jflashandclash

[jflashandclash]

EEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE! THANK YOU FOR AWESOME BIRTHDAY WISHES AND FOR BEAUTIFUL BIRTHDAY PICTURES!

BABY PAX FROM BOOK ONE! AHHHHHHHHH!

both of these are fantastic! Thank you @jace-reaall for drawing this baby!

(Omfgs, he's 14 when TOO starts. TEN YEARS OF PAX BABY--?!)

Happy (24th ha!) Birthday, Pax !!!

Ajax Pax from @jflashandclash 's charming Series: The Traitors of Olympus.

#ART #jace's awesome art #ajax pax #THANK YOU #I can never get over all of your awesome detail work #genuine love #I REALLY APPRECIATE IT! This has legit been so motivating to keep going even when it has been a rough month #<3 his pegasus boxers

[jflashandclash]

So, listen, sometimes I get my own accounts confused--

Tales From Mount Othrys

Axel: Into the Lion’s Maw

The trap was a simple one. There was a chain across the floor at shin level. That, alone, didn’t reveal if the chain triggered a secondary trap, maybe Mathias’ dream: a shower of Happy Meal toys.

However, the scattered skeletal and not-so-skeletal limbs and dismembered bodies decorating the area in a half-circle? That and the massive axe blades poking out of the walls? Axel had a guess it wasn’t McDonald’s related.[1]

Axel caught up with them as Mary and Ethan triggered Part II of the Fancy Death Machine.

He tackled them from behind. Blades swooped above them as they hit the floor. Ethan’s sword and the lighter clattered to the stone ahead.

“Get off of me!” Ethan snapped.

Axel altered his weight to pin Ethan down, praying that Mary didn’t try to fight him too.[2] He knew how strong she was and didn’t want her to lift all three of them into the still-swinging blades.

“‘Swish Swoosh,’ says the pendulum! ‘Did you know that I’m but a clock unwound? Tic-Tok!’” she shrieked in glee. She rested her hands over the back of her head, like this was a game of hide-and-go seek. “‘Slooth, slosh, I’m too tired to go on.’”

Only two swooshes of death above them. Ethan, fortunately, had gotten the message and stopped struggling. Axel hoped the blades didn’t swing in a descending pattern.

Several mechanical clicks later, the axe blades settled back into place.

Axel puffed up his cheeks and popped them. His lighter’s flame hadn’t gone out. The turquoise blaze spiraled lazily ahead of them, lighting up several dismembered limbs. Axel could see one wore a Happy Meal crown like a bracelet. Maybe he shouldn’t tell Matthias about that one.

Carefully, Axel sat up. He glanced to see how close the chain was. Several feet back. He didn’t readily see another trap.

“You could have gotten us killed,” Ethan snarled at Mary.

She didn’t respond. Her gaze had gone unfocused on Axel’s lighter.

Axel picked it up, watching her reaction as he did. She didn’t blink or follow the flame. She stared into the darkness. He didn’t know if that was more or less comforting than her earlier attention.

Ethan snatched up his sword. “We should leave her and get out of here,” he hissed.

Axel hesitated. She seemed completely nonresponsive. “I don’t want her to pick us off, one by one.” Axel could imagine her popping out of various doors in the labyrinth, Scooby Doo style, hoisting off demigods.

“What do you propose, genius?” Ethan Nakamura snapped.

We could unleash her onto Camp Half-Blood, the helm rumbled.

Axel liked that idea even less. She wasn’t a weapon. Unlike most gods, Axel didn’t get the vibe she was intentionally hurting people. He wondered if Prometheus could help her remember herself. He doubted “Mary” was her godly moniker. And, if it was, Catholicism had quite a few delusions that needed untangling.

“She could come with us,” Axel said.

Ethan glared, pointedly, at Axel’s bent shoulder pauldron then at the finger prints she’d left on Ethan’s arm bracer.

Point taken. They couldn’t exactly stroll merrily arm-in-arm.

Axel glanced at the pile of corpses. “If we have her hold a severed limb as we walked, she’d crush that instead of our hands.”

Ethan’s glare deepened. “I don’t like being mocked, Mayan,” he spat the last word like an insult.

Axel clenched his jaw. Anger boiled in his stomach. It eased when his helm spoke, Sacrifice him to this goddess to assure safe passage.

It was strangely calming. Maybe it shouldn’t have been comforting to be the reasonable one between you and your enchanted armor, but Axel would take the wins he could.

“I wasn’t mocking you or joking about the limb,” Axel said once he could keep his voice even. Alabaster or Pax would have brainstormed with him. He desperately wanted that right now. Maybe Ethan hadn’t carried enough limbless Titans around to know about the mythological options. “I was trying to figure out how to bring a lost minor goddess back to camp.”

Ethan lowered his gaze. He adjusted his shoulder straps.

At least he wasn’t arguing.

Axel crouched down near Mary, but not within touching distance. “Mary, what do you want to do?”

She blinked, still staring absently into the dark. “I don’t want to do anything.” Her voice was a soft drone compared to the previous fluttery tone.

Axel hesitated again. “Are you dangerous?”

Tears streamed down her cheeks. She dug her nails deeper into her scabs. “No.”

If she hadn’t proved how easily she could snap his arm, he might have touched her shoulder.

“You heard her. She wants to be left here,” Ethan said, “We need to get back to the others.”

The sacrifice is correct. We must rally your troops for battle.

Axel swallowed and rose. He would be sure to tell the other minor gods  and titans about her. She shouldn’t be left to wander like this in the labyrinth. “I’ll make sure others know you’re here.”

She continued to silently weep as Axel and Ethan cautiously retreated. When they stepped over the trip chain, Axel lost sight of her amidst the dismembered corpses.

“This feels wrong,” he murmured. Which titans would be able to help her—? “Oh—this way.”

Ethan had turned down an unlit corridor. He paused and glared back. “How can you tell?”

Axel gestured towards the dim glow of the corridor beyond his turquoise firelight. “Can you not see it?”

“I can still see,” Ethan snapped, a little too quickly.

Axel paused, considering Camp Othrys’ newest recruit, examining his weathered eye patch in the flickering light. Ethan was very quick to assume others intended insult. “Where were you? Before here.”

Ethan looked away. He fidgeted with his shoulder straps again. “Cabin Eleven.”

“The children of Hermes weren’t particularly kind about your eye?”

He sneered. “Children of the trickster god. What do you think?”

Axel nodded in understanding. Maybe Ethan wouldn’t be shedding any tears for the missing Chris Rodriguez. “I didn’t mean anything about your vision. The floor has a glow to it in the direction we need to travel.” He would need to ask Alabaster why no one else could see it. Navigating the labyrinth didn’t seem that daunting. Axel took a step forward, then paused one more time. “Which side do you prefer I walk on?”

If Ethan had previous cabin mates that teased him about his vision, Axel imagined he would have a preference that was frequently denied.

Ethan gave him a suspicious look. He pointed to his blindside. “Make sure nothing attacks us from your direction.”

Strategic, Axel mused, trusting Ethan to guard their other side.

They began walking.

The corridor seemed to have elongated. Axel hoped the other demigods were still there. He hoped Mary hadn’t sprinted them away in a sack like a evil Santa Claus, handing demigods out to hungry mythological creatures like presents.

“I’m sorry about the Mayan thing,” Ethan said.

Axel grunted.

“I thought only mortals could have clear sight that strong,” Ethan said, “Why didn’t you tell Lord Kronos that sooner? You could have saved us a lot of trouble navigating the labyrinth.” It sounded accusatory.

In answer to both, Axel asked, “What is clear sight?” He thought about it. “You mean that I can see through the Mist? I don’t hide that. I didn’t know that would affect how we travel the labyrinth.”

Ethan snorted. Axel was getting the vibe this kid didn’t like him. “That seems convenient. Alongside the fact that you haven’t pledged your soul to Lord Kronos.”

Axel stopped walking and pivoted to face Ethan, only to realize Ethan couldn’t see the movement. Convenient? The lion’s helm felt heavy on his back. Did—did Ethan somehow know about—there was no way he could know about Alabaster’s meeting. That happened in Hecate’s realm—probably somewhere in Erebos. “I can’t. I’m not a half-blood.” He gritted his teeth. “And who told you that?”

Not many people knew. Except Pax, Alabaster, and—

“Lord Kronos.”

He couldn’t help it. “You mean Luke?” Axel resumed walking.

“Show him respect,” Ethan snapped.

Axel didn’t know how to break it to Ethan: he’d seen Luke so drunk he could barely sit on his barstool as he babbled about how beautiful Thalia was. There would be no “lord” when talking about his friend.

Ethan seemed to straighten his posture. “Lord Kronos will be sending me on a secret mission.”

Maybe Axel should point out the definition of “secret” in a dictionary to Ethan. Instead, Axel grunted, “Good for you.”

“And I plan to assure no one gets in the way of it.” Ethan turned his head sharply, so he could see Axel. This time, his expression was one of wary curiosity. “You’re really not the spy, are you? You’re not going to ask me any question about it?”

“What are you talking about?” Axel made sure not to make eye contact. He missed the standard issue helmet that covered his ears. They could be a dead giveaway when he was uncomfortable. He wasn’t a spy though. He was just making back-up plans to kill Luke if his friend totally lost his mind. Axel refrained from rolling his eyes, wondering which “Lord Kronos” would find more treacherous.

“The Romans knew about the Hecate child’s lab,” Ethan pushed, like Axel hadn’t been there, “I’ve heard what some of the monsters are saying. There have been other times the Romans knew too much.”

“I almost died in that raid,” Axel growled. He’d just been happy that he and Alabaster managed to keep Pax somewhat safe.

“And you got elevated to a hero with your brother and friend. I think you three have been very… lucky,” Ethan said the word like it was vulgar.

Lucky?! Axel barely refrained from pivoting to hit Ethan.

No one will find his body in the labyrinth.

This helm kept making excellent points.

Clutching the helm’s cold metal over his shoulder, Axel managed to control his temper. “What does that have to do with me not being or being a spy?”

“Sometimes you need to take things into your own hands. Make your own destiny.” Ethan tapped his eye patch. “Before someone steals it away. I’m going to find this spy, and I’m going to kill them.”

Axel didn’t like that Ethan was investigating this behind Mercedes’ back. He knew Mercedes had been working tirelessly. He wondered if he could—no, if Pax could—ask her about her best guesses. Axel and Alabaster still wanted Camp Jupiter to fall, but maybe this Roman spy would be useful to their cause. Maybe they could work together.

In the meantime, Axel didn’t like that Ethan’s investigation had come near him or his friends. “Nakamura, don’t go around accusing others without evidence.”

That’s what he meant to say. But lion’s helm chose then to speak, “Child of Nemesis, if you hurt anyone under my protection, I will break every bone in your body, starting with your left hand. And when I’m done with you, you will have neither an eye with which to see nor a tongue with which to slander.”

Axel was beginning to really enjoy this helm’s input.

-----------------------------

Thank you for reading! And thank you for your patience! Life should be hopefully settling down in the next month or so. (I feel like I’ve been saying this for awhile, but let me live in my delusions, damn it! XD)

I hope you enjoyed! This chapter felt janky to edit since it has been awhile. Hoping, as always, to get back onto a regular writing/upload schedule, but we might have another skip while life gets settled.

Thank all of you for your continued support! You guys rock and all your asks, comments, and likes have been very encouraging! (Which, I promise, I will one day get to! XD)

---------------------------------

Footnotes:

[1] Pax wanted to point out that it is: just Ronald McDonald FNAF edition.

[2] I don’t think you’d be in my fan base, but for those of you who were looking for Axamura—

Pax, singing from somewhere, “When the cat hits your back in a Paxboy attack, Axamura!“ (Name that song--!)

#TFMO #percy jackson fanfiction #ethan nakamura #mary #PJO #gods--please read my original tags XD

[jflashandclash]

Best of luck on your Essay!!!

THANK YOU ANON! I RECEIVED A 150/150 ON THAT ONE AND MY TEACHER WAS REALLY LIKED MY DEEP DIVE! I'm panicking over a new one this week. ^.^''''''' But it looks a bit lighter and shorter than the previous one.

#asks #THANK YOU FOR YOUR KINDNESS

[jflashandclash]

You write a lot of characters from very diverse backgrounds (the Pax kids, Calex, Euna and Joey, etc) but you still manage to include details from their cultures that really show their connection to it. What kind of research do you do to be able to represent them well?

THANK YOU FOR YOUR ASK ANON!

*cries with relief that you're asking this instead of asking me why I'm so bad at it*

I am terrified of misrepresenting cultures. Someone I informally use as a sensitivity reader has told me that I overthink this. I screw up. A lot. Cultures can alter drastically depending on the geography and time frame. Sometimes I can't find anything on certain ethnic groups and other times I'm scared of misappropriating something. The last thing I want to do is hurt someone with how I portray something. But, I really want to have a diverse group that can connect with a lot of people, and would rather me told when I make mistakes so i can correct them, then not try.

Short answer: asking millions of questions and doing dumb amounts of research that STILL won't be enough.

Long-winded answer is below.

Where I... cheat? (Can skip to see where I don't)

Euna, Joey

I used to date a woman who is Korean, have two friends who went to teach in Korea, and live beside one of the biggest Korean immigration points in my country. Many a shopkeep has made fun of how bad my accent is when I try a little, "감사합니다," as I offer my payment with my right hand, left hand touching my elbow.

Korean culture is the only culture, so far, where I had someone speak out against how I represented a facet. I debated on altering the scene, and spoke with three cultural informants about this who said it was fine. However, it is something I am altering in the remake of the series that will ONE DAY happen.

Hiro, Yoshida

I have a friend who taught in Japan for a long time and speaks fluent Japanese. He's been an invaluable aid for both of them!

Flynn

I took Mandarin and college and had a VERY patient professor with my millions of questions. Also, I had a Cantonese friend who could give me some information about how it was for his family (different region though!)

Merry, Mercedes, Zaneera (and a little bit of Calex and Lapis)

(You don't know Zaneera yet.) This is several fold. I used to love studying religions when I was younger, so that has helped. I used to tutor and I owe a great debt to the Indian family that took me in and would have proper chai and homemade meals with me. They were not from the same district as Merry. I intentionally picked an underrepresented region for Merry, since most Indians portrayed are from Northern districts. However, I feel like I haven't been able to do proper research there and have been considering picking different districts for her parents, for fear of generalizing and misrepresenting.

My sister-in-law happens to be Pakistani Muslim and most of my brothers friends are from Pakistan or India (or... randomly proud country rednecks. His parties are, um, disjointed at times.) I absolutely adore her Amma and she's very patient answering my sheepish questions about her religion and culture. My sister-in-law also used to do a lot of work in West Africa and in Egypt.

One of my friends went to Granada, Spain, and provided information on Mercedes' hometown.

Where I flail and pray I don't screw up: The Real Research

Calex

I hit the books and newspapers and blogs a lot for Calex. He's one of the hardest ones to balance out all the facets that are nothing like my life experience. And. I got him wrong version one. Very. very. very. wrong. Embarrassingly. No one called me out, but I'll call myself out right here:

The original ethnic group he's part of was the Yoruba people. THAT ETHNIC GROUP IS MOSTLY IN NIGERIA, BENIN, AND TOGO. NOT LIBERIA. THERE ARE TWO WHOLE COUNTRIES WEDGED BETWEEN LIBERIA BEFORE YOU HIT ONE OF THOSE COUNTRIES. (In my corner of ignorant shame)

I didn't want this to happen again.

For the remake, Calex's ethnic group is now the Kpelle. I have.... loads of books on the Kpelle now. But, unfortunately, most of the research I found is decades old, and written by people who aren't always friendly to Liberia as a country. (Either Europeans or African countries that historically don't get along with their far neighbors.) So, um, I subscribe to a Liberian news blog. For Calex, I needed to research, trying to be aware of bias and bigotry...

