"You told," Ares said.
He stopped about thirty feet away, on the hard wet sand where the tide had gone out. The sword in his hand was smoking faintly. Behind his red sunglasses, the fire was burning so hot that Percy could feel it on his face from where he stood.
"We had a deal, little brother. You keep the shield, you keep your mouth shut. And you go and spill everything to my uncle."
"I said I wouldn't tell my dad," Percy said. "I didn't tell my dad."
Ares stared at him.
"I told your uncle," Percy said. "That's different."
Behind him, in the shallows, Ezra made a sound like he was trying very hard not to laugh and failing. Grover elbowed him.
The god of war's mouth twisted. For a second Percy thought he was going to explode. Then, unexpectedly, he grinned. Wide and sharp and bright, all teeth.
"Oh, I like you," Ares said. "I really, really do. It's going to be such a shame." He lifted the sword. "Give me the shield. And what's in it. And I'll make it quick. Out of respect."
"No," Percy said.
"No?"
"It's not yours. It's my dad's. And the Helm in your saddlebag isn't yours either." Percy nodded at the motorcycle at the top of the beach. A black leather bag was strapped behind the seat, and the air around it rippled faintly, like heat over a road. "It's Hades's. And I promised I'd bring it back."
"You promised." Ares laughed. "Kid, you've been making a lot of promises lately. To a lot of gods. You ever think about what happens when you can't keep them?"
"All the time," Percy said honestly.
He unslung the Shield of Ares from his back. He set it down on the wet sand behind him, face-down, with the Master Bolt still hidden inside. Then he turned to the others.
"Stay back," he said. "All of you. No matter what happens."
"Are you crazy?" Annabeth said. "He's a god. You can't fight a god!"
"I fought one in a swamp."
"That was a minor god! That's the god of war!"
"I know." He looked at her. "Annabeth. Trust me. Please."
She stared at him. Her jaw worked. And then, slowly, she nodded, and stepped back, and pulled Grover back with her.
Ezra didn't move.
"I'm not staying back," he said. "He framed me. He sent us into a trap. He almost got us killed by Hades. This is my fight."
Percy looked at him. The son of Poseidon, standing ankle-deep in the surf with Riptide uncapped in his fist. Sunburned and scared and angry, and trying very hard to be brave.
He'd been that kid once. On this exact beach.
"It is your fight," Percy said quietly. "That's why I need you to do something for me. Something nobody else can."
Ezra blinked. "What?"
Percy reached into his inventory. He pulled out a small pink-and-white shell that glowed faintly blue deep inside, and pressed it into Ezra's free hand.
"Your dad gave me that," he said. "Yesterday. For keeping you alive. When I tell you, blow it. And then do what you did in the Tunnel of Love. Listen."
Ezra looked down at the Conch of the Earthshaker in his palm. His eyes went wide.
"Percy—"
"When I tell you," Percy said. "Not before."
Then he turned around, and walked up the beach toward the god of war.
[TARGET: ARES, GOD OF WAR]
[Level: ??? (Divine. Manifesting at reduced power on mortal soil.)]
[Threat assessment: Extreme.]
[Host status: THREAD-WORN (Severe). INT and WIS -30%.]
[HP: 1,640 / 1,640]
[MP: 460 / 460]
[Great Sage calculates the Host's probability of victory at 4%.]
That's higher than I thought, Percy thought.
[Great Sage was being generous.]
Percy smiled.
Then he raised his right hand, and the bronze ring on his middle finger rippled with light, and unfolded.
[PROTEUS: Realm of the Blade. Form: Bronze Xiphos.]
The sword slid into his hand. Pale gold bronze, leaf-shaped, with the thread of Excalibur running silver down its heart.
Ares's eyebrows went up over his sunglasses.
"Now that," he said, "is a nice sword. Where'd a mortal get a sword like that?"
"From a king," Percy said.
And Ares came at him.
The first blow nearly took his arm off.
Percy had fought gods before, in his first life. He'd fought this god before, on this beach. But he'd been a son of Poseidon then, standing in the surf with the whole Pacific at his back. Now he was a mortal with a fog in his head and a borrowed sky in his blood. And the god of war came at him like a freight train made of swords.
He got Proteus up just in time. The impact jolted all the way up to his shoulder and threw him back three steps through the sand. His arm went numb to the elbow.
[HP: 1,640 → 1,310 (Blocked. Residual force.)]
