for the water again, the water reaches back. A massive wave rises up, wrapping around the Giant in the imitation of a hand, immobilizing him for precious few seconds before the Giant bursts himself free.
And in the interim, Eros’ arrow pierces the Giant's heart.