Kpelle society

Liberian society, economy, etc

the Second Liberian Civil War

Sierre Leone's Civil War (they're neighbors)

The Ebola Out Break of 2014

Racism in Britain

Football clubs in Britain

British culture and slang (according to 2014. Gods it has changed so much already)

Mixed race and religion families in Britain

Racial theory on exoticizing and fetishization of black individuals

This involved preliminary research with, honestly, kids books to get a broad, sweeping scope of things, then digging deeper with adult books, then digging into academic articles for specific information. I'm still struggling with information about Kpelle religion. In the remake, I like to read authors who are West African that eventually settled in Britain before I write Calex's point of view. Liberian Journalists are also great for this (thank you Helene Cooper!) There's SO much more information out there today, and I'm excited to hop back into researching once I'm done with TFMO!

Ajax Pax and Axel Pax

These boys.

These gd boys.

Okay, so I went to Belize. I was really lucky and fortunate that I was in a situation where I could go. And I know I still don't have everything right. I lucked into our tour guide being Maya. No one had ever asked him questions about the modern day culture, and he was so kind with all the questions that I had. I was... gods, that person on the bus. Super obnoxious. Hand going back up as soon as he had time to breathe.

Maya people are treated as second or third class citizens in Belize. Their culture was being eradicated by some of the prostheliziation happening in the area. (Okay, hear me out: modern day Catholics often don't mind melding with other religions. Check out Vodou Catholicism as a great example of this. Not all, but most Protestant religions will often stomp out localized religions when they come in. Around the time that Axel and Pax leave Belize, Protestantism is stepping in and knocking out things like the Deer Dance. Fortunately, Maya cultural groups are fighting back against this and preserving it.) Their beautiful ancient dig sites are also often plowed over and dug up to make new, fancy tourism spots for rich, predominatelywhite travelers. This is actually where some of Santiago and Frasco's character development comes in.

The only original documents I could find on Mopan Maya were in Spanish. So, uh, I started trying to learn Spanish to learn Mopan Maya. So, with the boys, I looked into....

Belizean Creole

Mopan Maya society and culture

Ancient Maya history and rituals

culture and history of Belize, how their tourism industry affects that culture

Spanish

Latin American and Caribbean drug trade (Santiago)

Racism against Indigenous populations, both in Belize and here.

Catholic school systems in Belize

Circus/performance culture, busking, and homelessness.

I also tried to consider how people interact with their culture when they've been separated from it. Being from Belize means a lot to the Pax boys' identities. However, Pax tends to lean more towards identifying as a California kid and a Camp Othrys rebel. Axel, on the other hand, feels very nostalgic for Belize and is reminded of his connection to Maya mythology every time he looks in a mirror or checks his nails. Claws. Nail-claws. Because Pax was younger when he was removed from his home culture, there is a real chance he'll start to lose the ability to speak Mopan Maya if Axel doesn't drill it into him. I have a lot of friends who can understand their home language, but lose the ability to speak it if they don't practice enough. Pax could already be falling into this.

Axel

Okay so look.

You hear, like, two things about Axel's mother. And she should be WAY BIGGER and WAY MORE OF A BADASS.

...... I couldn't find any research on her ethnic group. *hangs head in shame* I've been considering altering her culture of origin to be from somewhere that I can have more research and give her a fuller character design. I've had a wonderful person who is very patient with my book-babbling suggest Maori, since they're very open about sharing their culture.

For all of this Research

I started my research in 2014, TEN YEARS AGO, and did the majority of it about 7-6 years ago. There are SO MANY MORE RESOURCES NOW! *DROOLS* and BLOGS and YOUTUBE CHANNELS! I'm all about verifying resources, but I'm so excited by how much research is out there and how much ethnic groups are getting to share their own cultures and instead of being talked about by those outside of it. My original degree was in cultural anthropology, so this is a passion of mine. Once I'm done with TFMO, I'm really excited to dive back into the newer resources--maybe getting to alter and fix up somethings for the next version of the series!

.... I hope this long-winded rant helped >>''''' Thank you for reading all of it if you made it this far!

#asks #THANK YOU ANON #I'm still learning how to do this properly myself ^.^'''''

[jflashandclash]

In a main story (there's prequel's for before and sequels for after but is there something specific you should call the middle story? lol) you can grow the characters from point A to point Z through the series but with a prequel, you're building the characters back up to Point A; do you find that hard? Is there any changes or new character developments you'd like to add but can't because the characters have to fit into their previously established TOO introductions? 1/2

Thank you for your ask, Jacereaall!!!!!

("It's the squeal to PJO--oooohhhhhh. i see." "Medequeal." "I like limiqueal more." "That doesn't even mean middle--" "YEAH BUT IT MEANS THRESHOLD AND ALABSTER WOULD APPROVE--")

The bigger struggle I have is giving each baby the time I want them to have. Tales from Mount Othrys contains shorts that are snapshots of their time at Camp Othrys. It was always meant to be more summary than full dive, but it means the lil babies only get snapshots of character development.

As for a character development that I can't pursue...? Mercedes.

I want to do so much more with her. Her feelings about her job. About betraying her cohort. About Preator Julian dying. About her hidden family. About her hidden faith. About her secret crush on a particularly persistent parasite. There are snippets of scenes I would love to construct into full ones: Mercedes giving Pax an eidi card or cash for Eid. Pax snatching a kiss from her under Christmas mistletoe. Alabaster asking to join her during Salah. (She is, secretly, the demigod he respects the most aboard the Princess Andromeda.) Alabaster getting pissy because she'll explain prayer to Axel, but not him, since Axel has cultural and religious appreciation and Alabster is, um, clinical and scientific. (She would eventually educate him, but love to annoy Alabaster.)

Because of the construction of the prequel, she can't. Mercedes has a lot of pressure put on her, and she's balancing out a lot. Especially with how luke is losing it? She's scared of getting closer to anyone else, despite desperately wanting to and wanting to explore their worlds.

But, gods, can you imagine Mercedes being the one healthy friend this whole group has?

Otherwise....

I have a whole list of AU ideas for Reyel for the prequel. Listen. It's a problem. But I at least KNOW it is a problem--

#asks #tfmo #THANKS JACE!!!! #percy jackson and the olympians

[jflashandclash]

Is it limiting to write TFMO after already posting TOO, is there any struggle to build the characters up to how they were in the beginning of The Whispers of a Snake?

I've been loving the younger Pax brothers and newer characters like Lou Ellen and Mercedes. It's also cool to see small differences like Pax playing more with gender which wasn't as present in TOO.

(Hi btw, glad to see you back after so long.)

HI JACE! THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR ALL THE ASKS! you have no idea how much they mean to me and how much they encourage me to keep at this!

*rolls up my sleeves*

*puts on my nonprescription glasses for effect*

Let's fucking GO--

Yes.

Yes there is.

Because of this-->

stoic piece of--

(I know. this is an old picture. He should have a combo of dreads, braids, and quarter shave in the old school version. And WAY less facial scars. I told myself to make drawings. one d a y.)

In my main series, you might notice that Axel....

Can be comically useless. Don't get me wrong. He's meant to be a bad ass and have so much complicated turmoil to work through. But, keep a counter on how many times he gets taken out of a final fight before he actually gets to fight. Or gets his ass kicked.

Book 1: Aphrodite kneecaps him. On a sinking ship he didn't want shipped.

Book 2: Brothers being Brothers, blasting Axel's bluster with a bullet

Book 3: he gets to fight. But. Almost dies by praetor. Almost drowns by human fire hose.

Book 4: Almost dies by childhood fear of water puppy. Almost dies by half-brother's mom's parental skills.

Most of Riordon's plots revolve around a Hero's Journey, often times. His characters are normally rising bad asses. Axel already had his hero's journey when you meet him in Traitors of Olympus. It is well established and agreed upon by the other characters that Axel is a bad ass, even though you rarely see him win a fight outright. I get a certain amount of pleasure from the "oooOoooo, he's a bad asssss, when he's fighting oversized pidgeonnnnns with a frying pannnnn--"

My secret with Axel is he spends more time In Need of Rescuing than doing the rescuing. This works (oh gods--it does work? Right? Right guys? He seems cool--please--) because he has the presence, both in how he acts and how others react, of someone who is used to being in command and can command well. People respect him because of past heroics, even if you're not seeing him kick ass here. (How many of his fights has he won against Reyna, hrm?) Otherwise, I spend four books emotionally had physically kicking the cho out of him.

..... then comes the prequel

"Oh, fuck, I need to make Axel ACTUALLY cool--"

Axel is meant to be many things. In the first four books, he was meant to be

I wanted to take figure that looked like he would embody everything of toxic Hispanic Machismo, and then make them a hyper-feminist, social justice warrior that super supports their nonbinary little siblings, someone to fight a nasty stereotype from when I was growing up

Worthy of Reyna. Yes. Axel was made for Reyna, and they STILL SCREWED IT UP--GSDI REYEL, YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO--

But in the prequel, he's meant to be the parallel to the Greek's Percy and Rome's Jason. Lord knows (hail Kronos) that Riordan didn't set Luke up well for that. (I can do a different deep dive into this.) That means, not only does Axel need to progress, but he needs to rise above those around him. And he's surrounded by titans, mythical monsters, and serial killers like Jack and Flynn that can alter people's wills and health with words and songs. I'm going to end up truncating Axel's character development more than I want to, but, by all rights, he should have his own series-worth of adventures, and I believe he does.

It's just freaking HARD to go from humiliating and crushing someone for four books and then be like, "oh.... you need to... win here..."

Otherwise, Pax is relatively easy. Oh, except the Lamia thing. I might be, um, skipping over the Lamia thing. That is the one thing I just can't fit (we'll see) but the Trauma from--ehem, I mean the Massacre of Mount Othrys is more important to his character development. He has more pivot points, whereas Axel has long progression.

Jack was always meant to be a sweetie church boy that's got just a smidge of serial killer problem. Just a lil.

I'm SO freaking happy you like Mercedes and Lou Ellen. Mercedes is one of my favorite characters in Tales From Mount Othrys. <3 Her dialogue and scenes are tricky to write, but she's SO much fun to bring to life!

THANK YOU AGAIN FOR ASKS!

#asks #jacereaal rocccckkks #I CAN'T BELIEVE ALL THE FREAKING BEAUTIFUL ART YOU HAVE DRAWN #I WILL BE RESPONDING WITH PROPER COMMENTS SOON I HOPE #Axel is a coatimundi's butt #But I still love him even if he has to be cool for real now

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mount Othrys

Axel: Into the Lion’s Maw V

Bandages covered the forearm closest to him, ones striped with thin, red slits.

Her chesire smile was so fragile; it twitched on the edge of sobs.

She was going to crush his shoulder.

Axel gripped her wrist. She flinched back, dragging him a step with her. Up close, he could see her lips were split. Flakes of skin dangled off. Spittle flicked from them as she giggle-cried, “Gone. Don’t you see? All gone. Just us. Don’t you see? Just us and our little audience, like a puppet crowd we stigger and stabble in the auditorium with nothing to do but fear the dreaded Exit Sign at the end of all sho—”

Axel allowed one glance.

The monsters were, in fact, gone.

With that one step, one that the demigod soldiers had unwittedly taken with them, the labyrinth had come to life and taken its own step. The hoards of monsters—their strength and shield—had vanished. There was a fork in the stone tunnel ahead. It ended in two doors, one with a golden archway; another, a wrought iron one.

He was alone with a handful of terrified demigods and a mad goddess.

“They left us,” one of the demigods shouted, “Without Ariadne’s string…” His fellow soldier—Luke’s new favorite—Nakamura?—didn’t need to finish the sentiment.

Mary spoke their fears aloud, “Everyone forgets that we all cease. How does everyone forget? You can read and read and watch and watch and drown and drown, but that’s all you’re doing. Drowning—[1]”

Lieutenant, came the gentle reminder.

The helm was correct: his job was, right now, to keep everyone calm. Something Mary was rapidly undoing.

Mary was far stronger than he. There would be no overpowering her. But, maybe he didn’t need to. Ethel needed gentleness after Zeus attacked her. Hiro, his little half-brother, needed slow movements and softness after Hiro’s mother had killed herself and tried to kill him. Mary’s desperation reflected that same fragility.

“Mary,” Axel said, maintaining eye contact, “My name is Axel. I am friends with Chris Rodriguez.”

That’s what he meant to say.

“I am the Leonis Caput,” came out instead. Axel felt like the alteration should scare him. Instead, clutching the helm brought calm detachment. “The child of Hermes was to be under my protection. As these demigods are now. We are rejoining our main force. And I do not like distractions.”

Pax would have liked it. It had dramatic flair. He would have wanted to end it with, and hear me roar.

The authoritative tone worked.

Mary released his shoulder and shrank back a step. Her lower lip quivered, making the skin flakes dance. She hugged herself, digging her nails into the scabs along either bicep.

“I can help! Help—help—please—” she pleaded, “I’ve been down here a long time. A lo-o-o-onnnng time. I’ve guided many people in the labyrinth.”

In the labyrinth, Axel noted. Not through the labyrinth.

“I know the way!” she pranced once towards the golden archway. “This way—oh, all ways are the same, but this way is best same way.”

But, Axel knew it wasn’t the way. Earlier, the flooring under Kampe and the monsters had glowed dimly. Here, the glow deadended between the two arches. “No—”

Mary had already gripped Ethan Nakamura’s arm. She dragged him towards the golden arch. “Hey!” Ethan shouted, unable to keep his footing at her speed.

“We’re going to be left behind again!” someone from the back cried.

For an exacerbated heartbeat, Axel remembered babysitting all his siblings after Uncle Frasco had given them several pounds of candy and they sprinted in two different directions. Except, that only resulted in several bags of throw up instead of the potential destruction of the entire demigod force.

 “Stop!” Axel roared. He flicked out his lighter, bit his tongue, murmured a word in Maya, and spit into the flame. It quadrupled in size, taking on a turquoise hue. With a flick of the Mist, torches around the room flared to life, providing them a parameter.

He pivoted on his scared troops. “Stay in the protective barrier. We lose no more to the labyrinth on this trip.” He sought out someone whose name he knew, someone responsible, and settled on a short brunette in the back. “Ailiseu, keep everyone here.” Before anyone could protest, he ran for the golden arch. Ethan just vanished into it, his over-sized armor clanging.

There was no protective barrier, but Alex couldn’t have them splitting up into the labyrinth. Ailiseu—he couldn’t even remember their godly parentage—was level headed. He just needed them to keep the others there until—

Heart pounding and eyes darting, Axel dashed after Mary’s footsteps as the sound retreated into the darkness. He held up his lighter with the turquoise flame. Uncle Frasco could manipulate flames like this for hours—for a whole circus show. Axel had only tried it for brief tricks. He hoped that “protective barrier” would hold.

“Hey! Let go of me, you crazy lady—” echoed ahead.

Axel almost stumbled over Ethan’s sword. He must have dropped it in the struggle. Axel slipped his foot under the hilt and kicked it up, snatching it in his left hand. The floor’s dim glow had shifted, the light trailing after the kidnapped soldier and mad goddess.

When Axel saw them, he increased his speed.

Ahead, Mary was dragging Ethan towards a pile of corpses.

Thank you for reading! I know this is a short one. And I’m only technically getting it out before the end of the weekend (er, my time zone’s weekend--) but I hope you enjoyed! Getting a short with both Ethan Nakamura and Mary. I’ve had requests on both of them and I hope this doesn’t disappoint!

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I’m hoping to resume our every-other-week schedule with a lovely forecast of dismembered limb jokes. I hope you have an awesome leap day!

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[1] Interlude brought to you by Jack’s recent existential crisis. Interlude music begins here, preformed by Pax and three weasels. Doo doo to doo doooooo—

#PJO #percy jackson and the olympians #HOO #fanfiction #Tales from Mount Othrys #heroes of olypmus #Mary #Nakamura #Axel #tfmo #writing #a wee babe chapter #I GOT AN A ON MY ESSAY #THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mount Othrys

Axel: Into the Lion's Maw IV

Axel had a horrifying realization: if they bottlenecked to get into the Labyrinth, they would bottleneck on the way out. He could imagine their meaningless march into a massacre, Kampe shoving each demigod to their death in an orderly fashion.