Ares didn't stop. He never stopped. That was the thing about the god of war. Every swing was meant to kill, and the next one came before the last one finished. Overhand. Backhand. A kick to the knee. The pommel at his face. Percy blocked and dodged and gave ground, blocked and dodged and gave ground. He was getting slower with every step. Every block hurt more.
He's too strong, Percy thought. Can't block him. Can't trade with him.
So change the shape.
[PROTEUS: Realm of the Spear. Form: Lance of Camelot.]
The sword rippled, and stretched, and became a long ash-wood lance with a steel head. Suddenly Percy had eight feet of reach instead of two. He planted his feet and thrust. Ares, mid-swing, had to twist aside to keep from being skewered through the stomach.
The god of war blinked.
"Huh," he said.
Percy didn't give him time to think. He spun the lance, hammered the butt into Ares's knee, swept it around at his head. Ares ducked, and Percy shifted again in the middle of the swing.
[PROTEUS: Realm of the Blade. Form: Arondight.]
And suddenly the lance was a long, plain, perfect sword. Lancelot's sword. It came around under Ares's guard and opened a cut across the god's forearm.
Golden ichor welled up.
Ares stopped.
He looked down at his arm. At the thin gold line across his skin, already closing. Then he looked up at Percy, and for the first time, the grin was gone.
"You cut me," he said, almost wonderingly.
"Yeah," Percy panted. "Sorry."
"No, you're not."
"No. I'm not."
And the god of war stopped playing.
The air turned red.
It wasn't a metaphor. It wasn't the sunset. The air around Ares turned the color of blood. Heat poured off him in waves. The wet sand under his feet hissed and steamed and turned to glass. He grew. Not a lot. Just enough. He went from six feet to seven, eight. His leather jacket turned into black armor, spiked and scarred. His sunglasses burned away, and where his eyes had been were two pits of pure fire.
And from the top of the beach, the Shield of Ares came flying.
It tore itself out of the sand behind Percy like it had been yanked on a wire, spinning end over end through the air toward its master's hand.
[Warning: The god of war is reclaiming the Shield of Ares.]
Percy didn't think. He didn't have time to think, not with the fog in his head. He just moved. He jumped, and twisted in the air, and as the shield spun past him he slapped his left palm flat against its bronze face.
Just for an instant. Just a touch.
[PROTEUS: Weapon copied. SHIELD OF ARES (Echo). Stored in Realm of the Ward.]
The shield slammed into Ares's arm. The god of war grinned at Percy over the top of it.
And behind Percy, on the wet sand where the shield had been lying, something lay glowing blue-white in a shallow dent.
The Master Bolt. It had fallen out of the shield's hollow when Ares called it back.
Ares saw it too. His fire-eyes flicked to it, and gleamed.
"Oh," he said softly. "Well. That makes things simpler."
He started forward. Not at Percy. Past Percy. Toward the bolt.
And behind Percy, at the water's edge, Annabeth and Grover were standing right in his path.
"Get back!" Percy yelled.
Ares laughed and kept walking. Annabeth raised her knife. Grover raised his reed pipes, shaking. The god of war lifted his sword.
And Percy reached for a power he'd only had for a day.
[CLASS ABILITY (Fighter, Tier I — Knight-Errant): CHALLENGE!]
"ARES!" he roared.
The word came out of him like thunder. It had weight to it, and force, and something old and ringing in it, like a trumpet on a battlefield in Camelot. And the god of war stopped in his tracks, as if he'd walked into a wall.
[Target is compelled to duel the Host. Target cannot willingly attack any other creature until the duel ends.]
[Target resistance: Divine. Duration reduced: 60 seconds.]
Ares turned around very slowly.
He looked at Percy. Behind him, sixty seconds ticking, Annabeth and Grover scrambled back into the surf.
"A knight's challenge," the god of war said. His voice was quiet and strange. "Nobody's thrown a knight's challenge at me in five hundred years." The fire in his eyes flared. "You really think you can stand against me for a whole minute, little brother?"
"Guess we'll find out," Percy said.
He didn't stand against Ares for a minute.
He stood against him for forty-one seconds.
They were the longest forty-one seconds of either of his lives. He threw everything. The shadows came pouring up out of the sand at his call, all nine of them, and Ares carved through them like they were smoke. Asterion's axe shattered on the war god's shield. Fang went flying into the surf. Rime breathed frost across the beach until the sand froze white. Ares just walked through it, steaming, and the ice melted around his boots.
