In Pursuit of Power: Chapter 34

Chapter 34

An Old Friend

The coliseum in front of me was almost as tall as the famous one in Rome. It was cut from marble, but there was silver and gold trim on the arches. Every entrance was big enough to fit a giant… and that was by design. From up top, you could probably see halfway to Texas’ southern border on a clear day. All things considered the structure was absolutely beautiful. I hated it.

Looking at it reminded me of my half-brother’s coliseum. That one had been underground, buried in the depths of Daedalus’s now-collapsed Labyrinth, but fighting for your life while your friends are held hostage has a way of sticking with you.

Hopefully by the end of the day today, I’d have some better memories with coliseums. 

After all, we were here to tear this one to the ground.

“That’s supposed to be a small coliseum?” Leo asked. “I mean I’ve heard what they say about Texas, but I didn’t know Krios kept the state motto the same.”

Frank looked equally surprised. “You’re sure the capital has ones even bigger than this?”

Prometheus nodded. “Three times the size,” he said. “There are at least five of them that are that large as well. Let it never be said that the ruler of the south doesn’t value entertainment. He keeps slaves for more than manual labor.”

Apparently, arenas like this were scattered throughout the south. Each was run by a different minor god. Whenever monsters wanted a show, they could come and watch and gamble. Species that liked to fight could compete themselves, but the most popular events were ones that involved mortals.

Sometimes, slaves would be forced to fight a monster they had no hope against. Sometimes they would be forced to kill each other to survive. I wasn’t sure which was more cruel.

And, ultimately, it didn’t matter. After today, it would be no more.

“Close your eyes,” I instructed.

With me were Calypso, Prometheus, Artemis, Thalia, Leo, and Frank. Everyone else had been left behind a few miles back to watch over the mortals from our group. The seven of us here would be more than enough for this mission.

The demigods listened to me while the god and titans just watched. My true form swelled around me like a new set of clothes, filling me with power. Bending my legs was enough to leap over the walls of the arena, almost flying.

From above, I could see everything. There was a sandy pit in the middle. The seats were about half-full, all kinds of monsters making up the crowd. Down in the middle, a single Laistrygonian roared with laughter, allowing collared humans to pound feebly at his ankles.

My eyes darted around the arena. There were the regular seats, the seats in the higher rows, and… there.

A viewer’s box had been constructed with its own covered roof, just high enough up to give a perfect view without being too far from the action. I landed once on the rim of the coliseum and kicked off, blurring toward the place I knew the owner would be.

Just like Alastor’s forge that we liberated before heading east, coliseums were each run by a minor god. I didn’t know who ran this one. Frankly, it didn’t matter.

I blasted through the wall like it was made out of paper. A couple of Empousai screamed in fear. In the middle of the viewer’s box was a big decorated throne, and on top of that was a god with two faces. 

You couldn’t look at both of them at the same time, because they were facing opposite directions. I knew him. We met once before, down in the Labyrinth I’d been reminiscing about. It was Janus, the two-faced god of choices.

“Percy?” said one of the heads. “You’re alive?”

“Of course he’s alive,” said the other head. “I knew he’d live. He was always going to come back for revenge.”

I smiled. A brave Empousa charged me with her claws extended, but I grabbed her head and popped it like a grape. Dust oozed between my fingers. 

“Hey Janus,” I said, tilting my head. “Do you have any fancy choices for me this time?”

The more optimistic of his two faces said, “You can… choose whether or not to spare me?”

“Idiot!” snapped his second head.

I agreed with the pessimistic one.

“Easy choice,” I said. “Hold still.”

The last time we met, the god did everything in his power to get inside Annabeth’s head. He wanted to force her into making a choice on whether to side with Luke and the Titans, or me and the gods. He fed off of indecision the way a sadist drinks in pain. Less than a year after our meeting he fled to the Titans, turning his back on the gods, and landed this cushy position for it. Unfortunately for him, there wasn’t a shred of hesitation in my mind as I accelerated toward him.

Janus yelped and jumped up. His true form enshrouded his body in a bright flash. It was one of the stranger forms I’d seen yet.

He didn’t get any taller, but he grew a whole second body. One had silver skin, while the other had gold skin. From the neck down they were completely independent, but right above the throat the bodies were fused, sharing the same two-faced head. One body was holding a huge bronze shield with two hands, while the other was wielding a large spear.

