Nobody Said It Was Easy

Prologue

Percy opened her mouth to scream, but no sound came out. Tears poured down her face, carving tracks from her eyes over her cheekbones before finally dripping off the edge of her chin to hit the ground. She was on her knees on the ground, sinking into the earth, slick with blood. She gave no care to the mud soaking into her clothes or the hot crimson liquid that she felt oozing from the wound in her side. Her attention was completely focused on the body in front of her: Annabeth Chase, daughter of Athena, her best friend.

Her usual curly, honey blonde hair was splayed out around her fallen figure on the ground, no longer shining and healthy as it always was, but rather coated with mud and blood. Her usually warm tan skin was now cold and pale, and her intelligent grey eyes were glazed and dull in death.

She was dead. Dead.

Dead. Dead. Dead. Dead.

No matter how many times she told herself that she couldn't seem to make herself believe it.

Her best friend. The person who had been there since the beginning was gone.

She hardly even felt it as dark storm clouds began to gather overhead and the earth began to shake, throwing everybody but her and her own father off of their feet. It began to pour, the rain falling down in buckets around her, beating against the ground and those unlucky enough to stand in its way with such force it felt more like small pieces of stone then water.

The wind picked up, swirling around her and the body of Annabeth Chase, whipping her raven locks wildly around her face.

She screamed. Channelling all her sadness, anger, pain, and grief into one unholy sound. It was a wailing cry of such agony and such injustice that it drove right into anybody who heard it's soul. The pure emotion in that one sound was like a slap in the face, crippling them and forcing them to their knees, their legs now suddenly unable to hold up their weight.

Even as she screamed and cried Persephone Jackson was terrifying. Her short raven black hair whipped around her face and her eyes glowed an eerie sea-green in the sudden darkness brought on by the storm clouds overhead as dark as ash.

Her feet left the ground in the centre of her own hurricane and her terrifying eyes swivelled to land on the source of all of her anger and all of the problems she had gone through within the last year.

Gaea. The Earth Mother.

She stood regally above the battlefield, watching the fighting with a sort of sadistic glee filling the smile on her face.

"You", Percy started, her voice low and filled with anger, "You will die for that".

The scariest thing about that entire display of power. Over everything that Persephone had done, the one thing that drove that final spike of fear into the Earth Mother's heart was the fact that her words were not a simple threat that couldn't be followed through.

No... her words were a promise.