Upon stepping into the corridor, Axel was pleased to see that Lucille had been right about remaining calm. Kampe was, contrary to the bottleneck visual, an excellent strategist.

There was a massive corridor inside the entrance. Above them stretched a curved lattice of ornamental windows. Their floral and geometric designs were interspersed with white and green mosaics. Leaves and muck obscured parts of the glass, only allowing a few rays into the vast space. Where the light did break through, dust danced lazily in a snowy haze.

This was beautiful. Maybe eerie? But nothing like that horrors he’d come to associate with the Labyrinth. Alabaster said this was a foolish place to enter, that they’d lose a quarter of their army just getting through the maze. Axel rarely questioned Alabaster’s logic in mythological matters, but, seeing this…          

Several giants stood towards the far end of this massive chamber, presumably to lead their eventual charge. Earlier, Luke said the ground around the Zeus’ fist entrance was weak. If they sent the giants in first, they could likely widen that entrance.

Axel lowered his gaze. They didn’t have metros in Belize and, in their short stay in Los Angeles, Santiago always hired private cars. It took him a heartbeat or two to recognize the indents in the floor as tracks for a train. The monsters and demigods crawling in and out of them looked quite comfortable in the abandoned subway station. Axel just hoped no ghost trains came through to make everyone go splat.

Behind him, demigods coming in had a similar gasp of appreciation and relaxation. Someone mumbled, “Wow… so much better than Matthias’ horror game simulation.”

Lucille’s shoulder brushed his as she released his hand. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Axel huffed out a laugh. “Wish you could show Ethel?”

Lucille gave another weak giggle. She lifted her pilum towards her mouth, the same motion she would normally use to cover it. “Not my ideal romantic outing, but maybe, one—”

“Daughter of Aphrodite,” thundered from the far side of the room. Kampe made the title sound like an insult. Axel almost couldn’t see Kampe amongst all the giants. It was strange seeing them in battle gear. Seeing them made him think of the Triple A Chimera Dance and the horrifying death contraption Matthias had rigged to transport them like weasels in a titan-sized backpack.

Lucille nudged Axel’s shoulder. “Stay close. I need someone I can trust in battle.” The levity vanished. She meant it. Cho, Axel internally swore, was dissidents in Luke’s troops so bad that even Lucille was worried? He swallowed.

Others parted until they were at the lead of the demigods, several lines back from Kampe.

Kampe and the giants were already lumbering forward. The tunnel shook, sending more dust particles cascading into the dim light rays. Their march forward was both deafening and devastatingly wordless. Hundreds of feet of various kind—hooved, scaled, and mammalian—droned into an eerie oppressive din. No one spoke.

This tunnel led to a narrow one with less natural illumination. Well, there was a dim, continuous glimmer ahead of them. The floor seemed to almost… glow. Despite this, various demigods fumbled for lights. The monsters were unbothered by the darkness, but Axel could sense the mounting panic in his fellow soldiers.

His own chest had constricted. This reminded him of the cage matches—

“We’re okay…” Lucille cooed. Axel could see she’d turned to walk backwards, so the demigods would hear her without risking mockery from the monsters.

The fear evaporated. Axel couldn’t be sure if it was Lucille’s charmspeak or… his fingers had reached back to brush the cool metal of the lion helm. He hadn’t consciously meant to touch it, but it felt comforting.

The tunnels snaked, curved, elevated, lowered, and altered from metal to concrete to mud. There were scuffles ahead. Potentially foes that Kampe and the giants extinguished without real resistance.

Despite how Axel hated to admit it, he wished Jack were here. He would have feigned a newscaster, giving everyone live updates in rhyming verse, likely with acoustic or kazoo accompaniment. He could imagine Kampe trying to squash him as he asked her what kind of battle ballad she would want after this victory. If Jack was here, they would have known exactly what was happening ahead when Axel had to grab Lucille’s arm to prevent her from bumping into a Scythian Dracaena.

Axel’s ears perked up and strained forward to hear. There was a disagreement. Kampe hissing, “But, the string says to go this way. This is the most direct route.”

Was the air thinner down here? It was colder. Axel could see puffs of air as it evaporated out of the anonymous metal helmets around him. The demigods’ reverence and obedience to Kampe seemed to ebb with each strained breath in the tunnel. Whatever argument was happening made the demigods apprehensive. He could sense some sort of rising tension in the way they glanced at one another.

“Can you hear them?” Lucille murmured.

Axel parted his lips to answer when someone thundered, “You fool! That could bring the tunnels down upon us!”

And a shriek of pain.

The demigods startled. Axel knew the movement: the nervous shuffle of a herd before it sprinted to panic.

Lucille shifted her pilum into the hand with her shield. She squeezed Axel’s shoulder, or he thought she did through the armor. “Keep everyone calm.”

The light pressure left. Like Lucille was flitting backstage, she slipped amidst the monsters, the plumes of her helmet becoming indistinguishable from horns and tails bobbing in the dull lighting. He could almost envision her pirouetting.

Keep everyone calm.

It’s not like Axel’s little knowledge of Maya magic was fear-based. Or like they mostly knew him from murdering people “for sport.” Or like what Alabaster taught him about the Mist was used to blend into and out of shadows.

Oh, he would be as natural at this as Flynn was at childrearing. He hoped Lucille could settle the dispute quickly.

Whispers of worry wormed their way behind him into a growing, writhing mass. “Hold,” he growled.

They died down. The Dracaena ahead of him jumped.

Yeah, a natural. He couldn’t say something without scaring the monsters, let alone the demigods.

He hoped Lucille realized that directing sword lessons and commanding an army were very different activities. Why did she and Alabaster seem to think he’d be such a natural at it when Pax wouldn’t even listen to him?

Are they different? the helm—was it the helm?—hissed.

No one else reacted. Axel wondered when others could hear the lion’s helm or… or had he just imagined it talking? He reached to feel the cool metal. Whether the lion’s helm or his own thoughts—cho, he was beginning to sound like Jack—it was right: maybe directing sword practice was similar to commanding troops.

And neither one involved freezing up like Pax had pantsed him in front of Aphrodite.

Axel pivoted away from the monsters to face the demigods. “Lucille has gone to confer with Kampe. Take this time to check your equipment. No one wants their first battle tactic to involve tripping on untied shoelaces.”

Nervous laughter. A decrease in tension. Murmurs went from worry to routine: all of these soldiers were used to checking each other’s armor. Axel knew there was comfort in repetition.  

Until one voice spoke up, fluttery and quick.

“The tunnels ahead are too narrow for the monsters to pass. Kampe could start a panic. They’ll trample us.”

Axel didn’t recognize the voice. It was high with a fragile quaver, like Pax when he was acting pathetic to get something from someone.[1]

Everyone stopped checking their armor. The tunnels went quiet. They stared, in unison, to Axel’s side.

A hand clutched his shoulder. This wasn’t the comforting grace of Lucille’s hand, but a shaking, icy pain. Axel swallowed. The speaker had bent his armor by touching him.

Her irises were wide, so wide and such complete discs of blackness; Axel could imagine ink overflowing and dripping down her face. The sclera was more red than white. Dark circles encompassed her eyes. In an insomnia competition between her and Axel, she wouldn’t just win, but make Hypnos beg her to take a break.

Her rags reeked of urine and defecation. Of rot and unattended sweat. Scabs of varied age crusted her arms, neck, and shoulders. With her other hand, she absently picked one open, revealing a glimmer of tainted gold.

Ichor.

“Chris said you could help me,” she whispered. She stood a little taller. “He said you were strong.”

Chris. Chris Rodriguez.

“But you can’t.”

Chris Rodriguez, Matthias and Pax’s close friend.

 “Can you?”

Chris Rodriguez who vanished into the labyrinth.

“You can’t help anyone.”

Chris Rodriguez who went mad.

“My name,” her soprano quavered so violently, it blurred to euphoria, “is Mary.”

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Footnote:

[1] It only worked on Jack.

Jack, “MY BABY NEEDS ME!”

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Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! And thank you for your patience with me from last weekend! I plan to release next weekend, since I skipped a week, and then resume every-other-week. A job application+school kicked my ass XD Seriously, thank all of you so much for your continued support, likes, and comments. (And artwork, JACE! THE ARTWORK) I appreciate how kind everyone has been as I get my feet back under me and am hoping to respond to asks/tags soon!

#percy jackson and the olympians #fanfiction #traitors of olympus #writing #HOO #PJO #heroes of olypmus #Axel #Mary #suprrrriiissse #she's hhheeerrree #lucille #I'm so tired but I'm freaking DETERMINED to get this out before I work on my essay

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mouth Othrys

Axel: Into the Lion’s Maw III

A thunderous crack startled Axel out of sleep. At first, he thought Hecate had darkened the Mist into onyx.

His memory kicked in: black marble walls. Jack had moved Pax and Axel to their own room in Mount Tamalpais. Jack attempted separate rooms, but, of course, Pax ended up in Axel’s room within twenty minutes of being split, fifteen more minutes than the Sabotage unit had bet on, leaving Prometheus with a score of 7 to 1 on prediction.[1]

Mementos from the dead scattered and clanged all over their carpet. Axel had left all other decorating to Pax. That was why Praetor Julian’s medallions, a centurion’s unicorn necklace, and other items clattered onto a pink shag carpet with paint splotches. Axel hoped they were paint splotches. Pax had, allegedly, found the carpet dumpster-diving with Matthias.

Panic hadn’t set in yet. Axel sat up, clutching something to his chest: the Triple A Chimera helm. A hiss erupted from the top of the plumes, something far too weak to be the helm’s gravely tones.

Honey, the weasel, appeared quite distressed by the movement, hissing and squirming to find comfort.

Above Axel, he could see Pax peering over his bunk, his amber eye glistening in their room’s night light. Matthias had installed it at the same time he installed Pax’s bunk. Axel had replaced the original cover: a British aristocrat’s glowing ass, the monocled and top-hatted man peering over his shoulder while mooning them. Now, it was a winking dryad. Still inappropriate but a massive improvement.

“Baller is upset,” Pax said, his voice trembling, “Was that an earthquake? Like, did Poseidon just take a massive shit? Imagine if that is what took out the titans—”

“Axel! Pax! My boys!”

Their door flew open.

The scene was a flashback overlapped into real time. Jack stood in his pink, monogrammed PJs, the back of a toilet seat raised like a baseball bat to attack potential intruders. The only difference from the first time was that the walls and toilet seat were black. Prometheus often quipped that Kronos might have an aneurism if their new camp didn’t have the right SS aesthetic.

“You’re okay!” Jack exhaled, lowering the lid with a thunk. The effort had made his arms shake. “The room next door collapsed. I thought—”

“You were going to dig us out where a toilet cover?” Pax asked, voice quivering.

“Yes, next best thing to a shovel—”

“Jack,” Flynn’s snap quieted Jack. He took a step back.

The Leader of Assault and Battery was mid-tugging a shirt over her chest as she came into view. Axel averted his gaze. “Luke is hurt,” she said. There was a faint jingling noise, signaling that she must have been wrapping her bun. She’d taken to wearing the goofy hair trinkets Pax made for her. “Ajax with me. We’re mobilizing to dig Luke out. Axel, with Kampe. She’s decided she’s leading the charge to camp Half-Blood while Kronos is occupied under rumble.”

Axel’s gaze shot up. “She’s what?” Her command was already taking effect. Axel sat up fully, careful to assure the helm and weasel stayed safe against his chest.

“She thinks they might be able to beat Percy Jackson back to his camp—”

“He was here?!” Pax yelped. He, too, appeared under Flynn’s command. He scurried down from the top bunk, only pausing to collect Honey from Axel’s helm. She squeaked indignantly. Axel appreciated it: a battlefield was no place for a newborn Mistform, no matter how fierce.

Flynn glowered. She liked to be interrupted (especially by children) as much as the soldiers of Mount Othrys liked doing Monster Laundry Duty.

Fortunately, Jack had no such reservations. He picked up one of their newly minted Orpheus Metal shirts from the ground and slipped it over Pax’s head. As if he were five years younger, Pax obediently lifted his arms to make it easier. Jack’s motion was frantic, and Axel had to wonder if Luke could get hurt after receiving the Curse of Achilles. “Well, kiddo, unless some other demigod’s parent has earned the title of ‘Earthshaker,’ then that’s our perpetrator—”

Someone’s words overtook Jack’s. It was Luke’s voice, but not. A second voice reverberated under the first, the same way Kouta, Axel’s older brother, made announcements for the circus, but maybe if Kouta was hyped up on some demonic energy drink. It was a two-toned cacophony, rusty and vile. As it roared, the building shook again, a hateful scream of, “Percy Jackson! After them—after them—”

Everyone froze. Even Flynn’s hold on the boys snapped.

Before, when Luke and Axel used to meditate together or when Luke had convinced Jack to allow Axel to join them at the Horizontal Monster Mash, Luke had described that voice. Between Luke’s gulps of beers, the color would drain from his face and his eyes would go hazy. He recalled the sublime and awful tauntings that haunted his nightmares, that would seep into his waking hours to remind him he was useless, merely a vessel, a stuffed animal disemboweled of its stuffing. (That last one, Axel knew, would upset Pax immensely.)[2]

That voice made Luke feel small, the way Axel’s father’s voice had for him. He didn’t need to ask why Luke followed its orders. It was impossible to resist when it was in your head all day.

Now it was Luke.

Axel couldn’t help but think of Pax, pitching their cause to new demigods: Have you heard the good word of Kronos? Overlaid with a blasphemous verse from his days at a Catholic elementary school: he has risen, just as he said.[3]

Kronos had risen.

Axel didn’t realize the Luke-Thing was still screaming. Not until Lucille stepped into their doorway.

She wore her battle armor. Her blonde hair was neatly braided back, and she carried a Greek-style helm under one arm and a pilum in the other. With her frail frame, she looked like a costumed Barbie. Their training taught Axel otherwise.

“Flynn. Axel.” Her tone was grave, the same way it always got before battle. “The strike force is moving out.” Her icy blue eyes shifted. “Jack, Pax, I’m sorry.” Giving them a fragile smile. It failed to comfort anyone.

Flynn’s gaze narrowed. “I’m not leaving Jack alone.” Ever again, Axel thought he could hear. Maybe with another faint echo of, Especially not with that thing. “What if the Ol’sissies double back while Luke is out of commission? A child of the Big Three? Maybe two if that earthquake wasn’t from Jackson?”

Lucille nodded. The half-sisters had a respect for each other’s combat intuition.

Despite trembling at Luke’s shrieking and the fear of angering Flynn, Pax whimpered, “B—but Mercedes said—”

That she could make Axel and Pax be part of the Sabotage Unit, away from the main battles. But, Axel knew it would be futile after his second cage match had gone so well, especially after the assault on the lab.

Lucille explained this gently, “I know, sweetie. But, Axel has proven himself over and over. It will boost everyone’s moral if he’s there.” She pressed her lips together. “And gain him favor with any new… changes in command.”     

Axel had a gut-sinking feeling Lucille was right. The helm hummed in his grip. Now, more than ever, he needed to be seen fighting along the monsters’ side. If they were to survive assassinating Kronos after the war, they needed the full backing of Alabaster’s monster family.

Axel stumbled to the armor at the base of their bunks. His legs felt leaden. The fingers touching the helmet buzzed with painful anticipation, an electricity that made him lightheaded and eager. The opposite sensations left him disoriented. He needed to focus on one. He unwove a strip of leather from his armor and tethered the helm around his neck. That would need to do for now. He should leave it. They needed to test these in a controlled environment. But, instinct—

You’ll need me, Lieutenant.

Axel wanted to snap that he didn’t need anyone. A glance around the room proved no one had heard that but him. Maybe it couldn’t talk outside of Hecate’s realm.

Lucille had already lifted his breastplate to offer it to him.

Jack tugged at his hair, frantically looking from Axel, to Flynn, to Pax. “Oh, Lucille, keep my boy safe! He’s too young and pretty to die! We haven’t even gotten him a girlfriend or a solo in one of our concerts!”