I cocked my fist back and punched, but the body with the shield spun in front of me, absorbing the blow. The resultant shockwave slammed back every monster in a local radius hard enough to vaporize them on impact. But the bronze shield in front of me stayed firm. An ache traveled up my knuckle, even in my true form.

“Two choices! Attack, or defend!” said the cheerful head. 

The body on that side was the one wielding a spear. Janus’s two-pronged form spun around, driving the spear forward. I caught it, but felt the point cut my palm.

“Absolute immunity,” muttered the pessimistic head.

“The power to pierce anything!” said the cheerful one, pushing his spear forward against my hand.

“The key to any battle,” they said in unison.

The walls of the viewer’s box were breaking down around us. Neither of Janus’ heads noticed, but in my peripherals I could see that the Laistrygonian was burning to ash down in the arena. The slaves forced to fight him were watching Leo torch any monster that came close, Thalia and Artemis backing him up with their bows. How many shows like that one had gone off without a hitch? How many lives had been lost? And Janus watched over all of it. The two-faced god was more than just a traitor who had run to Kronos’ side. He was as much of a monster as the ringers fighting in his arena.

I lifted my right hand, his spear still cutting my left palm, and struck again.

Like the last time, Janus flipped around the shield himself. Even his pessimistic head had complete confidence in his defense. But the stinging pain in my left hand channeled pure power into my right. When my knuckles struck the shield, it caved in.

“What?!” exclaimed both heads. 

The cheerful side of him made a sloppy stab, but I grabbed the shaft and tore the spear out of his hands. He tried to dive away. Dropping the spear, I caught him with two hands, holding an ankle from both of his bodies.

My back muscles flexed. I growled, pulling with all my might. Janus screamed. The bodies tore away from each other, ripped apart in a single go.

I dropped the pieces, breathing heavily but not from exertion. It would take him a long time to recover from that one, assuming he didn’t fade entirely.

My shirt had been stained with golden ichor. The monsters in the upper portions of the stadium were gone, having either fled or charged the arena. I went to join up with my friends down below, shedding my true form. 

Only when I turned, I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see the center of the arena at all. Thick, solid tree roots had completely covered it.

I jumped down the arena as quickly as I could. when I got to the roots, I placed my hand on them and pushed, but they wouldn’t give at all. I lifted my hands and slammed them down. Nothing. I gave it a series of hits, but had no luck with that, either.

“Artemis!” I shouted. “Thalia! Leo! Are you alright?”

The roots seemed like they were just covering the arena, rather than attacking anyone. But where had they come from, and what did they mean?

It was risky to use my true form to break through. Even if I succeeded, if Leo or Thalia looked straight at me, I’d end up killing them by mistake. But if I opened a path, then turned back before jumping through, that should work. I grew in height again, my skin changing, and gathered my power.

Tentacles surged off of the roots. There was no warning. They wrapped around every part of me— ankles, wrists, arms, thighs, stomach, chest. They wanted to swarm me, squeezing in the world’s first photosynthesizing bear hug. They were just as tough as the roots I’d been trying to bust through. Unfortunately for them, going on the attack gave me an opening.

All the force they squeezed with only gave me extra power. I flexed, and this time, the roots snapped like twine.

They’d carried me about a hundred feet into the air by that time, but that level of fall was nothing. When I touched down, the impact gave me another burst of power. Just in time. The thickest root yet, shaped like a worm as thick as an ancient sequoia, swiped at me. I struck it and snapped the wood in half.

To my surprise, it was hollow. Stinging insects swarmed out, but couldn’t pierce my skin. I breathed out heavily, and the wind it whipped up scattered them around the arena.

The stone underneath my feet started to shake, but I didn’t notice. I was distracted. Whatever I was fighting against, it felt… familiar.

I wasn’t given any more time to think. Roots exploded from below, collapsing half the arena. They grabbed me by the ankle and hurled me before I could react. Behind me, more roots formed sharp spikes intended to impale me. Instead, I flexed my back and flattened them with the toughness of my skin.

Everywhere I turned, roots were forcing me back, away from the arena. They were carrying me up into the air. Maybe they wanted to drop me from a few thousand feet up? If so, it was going to be a nasty shock for them. That might’ve crippled a baby Hephaestus, but I was much tougher than that.

My biggest problem was that I didn’t know how to fight back. So far, every attack had come from these roots. Unless this was all the true form of some unlucky god, the one controlling the roots was yet to show themselves. I had to change that.

