I walked stepping through the cracks of reality. I was a son of Hermes, his oldest mortal child alive. There were no places I could not go to as long as I had the will and the guile to do so.

 

Even then, what I was doing was particular, something I knew most demigods of my father didn't know they could do. I was like my younger siblings, weak and unaware.

 

This had been before he taught me. If he hadn't, I probably would have never been able to do it.

 

It made me both angry and sad. I wonder how many of my siblings died gruesomely praying, begging to survive, escape their fates unaware they had the key all along but because our father didn't care, they died.

 

I hated my father. I hated the gods. I hate them so much. I hated the world they had created. I hated the injustice they had fostered. I hated the cruelty they so easily displayed.

 

I hated how the gods, the rulers and masters of the world, our parents didn't care about any of us, about demigods, about my family.

 

How was it fair for children to die devoured?! How was it right for them to beg? TO BEG for love? For what should be?!

 

I had chosen to act after seeing my family waste away, after seeing them suffer. I had chosen to change the paradigm.

 

I had chosen to change the world order, to create a new one, a better one. I had chosen to dethrone the gods of Olympus, to uproot their Western civilization.

 

What I wished for, what I was fighting for was madness. It was stupidity and foolishness at their worst but what else could I do?

 

This is why I accepted to serve Kronos when he came to me. I knew he was cruel and cared about me only as much that he could use me but I was fine with it. I was used to this. He was the progenitor of the rulers of this era.

 

He may have said the contrary but I knew that they were just reflections, exacerbations of his worst traits.

 

I only accepted him, exchanging one yoke for another because I was able to make him swear, make him swear on the Styx to protect my family, to allow demigods to live long and thrive.

 

I didn't care what happened to me at the end. I didn't care about how they'd think of me. I only cared about their happiness and if I had to drag them into it while they fought, so be it yet I felt anxious.

 

Thalia, she had come back. Poisoning the tree had been the plan of Kronos and I knew that he knew that I hated it but I had seen it as a necessary sacrifice.

 

Thalia was already dead no matter If I wished with all my soul for it to be the contrary. She was dead and nothing will change that fact. That had been what I was thinking and I had been so wrong.

 

Percy and Annabeth were able to find the golden fleece and escape with it. They were able to confirm to Olympus that I was working with Kronos and that he was coming back which made things harder for us.

 

Kronos hadn't been pleased. He made his displeasure very apparent by subjecting me to hallucinations which even though they didn't physically hurt me made me wish when I was suffering from them that I was dead.

 

I now had to fight against Thalia. I would try like I always did with the others to make her understand but I knew her, I knew how stubborn and proud she was. Even after everything we went through when we were younger, I knew that the greatest thing she saw In her mind was the affection of her father.

 

I knew that she would be ready to do anything even though the Sky god had watched as his daughter was chased and killed, even though Zeus didn't care about her.

 

With another step, I reappeared in the back of a Cyclops in an alley. His back was turned toward me but I could still see his form cake in human blood, I could hear the sounds of bones being broken.

 

I could see not far away from him the limbless body of a dead child, his eyes directed toward the sky in silent agony and rage erupted in me like a maelstrom.

 

I didn't think about the fact that I had left my sword back at the base. I didn't think about the fact the singular Cyclop before me was at least five meters tall and as wide and thick as a mini car.

 

I moved reappearing at his side faster than he could react to and plunged one of my hands into his giant eye socket before pulling it out with my bare hand.

 

I drifted, skating on the ground my natural dexterity and my shoes allowing me to move on it as if it was ice.

 

I turned back to look at him and he seemed to finally realize that something had happened. “My eye! MY EYE!” the monster screamed, begged and moaned in pain making a smile bloom on my face.

 

“SHOW YOURSELF!” the monster screamed at me.

 

A chuckle escaped me at the irony of his words “I would like to,” I told him “but I think it won’t be possible with you now being eyeless. Can you even be called a Cyclops anymore?” I taunted him.

 

The monster moved faster than expected from a monster of his size. He tried to crush me with his fist against the ground, to reduce me to a pulp.

 

Unfortunately for him, I was a son of Hermes. I was naturally quick on my feet. I would not be touched if I didn't want to.

 

My body moved by itself devoid of any input from my will. I moved to the side, watching how his punch encountered the ground and left with a loud boom a crater-shaped fist.

