The End of an Olympian

01 | Still Kicking

A/N: Thank you all for your patience and support for this story. I'm happy to say it's finally completed and will have daily updates. This chapter will give you all the background information you need, so it can be read on its own. But to understand the full story, I recommend starting with "The Beginnings of an Olympian" followed by "The Life of an Olympian". As always, feel free to comment any suggestions and correct my grammar. Without further ado, let the story begin!

1486 words

Percy

I have shared the stories about the beginnings of an Olympian and the life of an Olympian. They were filled with crazy adventures and ch changed my life in many ways. But what you will come to know soon enough is that there is a story for the end of an Olympian too. And the end of an Olympian changed everything.

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I lived life to the fullest in my first 150 years as the 15th Olympian, god of riptides, heroes, loyalty, respect, poisons, and water molecules with the Pegasus as my sacred animal and Anaklusmos as my symbol of power. I laughed with friends, saw my family grow old, helped all three camps prosper, built up my kingdom, and ruled it justly. But eventually, those I loved most died.

For a while, I went into a depressed state and rarely visited the camps or talked to the remainder of my family. I didn't even go to my palace. I just stayed up on Olympus. I didn't want to get attached because I thought the loss of loved ones was too much to bear. This went on for another 50 years or so.

But during one of my trips to the mortal world, I helped a little boy, a son of Mars, travel safely to Camp Jupiter. The boy reminded me so much of my past, mortal self. I found true joy in helping him. I had forgotten what it meant to be mortal in a mere 200 years, but the demigod helped me realize it was more painful not to have people to care about than to lose the ones you do care about.

In that 2nd century, I got to know the other gods very well and started making connections with mortals and demigods again. I had moved on from Annabeth by now (200+ years is a long time), but the few mortals and immortals I've dated never promised a lasting relationship. And as the god of loyalty, I kinda needed a lasting relationship. Which also meant I had no demigod kids. A one-night stand wasn't exactly my cup of tea. I went on a few personal journeys too, which I'll possibly tell you about another time.

In my 3rd century of godhood, I had an established plan with Chiron. I went undercover as a middle school teacher and helped guide demigods to their respective camps or the Hunters of Artemis. I was always on the move, but it allowed me to reconnect with humanity outside of potential love interests. I found a purpose again.

Not much had changed in society since I became a god. A lot more technology was developed; however, when Leo returned with Calypso from Ogygia all those years ago, he managed to "monster-proof" technology as it progressed. Only the Hephaestus and Athena cabin understood how it worked, but regardless, it helped out immensely. There was better communication between camps and family, and better utilities at the camps too. All three agreed to limit technology use, especially in the summer, so that it didn't impede training, yet it seemed as though campers preferred the activities over their devices anyway. Their ADHD had them moving around more so than sitting in front of a screen.

The biggest advancement had been transportation thanks to Tony Stark and Peter Parker's Solar Power Proposal project in collaboration with Princess Shuri of Wakanda, which was funded by AquaTech, a mortal company I developed myself. Every mode of  transportation that used to use fossil fuels or electricity was converted to run completely on solar energy with built-in battery reserves that lasted up to 1-week. Since then, pollution had decreased drastically, pushing America to invest in sustainability research for consumer and commercial products alike.

AquaTech was successful in its endeavors to bring clean drinking water to all areas of earth via machines that converted seawater to potable water. I couldn't keep up the company myself, so I handed it over to my brother, Alex Blofis, who ran with it. They expanded the network so much that AquaTech had a monopoly on water, but their aims were so altruistic that they provided the technology and water for free. My godly funding and the Mist helped out a lot. People no longer paid for water bills once technology was able to cleanse and reuse even radioactive wastewater. The company was passed down the generations and still remains in the Blofis family, though, it's under a new name because of my many greats niece who married and took over a half-century after Alex.

Additionally, the environment had a "green spurt" that scientists struggled to figure out. Their assumptions will never be true because the cause was the passing of a dear friend, Grover Underwood, Lord of the Wild, who held the essence of Pan. The spirit of the wilderness had been accumulating in him over the centuries, so when he died, he wasn't just reincarnated into a flower, he was instead reincarnated as various plants in multiple forests! Grover's essence didn't stay in only one location, let alone only one plant. No, his essence traveled to all major forests around the world and increased their vegetation by 10%. Since then, humans have taken extra precautions to keep the Earth green and healthy.

Flashing forwards to my third century of godhood, scientists—funded by AquaTech—were working towards improving the health of aquatic environments. They sent out collection boats that picked out trash from oceans. They harvested bacteria that could digest microplastics. They even invented new biodegradable plastic made of seaweed! It's durable and keeps for a week or so. The process of replacing all plastic with alternatives, such as starch-based bioplastic, was slow going, but it was farther than humanity had ever gotten to reverse its footprint. Needless to say, Poseidon, my father, god of the seas and other stuff, was ecstatic at their progress—as was I.

It'd been three and a half centuries since I'd become a god, and I've lived happily on Earth amongst the mortals for the past half-century. Over the summer, I worked with satyrs to scout out demigods about the age of twelve to bring to camp. Most missions were simple: go to their family, ask if they know of the Greek gods, invite them to a camp. But one mission proved more difficult than most.

A young boy was discovered by Gavin Bloom, an ambitious satyr who claimed said boy had a strong demigod scent and wanted to bring him to camp right away. But the boy had been evading Gavin. He didn't give out any personal information, not even his name and age; although, I don't think Gavin was very tactful in finding the answers, which could explain a lot. We only had a description to go by. Gavin couldn't even find a home address to locate the boy, so eventually, Chiron asked me to step in.

It was only a week until the school year started, so I agreed to go undercover as a Latin teacher. Luckily for me, my dyslexia disappeared after about 50 years. It took longer to dissipate than my ADHD, but it wasn't like I needed to read English on Olympus anyway. In my 50-ish years of depression, when I wasn't on Earth much, I got hung up in Athena's library. She even taught me herself when she had the time. I learned many languages, lots of history, and modern science. I was still terrible at math, but the other knowledge I had came in handy when a demigod wasn't signed up for a Latin class.

I was taking the week to set up a lesson plan, though, I mostly used the same plans from past missions. I moved into a small apartment in Queens on Long Island, NY where the school was. I loved the fresh air (now that cars were solar-powered, the air was much cleaner), so I walked almost everywhere I went.

Faster than I realized, I was headed towards the school for the first day. When you're 350+ years old, 1 year goes by quickly. You can imagine how 1 week would feel like nothing. I mean it makes sense seeing as when you're young, one year could be 1/3 of your entire life. But as you get older, the amount of time a year takes up compared to how many years you've lived makes the fraction even smaller—1/12 of your life, 1/50 of your life, 1/100 of your life, and so on. Essentially, 1 year of my life equated to one day of a twelve-month-old baby (about 1/365 of my life).

All this to say that length of time feels shorter as you age, and living for three centuries meant that a human lifespan would fly by pretty quickly. Consequently, so did that week of preparation.