Lucille giggled weakly. She couldn’t cover her mouth with a pilum in hand. “I’ll do what I can.” As Axel finished strapping on his armor, she turned to Pax. “Can you do me a huge favor?”

Three sets of eyes were intent on her: Pax’s multicolored ones, and the beady eyes of the two weasel kits.

“Go to the nursery and check on Charlie and Ethel for me.” Her eyes softened at the names. 

Oh, Fortune bless Lucille. That would get Pax out of harm’s way. Besides, he was an excellent playmate for Charlie.

They walked as Axel finished strapping on his armor. Lucille led him out. Goodbyes—did they properly say goodbye? He remembered ruffling Pax’s hair, trying to ignore how Pax’s eyes welled with tears, the same way they always did before his cage matches—Don’t you dare die—and ducking under Jack’s attempted hug.

Their hallway was an offshoot from the main one. The main one had descended into chaos. Monsters and demigods jostled past each other. The Luke-thing’s howls left them panicked, disorganized, and disoriented. Its order was so primal: after them.

“Please proceed to battle in an orderly fashion. Please keep your voices low so you can standby for more orders!” Lucille’s charmspeak was sweet and kind. She never had the projection that Flynn’s snarls had, but all the soldiers within hearing distance slowed, relaxed, and fell more into military lines. The calming effect rippled to the others rushing by.

With the mob partially tamed, Axel could see down the hall towards Luke’s quarters. Part of the ceiling was collapsed. Krios, one of the Titan lords, stood beside the rubble with his arms folded, tapping his left bicep. “If you can’t ask nicely for help,” he said, voice booming, “then you needn’t bother asking at all.”

“Imbecile,” the not-Luke snarled back.

Krios rolled his eyes. “Some things never change.”

At least the Titan Lords seemed unbothered by Luke’s and Kronos’ unholy matrimony.

Something about seeing Krios standing there left Axel confused. “Kampe is leading us?” he asked. Hadn’t Luke mentioned something about Krios leading them through the labyrinth? Axel finished strapping on his old helmet. It wasn’t anything fancy, but it would keep his skull intact. His own confusion at the chain of events—going to Hecate’s realm, Flynn’s charmspeak, Kronos’ screams—was clearing.

Lucille nodded, helping up a demigod who had fallen in the chaos. “Yes.”

The younger camper blushed, thanked her, and darted after the others.

Axel felt skeptical. “But, she’s a jailor.” Did they give battle lessons in Grecian jail school?

“Luke gave her Ariadne’s string,” Lucille said, “The others are going to follow her.” She nodded to the disciplined line up at the labyrinth entrance. Because of newly established order, support was able to come through. Matthias could be seen walking down the line, chest puffed up and shoulders pulled back, as he handed out goody bags of ambrosia and, if Axel had to guess, fart bombs. He and a dracaena checked monster and demigod armor and handed out extra weapons.

Lucille continued, “She’s known to be a powerful entity—like Atlas. Why do you think Luke wanted Atlas when he had the other Titans?”

Recognition meant a lot to mythological beings. Axel clenched his jaw. Just another mythological aristocracy, as Alabaster would say. “Being a famous jailor doesn’t make a good strategist.”

They were approaching the labyrinth entrance. Axel had steered clear of this place, especially after Chris Rodriguez never came back. Selene Beauregard had told Luke that he was alive at Camp Half-Blood, but that he’d been left to babbling incoherence. Chris was the only one who had come out alive.

Another foolish scheme to send a demigod when a monster could thrive in the labyrinth.

Axel could see the mark of Daedalus. Alabaster had explained the symbol to him: a glowing blue D above the labyrinth entrance. Any time he walked in the hallway, it stuck out sorely: an exploitable security risk that had, indeed, been exploited. He didn’t understand why everyone had treated it like a kitty door for coatimundi to wander in. Jack and Pax had given him a weird look the day he’d growled, “It’s like no one else can see it.”

Watching how the others felt along the wall until finding a grip on the door, Axel realized the others really couldn’t see it.

Lucille glanced at him. “Are you nervous, Axel? It isn’t like you to protest so much.” She reached over to squeeze his arm. With Lucille’s status in the Attack and Battery unit and Axel’s recent rise to fame, no one minded how they cut in line. From the queasiness on some of the demigod’s faces, he assumed they wouldn’t have minded either way.

Axel stared at the entrance as they stepped up to it. He couldn’t stop his ears from twitching. Something felt wrong about this place. The strategist in him screamed. They were going underground—underground­—chasing after a demigod that could cause earthquakes. “What if Percy doubles back and collapses the tunnels on us?”

“Recent rumor has it, Percy sprinted away from Luke and did not look like he was coming back. He was scared of Kronos. We’re in his army and I’m scared of Kronos….” Her brow furrowed. “I’m glad Pax agreed to check on Charlie. I can only imagine how terrifying those shouts are for them.” She frowned, and reached to twirl a lock of hair that was tucked too far back to reach.

Axel winced. Them. She meant Charlie and Ethel. Ethel didn’t handle this kind of shouting well, and Charlie was only a kid. “If there’s one thing Ajax is good at doing, it’s distracting people from terror.” And he and Lucille both knew Pax would be a she (instead of a he) if it would make Ethel more comfortable.

Lucille might have been about to thank Axel.

“Move it,” a quivering voice came from behind them. Feigned bravado. Axel suspected the waiting was about the same as waiting for a delayed tooth extraction: sometimes you just want to get something over with.

Axel took a deep breath. “If I lose my mind and forget who I am, promise me you won’t let Ajax convince me I’m a famous weasel catcher on Discovery Channel.”

That earned a real giggle. Axel remembered how cute he thought Lucille was the first time he met her at Monster Donut, before he knew about Ethel. That seemed so long ago.

“Oh, don’t make me promise that! I think you’d make a charming show host.” She suddenly hopped onto the tips of her toes, coming close to his height. She rearranged her pilum, so she could hold it and her helmet in the same hand. With her hand freed, she gracefully lifted it up and lowered it towards Axel.

It took Axel a heartbeat or two to realize she was offering her hand the way she might for a ballet partner to spin her. Or for a partner dance? It was called something in French that Alabaster would have known.

Axel took his friend’s hand, sheepish at how scarred and rough his looked compared to her dainty fingers. The absurdity of it—a ballet pose before battle—made him laugh.

Axel had no delusions. She was holding his hand for his sake. A return laugh for the one his joke incited.

He and Lucille stepped into the darkness, hands held high, into one of the most dangerous places of the mythological world.

___

Thank all of you for reading! I think I rediscover my footing a bit better as a writer in the next chapter. In the meantime, I hope you enjoy! (AND THANK ALL OF YOU SO MUCH FOR YOUR COMMENTS, ASKS, REBLOGS, AND SWEETNESS! You're making it so worth coming back! <3)

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[1] Jack, “You’re old enough now that you can have your own room where your fanclub will know how to find you alone and, potentially, underdressed—“ Axel, “Ajax and I are still sharing a room.” Jack, “B—but your fan club!” Lou Ellen, “But your fan club!”

[2] Pax, “ARE YOU INSINUATING LUKE WAS ONCE A BABY PANDA--?!”

[3] Mathew 28.

#Tales From Mount Othrys #percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olypmus #PJO #HOO #TFMO #fanfiction #Pax #Jack #Axel #Lucille #Flynn #Luke whining under a pile of rocks #Luke #Krios laughing at him #WEASELS!!!!!! #inappropriately timed dramatic dance moves Part I #writing

[jflashandclash]

MORE AMAZING ART FROM JACE!

Thank you so much for this lovely depiction of Kally!! This is the cue for Pax to "accidentally" fall upon seeing Kally turn towards them, trip Alabaster, and "accidentally" grab Alabaster while falling. Then act pathetically hurt so Kally has to heal both of them.

Alabaster and Pax vision:

From @jflashandclash 's terrific Series: The Traitors of Olympus

#jace's kick ass art #kalypso cassand #PJO #HOO #TOO #Imagine Alabaster using the Mist to make the hearts appear #Pretending it is all in Pax's head

[jflashandclash]

EEEEEEEEEEEE CHECK OUT JACE'S AMAZING SONG SISTERS!!!!

You captured Euna's "I'm done with this shit and ready to nap" look SO perfectly. And Joey looks exquisitely put-upon and annoyed. <3

You act like I don't still love your old art

Your tags bring so much joy XD

The Song Sisters

From @jflashandclash 's spectacular Series: The Traitors of Olympus

#Jace's kickass art #TOO #traitors of olympus #Song JooYeon #Song Euna #also can we talk about how elegant you made joey's foot? #I love the hair details #this is euna's exact expression when Axel is detailing battle plans #“Euna.” “M?” “If you listen until the end--i'll give you a cookie.” “hmmm”

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mount Othrys

Axel II: Into the Lion’s Maw

The masks’ thrum was alluring. Something brushed his knuckles—the edges of another pew? Axel startled, gripping the wood. When had he started walking forward? There was nothing between him and the altar now—no other pew to warn him that his legs had elected to go for the shiny, dangerous object before his brain agreed. 

Pax was as cautious as he was capable. “The Triple A Chimera helmets!” he squeaked and scrambled ahead of Axel.

“Ajax!” Axel growled, but knew he couldn’t stop him. Pax was right beside the altar, and Axel didn’t trust his legs to cooperate.

Alabaster sighed. “Ajax, we’re not calling it that.”

“Witch Boy, you might not be, but the rest of the world is in agreement.” Pax cracked his knuckles and reached for the bronze serpent helm. If he was willing to drink mysterious, glowing vials for Alabaster, he would definitely pick up a haunted artifact that screamed, “hex me, please.” 

Alabaster grinned darkly. “Mercedes has been fueling more of the Romans’ own rumors, the ones about a beast that can morph in and out of the Mist. Why not—”

“Hello, little Spy Master,” the voice was soft, harsh, and slithered from the helm in Pax’s fingers.

The helmet clanged onto the altar. Pax jumped backwards. “Cool creepy stuff!” he yelped.

Axel ground his nails deeper into the pew. “They talk?” He already had to worry about Jack and Matthias’ influence on Pax. Pax didn’t need more bad influences.

Alabaster nodded. “They each have their own unique sense of humor.”

Sense of humor? What could that mean from Alabaster of all people?

Pax paled, still staring at the bronze one in confusion. “Why’d it call me the Spy Master? I’m just an irresistibly adorable spy assistant.”

Hecate settled a calming hand on Pax’s shoulder. This time, her smile was sad. “These helms reveal potential futures if you chose to align with them.”

“Maybe you take over spying on the Greeks when Silena Beauregard finally betray us.” Alabaster rolled his eyes at his age-old complaint.

Pax brightened, “You mean, I could be Mercedes’ irresistibly—”

“Irritatingly—”

“—adorable partner? Not just her assistant?” The prospect thrilled Pax. Axel knew how desperate Pax was to impress Mercedes. Despite that, Pax glanced over at Axel. The Free Possessions Here vibe had spooked him, and he wanted to make sure it was safe.

Axel swallowed, willing his legs into a casual approach. The closer he came, the more he could make out the detail of the beautiful plumage, the worse the urge to touch that gorgeous gold. His fingers twitched back to the cigarette in his pocket. Otherwise, he’d grab the helm. “Kinda flashy for you, no subtle amulets?” his voice came out rougher than he wanted.

Alabaster rubbed the edge of the antler between his forefinger and thumb. “I believe you gave me lectures on the value of utilizing fear in battle, and then proved it during our fight for my lab. These forms will enhance that…” His hand shook. He was awaiting an answer for a question Pax hadn’t realized he’d asked. But Axel knew the gravity of this conversation. And with this topic of conversation, Axel worried how demigods, supposedly, could spy on others in their sleep.

If Axel hadn’t come to know Alabaster so well, he might not have noticed how unconfident the Witch Boy felt. He was paler than usual—worried. His voice was soft as he continued, “Daedalus won’t make Kronos a body. I’ve researched his myth and history. He worked under threat for too long. Kronos only needs one more soul before he reforms.” Alabaster glanced up at Axel. “Castellan’s getting desperate. Even more short tempered than usual. And paranoid. He turned away Kelly. He sent out souls into the labyrinth that aren’t coming back—”

The three of them winced. None had heard from Chris Rodriguez. Pax liked to pretend he was okay.

Alabaster’s expression hardened. His knuckles turned white on the edge of his helm. “He hit Mercedes.”

Pax froze. “He what?”

Axel clenched his jaw. Mercedes hadn’t given Luke a name for their leak yet. She couldn’t find that Di Angelo child that Luke so fanatically wanted. He went from saying they didn’t need a Spy Master to using her supposed incompetency as a scapegoat to Kronos.

“Yesterday. When I told you Mercedes wanted you in the laboratory…” Alabaster trailed off. Something uncharacteristic of him. He was usually so calculated with his words. “Both of you are…” He hesitated and glanced at his mother.

Hecate nodded at him in encouragement.

Pax clutched his stomach, like he was ready to use the new helmet as a barf bag.[1] Axel understood the nausea. Mercedes was the first person to show them kindness on the Princess Andromeda.

Alabaster closed his eyes to collect himself. He squeezed the horn of the boned helm once more before his gaze shifted back to Axel. “You’re not pledged to Kronos. You can’t. Both of you have befriended those in power: Castellan’s Scourge of New Rome, his Quiet Death. The Bearer of Flames owes Axel his freedom—” Axel felt dizzy as Alabaster listed their monikers: Jack, Flynn, Prometheus.

“You can just call them their names,” Pax said weakly. “Or give them more accurate names. He Who Wears Pink Pajamas.”

Alabaster glanced to Pax, betraying the slightest of smiles over the joke at Jack’s sleepwear. “Ajax, you’ve become Mercedes’ prized spy for New Rome. Even your silly band has marked the two of you as a minor celebrity with the monsters. And—and both of you have wormed yourselves into the good graces of the children of Hecate.”

Pax feigned some bravado, leaned towards Axel, and whispered loudly, “I think Alabaster just admitted to liking us.” He straightened and looked at Alabaster. “Alabaster, you could have just said you thought we were cool. Remember how we talked about needing to sound less like a super villain about to assassinate someone?”

Alabaster’s lip twitched.

Pax balked. “Are you a super villain about to assassinate someone?”

Alabaster and Axel exchanged a glance.

That was exactly what they were talking about.

If possible, Pax’s eyes widened further. “Axeeeellll,” he whined in a tattle. “Alabaster is talking about assassinating someone!”

Alabaster sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose. “It’s Kronos, Ajax. Must I spell it out for you and any hostile gods that might be eavesdropping?”

“Nah, I’m illiterate.” Pax waved a hand. “It would only help the gods.” Axel could tell how desperately his brother wanted to look aloof about the situation.

Alabaster straightened to his full height. One hand lifted a vial out of his pocket. “I can’t do this alone. I need people I trust.”

“And if we refuse?” Axel asked, eyes trained on the vial. Something about this felt wrong. But, when was the last time things felt right? Despite everything, he could picture Luke’s easy smile, the way he coaxed Jack back after Calypso captured him.

And the look of hunger on his face when he wanted to interrogate Annabeth one-on-one.

Alabaster’s expression crumbled. “I have the River Lethe water on hand. You’ll never know you were asked. And, I will be down two friends.”

Tension curled the Mist into menacing figures in their peripheral. Hecate, Axel suddenly realized, had faded into the fog around them. 

Alabaster and Axel stared at each other. It felt like they were on opposite sides of disk that was balanced on a ball. One wrong move, both would topple. Was Alabaster trying to trick Axel into admitting treachery? Or was he reaching out to commit it with him? This felt like a trap, but Alabaster had never gotten along with Luke. But, what if Luke could still be brought back?

Pax glanced from his brother to his friend. He raised his hands in an unarmed gesture. “Guys, I know you’re both paranoid, but, like, we can all agree that Luke is a dick. He—” Pax quieted. He took a shuffled step closer to Alabaster. Tactically, Alabaster shouldn’t let Pax get that close until he had an answer. “He has been. H—he hit you… when we first got here.” The end of the sentence disappeared into a mumble. Pax slipped his fingers along Alabaster’s.