 

I moved his eye still in my hand. “Here is your eye,” I told him softly before with all my strength, I threw his eye as if it was a disk in his bloody empty socket.

 

The eyeball cut through the air before impacting the empty eye socket of the monster and making him back down.

 

I didn't stop here. I took a deep breath and focused. This wasn’t something I controlled perfectly but I had already done it before. I could do it now, I was sure of it!

 

There was an ache I could feel in my heart. It had always been there since I was born. “Fast, I need to be fast!” I thought. I let it spread through my body and pushed with my leg with all the strength I could muster.

 

I moved faster than an arrow, making the air explode being me as I moved faster than it. I closed my fingers and punched the Cyclops in his eye socket. The ground and the walls around us cracked.

 

My fist pushed the eyeball and made it explode, crushing and destroying the flesh of the monster.

 

I could feel resistance. Even with how fast I was going, the natural hardness of the monster allowed him to stay alive.

 

“I’LL KILL YOU” the monster raged against me, pain and hatred fuelling him.

 

I grasped the feeling, the constant ache and directed it toward my legs “Sorry but I can’t die before I'm sure they are all right,” I told him before my punch crushed and destroyed all flesh on its path making me remove the head of the monster from his body.

 

I turned to look at the corpse of the monster. Behind me, his body twitched as if unaware that he was already dead before he exploded into yellow dust.

 

My gaze lost itself on the half-eaten corpse the monster was eating. Like I had feared, this had been a child, a demigod. His resemblance to the numerous children of Ares and the fact he died at the hands of a monster only confirmed that fact.

 

I sighed and kneeled at the side of his body. Slowly, I scooped him in my arms. The Underworld had certain rules no mortal could escape.

 

The boy had died without anything of value to him. He looked as if before even being eaten, he was underfed. If the boy wanted to cross the realm of Hades and hope for a good afterlife, he needed something of value that would be accepted by Charon.

 

I took a step, moving through space to reappear in an isolated place I knew was empty. This was a familiar place. I had been here two times before.

 

The first one was with Thalia and Annabeth. This had been our safehouse before we had to move.

 

The second time was during my quest. I had almost died against that thing and I had been to survive and escape to this place. Scales of blue that weren't found on Earth, dozens of heads, eyes that reeked of madness and cruelty and his claws, his claws!

 

‘Not now Luke,’ I grounded myself. ‘Not now. There was a mountain of broken woods. I set up the corpse on it and placed it on each eye and under the tongue of the corpse drachmas.

 

I searched for something capable of lighting fire. I was able to find two laying iron rods.

 

I put the two of them against each other and ground them against each other before moving them quickly lighting up a spark that slowly began to consume the wood before turning into a Brazier.

 

This was how demigods were taught to honour those who died bravely. This is what they had always done. Burning the body to ashes. The tradition had changed now due to the fact that a lot of times, they didn't have the luxury of having a corpse to burn.

 

This was why I was rebelling. This was why I was right even though they saw me as a monster, as a villain.

 

They all saw the mediocrity and their suffering and were okay with it. They fought against a change that would only make things better for them. They were indoctrinated into forgetting the fact that they were children, not soldiers.

 

How was it fair that I was the oldest demigod alive? How was it right that I wasn't even twenty yet I was considered a miracle, old by demigod standards?

 

“Such a beautiful Brazier, full of hatred and hope. Full of rebellion,” a voice said in my side.

 

I jumped back without thinking. I was a demigod. I was intimately familiar with danger. I looked at the owner of the voice. She was a tall woman dressed in a suit. She had silly platinum blond hair and two heterochromatic eyes with one being red like blood and the other being blue like the sky above.

 

It was as if I was in the presence of both Zeus and all the other Olympians but worse. I knew without a doubt that nothing I would try would work with this goddess because what else she could be unless she wanted to.

 

 

I was a traitor in the eyes of Olympus. I knew I was hunted, that the ones who would capture or kill me would be rewarded by the Olympians. Was this how it was going to end for me? Will I die unable to change anything?

 

She turned to look at me “I have many names Luke Castellan,” she said a little smile blooming on her face  mischief shone in her eyes as if she had told a joke only she understood the punchline “But you can call me Louise Ferre and I think I can help you.”