Plan and Execution
Annabeth sat on her bunk, holding her head in her hands. A few traitorous tears dared to slip down her face, a sign of her own internal weakness made manifest. She knew her eyes were flickering, a constant reminder of the madness that festered in the back of her mind. She wanted to laugh or to smash something, either would work.
In all honesty, she didn’t know why she felt like this. She didn’t really know why learning that Percy Jackson had ascended to godhood hurt her so much. Maybe it was the idea that the gods had taken this….this hero. This symbol of the demigods and corrupted him. Changed him, made him one of their own. She wanted so badly to laugh. It was a fucking sick joke, she knew she had no claim to him, no right to feel outraged at his decisions. After all, they had spent the better part of the last four years crossing blades. Perhaps she shouldn’t have been surprised; after all, he had sided with the Olympians during the rebellion.
But it still didn’t make any fucking sense. Annabeth had been with him, and Luke, on that first, unsanctioned mission before she’d made her true allegiances known. During that whole journey, he had spoken nothing but of his distaste for the Olympians. for the neglect of their children, which left him and his mother with an abusive rat for six years. for their cowardice, which left their children fighting their wars. And so much more, Annabeth had been practically frothing at the mouth, here was the child of prophecy speaking so openly of his hatred for the Olympians, it all seemed perfect, she would help save his mother, and in return he would join her in ripping apart Olympus brick by rotten brick.
But instead, the moment they had rescued his mother, he had seemingly turned around and professed his undying loyalty to that cabal of corruption. She had stolen the master bolt a few months later and blasted his father’s palace back into oblivion. Maybe she’d been lying when she’d told Poseidon that it wasn’t personal. In reality, Annabeth had wanted to scream. Had he really only cared about the struggles of the demigods when he was personally affected? Was he that fucking selfish? Maybe the apple didn’t fall far from the tree when it came to children of the big three, maybe they were just predisposed towards selfishness and tyranny, and maybe Thalia had just been a one in a million fluke, the one child of the big three that cared for anyone other than her immediate relatives, the only who dared to offer a hand to others and take them in…..maybe that’s why the gods killed her. Maybe that’s why she was a goddamn tree while Percy was a god.
Tears burned behind her eyes. It wasn’t fucking fair.
She opened her eyes and looked in the mirror. Her left eye was flickering violently, small specks of gold and grey flashing in the darkness. Percy’s words reverberated in her mind.
"𝘉𝘦𝘤𝘢𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘳𝘪𝘨𝘩𝘵 𝘯𝘰𝘸 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘺𝘰𝘶 𝘢𝘳𝘦 𝘪𝘴 𝘢 𝘭𝘪𝘵𝘵𝘭𝘦 𝘮𝘢𝘥 𝘨𝘪𝘳𝘭"
She resisted the urge to punch the mirror. Her talk with Percy had been ever so infuriating, but at least it exposed just how ignorant he was. She knew there would be no chance of parleying with the son of Poseidon. No, when the time came, he would be another obstacle that she would have to overcome.
But that was a worry for the future; for now, she had to focus on building a plan. First, she would have to assess the forces at her disposal. She knew that most of the Titans, like Atlas, Hyperion, and Krios, had sworn themselves to Gaia’s service. This she had expected, Even after pulling them from the depths of Tartarus, she knew never to expect any loyalty from the elder deities, they had both been nothing more than a means to an end for each other, so that partnership was gone. She had overheard talk in camp of insurgent raids, supply lines being harassed, prisoners being rescued, that kind of thing. Nothing major, but still, it was all the proof Annabeth needed that there was a resistance out there.
She reached into her bag and pulled out one of her prized possessions, it wasn’t the most impressive thing, just a notebook but it came with its fair share of quirks-like not being readable to anyone other than her. It had been in this little notebook that she had planned her first war during late nights in the Athena cabin. She flipped through the early pages, suppressing a smile as she passed the page where she had first discovered the Lotus Casino, a place that she could use to bend age and thus the prophecy itself to her will. She passed the page where she had first discovered Bianca, and Nico, and the massive headache they had thrown into her schemes. She passed a few dates that had been circled, like the date that Grover had died, she resisted the urge to sneer at the memory of the bumbling Satyr that had helped get her sister killed. There had been other plans as well, those that had been crossed out and archived away, one involving Typhoon that had been shelved due to being too unpredictable, another involving Huitzilopochtli that had been scrapped due to that deity's insistence on certain 𝘴𝘢𝘤𝘳𝘪𝘧𝘪𝘤𝘦𝘴 that she had been unwilling to provide. None of these would do, they were all so 𝘵𝘦𝘮𝘱𝘳𝘦𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘵𝘢𝘭, dependent on other beings to provide her with the power to destroy Olympus.
She had tried fighting a clean war, a war of liberation, but what had that gotten her? Defeat and chains, she had tried to fight a war of neat surgical strikes, refusing to take the fight straight to her enemies until the last campaigns. But now she realised all that would have to change. A smile began to creep across her face, and the words of another great demigod reverberated in her mind: "𝘞𝘢𝘳 𝘪𝘴 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘵𝘺. 𝘛𝘩𝘦𝘳𝘦'𝘴 𝘯𝘰 𝘶𝘴𝘦 𝘵𝘳𝘺𝘪𝘯𝘨 𝘵𝘰 𝘳𝘦𝘧𝘰𝘳𝘮 𝘪𝘵. 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘤𝘳𝘶𝘦𝘭𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘪𝘴, 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘴𝘰𝘰𝘯𝘦𝘳 𝘪𝘵 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘣𝘦 𝘰𝘷𝘦𝘳." Finally, she reached the page she needed; a half-formed plan made when she was still reeling from Luke’s betrayal. She laid out the map and examined the highlighted points. Manhattan, Boston, Brooklyn, and others. The plan was far from complete, but given time, it would be ready.
This war would be brutal, it would be cruel….and she would 𝘸𝘪𝘯