Percy called the lightning, and the sky answered. Twinned bolts, blinding, crashing down out of the darkening sky. Ares caught them on his shield. Percy had seen that shield up close. He knew exactly how strong it was. He shifted Proteus to its new form, the Echo of that same shield, and raised it just in time to catch the war god's counterblow.
[PROTEUS: Realm of the Ward. Form: Shield of Ares (Echo).]
[Aura of Dread activated.]
For one moment, as Ares's sword hit the copy of his own shield, the god of war heard what Percy had heard back in Denver. The screams. The battle cries. The roar of a thousand wars.
And he flinched.
It was barely anything. A hitch in his rhythm. Half a second. But it was the first time in three thousand years anyone had seen the god of war flinch, and Percy saw it, and so did Ares.
The fire in the god's eyes went white with rage.
The next blow broke through.
[HP: 1,310 → 690]
The one after that hit Percy in the ribs, and he heard something crack.
[HP: 690 → 212]
He went down in the frozen sand on his back. Proteus flew from his hand and folded itself back into a ring on its own, and rolled away. And the god of war stood over him with his sword raised in both hands, point down, like a man about to drive a stake.
[CHALLENGE expires in 19 seconds.]
"Good fight," Ares said, and he almost meant it. "Real good fight, little brother. I'll make sure the bards get it right."
Percy looked past him.
At the water's edge, Ezra Coleman was standing in the surf, staring at him, with the Conch of the Earthshaker in his hand.
"Ezra," Percy said. "Now."
Ezra put the shell to his lips, and blew.
The sound that came out of it was the sound of the ocean. The whole ocean. All of it. Every wave that had ever broken on every shore, every storm, every tide, the sound of the deep places where whales sing. It rolled out across the beach and the water and the whole of Los Angeles, low and enormous, and it shook the ground.
And the sea answered.
The Pacific pulled back. All at once, a hundred yards of water sucked away from the beach, exposing wet sand and stranded fish and gleaming seaweed. Further out, it rose up into a wall. A great green-black wall of water, fifty feet high, a mile wide, with the last red light of the sunset burning through its crest.
Ares looked up at it.
And Ezra, standing at the edge of the exposed sand with the empty shell in his hand, closed his eyes, and listened.
The wall of water didn't crash down on the beach. It didn't flood the city. It didn't drown his friends. It came in fast and silent and precise, like a hand reaching down. It passed over Annabeth and Grover without even touching them. It parted around Percy where he lay. And it closed its whole weight around the god of war like a fist.
Ares was swept off his feet.
The water took him, and spun him, and slammed him down into the sand with a sound like a building falling. His sword went flying. His shield went flying. And for one moment, the god of war was flat on his back on the beach with the whole Pacific Ocean pinning him down, sputtering and roaring and blind.
[CONCH OF THE EARTHSHAKER: Consumed.]
[Ezra Coleman has commanded the sea.]
Percy was already moving.
He rolled over. His ribs screamed. He crawled across the wet sand, past the ring of Proteus. He snatched it up and jammed it back on his finger, and kept going, and reached the dent in the sand where the Master Bolt lay crackling blue-white.
[Fusion requires the vessel and the pattern to be joined under a surge of divine power.]
A surge of divine power.
He looked at the bolt. At the god of war, already tearing himself free of the water, roaring, golden ichor running from his nose. At his own right hand, with the bronze-and-silver ring on it.
Okay, Percy thought. Okay. This is either the smartest or the dumbest thing I've ever done.
[Great Sage believes it is both.]
He grabbed the Master Bolt with his right hand.
The sky came into him again.
It was worse than the first time. He was hurt now, and exhausted, and fogged, and the power came through him like a flood through a broken dam. Every storm that had ever been. Every flash of light over every ocean. The forge of the Cyclopes. A young god laughing in a burning sky.
It went into his hand. Into the ring on his finger.
And the ring drank it.
[VESSEL AND PATTERN JOINED.]
[DIVINE SURGE DETECTED: SOURCE — THE MASTER BOLT OF ZEUS.]
[REALM VI: THE REALM OF THE HEAVENS — UNLOCKED.]
[FORGING...]
The ring blazed.