I allowed them to carry me upward, fighting just hard enough to keep them from thinking I was up to something. Each hit was soaked up by my domain, adding to a growing sense of power in my gut. It was addicting. The power begged me to let it out, but I delayed and delayed…

Until I couldn’t hold off any longer. The ground was getting far away. I could see for over a hundred miles in any direction, at least in the directions that weren’t blocked by clouds. The power in my gut reached a level that couldn’t be ignored. I lifted my hands above my head, interlocked my fingers, and smashed both hands down like a club.

The noise was deafening, even if nothing was up there to hear it except for me. The roots shook all the way to their core. Cracks formed. They broke apart into scraps of bark which fell with me toward the ground.

My plan worked. I forced whoever was attacking me to show themselves. Down on the ground, I sensed a presence that felt as potent as Hyperion’s had. For a moment, I thought this was Krios. But that didn’t match at all. The Ruler of the South didn’t have any kind of plant abilities.

I still had some of that power left. It begged to be channeled into my fists. With the height I was falling from, I could have probably cratered the earth with an attack as I landed. 

Whatever was underneath me was gathering power too. I could sense it. I focused on the power, confusion growing. It really was familiar. I hadn’t been imagining that. Where had I felt this before?

I was halfway to the ground when it came back to me. I should’ve realized sooner. After all, the place I’d felt it was in the same place I thought about twice today already— Daedalus’s Labyrinth.

It was the energy of nature. Of a fresh stream with your toes dipped in it. Of the thickest snows on mountain peaks, and the hottest days in dry cracked deserts. It was animals running free. It was the Wild, pure and simple, forever unconstrained. Vengeful, when it needed to be. It was the energy of Pan.

But he had faded. I watched it happen over a year before Kronos’ rise. Which meant that this could only be—

“GROVEEEEEEER!” I shouted at the top of my immortal lungs.

I unclenched my hands from fists, stretching my arms out in either direction. Beneath me, the source of the energy came into sight. As much as he’d changed, there was no way I wouldn’t recognize my best friend.

He’d ditched any kind of pants, the goat hair on his legs having grown to  almost six inches thick in places. He had a mane of brown hair that extended halfway down his back. He was shirtless, too, and ten times as ripped as I’d ever seen him, his skin a shade of light green. His eyes were the same, too. I felt his power spike, preparing to unleash something, until he heard my voice. He froze exactly the way I had. Even in my true form, I didn’t worry about landing on him after a fall like this. My body would’ve crushed an ordinary person, but Grover wasn’t ordinary anymore. What I was looking at was the true form of a new god.

I wasn’t the only one who had been present when the thrones broke. Grover must’ve absorbed energy just like I had. And with Pan’s domain laying dormant within him, the old god having picked Grover as a successor, Grover became a proper god of the wild. I didn’t care much about how it happened in the moment, though. I was too excited.

I think he tried to catch me. It didn’t really work. We collided, the force of my descent still forming a crater around us. Both of our bodies were fine, though. The only casualty was the part of the arena we’d been standing on.

“You’re aliiiiiiiiive!” Grover’s old bleating habit was ten times as bad in this form. “Peeeeeeercy!”

I got the feeling neither of us could believe it. We embraced for a solid thirty seconds before pulling ourselves up. We looked each other over, really absorbing the changes we’d undergone.

“Nice hooves,” I said finally.

“Your skin’s glowing,” he said. “Are you sure that’s healthy?”

I flexed one of my arms, looking at the fissures that ran through my skin now. “I think so.”

We both went quiet, looking at each other. There was so much we had to say. We both must’ve had a million stories, and the urge to blurt them out was rising. But deep down, I knew this wasn’t the right time.

Grover looked to the side, and I followed his gaze. I’d sensed it vaguely as soon as I stopped focusing on Grover. Something else was out there, growing closer. On the horizon, clouds of dust had formed.

“We made too much noise,” Grover said. “They’re coming.”

“Who is? Krios?”

“Woooooorse,” Grover groaned. “We need to leave.”

I squinted, but couldn’t make out more than the rising grit. The only thing I could think of that could make a cloud that large was an army. Not just any army, either. Among them, I could sense presences that were truly powerful. There were immortals marching on us, seemingly with hundreds to thousands of monsters at their back.

“I have mortals with me,” I said. “People who can’t fight.”

“Get them quickly,” Grover said. He was much more confident than he used to be, standing (and speaking) with the pride a god should have. “I have a place for us to go.”