Myth Mashup (A Percy Jackson, Magnus Chase, and Kane Chronicles crossover)

Bonus: Part 3- Magnus' POV

Annabeth looked at me sadly. "You just have to keep going. If you stop, even for a moment, something will go wrong. Heroes don't give up. We don't get to retire. We do our job. We save the world, again, and again, and again. Until the day we die."

"But I'm already dead!" I shouted. "I'll never get to stop. Not until the end of the world! And my entire job is to stop the world from ending. If I fail, I can stop trying. But if I succeed, I just have to keep being the hero for all eternity. The grand, shining example of bravery. But Ragnarok will come eventually, no matter what I do! That could be hundreds of years from now! And what can I do in the meantime? I can't just sit around, reading books and learning dozens of languages like Halfborn. I can't sit and watch while you and everyone I knew from my earthly life dies. And it's not like you'll go to Valhalla, since you're not Norse."

My cousin just gazed at me.

"You are one of the only things tying me to this Earth. What am I going to do when you die?" I continued, my voice cracking again.

I put my face in my hands and felt like I just wanted to break down crying about my ridiculous existentialism. Annabeth wrapped her arms around me, surprising me. She was only a few inches shorter than me, and she pulled me tight. I hugged her back fiercely, tears stinging my eyes. She didn't say anything for the longest time. I wanted to melt into the floor and never come back up.

"Believe in something," she finally said.

"Huh?" I wondered if she knew I was an atheist.

"Believe that there's something worth saving in this world. In all the worlds. Heroes do what we do because it's the right thing to do. If you let everything succumb to Ragnarok, would you be able to forgive yourself? I think your morals are too high for you to not try and make a change in this place. Sitting idly by isn't something the Chase family does."

She was right. She was right, and I hated that she was.

<<<<..........>>>>

We met up again the next day at a park in Boston for her to continue her story. I was in a much better headspace than I had been yesterday. I honestly don't know where that outburst came from.

She picked up from where she left off. "The summer after that winter is where things start to get... interesting  again. I was issued a quest by our oracle to find a way to stop Luke and his army from using the labyrinth. He was after Ariadne's string, and there's an entrance to the maze in our camp that he could have easily used to decimate us. We wanted to find Daedalus, to get him on our side before he could default to Kronos and Luke. Percy, Grover, Tyson, and I tried to navigate through his labyrinth. Grover had this... feeling that Pan was inside of the maze, and he was really determined to be the one to find him.

"We turned up at this weird dude ranch - Triple G Ranch. They supplied camp with monsters for games sometimes."

"You guys buy monsters from smugglers?" I asked.

"They aren't exactly smugglers, per se..." Annabeth replied. "We didn't do it often, and that was before the whole labyrinth incident. When we got there, there was this dude with three bodies, Geryon. He runs, or ran, the whole place. That's where we found Nico. He had been dealing with ghosts, trying to get Bianca's soul back. The worst of them was King Minos. He manipulated Nico like there was no tomorrow. Anyway, Nico tried to make a deal with the ranch, but they were basically holding him hostage for Luke's army. They wanted to sell him off as a soldier. Percy vowed to clean Geryon's fire-breathing horse stables if they let all of us go when he finished."

"He scooped poop?"

"Exactly."

"Fun."

"He succeeded, but Geryon tried to go back on his word. So instead, Percy chucked an arrow through all three of his hearts, and he died. His ranch hand, Eurytion, offered to let Nico stay with him for a while since he refused to come back with us. He was still really, really  angry at Percy for Bianca's fate. We didn't want to leave him behind, but he insisted. We eventually split up - Percy and I going one way, towards Hephaestus for guidance, and Tyson and Grover going into a tunnel supposedly towards the god of the wild.