Percy didn't let go of the real bolt. He held on, and held on, while the light poured out of it and through him and into Proteus. He felt the Shifting Blade learn it. Learn the pattern, the shape, the way the power folded in on itself, layer on layer, like a thread wound on a spool. The pattern from the blueprint. The rune from Floor 3. The understanding he'd gained in the Underworld.
All of it came together, and caught, and held.
[FORGING COMPLETE.]
[PROTEUS: Realm of the Heavens. Slot 1: THE UNCLAIMED BOLT (Copy of the Master Bolt of Zeus).]
[Power: 1% of the original. Grows with the Host's bloodline and Vessel Rank.]
[Note: This is not the Master Bolt. It is the Host's own.]
Percy let go of the real bolt. He dropped it in the sand.
And he stood up, with something blazing in his right hand.
It was a bolt. Not the Master Bolt. Smaller, maybe a foot and a half long, its bronze caps paler and threaded with silver like the rest of Proteus. The light inside it was a little different too. Bluer. Wilder. Less like the white fury of the king of the gods, and more like a summer storm rolling in over the sea.
But it was a bolt. And it was his.
Ares had just torn himself free of the ocean. He was on his knees in the sand, dripping, coughing up seawater, golden ichor running down his face. He looked up. He saw what Percy was holding.
And the god of war, for the first time in his long, violent, blood-soaked existence, looked afraid.
"That's," he said hoarsely. "That's not— you can't—"
"It's not his," Percy said. "It's mine."
And he threw it.
It was one percent of the Master Bolt.
One percent of the weapon that had cast down the Titans was still more than enough.
The Unclaimed Bolt left his hand in a streak of blue-white fire and hit the god of war square in the chest. The world went white. The sound was so loud it wasn't a sound at all, just pressure, a blow against every inch of Percy's body at once. The sand under Ares's knees exploded outward in a ring of glass. Every window on the Santa Monica Pier shattered at once, a mile away.
When Percy could see again, Ares was lying on his back thirty feet up the beach, in a smoking crater of melted sand.
His black armor was cracked straight down the middle. Ichor was pouring from a long, jagged wound across his chest, gold and shining, soaking into the glass. He was staring up at the sky with his fire-eyes wide and stunned and very, very dim.
The bolt came back. It flew back into Percy's hand like a boomerang, and folded down into a bronze ring threaded with silver.
[TARGET: ARES, GOD OF WAR — GRAVELY WOUNDED.]
[The god's manifestation is failing.]
[MAIN QUEST UPDATE: THE LIGHTNING THIEF. The Master Bolt has been recovered.]
Percy walked up the beach.
Every step hurt. His ribs were on fire. His vision was swimming. He walked anyway, past the stranded fish and the glittering puddles. Up to the edge of the smoking crater. And he stood over the god of war and looked down at him.
Ares looked up.
For a long moment, neither of them said anything. The surf was coming back in, slowly, hissing over the sand.
"You know he's using you," Percy said quietly. "The thing in the pit. You know he is."
Ares's jaw clenched. He didn't answer.
"You heard him too," Percy said. "Didn't you. Whispering. Promising you the biggest war in the world." He crouched down at the edge of the crater. "That's what I don't get. You're the god of war. You love fighting. But this isn't a fight. This is somebody else's game, and you're the piece he's moving. You'd have started the war he wanted, and then he'd have climbed out and eaten you. That's not glory. That's just being used."
The god of war stared at him.
"Shut up," he said hoarsely. There wasn't much force in it.
"Okay," Percy said. He stood up.
Then Ares laughed. Short and pained and bitter.
"You're something else, little brother," he rasped. "You know that? Blackmail me. Rat me out to my uncle. Turn my own shield on me. Make my old man's bolt your own personal toy. Put me in the ground in front of a satyr and two kids." He coughed up gold. "And then you stand there and lecture me."
"Somebody has to," Percy said.
The god of war looked at him for a long time. Then his fire-eyes flared one last time, hot and red and dangerous.
"You've made an enemy today," he said. "Not a rival. An enemy. You understand? Someday, when you need it most, when everything you've built is on the line..." His voice dropped to a whisper. "I'll be there. And you won't see me coming."
[Hidden status applied: ???]
[Great Sage cannot read this effect. Great Sage is logging it.]
"I know," Percy said. "I'll be ready."
Ares grinned at him, bloody and golden.
And then he was gone. He burned up from the inside like a match. There was a flash of red light, and a smell of gunpowder and burnt rubber, and the crater was empty. The black motorcycle at the top of the beach roared to life on its own and peeled away up the road and vanished into the dusk.