          Alabaster startled. His face rouged, but he didn’t withdraw. “You hadn’t even officially joined and you were already spying for Mercedes.”

          “Only unwittingly.” Pax’s smile was shy, impish. He pressed Alabaster’s hand, and vial, back into Alabaster’s pocket.

          Something about the interaction rang Axel’s Older Brother Alarm Bells. (And, besides, did Pax have a crush on Mercedes…?) But there was too much to process to consider it now. “And if Luke can be separated from Kronos?” Axel asked.

          Alabaster shrugged. “This will give us the tools to free him, whether through aid or death. We need him to win the war, but afterwards…”

          “I don’t want to kill Luke,” Pax said, “That would make Jack very sad. And he might resurrect him. And that could start the zombie virus—Ala, do you think we could make the zombie virus in Camp Half-Blood and New Rome and win that way?”

          “Well, we—” Alabaster raised an eyebrow at him. “Super powered zombies?”

          Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them. “Oh. I see your point. Bad idea.”

          Pax and Alabaster’s hands hadn’t come out of Alabaster’s pocket. Later, Axel decided.

          Right now, the helm thrummed in his ears. There were no coherent words, just dissonance—a presence felt by way of an increasing pressure around his skull. Did the others hear it? Did they feel it? Did theirs call to them so intensely?

          The eye sockets seemed to have eyes of their own, pits of blackness. Axel thought, for a stuttered heartbeat, that an iris shifted. Reflections off metal, he assured himself. Though he knew better. Maybe others could be tricked by the Mist. He could see through it. Something was inside the helmet. Something wanted out.

          “These grant us power,” Axel summarized. Placing a hand beside the helm made the cacophony inside his head near unbearable. 

          No wonder Alabaster asked them to meet in his mother’s realm. Having these in the laboratory felt dangerous. Too much for demigods. Axel had to wonder if Alabaster was just a mouthpiece? Maybe Hecate was doing what she was rumored to do: give another option. A tertiary option to Kronos or the Olympians.

          Axel searched the surreal jungle. She had to still be here. This was, presumably, her temple, and these were her godly gifts. Even with his true sight, all he could spot was wisps of her presence in the fog: the wave of some hair, the echo of a finger, the curve of fabric along her side, none in the same spot. An unsettling notion made Axel draw his shoulders back. She was the Mist itself. Millennia of entangling with its essence had left her nearly indistinguishable.

          “Hecate?” he called, “What is the catch? What are we trading?”

          She resolidified across the altar from Axel. “While you wear these, the past will become nothing more than just a dream, so that you may regain the ability to dream.” She lifted the feline helm to examine it. As she did, the air electrified. He felt something swishing behind him in tempestuous flicks—a tail? He didn’t look. She was trying to distract him.

          “These will harness your anger, your pain, your doubts, and your fear. They manifest it and they become it, so that you may hold it separately from your own identities. So you may don it and meld with it when it is most fitting.” Her emerald gaze lifted to Axel’s. “You are trading a piece of yourself, pieces that will become my little monsters, my children. You are trading control. You will no longer have unwanted intrusions, but they will become the intrusion when you don them. I’m powerless to change your fates…” She looked to each of them in turn. Her son. Pax. Axel. “But in the end, I’ll shelter you. After all, you are my child’s cherished friends.”

          Alabaster went red.

          Breaking her somber speech, Pax nudged Alabaster. “Your mom knows she doesn’t need to pay us to hang out with you, right?”

          Alabaster shot Pax a glare.

          Axel tried to picture what that would mean, to be able to dream again without screaming, to know internal peace. He clenched his jaw. This felt like a cheat. It felt like—

          “They will fail one day,” she said, as though reading his thoughts. “You’ll need to face your fears. But, not during this war. The delay will make it traumatic, especially for you, Jaguar Child. Melding with this will cause you pain.”[2]

          Axel swallowed. Hesitantly, he reached out. The cacophony intensified, screaming until—

          “Hello, Lieutenant of Kronos.”

          Everything siphoned into that voice. Tension eased out of Axel’s shoulders. Distractions faded. He meant to just brush the cool metal with the back of one knuckle, but it was cradled in his hands. Its weight felt right, comforting. The plumes were soft as they curled around his forearm, around the blades he kept strapped there.

          Lieutenant? Axel mused, Like Atlas? A smile curled along his lips. The Leader of Assault and Battery? Or the Sabotage Unit?

          Touching the feline etching made Axel feel lighter. The calm was intoxicating. Some people went to his father to fuel their opioid addictions. He wondered if this kind of relief was similar. 

          “Do you two need a room? Or, well, a tree to hide behind?” Pax asked. He tried to sound light.

Axel startled, glancing up at his brother. He wasn’t sure how much time had passed. It must have been more than a few moments, as it had felt for Axel. Pax fidgeted with a satchel of something Alabaster must have given him to occupy his free hand. The one not in the Witch Boy’s pocket. Alabaster was examining Axel, expressionless. Axel ignored Pax, instead, giving Alabaster a crooked smile. “You’re not tricking me into taking a magical sleep med by throwing a rebellion, are you?”

Alabaster shrugged. “Is it working?”

          It was, but Axel didn’t want to admit that. The thought of falling asleep with this calm, all in the name of stopping a tyrant? Instead, he pointed out, “If these are going to alter how we fight and think through combat, we’ll have to test them in a controlled environment first.”

          Pax bounced on the heels of his feet. Alabaster merely nodded; he already would have planned for that.

          Axel’s fingers shook around the helm at the thought of putting it down. “Kronos will be suspicious if Luke tells him we have got specialized magic armor, if Kronos doesn’t just pull the memory out of his head.”

          “A memorandum for surviving the Roman’s raid on my laboratory,” Alabaster explained away.

          Pax rolled his eyes. Axel had to agree: Alabaster wasn’t known for being sentimental. That was an unlikely story.

          Axel considered other protests or objections. But, as he did, he realized there was no way he could put this helm down without trying it on. His gaze dropped down to the flicker of movement behind those blackened eye sockets.

          We have work to do, Lieutenant, the mask reminded him, as though they were already one.

          This wasn’t like signing up to fight Camp Half-Blood and Camp Jupiter. That hadn’t been a choice. Luke’s men were going to kill both of them if he hadn’t signed up. But this? Alabaster was treating Axel as an equal. He was giving him the tools to fight an encroaching evil, something that was devouring his other friend.

          “I’m in,” he said.

          A dark laugh echoed from the helm, something that felt strangely comforting.

          Axel looked up to find Alabaster smiling. The Witch Boy turned to Pax. “Ajax?” he asked.

          Pax puffed up his cheeks and popped them. Everyone always assumed he would follow Axel’s lead in every decision. Axel appreciated that Alabaster wanted the three of them equally committed.

          Pax hesitated. He set the satchel in Alabaster’s pocket. Timidly, he reached for the serpentine helmet. This time, he didn’t drop it, cradling it like Axel held his. He gave Alabaster and Axel a goofy grin. “Triple A Chimera assemble! Do we get a secret handshake?!”

“No,” Alabaster said. After Pax pouted at him, his stern expression cracked, “But, the helmets do come with weasel kittens, now that you’ve accepted them.”

Alabaster was excellent at delivering deadpan humor; that hadn’t sounded like a joke. Before Axel could ask him to repeat himself, he heard the soft trilling sound from the plumes.

“No…” Axel mumbled in disbelief.

There, emerging from the thick feathers, was a tiny set of squinting, beady eyes. The whole critter was miniscule, certainly smaller than Axel’s palm. Lifting its head appeared to be too much for it, the snout bobbing around uncertainly as it sniffed. A pang hit Axel’s chest. He held the helm more delicately. This was even more fragile than his pet jaguar cub, Juana, had been.

Pax squealed with delight. “It’s a weasel! It’s a baby weasel! You got us baby weasels!?” He hopped around the altar with the helmet. It made Axel want to frantically rush over to assure no tiny weasels fell out.

Alabaster plucked a pure white one out of the ivory on his skull helm. He slipped the weasel into a breast pocket on his shirt. Alabaster often had various compartments on him for spell ingredients, but—

“And you got yourself an incubator shirt?!” Pax yelped with glee. He had separated his weasel from his helmet, set the helmet on the altar, and was cradling his weasel in both hands.

Leave it to Pax to ignore the All Powerful Magical Armor.

“Kits or pups,” Alabaster corrected. “They don’t need incubators, but they will need to be fed, socialized with each other, taught to hunt, and—”

Alabaster cut off when Pax went on his tiptoes to kiss his cheek. His complexion had just settled back into that of a vampire. He went bright red again, cleared his throat, took a step back, and pointedly avoided looking at Axel.

That “later” talk that Axel and Alabaster needed to have? It was going to happen as soon as the three of them were awake.

“And named,” Alabaster tried to make it sound like there hadn’t been a pause. “Th—they’re more than pets.” He swallowed, regaining composure. “Each is an extension of your helm’s power, playing to the strength of the owner. Nietzsche can store spell runes, acting as both a roving set of prepared spells and a conduit to set magic off at a greater distance.” The tiny white head poked out of Alabster’s pocket, slitted red eyes trained on the Pax brothers.

Axel extended a finger towards his tiny charge. When the weasel sensed him, it curled about his index finger, nipping vainly. Axel had to admit, he liked her. She had spunk.

“Who gets Honey and who gets Baller?” Pax bobbed to Axel’s side.

Axel’s tiny charge clung to his finger while nodding off to sleep. “Honey and--?” he asked.

“Hunahpu and Xbalanque! Duh!” Pax cheered.

Alabaster looked relieved at the shift in conversation. “Maya names?” he asked.

Axel nodded. “The hero twins.” The names of sorcerer warriors felt fitting for gifts from Hecate. Though, Axel doubted these two weasels could feign dismemberment, the way the ancient warriors and Hecate’s children could. Well, maybe Pax’s could. That would fit Pax’s style of combat.

Pax pointed to a clustered spot of fur on the back of Axel’s. “Yours has little rosettes.”

Axel nodded. “Mine shall be Hunnapuh then.”

Pax held his up, Lion King-style. “And this shall be Baller!”[3] he proclaimed with bravado.

The three boys got to enjoy something they rarely did these days: a peaceful moment in a safe place with no one watching but a caring mother. Pax demanded they put their weasels into a kit pile in his hands. Axel surveyed this carefully, but was relieved Pax seemed to have a natural knack for tending to the little ones.

Despite discovering the existence of Greek gods, being “adopted” by someone a few years older than he was, and being cast as the heartthrob in a monster-centric metal band, these gifts were some of the biggest surprises Axel had in the past two years. Alabaster had always been uncomfortable with shows of affection. Some people got each other burgers and French fries as signs of friendship. Others gave each other weapons of war.

All of them were smiling when the jungle shook. The quake’s ripple was so strong, Pax pitched onto one side. He cradled the weasel kits protectively to his chest with one hand while smacking the forest ground with the other floor to break his fall. Axel stumbled. Alabaster snagged the edges of the altar. “Mother--?” he called.

“Mount Tams,” she said from the fog of mist, “is under attack.”

***

Thank all of you for reading! Also, thank you to those of you that left comments in my last post. I promise, I’ll be responding as soon as I can. You rock and have made it worth while to get myself to post again! In the meantime, know you have Jack in an appreciative pile of moosh and gratitude! Stay tuned for, hopefully (>>’’) every other week updates!

***

[2] Pax, “Way to hit his kink, Hecate.”

[3] I recently read up that the hero twins were pronounced, “WAH-nuh-pwuh and shi-BAY-lan-kay.” But I think younger Axel would have been too insecure to call his lil one “Pooh,” so we’re sticking with the mispronunciated, butchering of Honey and Baller.

#percy jackson and the olympians #PJO #the heroes of olympus #HOO #Tales From Mount Othrys #TFMO #alabaster c torrington #Hecate #Pax #Axel #WEASELS #FINALLY WE GET SOME MF WEASELS

[jflashandclash]

It’s been a long time since you’ve been on. Just want to drop by and say that I hope you’re doing okay! Happy holidays and I hope you’re well!

Panel 3: Since I last vanished--maybe first vanished? I was kicked out of my dwelling due to a dispute with a partner, I had surgery for one disorder, and have been trying (and failing) to get medicated for another. (Character Jack and author Jack share more in common than red hair. Maybe I'll do a comic on that one day, since we're an often misrepresented minority.) I started a new job, and really, really recently, started grad school. (Wooh! Just got a baby scholarship!)

Panel 4: It's really hard to make art when you lose direction and hope.

If art is an expression of the soul, and you lose yourself, creativity becomes a vacuum. All the more hellish to realize it--you--were empty.

Panel 5: Anyway, THANK YOU FOR THE WELL WISHES, ANON! I'm doing a lot better. A lot clearer. I started to write and (obviously) draw again. I really appreciate your (and the other followers of this blog's) support. You guys ROCK!

I just picked up writing Tales from Mount Othrys again and want to get on a regular release schedule. I can't make any promises, but I plan to release more info on that (and my not-so-secret side project that had to be put on hold for--) soon!

THANKS AGAIN FOR BEING AWESOME!

Panel 6: What do you MEAN--it--it has been HOW LONG?!

Panel 7: Happy two year belated holidays to you too.

Two years....? TWO YEARS?!?

#THANK YOU FOR THE WELL WISHES ANON #thank you for letting me use this to rant as well XD #I hope you're doing awesome and you have a lovely start to the new year!!! #art #tfmo #the traitors of olympus

[jflashandclash]

Axel I: Into the Lion’s Maw

Axel I: Into the Lion’s Maw[1]

Or Labyrinth of Treachery

          Mist poured everywhere, both magical and nonmagical. Axel liked to think Alabaster’s mom had the same flare for the dramatics that he did, if not a little more pronounced.

          The dilapidated church flickered with light from three torches, forming an equilateral triangle. Two hovered behind them and one above a scorched altar. Their eerie green light cast everything in shades of grey and turquoise.

          Reflexively, Axel knelt and crossed himself upon entering. He swatted Pax to indicate that his little brother should do the same. Pax did, but with about as much reverence as grabbing a napkin for eating at a barbecue.

          “Hello. Hedonism.  Blasphemy at forever o’clock.” Pax mumbled, rubbing the back of his head with a pout. He’d gotten more mouthy. Axel couldn’t tell if it was from discovering he could adjust to people’s gender preference when he flirted his way out of things. Or, more likely, because their surrogate father had been different since he’d been trapped on Calypso’s island.[2]

Recently, Jack had been… worse. He’d come into dinner toying with a tendon he’d ripped out of a captured Roman’s knee and wondered why some of the demigods didn’t want to participate in Spaghetti Night after he lost it. The monsters thought he intended it as a Happy Meal toy. Great for monster moral. Great for demigod nightmares. 

Axel puffed up his cheeks and popped them as he and Pax approached the hooded figure in front of the altar. The person was meditating. Alex would say praying, but Alabaster didn’t pray to deities. He spoke with them as equals. Any misrepresentation of that, Axel knew, would be considered a “grievous offense.” Axel wasn’t in the mood for another thirty minute lecture.

Without checking to make sure it was Alabaster, Pax scurried up alongside the figure. He sat beside his assumed babysitter and shuffled closer until their legs touched. If that was Hecate, she would need to come up with a creative punishment for impertinence. If she turned Pax into a pole cat, he would consider that a reward.

“Pleasure seeing you here. You come to church often?” Pax teased.

“Ajax,” Alabaster’s warning was half-hearted.

Axel could hear Pax roll his eyes. “Fine,” Pax corrected, “Do you come to evil church often?”

Alabaster’s response was dry, “Every night in my finest robes in hopes of attracting… what does Mercedes call them? Persistent parasites?”

“Ah.” Pax patted down his duster jacket. “Sorry I forgot my occult robes.”

“I have some for you in the pews.”

