Chapter 33

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Percy's point of view

Obviously, I was concerned when I learned that the gorgons had gone after Silena, but at least she'd been able to defeat them and come out of it with only minor wounds. As much as I wanted to protect her from the monsters I knew I couldn't be everywhere, there would always be times where I wasn't with her, after all, she was going to school, and I couldn't just quit my job, not to mention that Silena is getting older and she spends more time with friends rather than spending a lot of her time at home.

The return of the gorgons made me wonder how long it would take Medusa to return, after all, she seemed to be one of the monsters that took longer to reform, and the gorgons had made it pretty obvious that she wasn't back yet. Obviously, she was a monster so I didn't want her to come back anytime soon but I still wondered when she'd return and if I'd be the one to end up facing her.

Just as I'd expected Ares eventually confronted me about Aphrodite, and he seemed to pick the worst time to do it. It was evening and Silena had gone to spend time with one of her friends, they were supposed to be working on an assignment together for school, but how much time they'd actually spend on it could be debated. Regardless I was about to go pick her up when Ares decided to make an appearance.

As I expected he was pissed, he said, "You think you can steal my girl punk!"

I didn't bother to point out the fact that she was technically still married to Hephaestus partially because I doubted Ares cared about that, and also because technically I had kind of been ignoring that fact myself most of the time ever since I fell for Aphrodite. I just reminded him that Aphrodite said she didn't want to be with him anymore.

Ares' Aura was affecting me and I was finding it rather hard to not start yelling at him. Long story short Ares wouldn't listen to me and decided he wanted to get violent. I felt like rolling my eyes at that, I had kind of expected it but still, Ares acted like a self-absorbed egotistic child, all he cared about was getting what he wanted so when something changed or someone didn't give him what he wanted the first thing that he thought of was violence.

As much as I would have preferred to avoid a fight, it was now obvious that Ares wouldn't let that happen. I could see that trying to argue with the angry war god was pointless, and the only way he would give up and leave would be if I managed to beat him in a fight. I was getting increasingly irritated partially because his aura was affecting me, and partially because I really didn't want to deal with him. As a result, I eventually found myself saying in an annoyed tone, "Move on Ares, she doesn't want to be with you anymore. You act like you're a super tough guy but when you don't get what you want, you throw a tantrum like an overgrown five-year-old,"

Obviously, that comment didn't help his mood and I could see that his fire-filled eyes flared behind his sunglasses. He was clearly pissed off now and it wasn't long before he asked almost the same question as he did so many years ago when I was twelve and we were about to fight on Santa Monica beach in California.

Technically I could use a gun but obviously, I only had it for work, and even while I was on duty I wouldn't use it unless I absolutely had to. Even if I did want to use it against Ares I couldn't since the only bullets I had were normal ones. I would rather not have to fight Ares, not because I didn't think I could beat him, just because I would rather him realise that Aphrodite no longer wanted to be with him.

Obviously, he didn't want to accept that fact so we were about to fight for the second time. Since I didn't have much choice I took out Riptide and Faced Ares even if I would have preferred not to. He got the memo and took out his own sword, the same one he had used all those years ago. He quickly attacked first and I blocked his strike, sure he was strong but strength isn't everything, and I used all my skills and experience as we fought.

My increased knowledge paid off since the fight wasn't as difficult as the first time I fought him, for one I was stronger and I knew a lot more than I did back then. Secondly, he relied primarily on his strength so I did eventually manage to land a hit on him after catching him by surprise. He seemed determined to beat me but that wasn't enough since I landed a couple more hits on him which resulted in him very reluctantly giving up and leaving.

Honestly, I wasn't sure if I'd see him again or not but I kind of hoped not, even if Ares didn't show up again Hephaestus would find out sooner or later and who knows what he would do when he did. I wasn't going to worry about that yet though since I had more important things to worry about one of which was going to get Silena before she starts thinking that something might have happened to me.

Things remained normal for the next couple of weeks, Ares hadn't come back to bother me and Silena and I hadn't encountered any monsters. The only thing that was kind of out of the ordinary was a rather awkward conversation I had with my mother. To sum it up she and Silena had stopped to pick up a few things after mom picked Silena up from school.

I assumed mom just needed to get a few things that she was running out of, but when she mentioned that silena had also needed a couple things that's where the awkwardness came in. By the time the conversation was over I was once again reminded of just how fast Silena was growing up. Awkward conversations aside things were going rather well for us, Annabeth seemed to have been telling the truth when she claimed she had put her attempts to get me back behind her and we had also visited Luke a few times since we had come home from camp for the winter.

Luke's Point of View

Honestly, I had never really had any problem with school. I usually did pretty well in my classes, and I did have a couple of friends that I would spend time with, I had never really been bullied either, and when older kids did try to bully me I wouldn't let it get to me. things were going pretty well, I had no problem with any of my teachers and my parents seemed to be getting along better.

I don't know if I'd say they were friends but they weren't arguing as much as they were during the summer so that was better. Dad had visited a few times since camp ended and although I had encountered a couple of Hellhounds one day I had managed to kill them and come out of it unscathed. Days went by as we went through much the same routine every day. I went to school I would sit with my friends from last year when I could and If I couldn't I would just sit anywhere really I wasn't all that picky about where I sat in class.

At lunch, I would always sit with my friends and we would talk. Obviously, I had to lie when some of my friends asked me what I had done over the summer, I just said I'd gone to a summer camp, I made it sound like it was just your run of the mill summer camp with all the typical activities instead of one to train demigods. I tried to make it sound as unexciting as possible so they wouldn't ask too many questions.

I did tell my friends that I'd finally met my dad and that I had a half-sister, but I obviously left out the part about gods and demigods I was pretty sure that my friends were completely mortal so they didn't need to know about that and might not be able to handle the knowledge if they did find out. I'd had fun at camp this summer and I would probably go back next summer but it wasn't something I was going to tell all my friends about.

What I didn't know then was that my life wouldn't remain peaceful for much longer, because it wasn't long before I found out that the fates had some rather unpleasant surprises planned for me and the rest of my family, It seemed like we would only get a few more months of peace before we were faced with their first surprise, I didn't find out about their little surprise right away though.

It was a couple months after I started back to school that my grandmother phoned my mom. As you might have guessed this was rather unexpected since my grandmother still dislikes my mom and the only reason she had our number was because of my dad. Due to that I was kind of confused when she called but I quickly became worried once I found out why she'd called.

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