Chapter Text
The end of the world began the evening of the 22nd of May, Anno Mundi 6961. Perseus, who usually never had a head for such things, would mark the date indelibly in his heart for the rest of his life.
That night, the moon had risen, dark and eclipsed, and the men around him on the walls had shuddered, marking themselves with the sign of the cross. “An ill omen,” they muttered, fearful. “A portent of evil, surely.”
Surrounded on all sides by the Ottomans, Percy certainly couldn’t see how it might be otherwise. Amongst the rising smoke of prayer which surrounded him, Percy sent up his own. Poliouchos, Brotoloigos, be with our swords. Sthenios, guard your people here. Ennosigaios, he prayed, lifting his face to the dark moon, Father. May I bring honor to your name.
The night passed without further incident, but Percy could feel it coming, the way he could feel the earth shift beneath his feet, or the storms rolling in from the sea. What “it” could possibly be, however--that was the question.
It felt somewhat futile to pray to his father, and the rest of the Olympians. Though they had answered him in the past, though his father had sent him more signs and gifts and summons than any other demigod he had ever known, the gods had, of late, been strangely silent. This was not terribly unusual in and of itself--most children like him rarely ever heard from their divine, yet distant, mothers and fathers--yet even Percy found his attempts at conversation thoroughly rebuffed. The rainbow messages would not reach their recipients. There was not a single satyr or faun to be found in the whole of the city. The nereids of the Bosphorus had vanished without a trace. Perhaps most concerning, he had not even heard from his cyclops brother in quite some time. It was certainly a question he wished to pose to Chiron, but Percy simply had not had an opportunity to visit camp, what with all that had been going on.
The journey to Sigeion was not so long and arduous, merely two or three days at most, even if he chose to travel over land rather than shortcut through Marmara, but Percy simply could not afford to leave at this time. Not with all their many and varied enemies closing in on them.
Leaving his fellow men to mutter and pray amongst themselves, he turned to view his city for himself, leaning between the merlons of the battlement, resting his arms on the lip of the embrasure. Even from here, one could see the dome of St. Sophia rising over the peak of the first hill, even in the darkened moonlight, silvery and silent and still. He looked above, to the jeweled night sky, and wondered, not for the first time, for what purpose was this divine silence that they suffered here.
He received no answer, of course, not that night, and not for three nights afterwards.
On the fourth day, he had been forcibly shuffled off his post by his commander, who ordered him to get out and get some rest, after he had endured the very worst of the previous day’s rain and hail. The commander was but a mortal, but a damn good one, with a mind like Athena and a war cry like Ares, and arguing with him was a relatively useless proposition, despite the fact that, if pushed, Percy could rout his whole cohort. But he acquitted, and had spent his free evening walking up and down the misty, ghostlike streets of Constantinople. Hymns and prayers were sung behind every door, a litany of pleas, a symphony of sobs, a catalogue of wishes, all to the god of the Christians and to this god’s holy mother, which only made Percy more melancholy. How long had it been since he had seen his own mother? He had sent her away before the siege had begun, her and her husband and his half-sister, praying that his father had had enough continued affection for his one-time lover to see her and her family to safer shores, wherever they may be.
Small comforts.
Overcome with melancholy, he did not realize that his pilgrimage had brought him to the walls and domes of St. Sophia, the tether to Olympus. They were always a sight to behold, he thought ruefully, as facts he had never cared to learn himself surfaced from the recesses of his memory, even if he could not quite see them through all this damned mist. The mathematics of it was, in truth, quite beyond him, but still he could hear her voice as she explained, for the hundredth time, how the dome had been expertly balanced upon the pendentives, which then thusly bore the gargantuan weight downwards, how the forty windows gave the impression to the mortals that the dome floated above the cathedral, which of course it did, in a manner of speaking, hung on a silver thread from the heavens, how she had been quite nice when she hadn’t been an insufferable daughter of Athena--
“Percy?”
He turned, not to the blonde hair that he had half expected he would see, but to hair as red as firelight, the starkness turning her pale face even paler. “Rachael?”
“Oh, it is you!” And she leapt on him in an embrace that would have shocked the people around them, if they had cared to lift their heads from their unceasing prayer. “I cannot begin to tell how glad I am to see you.”
“And I you,” he said, returning her embrace. They no longer had any awkwardness between them, and had not for years--and thanks be to the gods for that. What had once been a fumbling, awkward romance had blossomed instead into a deep, solid friendship, one that he was most grateful for. “What are you doing here? Is something wrong at camp?”
She shook her head. “No more or less wrong than the last time you were there. Troia still stands, for the moment.”
That was not a reassuring answer. “Then what brings you to our fair city? And,” he frowned, suddenly confused. “We are under siege… how did you--”
“I had to come,” she said, turning towards the church, despite the mist which shrouded it from view. “I just had this feeling.”
Oh, her feelings were rarely ever good. “The Oracle?”
Rachael nodded. “She has been restless, as of late. She has not spoken through me in many years, though I can feel her stirring.”
“Perhaps it will be good news, this time.”
She looked at him, pityingly. “Dearest Perseus, surely even you know better than to court the Moirai in this manner.”
“What more can they do to me,” he replied, “than has already been done?”
They stood in silence for some time, contemplating on the odd circumstances which brought them to this place, at this moment. Around him, the prayers of the people never ceased, though in the thick, heavy fog which surrounded them, it seemed as though they were the only two real people in the square. He could see very little, but whatever Rachael could divine from the walls must have been fascinating, he assumed, whatever she could see with her special sight.
“This mist,” she murmured. “It is strong, and unnatural.”