The leather saddlebag fell off the back of it as it went, and landed in the sand.
[BOSS DEFEATED: ARES, GOD OF WAR (Manifestation).]
[The Host has wounded a god in single combat.]
[+150,000 EXP]
[LEVEL UP! Level 68 → Level 71]
[Title upgraded: Godslayer (Lesser) → GODSBANE. (+20% damage against beings worshipped as gods.)]
[STR +3. VIT +3. CHA +4.]
Three dark shapes dropped out of the twilight sky. Leathery wings, and whips, and old-lady faces twisted into sneers. Alecto landed on the sand in front of the saddlebag. Behind her were the two other Furies, re-formed and furious, both of whom Percy had blown up once already.
They looked at Percy. Percy looked at them.
Then Alecto bent down, very slowly, and picked up the saddlebag. She opened it. Inside, rippling like heat, was a dark bronze helmet shaped like a skull.
The Helm of Darkness.
"Our lord," Alecto said stiffly, "will be... pleased."
She looked at Percy for a long moment. At his broken ribs and his static hair and the ring on his hand. And then the oldest of the Furies, who had hunted the guilty for ten thousand years, did something Percy would never have believed.
She bowed her head to him. Just slightly. Just once.
Then the three of them were gone, up into the darkening sky, toward the Underworld.
[SIDE QUEST COMPLETE: THE HELM OF DARKNESS. The Helm has been returned to Hades.]
[DIVINE FAVOR: Hades regards the Host as a man of his word.]
Percy stood alone on the beach for a moment.
Then his knees gave out.
He sat down hard on the cold wet sand. The world was spinning, and his ribs were screaming, and the fog in his head was so thick he couldn't remember what he was supposed to do next. Somewhere, very far away, the sun had finished setting. Stars were coming out over the Pacific.
Running footsteps. Three sets.
Then Grover was on one side of him, and Annabeth was on the other. And Ezra was kneeling in the sand in front of him with the empty conch shell still clutched in one hand and a look on his face Percy had never seen before.
"You threw a lightning bolt," Ezra said. "You threw a lightning bolt at the god of war. You made a lightning bolt out of your ring and you threw it at Ares."
"You made a tidal wave," Percy mumbled. "That was pretty cool too."
Ezra stared at him. Then he started laughing. Wild and shaky and breathless, the way he had in Waterland. And then, just as suddenly, he stopped laughing, and his face crumpled.
He grabbed Percy and hugged him. Hard. It made Percy's ribs scream. Percy didn't care.
"Thank you," Ezra said into his shoulder, so quietly the others couldn't hear. "For everything. For all of it. I don't know why you did it. But thank you."
Percy put a hand on the back of the son of Poseidon's head, the way he'd seen a god do on this same beach a day ago.
"Anytime," he said.
[FAITH: Ezra Coleman believes in the Host. +80 Faith.]
[FAITH: Annabeth Chase's faith in the Host has deepened. +40 Faith.]
[Vessel Rank Progress (E → D): 2,106 / 2,000.]
[Rank-up conditions met. Rank-up will occur when the Host is at rest.]
Annabeth was kneeling next to the Master Bolt where it lay in the sand. She was looking at it like it might explode. Which, Percy thought, was fair.
"The solstice is tomorrow," she said. Her voice was shaking only a little. "Sunset. We have to get this to Olympus by sunset tomorrow. In New York. And we're in Los Angeles. With no money, and no ride, and you're bleeding."
Percy reached into his inventory. He pulled out the last LotusCash card, and held it up between two fingers.
"LAX is about twenty minutes away," he said. "There's a red-eye to JFK at eleven."
They all stared at the card.
"A plane?" Grover squeaked. "Percy, Ezra's a son of Poseidon. Zeus will blast any plane he gets on right out of the sky!"
Percy looked at the Master Bolt in the sand. At the ring on his finger. At the sky, where the first stars were shining over the dark Pacific.
He thought about a voice through a statue at night. My son. About thunder in a swamp, rolling in from nowhere.
"No, he won't," he said. "Not with me on the plane. And not with his bolt in my backpack."
He looked up at the sky.
"Right, Dad?"
Far away over the ocean, so faint it might have been his imagination, thunder rumbled. Low and long and almost gentle.
It sounded like yes.