The Battle of Olympus | III

11. Apollo Learns Creative Curses

Omg. Guys. The speed of my updates... incredible. I'm probably gonna hit a rock-solid wall of writer's block and disappear for another two months, but for now, let's just focus on the good things.

You know the drill. Terrible chapter, title, writing, character development, et cetera. Here you go! Enjoy this trash. :)

"Thalassa was here?"

It was almost forty-five minutes later, and Apollo had yet to stop raging.

He first lamented at how he was out of the loop for five minutes and everything went downhill, before he started getting angry at himself for not being there. I tried to tell him that it was surprisngly uneventful, but he didn't take my word for it.

In truth, Thalassa only threatened me a little, warning me that if I thought I had seen war before, I wouldn't know what was about to hit me. She told us to stay out of their way and she would spare us, though I knew that even if Thalassa truely believed that, Claudius would hardly let us live. Especially me, when I could still technically claim I was of his blood and threaten his position. Not that I would ever claim to be related to him again, but the threat was still there.

"Yes, as we've already told you seventeen times," Artemis said dryly, but even an oblivious fool would've seen how unnerved and almost terrified she had been when she saw Thalassa.

After all, even a fool would've been afraid of a primordial's threats.

"She couldn't stay long," Athena continued. "Olympus was forcing her out, and she can only fight her brother for so long."

"But long enough to get the message across," Paris muttered.

He was staring at the plate of cookies Artemis had materialized out of thin air, but he had yet to take one. Under any other circumstance, I would've already finished the entire plate due to stress, but I found myself suddenly unable to eat anything lest I risked seeing it again.

"Well, at least we know they're choosing Olympus as their battleground," Jackson said half-heartedly.

"Yeah, because they don't care about Olympus," Apollo muttered. "They can't exactly destroy the world and then try to rule it, right? What's the point of being the king of a dead world? Or, in the earth primordials' case, destroy the very parts you're trying to save?"

"But why are they fighting us here?" Aden asked. "Why in our home territory?"

"Because we don't want to go to war—they do," I said, still staring at the flames in Apollo's fireplace. "If they choose some other place, they think they might risk us not fighting. By attacking Olympus, they're forcing us to make a stand and fight. If we hadn't attacked Troy and instead demanded the Trojans meet us somewhere else, they would hardly do it, wouldn't they? If they didn't care about looking like cowards?"

"And we don't really have any other realms that we've aligned with either," Athena agreed. "None we'd rush off to save if they attacked there. It's not a smart move, besieging someone else's territory, but..." She grimaced. "How long has it been since immortals last went to war with each other? The Titanomachy? Less than half us Olympians were even born yet, and that was tens of millennia ago. I don't know how immortal warfare works." She winced. "Gods, I hate saying that..."

Apollo just snorted. "The number of times I had to say that down in Tartarus..."

"What about the Gigantomachy?" Ella suggested. "Doesn't that count?"

"Not exactly. Not all of the Giants were immortal, and we also defeated them by pinning them under mountains." Apollo grimaced. "Not the best move on some of our parts, considering Athos probably hates Poseidon for that... Anyway, point is, you can't do that with a primordial. What are you going to do, trap a mountain under their own mountain? The Ourea are the ones keeping the Giants in place."