“I suspected as much.” Dense fog such as this was not a common occurrence in the city, so sudden and out of place that even the mortals had noticed it, another malignant augury to haunt them. “Can you see through it? Do you know what has caused it?”
As long as he had known her, Rachael had possessed quite the unique gift, to see truth clearly and without alteration. Magic spells and enchanted fog were no match for her, she who had once traversed the fabled Labyrinth, Ariadne’s thread made manifest in a young girl. She had even been able to see Olympus as it perched on top of the dome, the severed head of the mountain balanced perfectly on the point of a needle, even as he and his fellow demigods could see nothing. As the Oracle, she had lost none of her keenness, speaking prophecy as precisely, and as cuttingly, as she had always spoken truth to her friends. She was not one who believed in lies or falsehoods, or who would hide the truth for any mere convenience.
So he knew that the naked fear on her face was real when she turned to him and said, “I can see nothing but this wretched mist.”
There were not many monsters he knew of who could create an illusion so powerful as to shroud even the Oracle of Delphi; Hecate, perhaps, but why she would have deigned to show her face when the rest of the gods remained silent was very uncharacteristic of what he knew of the goddess. And he did not think that even she would still be so bitter as to side with the Ottomans in this instance.
Faintly, through the thick net of psalms which enfolded the square, he heard those other voices, sharp and piercing in tone, yet rich and mellifluous in melody, floating to them from across the Golden Horn. By his count, this was the fourth time they had sung today; thus, the time was now evening, a little after sunset, if he was correct.
“What is that strange singing?” asked his companion, tilting her head curiously to the source of the song.
“It is the enemy,” said Percy. “Five times daily they call out to their god in this manner.” The Ottoman prisoners they had captured continued to pray their daily prayers, even in captivity, with a fervency and a dedication which deeply impressed Percy’s captain, though had sorely disturbed Percy’s other, more brutish fellow men. Having heard it up close and far away for so long, he had nearly grown accustomed to the melody, and found it oddly comforting in its sharp, even predictability, in this other man’s faith which would not desert him as it had with some of his Christian captors.
“It’s beautiful,” Rachael whispered.
“It is,” he agreed. He was sure there was much more to say on that topic, but the fear and unease of the magical fog was too much to bear, and, truth be told, he was quite hungry. Perhaps they could debate this another time. “Do you have a place to stay? I wouldn’t trust an Inn at the moment, if I were you. My mother’s house has an extra bed; you will be well come there.”
But she did not hear him.
He frowned, giving her arm the briefest of shakes. “Rachael?”
She stood, still as a statue, her gaze turned up to the dome, her mouth hanging open. There was not even a breath of wind to ruffle her wild hair.
“Rachael?”
Her posture, already so straight, snapped even straighter, as though it were the string of a bow. Her head was thrown back, and she gazed sightlessly at the sky, her mouth open in a wordless shriek. He nearly toppled over as she fell onto him, her hands a death grip around his wrists. Green, sickly mist poured forth from her mouth, her eyes, her ears, and all around him in a horrible, deathless voice, the Oracle delivered its prophecy.
Tell the emperor, she gasped, in an ancient tongue that had not been heard for nearly a thousand years, that my hall has fallen to the ground--Phoebos no longer has his house. In this state, she attempted to claw her way up his body, her shaking hands reaching for his face, even as he tried to hold her at bay. Nor his mantic bay, nor his prophetic spring.
His storm sense tingled, the hairs on the back of his neck rising, the sweet scent of flowers in the air. Thunder rumbled above them, even as the fog retreated, revealing the walls and domes of the church to the open air once again, and the mortals increased their plaintive wails.
The water has dried up! She shrieked, her eyes rolling into the back of her head. Tell the emperor--all is ended!
With an almighty crack, lightning struck over their heads, arcing with pinpoint precision onto the very tip of the dome. The receding mist lit up like gold and silver, like the celestial bronze of his secret sword, like the bright, blinding glow of a god’s truest form, one which mortal eyes were not able to comprehend, and in that light Percy thought he saw them, the twelve and the others, the hammer and the dove, the twin archers, the owl and the crown and all the rest, and for one terrible half of a heartbeat, there also he saw the trident, saw his father’s face turn from him in sorrow, and he could not feel the drag of Rachael’s fingers into his skin, nor hear the cries of the mortals as they beheld the terrible sight, though they could not understand what they saw, none but Percy could see how the gods fled the ancient city, leaving their people behind, leaving Percy behind, to slaughter and to ruin.
And just as swiftly, the vision vanished. The fog had lifted entirely. Rachael collapsed into his arms, the spirit of prophecy having left her form, and he shook her as gently as he could. “Rachael, are you alright? Rachael?”
As though she were emerging from a dream, she groaned, her eyes shut tight. “Percy?” she grunted, shuddering in his grasp. “What--where--”
“You had a vision, it seems,” he said. “Can you remember any of it?”
She shook her head, blinking. “No… what did I say?”
“You spoke of the emperor.” It was likely that the man himself was within the very church, leading what was left of his people in more desperate prayer. “You said--”
But with a short, sharp scream, she cut off his words, and lifted one trembling finger to the sky. “Percy,” she gasped in fear and in terror, “Percy! Look!”
“You know that I cannot see as you do,” he said, though his gorge rose within him. “What? What is it?”
“Olympus,” she cried out, with all the passion of a child newly orphaned “Olympus! Olympus has gone!”
And his arms around her as she gazed upon the tortured scene that only she could see, he sent up his prayers once again, to Athena and Ares and Zeus, to the father that had always professed to love him above all his other children, his thoughts rising like smoke up to a sky suddenly devoid of stars.