Axel snorted. The pews were, mercifully for their eternal souls, empty of said robes. He scanned the church, checking for exits or potential ambush areas. Not that they could be ambushed here.

“Do we finally get to see the secret project you’ve been scheming over?” Axel asked. The question came out a little too serious for Axel’s liking. This was some kind of special occasion for Alabaster. The invitation in Axel’s back pocket proved it. The envelopes had been waiting on their pillows on thick, dark paper and swirling golden script.

Axel Pax,

Your presence is formally requested at the altar of Hecate.

Directions to Address: Fall asleep at a reasonable hour.

I know that’s hard for you. Your attendance will be appreciated.

--Alabaster C Torrington

Axel wondered if Pax had been twiddling his thumbs outside the church for hours or if Hecate had given him a sleep Fast Pass. Knowing Pax, he would have been thrown out of Hecate’s realm for making ghostly faces through the windows had she not. 

Axel had tried to sleep on time. He really did. He just saw corpses of the people he killed each time he closed his eyes. He tried reading the brick-of-a-book  Alabaster lent him. As it turns out, the dog-eared pages about overcoming a sinisterly encroaching tyranny? Not a good substitute for counting sheep. Especially not when it had Axel pacing in the world’s shortest loop across his and Pax’s room, wondering if Alabaster was referencing how Luke—no—no—how Kronos had been acting. Did Alabaster disapprove of Luke’s new management style as much as Axel did? Axel had been wondering about that until Pax threw a pillow at him with a, “Axxxeelllll! I wanna see Witch Boy’s mysterious whatever! Go to sleep!”

Axel had succeeded without being drugged by Pax, which Pax claimed his invitation instructed him to do.

Alabaster didn’t respond to Axel’s question about what this mysterious night time meeting. But, the room seemed to. Axel felt the air thicken. His breath strained.

The gleam of torchlight above them sank. A stoic whisper entwined with his own thoughts, making him flinch.

I can’t give you back what you had…

The Mist expanded, enveloping the room. A river gurgled nearby. The stars sparkled into life above them, thousands more than could be seen in Los Angeles or at the new site for Mount Othrys. Bugs hummed and Axel found himself smacking a mosquito that landed on his neck.

Belize.

They were in Belize.

Sort of.

Axel was left with the uneasy superimposition of the evil church amidst the calming jungle: a scorched altar and pews dropped into the thick undergrowth. Vines wrapped along the rotting wood, as though the disjointed images had been one for years.

Nearby, Pax wept softly. He and Alabaster were still kneeling in front of the altar. Pax turned to press his face against Alabaster’s shoulder, quivering at…

The last time they were in Belize, their father had killed their Uncle and Aunt in front of them. Axel hadn’t been strong enough to save them. All he’d done was get his arm broken.

Someone touched Axel’s hand, the one he had on his neck. I can’t give you back what you had…

He couldn’t tell if it was an echo or if she was repeating herself. Axel clenched his jaw. No one could give him Frasco or Nilley back. But… But Belize and Chiich… his siblings. They were still alive—they were—

Axel didn’t feel like a trained killer when his gaze turned to see the titaness beside him.

But you don’t have to do this on your own.

They had walked among titans and gods for years now, yet Axel felt his knees go weak seeing her. Her black hair swayed in the humid breeze. Her white robes with the ornate silver runes—all of it was immaculate despite their surroundings. Her eyes blazed like the orbs themselves were made of emerald fire.

Even if you’re never going home…

Pax hiccuped with a sob. What even was home for them now—

“You’re not alone.”[3] Until the last part, her mouth hadn’t moved.

Axel found himself staring a moment longer than he intended. “Hecate,” he breathed. Alabaster’s mysterious mother. Although she mothered at least a fourth of Luke’s troops, Axel had never directly seen her.

Hecate stroke Axel’s cheek and temple with gloved knuckles. She was investigating the swirled patterns of his fresh scars. “You ran out of room in your graveyard,” she observed.

His stomach plummeted. His graveyard? His and Pax’s room. He had run out of space for his—what else could he call them but trophies? Graveyard felt more appropriate: the pieces he collected from those that he murdered, his way of honoring the dead. They had become too numerous, too heavy. Encroaching into his sleep at night and into his thoughts during the day.   

But he couldn’t forget them. He couldn’t pretend they were nothing. He couldn’t become his father. So he’d started to carve them into himself.

Because, wasn’t that how it started? Choosing yourself over them? Deciding people were insects because you’d shatter to think anything else?

“You’ve been having more bad days,” Alabaster said evenly. He wouldn’t look at Axel.

Axel knew that. If Axel clenched his jaw any tighter, his teeth might break. This felt like an ambush. It didn’t help him to dwell on the bad days. That was the problem. That’s all his brain wanted to do—to rewind, replay, repeat.

          Breathing exercises and meditation didn’t work anymore. All he could do—as he did now—was fumble a hand into his pocket for a cigarette.

          Hecate’s brow furrowed. “My son is worried about you, Jaguar Child.” When her fingers curled around Axel’s ears, his grip loosened on the cigarettes. Her touch was soothing, almost mesmerizing. He hadn’t had someone scratch behind his ears like that since he was very little.

          “I—I don’t need help—yours or otherwise,” Axel said. He didn’t need help. He was the cavalry. He couldn’t need help because—because where would Pax go when he was crying from a nightmare? Or Jack when he was panicking over which band covers they would pick? Or—or Luke if he—if one of Axel’s best friends needed someone to kill them—[4]

          “Holy Titan!” Pax sniffled away his tears. Something had thrilled him. “Did you hear the quaver in his voice? Do whatever you just did again!”[5]

          Axel glared at his little brother. He would have smacked the back of his head if he were closer. All Axel could do, for the moment, was reach behind him to grip the backing of a pew. Hecate’s presence thickened the air with the tang of lavender, mint, chamomile, rosemary—a cycling swirl of scents that overwhelmed Axel’s sensitive nose and made him lightheaded.

          Those gloved fingers scratched along his other ear. Axel thought about slapping her hand away but—

          “Axel Pax,” she said his name like it was a secret, “A poison has infected the members of this camp and spread to you. You’ve seen it growing.”

          “I don’t want to lose you to it. Now that I’ve decided the two of you are worth something beyond being lab specimen,” Alabaster said. He tilted his head to allow his hood to drop back. He withdrew his spiral notebook, flipped it open, looked up, and startled. “Mother, what are you doing?”

          “Calming your wildcat,” she said. Axel could see her lips curl into a humorless smile. He swallowed deeply. She had stronger features than most of the Greek goddesses. When he lost focus (something he struggled to keep with her touch) he swore he could see multiple faces beside hers—one a residual of her past expression and one, he could only guess, a foretelling of her future. “I’ve been rather fond of cats as familiars in the last few centuries, especially since polecats are harder to come by. It’s important that they know your scent and show them you mean no harm before you make deals.”

          No harm—deals--? Axel’s mind spun. He jerked his head back. Although he felt her fingers lose contact, there was a shadow of her hand, a lingering, that rolled along his chin, just as another phantom of her limb withdrew sharply. Axel shook his head, watching as the shades unified into one hand.

His arms strained. Axel realized, with some mortification, that he’d bumped the backs of his knees into the pew. The only things keeping up upright were his claws, digging into the wooden backing.

“Deals?” he managed. His face felt hot; his legs were shaking. Axel hoped his ears weren’t a dead giveaway about how uncomfortable he was. He focused on orienting himself instead of replaying the feel of Hecate’s gloves on his ears. What were they talking about—his nightmares. Maybe something about Luke. Maybe this could be related to the book Alabaster lent him?

Axel glanced to Alabaster for answers.

He thought he’d seen Alabaster angry before, when he muttered about “causing his downfall,” during their celebratory dance. Axel had been wrong.

Had Hecate not been standing beside him, Axel could have felt the Mist radiating off Alabaster from the Princess Andromeda to Mount Othrys. His freckles looked like cooled black spots on a volcano, his face had gone so red.

“My child, shall we continue? Weighing the options?” Hecate asked, stepping past Axel towards the altar.

“I’m reconsidering,” Alabaster growled.

Axel fumbled to find his footing. Hecate’s, um, greeting hadn’t been weird. And, it wouldn’t intrude on his nighttime moping for the next week. He puffed up his cheeks and popped them before he could stop himself, something that made Alabaster’s glower deepen. Alabaster’s mother, he chided himself. Not that he needed chiding. He hadn’t done anything.

Pax looked delighted. His little brother was likely devising the best teasing strategies that would incur the least amount of injury.

Axel wouldn’t look at Hecate as she ran her gloved hands along the scorched altar. He gritted his teeth, seeking that indignant rage he felt moments before, instead of… instead of whatever that had been. “Is this supposed to be some kind of intervention? I’m fine.” He just hadn’t been sleeping. That was it. He had been waking up screaming for years. It was routine by this point.

“Augh, you had to focus on the boring part of this interaction, not the sexy one” Pax complained.

“Ajax!” Alabaster and Axel scolded in unison, going red for very different reasons.

Hecate remained impassive.

Alabaster fought to keep his voice level. “We talked about this?” Raising an eyebrow at Pax.

Pax rolled his eyes. “Fine! Fine—the fact that Axel has startled backwards from new campers, thinking they’re people he’s killed that have come back for vengeance? Totally normal.”

Axel clenched his fists. That had only happened once. But, it had been while he was helping Flynn train new recruits. A bad look for their camp. She had been furious and made him smack himself with a sword hilt.

With the alteration in conversation, Alabaster’s expression eased back to a calculated calm. He gently disentangled from Pax and stood. “This is more than an intervention, Axel, and this proposition goes far beyond counting sheep before bad dreams.”

He stepped to the side of the altar, parallel to Hecate, his swaying dark robes contrasted hers. “For…” Alabaster closed his eyes, quoting, ‘Contradictions do not exist. Whenever you think that you are facing a contradiction, check your premises. You will find that one of them is wrong.’” He opened his eyes, Hecate’s emerald fire reflected in his own. This must have been a quote from the loaned book. Axel didn’t have the heart to tell Alabaster there was no way he would remember a quote like that.

Alabaster continued, “Elevating a thug to a position of power to destroy other thugs—that is a contradiction.” He nodded to his mother.

No incantations or movements came from the Goddess of Magic, not that Axel saw or heard. Unlike her son, she didn’t seem to need them. Axel felt her will ripple the air around them. The pressure in the jungle dropped. Axel’s ears pop. Pax slapped his hands to either side of his head, like he could stop the sensation.

Mist thickened around the altar, strands winding into three orbs. One reflected the green of Alabaster’s eyes, one the gold of Axel’s, and one of utter blackness. A nod towards Ajax’s black eye? Or perhaps my Mist mask? Axel wasn’t sure. He’d seen displays of godly power before, but this made him shiver with excitement. Pax had sat up, shifting his weight from side to side in anticipation. 

The weaving tightened into distinct shapes. Teeth sprouted out the golden mass. A mane of red pilled out its back.

Horns jutted from the central, black Mistform. The blackness chipped and shriveled away to hardened ivory. It pooled and gathered into two central eye sockets in a cervine skull.

The emerald smoke undulated in leisure waves before solidifying into serpentine scales.

All three settled into oblong shapes with distinctive eye sockets and mouth openings. The green and gold glimmered with metallic sheen; the former, a platinaed bronze, the other a pure gold. The last one kept the texture of bone.

As the Mist twisted away, three helmets remained. They hummed in deep guttural tones.

Axel’s heartbeat pounded alongside their two-toned cacophony. Adrenaline pumped, though he wasn’t sure if it was to rush towards the helms and grab one—the gold one, the feline one—that one is mine—or turn and flee this desecrated holy ground, maybe shrieking a few octaves higher than he’d normally allow.

“These,” Alabaster said, settling his hands onto the bone helm, “were made to eradicate contradictions.” Alabaster’s gaze turned to Axel. His expression was hard and defiant.[6] “The idea that Kronos would rule over freed demigods? That is a contradiction.”

He spoke so openly of treason. Axel almost forgot they were in Hecate’s realm. He’d broken into a sweat. Luke had become so paranoid; he and the other titans spread rumors that the walls of Mount Tam had ears. Some deep instinct warned this would be the perfect way for Mercedes and Alabaster to rat out dissenters, to trick Axel into admitting he disapproved of Kronos.

He thought of the promise he’d so casually given to Luke on the edge of a cliff. It was one of the last times Luke had acted like himself. It was when Axel had promised to kill his friend if he ever became a danger to those he loved.

Jack had lamented why they couldn’t just spend the evening talking about cute girls. It felt so absurd now. There had never been a future where Axel could just worry about girls, or school, or a job. He’d spent months strategizing the murder of his father; would killing his friend be that different?

Axel swallowed, looking from the golden helm, the feline curves of its face, back to Alabaster. Maybe these helmets would be the one way he could bring the promise to fruition.

“I’m listening.”   

***

Thank you for reading!

(And waiting two years >>’’’’ Those of you that are my original readers.)

I hope you’re having an excellent start to the New Year!

I can’t make any promises, but I’m hopppppinnnng to stick to: Stay tuned in two weeks for part II!

I will address some of where I've been in a post, shortly. In theory.

***

Footnotes:

[1] In which Jack has to begrudgingly let Axel be a badass instead of having his kneecaps hit every thirty seconds. I spent four books breaking this unbreakable rock, and I got so grumpy when I realized I need to actually let him build up to being Reyna-worthy in this one. *sighs* Can’t I just continuously beat up the Pax boys?

[2]When I need to edit stuff out and just can’t delete it, I’m going to start slipping it into my notes: Not that Jack had ever been the role model for stability—he couldn’t make it through a concert without striking up casual conversation with the base. Not the base player. Jack was the base player. The instrument itself. Something that surely would have made fan girls jealous if Flynn didn’t give away free ass kicking for anyone dumb enough to hit on Jack in front of her.

[3] For anyone wondering, yes this entire sequence was inspired and written to The Puppet Song by TryHardNinja. It felt appropriate. <3 It’s one of the first songs on their Spotify playlist that I will one day release.

[4] All equal IOUs in Camp Othyrs.

[5] What Pax wanted to say was, “I think he just went through puberty!” but fortunately the Fates prevented this.

[6] Pax guesses Alabaster practiced this line, and its bravado, over and over, both in front of a mirror and in front of Mistforms of his own creation, so they would applaud him each time. Just imagine him lecturing Hunnie, Baller, and Nietzsche and three tiny weasels standing up on their hind legs to applaud.

#percy jackson and the olympians #heroes of olypmus #PJO #HOO #tales from mount othrys #TFMO #Axel #Pax #alabaster c torrington #hecate #fanfiction #writing #did you know... there might finally be WEASELS soon? #hey--long time no see #how is everyone doing?

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mount Othrys

Silenced V: Jack

 When the brilliance stopped radiating through his eyelids, when Jack thought it might be safe to look—to hope, to dream—they were back in Camp Othrys’ titan’s quarters. The Pax brothers, Luke, and Lucille were locked in heated conversation several feet away.

At the sight of Pax’s wild hair, Jack sobbed. They were real. He was back.

“My boys!” Jack cried, his throat cracking with effort. That phrase had been unused in his timeless prison.

Everyone moved towards him. Words blurred together into a pleasant garbled drone. As they gathered, surrounding him with love and excitement, his chest constricted.

As they encroached, so too did thought of children’s graves: Calypso’s children with various, unnumbered lovers. The children that never left the island nor would age to adulthood. What would Axel and Pax’s tombs be like? Would they be decorated in Greek or Mayan? If Calypso had been right, if he truly was cursed to dismembered eternity, would Jack outgrow his boys and entomb them? Encasing their bodies in eternal prisons like Calypso had caged him?

Her words drowned out those of his children, of his friends, of his love—the only dreams that kept him on the edge of that sanity, the sanity that Calypso cursed him with. Her. She was still all over him. Still in his head, her fingers still gliding through his too-short hair—

“Get these chains off of me!” Jack shrieked. He clawed at the white clothing, the sinister henchmen to that sea witch. What if she could still control the fabric here? What if she could use it to choke his boys in the night, to worm each strand under Flynn’s skin and clog her veins? If he fell asleep, he might wake up to them—his boys, his love—made of nothing but yarn.

