Alternatively

Ungodly Aftermath

It should have been raining.

The clouds should have been thick with devastation, begging for forgiveness. The streets should have been flooded with guilt and the sea should have been towering over the island with skyscraper waves.

But it was still.

Not a car moved on the criss crossing roads, the civilians evacuated long before the first building began to crumble. There was no breeze to cool the slowly advancing platoon of demigods from the sun mercilessly beating down. They glanced warily around as they stepped over bodies littering 5th Avenue, glaring armor making them easy to track. Chiron had told them that this would be their greatest enemy, a redundant warning. Only the best were sent to the front lines and even they knew it was a hopeless cause.

Even they knew it was too late.

The Empire State Building was in a sorry state of destruction, windows shattered from their panes on all floors and the surrounding block sparkling with shards of glass. Chunks of concrete and steel peppered neighboring buildings, utterly destroying the roof of Macy's and turning the west sides of several hotels and offices to rubble. The power had been blown out, but somehow, the elevator light in the lobby flickered to life.

A lumbering figure picked his path over fallen support beams and cracked marble floors, gingerly taking an abandoned key from the security desk as he waited for the ornate doors to open. He rocked anxiously back on his heels, chaos and bloodshed fresh in his mind. It was by a stroke of luck, a semblance of sanity left, that spared him from the massacre, but he wasn't safe. His father's blood ran through his veins and his brethren's claim was heavy on his existence.

Of course, what he was doing wasn't the safest thing, but he must mean something to his brother.

The steps to Olympus were in shambles, pieces long since chipped off to tumble through the clouds and every tile an unsteady foothold. Though, if one could make it to the otherside, the city of the gods was surprisingly intact. Statues were left relatively untouched, aside from a select few toppled over and scattered across the pathway. Buildings and pavilions stood tall, gleaming in a pale, lifeless light. Foliage and gardens remained blooming, touches of organic beauty in the strange menagerie of Neo Greco-Roman architecture.

There weren't any fires burning in bronze sconces or designated alcoves, each wick and alter blackened without a hint of being relit. In fact, there was only one flickering flame left in all of Olympus. It reflected in the blood, still wet but cold, and it danced in the hollows of his face. It shed no warmth, barely more than smouldering embers, and if someone were to walk to close, their wake would wink it out in an instant. The hooded woman beside the basin of fire continued to stir the coals, eyes downcast and face ashen.

She had seen it from beginning to end. The very beginning, before the boy had been born. She could see where it was going wrong and where he tried to fight his fate. He was so earnest, so desperate to achieve the happy ending his namesake promised.

But fate was not kind, nor was it wise.

The lone goddess kept her head down; it was one thing to see all the empty thrones, but her heart clenched painfully when she caught sight of the one throne occupied.

It was the head of the U formation, gray marble veined with blue and etched with gold. Physically set apart from the other eleven, it towered over the throne room on a raised pedestal drenched in blood. The pool was lazily stirred by the tip of the gleaming sword that spilled the blood to begin with, it's wielder holding it in the loosest grip possible. He stared blankly across the room and out the door, eyes void of emotion as he slumped in the king's seat. His feet didn't reach the ground and he had one leg propped up on the chair, something that could be seen as very disrespectful.

His lips quirked upwards briefly, absently wiping his bloody free hand on the marble. Disrespectful.

He watched as Tyson stopped in the doorway, small and unsure. The cyclopes was drowned in the shadows of the hall and disgust flickered in his eye as he stepped in a puddle of gold.

"Brother?"

Percy didn't respond, continuing to scrape his sword against the pedestal.

He steeled himself, walking down the center of the floor. The last time he had seen the throne room in such disarray was the Second Titan War, the war Percy fought to protect the gods.

Though, that wasn't quite correct, was it? In the end, who cared if the gods were dead?

Tyson hesitated before Zeus's throne, wanting to say something but not knowing what could be said. He couldn't do anything when it happened, no one could. No one could stop him even though everyone knew what would happen. After all, he had warned them what he'd do, if not so much in words than in his unbridled rage.

His anguished cries still echoed in the heads of anyone who had seen it happen. It could be said the gods themselves felt goosebumps the moment Annabeth's hand fell limply over that hospital bed.

The cyclopes took a shaky breath and wandered to his father's throne, turning to press his back against the chair. He numbly slid to crouch at the base, wrapping his arms around his legs.

Only the scraping of metal on stone and and weak crackle of fire could be heard, if not isolated and lost in the cavernous hall.

okay that's all for the disaster duology i promise (maybe)