Jack didn’t know he’d stolen Axel’s lighter until Axel and Luke were stomping the flames out. In the warm, California air, Jack stood naked, staring at the smolder of white fabric, crushed repeatedly by his son and friend.

Someone had shouted to give him room. Jack didn’t hear the exact words; he just saw a blur of motion away from him. Someone saying, “He’s been through a lot.” Anger. Worry. Exclamations of revenge. Someone offering a cute panda hug with no pranks attached. The words and faces existed in a flurry around him, but none of it would stay. All he could think about was how she’d be around the corner. Waiting. Knowing he had nowhere to run.

Been through a lot. Was this trauma? His mind raced with the erratic beating of his heart. This was a different way for the world to be distorted. He missed the old way: hearing voices he could decide weren’t there instead of dreading a presence he knew was. He—

         He grabbed Flynn’s hand. She had stayed beside him when everyone moved away. In contrast to the fogginess of everyone else, everything about her was so real: the way one eyelid drooped down more than her other, the ribs of scar tissue lining her left cheek and left side of her forehead, the way her left nostril ended shorter than her right, the thinness of her lips. The sight was comforting: gritty and uneven compared to the movie-surreal quality of Calypso’s beauty.

Jack always waited for Flynn to initiate contact, but he needed her right now. “Flynn—” he choked. Words still hurt from disuse. His voice was so quiet and hoarse. When he leaned towards her, Flynn gathered him up in her arms, like she had the day they came to camp, like when she’d taken away memories of his family, memories that had crept back while he despaired on Ogygia. “Take me away.” He pressed his face into her neck. Her posture stiffened and her neck muscles tensed but she didn’t shove him off. “Take away my sanity. Lie to me that we’ll be safe and I’ll never see her again. Everything is too clear here, too bright, like an endless, flat plateau boiled under the unclouded sun. Give me that shade. Grant me the oasis of a mirage.”

Over the years, he heard the whispers: Flynn didn’t charm speak him. It’s why she wouldn’t take him to bed.

But she had once: to drift him into a happy lullaby where he didn’t murder his family on accident and where Camp Othrys was a choice instead of a last resort. She let him start his new life with a fresh conscious and the ability to see Pax when he looked at his adoptive son instead of the corpses of his little sister and little brother.

Axel and Pax are much too old to be my children. A voice of reason dared to breathe.

The thought was unacceptable. Jack whined. Although he could barely make the intonation correctly, he begged, “Qing, Fēi Lín.”

Flynn slid a hand into his hair. “You’re safe here, Jack.” Her melodious voice was soft and warm. It quavered with emotion. When something wet fell against the back of Jack’s neck, he realized she must be crying. “She can’t get you.”

The words sank in, weighing down his panic and compressing the tension smaller until only exhaustion remained. He melted against her, unaware, until he relaxed, how hard his heart thundered or how violently he trembled. Jack could see again: past Flynn’s soft skin, he could see Luke, Lucille, Pax, and Axel in the hallway. Prometheus must have left or been out of sight.

From the way Luke’s cheek puckered, he must have been chewing on the interior. He always worried too much. Recently, he hadn’t had time to go to the bar for their weekly Luke-gets-smashed-and-Jack-has-a-Shirley-Temple. Jack wanted to tease that they needed more days along the cliff, meditating.

Pax burrowed against Axel, his amber and black eyes barely visible. They glistened with fear. Axel kept a comforting hand atop his brother’s twisting hair. With the paranoia of a warrior under constant threat, Axel’s fingers trembled over a sword hilt.  

Silent tears rolled down Lucille’s cheeks. She didn’t look at Jack, but at her half-sister.

“Jack…” Flynn rested her chin atop his head. “What did she do to you?”

Looking at his friends and family, Jack swallowed. The boys were used to seeing him break down—Jack liked that. They needed to know they were allowed to show emotion, especially Axel. But, this was different. Other than Luke, they hadn’t seen him begging, naked and shivering. How long had he been gone to them? On the island, he’d stopped counting the number of etchings he’d put into the new cave, making it closer to the mirror image of Odysseus’.

He didn’t want them knowing what happened.

“She threw away Mr. Sunny,” Jack said.

Flynn gave a choked laugh. “I’ll be sure to buy you a new one.” Although she already held him, Flynn cradled him off the ground with little more than a grunt.

Jack glanced up. Flynn paused to stare at the anxiety of their onlookers. Jack wanted to reassure everyone. That was Jack’s job: to handle people and their feelings. Flynn didn’t like to. When Jack opened his mouth, he couldn’t lie to them. All he could do was tremble.

“Let’s get your medicine—Phil has some,” Flynn said slowly. “Then, let’s have you rest—”

Jack’s muscles tensed again. Some deep horror fought back the calm of Flynn’s charm speak, peeling its lulling effects to shreds. “I don’t have to rest. She’s always there when I rest, eating my dreams.”

Flynn hesitated. Another of her tears splattered onto his skin, chilling it. “Then, let’s go to a Monster Donut shop with the boys. How does that sound?”

Jack wanted that to be an adoption day tradition. No one wanted to go after the first one exploded and killed Jasmine. He nodded his head vigorously, enjoying the thought of Axel and Pax stuffing their faces and happily chattering. Like things could go back to normal.

“Lucille, can you run ahead and make sure there are no questions at the shop?” Flynn asked softly. “Axel and Pax, get one of his band shirts and some jeans. Ready some stories and plans about your next band show. And, uh, Luke, don’t be worthless.”

There were sounds of movement. Pax uttered something in protest and Axel shushed him.

“Luke’s my best friend. He’s not worthless,” Jack whispered.

“That’s right, man,” Luke said. The hand that settled onto Jack’s back made him flinch before relaxing further. It was too broad and ungentle to be Calypso. “I’m gonna go find Phil to get your medication. Then things will go back to how they’re supposed to be.”

Jack repeated that word in his head: normal. Home with his boys, friends, and true love, never to see that sea witch again.

Something twisted his stomach and knotted his brain. You will be cursed, Jack. Even as his family scattered to prepare, even as Flynn took his face in one hand, the words slithered with the same consistency of Ogygia’s tide. You will know both the torment of the Fields of Punishment—

Flynn’s mouth pressed to his. The dampness of her cheeks imprinted on his, allowing their tears to join hands in their travel downwards.

—and you will know the curse of dismembered immortality—

Jack clung to Flynn, tracing and savoring the curves of her lips and the wetness of her tongue. He inhaled her harsh scent—leather, sweat, metallic—

If you stay here—

Jack tore his face back enough to see her dark eyes. “Flynn, I can bear torture in the Fields of Punishment if you’re with me. I won’t break under a dismembered immorality if I know you’re there. Promise me our souls will be intertwined—that death itself shall not part us. Promise me that—I—” Jack wanted to be on one knee, wanted fireworks in the background, and wanted a full orchestra (by orchestra, he meant his metal band) playing. He wanted to make the world as beautiful for Flynn as it could be, instead of the distorted chaos they’d experienced. “Flynn--Dǒng Fēi Lín—will you marry me?”  

This was the first time he officially asked. They had talked about it before in theory, but not…

But, before, Jack didn’t know what it was like to be without her.

Flynn frowned.

Jack’s heart pitched.

The same way she had when Jack adopted their sons, she groaned in annoyance. “Will an exchange of self-written vows suffice?”

Jack almost knocked Flynn off balance when he flailed. “Oh, titans, Flynn, is that a yes?!”

The tears dried up when she said, factually, “I vow to want to be and try to be with you and love you for as long as I exist.”

“Oh, gods! Flynn! Flynn, you’ve made me the happiest man. Wait—my vows are in my room. They’re ten pages long and I’ll need a guitar—electric, I’m not playing acoustic ever again—”

“Jack, we’re going to the donut shop first.”

“Yes! We can exchange donuts as rings—Axel can be the bearer and Pax can be the flower girl. Luke can be my best man and Lucille your best woman—”

Flynn didn’t shush him, as he suspected, nor did she tell him to stop dancing naked around the hallway, as he started upon being set down. She sighed and leaned against a wall, watching him with the slightest of smiles.

With his excitement, Jack rediscovered his love of planning for a theoretical, happy future, something he’d lost in the timeless, futureless island of Ogygia.

Something still felt different. Calypso had taken something from him. Maybe it was the belief in altruism, that selfless love was pure, that either could avoid the pitfalls of poison. Maybe it was that they were the good guys, that being good was definitive, or that being good mattered.

You’ll avoid both fates.

As long as Jack had his friends and family, he could handle any fate.

  PSA: don’t get married unless you want to.

  Thanks for reading! I hope you’re all doing well and getting ready for the spooky season!

#TOO #Tales from Mount Othrys #PJO #Percy Jackson and the Olympians #HOO #Heroes of Olympus #Jack #Flynn #Pax #Axel #luke castellan #the desperate hopes that this author will write more soon #I really had been working on a project for you guys #The weasels thought it was cool

[jflashandclash]

Happy new year! I hope 2022 brings you much peace and creativity. I’ve begun my year right - by rereading the your series :) Thank you for the stories, this and every year

This ask was one of the reasons I'm coming back to finish Tales From Mount Othrys. So, sincerely, thank you. I'm really happy my story could bring you distraction or enjoyment (I--uh--I would say comfort? But, my story is kinda fucked up. >>'''' You good bro? I send you weasel hugs and Reese's Sticks!)

Thank you for being so supportive and for the asks. <3 I couldn't ask for kinder readers.

Full transparency? I was working to give the Pax boys, Song sisters, Kally, Merry, and Calex their own world to live in and combat (or make, in Pax's case) chaos. When the pandemic hit, my position was deemed an "essential worker" (I'm not a nurse. Don't pop party poppers) alongside both my housemates (we're all in different fields), and [insert long list of life events that can be summarized with a british accent and, "bring me my pot of tea; this could take some time--"] --medical trauma/malpractice makes it hard for me to handle simple things like vaccinations without being tranquilized. POINT BEING! I withdrew really hard into working on teeny collaborative stories and paused all other writing.

I felt the first real sparks of pride at creating something recently. Like, two years later. This has been exciting. I want to pursue this and to chase after it like that crazed hippie in the woods SCREAMING about the nymph they totally saw out of the corner of their eye. I can't make promises about finishing things? I can't promise a set schedule for release anymore or when I'll get back to the exclusive Paxiverse? I can say that I want to and I'm trying. I don't know if it'll be as good as it once was or if there will be some continuity errors. (I--look man, I have a lot of concussions and it'll take me a long time to reread what I wrote--)

What I can say is thank you. Thank you for being here and reading and rereading. Thank you for caring about the Pax boys. Thank you for your kindness and understanding. I hope you're able to heal from your last two years. I hope the world is kinder to you and your creative cocoons wiggle out into beautiful and monstrous dreams that expand out to make more cocoons. May your day be an uplifting one that reminds you there are things worth living for. <3

#Thanks #I mean it #So do Hunnie Baller and Nitzch

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mount Othrys

Flynn: Silenced IV

   Oh, My Wonderous Flynn,

I miss you.

She hates you.

Hates when I talk about you. Fear wracks me each time I incur her iced envy, fear that she’ll eat my dreams and inhale my memories—more—she’s already has

Sweet as poisoned honey, kind as Rohypnol before the trauma, patient and methodical as a farmer gavaging a goose to rupture its liver for consumption.[1] Ever present. As a child, to think how I sang jubilation to the omnipresent, encompassing God, one that coddled and defended the innocent from the sadism of the universe. And now, to be tormented with true omnipresence and true circumscription: her eyes ever-watching, her hands ever-touching, her mouth ever-murmuring those lascivious slither of suggestions.

           Oh, Flynn, my love, Flynn.

           I fear

           I hate her. She desired my love so violently that she earned my ire.

           She’s coming.

         And the message cut off. The handwriting was unmistakably Jack’s. No one would dare to call her, “my love” or “my wondrous” other than Jack. She’d made sure to that.

         There was poetic scribbling in the corners, tucked into the other side of the crumpled, folded paper:

 Like a full body straight jacket. You grant me my sanity and take away my freedom, my voice—what sick torture is this?

 Flynn trembled at the pit in her stomach. The paper shook so much that she was shocked Prometheus could read it. “Who,” she said, her voice hardly above a growl, “is he talking about?”

Prometheus leaned over her extended hand, skimming. His grey eyes went from glazed disinterest to surprised concern. “Oh, I did not foresee this… I would have thought it would be Luke or Axel or, even, Lucille…”

He and the other titans hadn’t rested much recently. Flynn had seen to it: no one rested while Jack was missing. She’d killed several Romans in a rage-fit while interrogating them. All maritime troops were scouring the oceans for any sign of Jack even… even if that sign was a corpse.

Then this. Pontus, the Titan of the Sea, drifted the bottled letter to the only recruit who wouldn’t think it was a trick. Pax had run shrieking to Axel and Flynn had intercepted him.

Since the ambush on Alabaster’s laboratory, Flynn had learned that Jack wasn’t helpless, that they could burn the world together with his angelic song as their theme. He could still accidentally make an ice cream pallor look like the end of MacBeth if left unattended. But, he wasn’t prone to becoming a damsel, not the way this note detailed. Other than the moments he broke down murdering Apollo’s children and the moments after Thalia pushed Luke off a cliff, she’d never heard him spew such hatred.

After weeks of sleepless nights—of punching Jack’s bed banisters until she crumbled to tears or until Pax came in to hug her, of Luke surfacing out of Kronos to panic over his friend—this was the first message they received and it was a distress call.

Flynn would destroy whoever hurt him. Kind as Rohypnol before the trauma. Nausea, so deeply repressed she could only feel it as a rock in her abdomen, resurfaced. She thought about her uncle, and the day she discovered she could use words and actions on him the same way he’d used words and actions to teach her the casualness of violence.

         “None of your dramatics. Who is it?” she snarled. The lack of sleep and constant tension had frayed her patience.

         “Calm now, Flynn. I believe he’s referencing…” Prometheus frowned. He brushed some invisible lint off his tuxedo. He and Morpheus had gotten into a competition to be the most stylish in Camp Othrys, much to Krios’ delight and Kronos’ irritation. “Yes, my niece. Calypso.”

         “Your niece? A titaness? Where can I find her?”

         “It’s not that simple, Flynn. Mortals can’t just go there. Demigods can’t just go there—”

         “Then make it that simple.” There were few things Flynn cared about in this world: Jack and her Nǎinai. One would die without the other, as Nǎinai’s health had already deteriorated over the weeks without Jack’s healing song.

         Before Prometheus could do more than deepen his frown, someone squeaked from the doorway. The Titan’s lodging had walls made of black marble and obsidian. A bustling of twisted hair poked out from around the dark stone. The electric wall torch glinted off a yellow eye. (Titans didn’t like modern technology, but Matthias was determined to update their archaic preferences, usually with occasional explosions of glitter.)

         Someone gently encouraged Pax forward. He, Axel, Lucille, and Luke stepped into the room. Axel wore his Maya war paint and a Greek breastplate. Ever since the ambush, Pax had gathered darts to tack onto a Batbelt, as he called it. That and the massive black jacket—that apparently some hobo had traded for Pax’s new winter jacket, convincing Pax he’d look more menacing—made him look ready for a stealth mission. Lucille, herself, looked like the glass figurine of a war goddess. Her blonde hair was pulled into a perfect bun and her leather armor made her look smaller rather than larger.

         The ballerina was an unlikely warrior, but Flynn knew her ferocity in battle. Their combined charm speak could probably convince Zeus to slice off his own gonads—an excellent hypothesis that both of them wanted to test. Maybe, if they tossed those into the ocean, they’d get a love goddess that wasn’t as shitty as their mother.[2]

         “We want to help,” Lucille said. “Pax said you got word from Jack. A cry for help.”

         “One that didn’t rhyme. That’s the scary part,” Pax mumbled.

         “Ajax,” Axel said.

         “What? He made our chore list rhyme and in iambic pentameter just to show me what it was!”

         “Focus.” Axel jammed his hands into his nonexistent pockets, frowned, and folded his hands over his biceps. “We need to get Jack back—”

“—ha. Ha. Jack Back…. I miss him,” Pax said, “What kind of a band would we be without a lead singer?”

         Luke, sweat-soaked and shaking, nodded at the back of the group. He scowled at Flynn. Without Jack around, Luke viewed her as an unhinged liability. There was something only she could give him: bouts of sanity. Flynn could charmspeak Kronos into a slumber. The fear for his best friend had given Luke a renewed surge to fight Kronos off. “He’s important to the camp. Moral has crashed and they started throwing goats during the monster meditation sessions. And not in the happy way.”

         Typically, Flynn preferred working alone. Seeing her “sons,” her actual half-sister, and their shitbag leader brought her some comfort. Even if this Calypso could somehow stop Flynn, she probably couldn’t stop the group of them.

         Flynn tapped her fingers along the blades she kept in her hair. Pax was still too gentle for this. As he’d grown, he reminded her more and more of Jack’s tenderness. She and Jack were so proud that Pax tried to hang someone with a cable during the ambush. Pity the cable must have broken. She and Jack took Pax and Axel to the circus and for ice cream as a private celebration away from the party, but neither boy seemed festive at the massacre.

         Luke’s shaky scowl slipped to Prometheus. This was distinctly Luke. If it was Kronos, he wouldn’t have cared about Jack. She could further tell from the way his cheek twitched—likely from biting it. One of the nights she’d decided to puppet Luke as a toy, she’d discovered the deep scars on the inside of his mouth. “How do we get him? I—I can’t go, but I want this handled.” They knew he could slip any moment. No point starting an operation only to have Kronos cancel it.

         Prometheus sighed and rubbed his forehead. “Calypso is not… she is not a battle to be fought. A chess master who has lacked a proper contender for centuries? Yes. Convincing her to surrender someone is like convincing a gardener to part with their prized flower. And, she can be very convincing.”

         “So can we,” Lucille said. She hesitated a hand over Flynn’s shoulder. Instead of patting it, she gave Flynn a thumbs up. Flynn both appreciated the gesture and Lucille’s restraint from actually touching her.

         “Lucille is right. Between the two of us, she can’t say no, titaness or not,” Flynn said, and, oh, was she crafting a creative list of ideas for Calypso.

         Prometheus shook his head. “It would be unwise to attack her head on or to attempt charm speak her on her own island. The best route would be for me to go alone.”

         The room deflated. Axel’s shoulder sagged. Pax’s lower lip trembled.

         Lucille frowned. “Is she a charm speaker?”

         Prometheus considered this question. “She has a way with words. Her island is her magical fortress. Even I don’t know exactly how things work there. But, she has respected orders from the gods before and she is Atlas’ daughter—”

         “So was that bitch, Zoe,” Flynn growled. The prophecy Selena supplied them, about a child dying by her father’s hand, was supposed to apply to Chiron dying at Kronos’ hand, not to Zoe. Her death meant far less to them, other than proving to Luke that Thalia was fully brainwashed by the gods. The titans should know that familial connections meant nothing in the Greek world.

         Prometheus opened his mouth for more words—words that Flynn didn’t trust to lead to action. Fortunately, Luke cut him off. He pointed to Flynn. “Take her. She’s the strongest out of all of u—out of them. In the event that your crafty counsel goes poorly, she is the best back up.” Luke glared. “That’s an order, Prometheus.”

         And, Flynn knew how much Titans enjoyed orders.

         Prometheus didn’t protest, as Krios of Hyperion would have. He stared through Luke, his eyes hollow with the ambience of omnipotence. “Very well.” Before Lucille, Pax, or Axel could counter the decision, he hovered a hand above Flynn’s shoulder.

         She closed her eyes a heartbeat before the room vibrated and radiated into something her mind couldn’t process. Others had survived witnessing the Titan’s mode of travel, but Matthias said he’d never have Taco Bell again afterwards. Hopefully Lucille and the boys had shut their eyes in time. Even behind closed eyes, the light’s brilliance made the darkness of nothing tinted red.

         As they disintegrated, Flynn considered their opponent: one of Atlas’ daughters. Atlas himself had been underwhelming, but Flynn didn’t like to underestimate an adversary. She preferred to hit hard and fast, so she didn’t need to ask or answer questions later.    

         The brilliance outside dimmed from blistering red to reasonable warmth. A breeze cradled her chin. The charm at the end of her hair blades swayed, gently tugging at her bun. Everything smelled salty and fresh.

         Water soaked through her shoes and into the ends of her jeans. Her heart leapt at the melancholic strum of a guitar.

         Flynn opened her eyes to a blinding paradise island: rolling meadows, a beach, a cavern off in the distance.

And, there he was.

         “Flynn,” Prometheus warned.

         The music stopped. The makeshift guitar dropped silently into the sand, leaving the island with nothing but the rhythmic flush of the water.  

         Everything else blurred to nothing.

His messy, red flag of hair had been trimmed down, much shorter than he preferred. He wore all white—a color Jack despised. He ran towards them, waving his hands, uncannily silent. Other than when he slept, Flynn had never heard him this quiet. Flynn didn’t plan to see Jack first. Her legs responded with a lack of discipline that made the stagiest in her scream with alarm. This could have been a trap. This could have—

Jack jerked to a violent stop, his feet slipping out from under him. Flynn snatched out her hair blades. He might have been shot in the back or, in a more comically, invisibly clotheslined. Before Flynn could stop her momentum and duck for cover, she saw what kept him silenced.

There was a thin white collar around his neck. The material ran taut back inland. His ragged breath choked on a similarly silky white gag. Tears streamed down to soak the fabric. He grabbed at her with the desperation of a drowning victim, floundering against his leash. His eyes bulged and his brow furrowed with the noiseless sobs.

This was how you disarmed a child of Apollo.

Flynn dropped to her knees beside Jack. She slashed a stiletto through his leash. As the blade cut, the strings rewove themselves, like she’d been trying to cut light.

“Release him,” she snarled, jamming her stilettos back into her hair.

The fabric exploded into frays. The leash thinned and warped until the material could no longer stand the tension Jack exerted onto it.

Jack flopped forward against her. This close, the contrast of white fabric and bruised skin was stark. Considering how rapidly Jack normally healed, he must have been twisting and struggling against the binding recently. The sight of him, sobbing into her shoulder, quenched her stomach with a nauseating rage. The way he gripped at her, like she too could dissolve into sand, the way he pressed his gagged mouth to hers—

She dug her nails into the fabric between his lips. “Release him.”

         It exploded off, revealing red imprints in his skin. His mouth moved to repeat her name with each breath, with each kiss, with each vibration of a sob. There was no noise other than the rustling of his skin against hers. Too quiet. No vocalization or humming.

         He smelled different: a perfect harmony of salt water and flowers and spices. Probably like Calypso.

         Less gentle than she wanted, Flynn grabbed Jack’s shoulders to shove him back. “What’s wrong with your voice?”

         He froze. Jack swallowed, more tears streaming down his cheeks. Rolling onto his side, he dragged his finger along the sand.

         He drew a stick figure torso atop that stupid Jesus Fish symbol that was on all the cars in her and Jack’s little Baptist town. A mermaid. She might not have understood the reference had Jack not forced her to watch The Little Mermaid so they could have matching Halloween costumes. Jack got to be a redheaded merman and she got to be a mariner that disemboweled a sea witch with a ship’s  figurehead. Acceptable and potentially very relevant.

         “A sea witch stole your voice?” she asked, begrudgingly happy that he orchestrated a family day for them to play charades. It might come in more combat handy than she could have predicted.

         “A sea witch that is currently present.”

         Flynn hadn’t forgotten Prometheus, but Jack startled and cowered against her as the Titan settled a large hand on either of their shoulders. Likely to comfort Jack and to restrain her.

         A woman stood along the beach. Her delicate hands covered her mouth in disbelief. Tears streaked her face. Flynn knew not to trust that glow of innocence. The most dangerous people in the world thought they were doing something that was moral. Morality and ethics gave people righteousness, the ability to feel justified in subverting others.

Flynn needed no such excuses.

         “Wait,” Prometheus breathed. “Calypso,” he greeted, “Dear me. A leash? A gag? Cousin, what is this?”

         Her hands shook. Her almond-colored eyes were crestfallen as she reached out towards Jack to trace his face in the air.

         Jack flinched. His breath turned to panicked panting.

         “Prometheus—no—if you’re here… and you brought her…” With her hair braid tucked to the side and her white dress fluttering in the island breeze, she looked like a forlorn Southern belle. Calypso’s lip quivered. “Are the titans no more merciful than the gods? Do they have such jealousy when a goddess takes a mortal bedfellow? Will you deprive me of him how Artemis stole Orion from Eos? Or how they robbed Demeter?”

The rage spread from inside Flynn’s stomach into her chest. That was the angle she was taking.

         Prometheus released Jack to rub his forehead. “Calypso, you didn’t tie and gag Odysseus, Columbus, Doris Miller, or any of the other dozens of men you’ve had here.”

         She clenched one fist. “He… he kept trying to swim out to sea, and it kept making him ill, so I had to keep him tether to the shore unless I was there as escort. And, he threatened to make me sick with his voice, to use as leverage to let him go. His voice is powerful. He managed to sing through some of my weaving. I needed double assurance—I know his fate! He’s safer here. He’ll be better off here. If only he knew, he’d agree.”

         “I tire of this parley, Prometheus,” Flynn growled. She was experiencing one of the few hesitations she had: indecision on how to mutilate your enemy. Prometheus’s grip tightened on her shoulder. When they returned to Mount Othrys, she’d have to remind him why no one but Jack and Pax were allowed to touch her.

         “Calypso, you are no decreer of the Fates, and, by Zeus’ order, no lover of yours will remain here forever. Do you want Kronos, after his rise to power, to make your fate a worse one?” Although Prometheus gave no physical indication, the threat lay heavy on his words. “You are holding his host’s best friend as prisoner.”

         Calypso’s expression contorted, though Flynn couldn’t tell if it was from fear or rage. Her gaze flicked to the trembling mass in Flynn’s arms.

         “You will be cursed, Jack,” she cried, “You will both know the torment of the Fields of Punishment and you will know the curse of dismembered immortality. If you stay here, you’ll avoid both fates. You, Prometheus, of all titans, should know that is not an offer to be taken lightly!”

         Prometheus’ grip slackened.

Jack’s shudders turned violent.

Flynn refused to risk Prometheus sympathizing with this sea witch. First, she would rid Calypso of her tongue, as she had deprived Jack of his voice. Flynn opened her mouth to speak.

         “I will transport you back, without Jack, if you say a word,” Prometheus said softly into her ear.

         Flynn scowled up at him, tightening her hold on Jack.

         Prometheus wasn’t looking at her. He’d straightened, gaze set on Calypso. “Calypso, you must promise to detain no more heroes like this. If not, when the titans win the war, I’ll assure no more companions are sent and you are forgotten. Do not harm my humans like this again. They may only stay off their own volition. If they should choose to leave, let them leave of their own free will. And for Kronos’ sake, provide them a raft, in case you get any more dinky heroes like Jack.”

         Calypso stood eerily still. With the sunrays and sway of trees behind her, she could have been a mirage. Her sobs quieted. Her fists clenched. She closed her eyes, perfect skin temporarily wrinkled with consternation. After an exhale, she relaxed her fingers and opened her eyes. She withdrew a thick thread from her collar, one that matched the red of Jack’s hair. “Is he not frail because he is ill?” she asked, softly, while snapping the thread in half.

         Jack’s next inhale came with a throaty whimper. He withdrew from Flynn, his eyes wide with alarm. The son of Apollo twisted to face Calypso, snarling, “No, you judgmental bitch, I’m just gangly! You stained-glass gas chamber! You—you—!” His voice cracked, hoarse from disuse.

         Prometheus shushed him. “While an apt description, I doubt Calypso knows what a gas chamber is.”

         There were a countable number of times that Flynn heard Jack swear and never so fluidly. He normally stumbled over them with the robotic stammer of a grandparent using modern slang.

         Tears streamed down Calypso’s cheeks anew. A sob rose with each breath. She refused to look at Jack, keeping her gaze level with Prometheus. As though Jack hadn’t said anything, she demanded, “I will agree to your terms, but only after I have known their love! I’ll let them leave, I’ll give them a raft, but only after I love them and they love me in return.”

         “Paralytic spider dressed as a Whore of Babylon—!” although hoarse and quiet, Jack’s voice picked up a tune. He was trying to sing.

         Prometheus pressed a hand over his mouth.

         With Jack’s weakened condition, Flynn wondered if he and she could overpower Prometheus to kill this brat.

         “Fine! Fine!” Prometheus said. His impatience made Flynn think they could. “After you’ve—ow! Jack.”

         From the way Prometheus jerked his hand back and Jack twisted away from him, more into Flynn, Jack must have bitten him. “Do not steal my voice from me,” Jack hissed. He nuzzled into Flynn’s chest. “Don’t let them take my voice from me again.” This time, he was begging her.

         Flynn’s scowl deepened.

         “Just a few more minutes.” Prometheus looked hurt. For being a titan of forethought, Flynn wanted to snarl at him for his thoughtlessness. They didn’t know how long Jack had been gagged. She wondered if Jack would struggle with being shushed.

The titan raised his gaze back to Calypso. “Agreed—after you’ve known their love. But then you better give them a route to leave. All we need is Luke showing up here and being too stupid to build a boat and it ruining our whole war effort.”

         “If she was dead, we wouldn’t need to worry about it,” Flynn said, expecting Prometheus to try silencing her. Had he tried, she would have done more than bitten him. She knew he could regrow limbs.

         Calypso fully acknowledged Flynn for the first time, examining her. There were two typical reactions Flynn received from onlookers. Either people noticed her curves first and scanned up in anticipation only to spot her face with horror, or they saw the withered, burned disfigurement of her face and nothing else. Calypso was different. She took in Flynn’s deformities with disgust and slowly worked her way down, surveying her clothing and her body.

         “Mangled, barren Flynn,” she whispered, “who provides him neither marriage nor child. Neither loyalty nor warmth.”

         Flynn had no interest exchanging pettiness. She never hid any of this from Jack and had hardened any self-hatred or shame she had into weapons instead of vulnerabilities. Before Flynn could utilize them, Jack snarled, “Be silent, you queen of thieves—no—no—that’s too cool a title for you! You Distributor of Asphyxiation! How dare you speak to her.”

Although his hands still clenched her, Jack stood up straighter and drew his shoulders back. When he scowled at Calypso, his eyes seemed clearer and his focus direct. Flynn wondered how long ago he’d run out of medication. “Don’t kill her, Flynn,” Jack said, “She’s just a fucked up, miserable soul. She’ll be sadder alive.”

Calypso covered her mouth again, choking on more sobs.

“No one is killing anyone,” Prometheus said, “Calypso, do we have a deal?”

The lady of Ogygia refused to look at them. She waved a hand in answer as though she could erase their presence off the island.

Flynn couldn’t tell if it was Calypso’s will or Prometheus’ that altered reality. She wasn’t even sure if she lucked into blinking at the right time or if she held her eyes closed out of reflex against the brilliant light.

All she knew was that Jack was home.

  ***

Author’s note: Thank you for reading! I hope you enjoyed! One more instillation of the Silenced series left! Thank those of you for still reading despite my Covid hiatus. I hope you’re all doing well and you and your families are safe!

Footnotes:

[1] If this sounds horrifying, don’t look up Fouie Gras.

[2] I still can’t get over that Aphrodite was born from Kronos’ castrated dick. Do you think that’s part of Luke’s plan? To capture Aphrodite and demand his dick back?

#Percy Jackson and the Olympians #PJO #Heroes of Olympus #HOO #Tales from Mount Othrys #TFMO #Jack #Calypso #Flynn #Axel #prometheus #Pax #Lucille #Seriously thank you guys for all the support #i couldn't have come back to this without you #also all hail weasels