Chapter 2
Apollo
❝Make Haste❞

TO say Apollo was having a bad day would be an understatement.

He used to be a god. The god of the sun and a dozen other amazing, cool things to be exact. He had been worshipped and welcomed wherever he went. In his four thousand, six hundred and twelve years, he had done many things. He inflicted a plague on the Greeks who besieged Troy. He blessed Babe Ruth with three home runs in game four of the 1926 World Series. He visited his wrath upon Britney Spears at the 2007 MTV Video Music Awards.

But in all of his immortal life, not once had he crash-landed into a dumpster.

He didn't know how it even happened. He simply woke up falling and the next thing he knew was getting a face full of waste.

Believe it or not, that wasn't even the bad part. A pair of regular worthless mortals had mugged him. Him. He had done something he didn't commonly do, gave them a chance to pick how they'd like to be destroyed, but the gorilla named Cade just punched him in the face! Him!

And he didn't have anything to use to fight him back. No ability to burn them to a crisp, unable to turn them into a rat, nothing, nada. Well, that's not true, if a wallet was considered a deadly weapon. Surprise, surprise, they took it.

Now here's the bad bad part.

In all the times he had been turned into a mortal (which had twice up until now), he had been forced to give his services to whatever master claimed him as their slave. He could not choose who he served, nor go against any orders they gave him. They could tell him to kill himself and he would be forced to obey their command.

He had been forced to give his services to a (sob) bratty twelve year old girl with garbage powers, and was currently dressed in new clothing that made her look like a traffic light, curtesy of Sally Jackson.

And then, after being driven to Camp Half-Blood by her son, Perseus Jackson, and a run in with plague spirits, causing Apollo to come face to face with his greatest regrets all over again and face near death, him and Meg hiked through the forest toward Camp after they bid Percy farewell. And right now, he was currently being judged by trees of all things. Trees!

Apollo didn't like the forest. For reasons he'd rather not think about, he found them to be...uncomfortable. Even more so, now.

He tried to convince himself that they weren't watching him, scowling and whispering amongst themselves. He wanted to snap at them, take a picture, it'll last longer. But Meg would stare at him in judgment as well.

As they walked, he had to constantly tell himself that they were just trees. Even if they did have dryads spirits living in them, those dryads couldn't possibly hold him responsible for what happened thousands and thousands of years ago!

Why not? You still hold yourself responsible.

He told himself to stuff a sock in it.

Finally, after hours, when they passed the same boulder for the third time, Apollo finally admitted, "I have no idea where we are."

"That was obvious," Meg scoffed, plopping herself down on a fallen log. In the green light, she looked more like a dryad than ever, though tree spirits do not often wear red sneakers and hand-me-down fleece jackets.

"Don't you have any wilderness skills?" She asked. "Reading moss on the sides of the trees? Following tracks?"

"That's more of my sister's thing," He sighed, thinking of his twin. He missed her.

"Maybe Peaches can help?" She suggested, turning toward her karpos. "Hey, can you find us a way out of the woods?"

Peaches had been muttering nervously to himself the whole time. He sniffed the air, his nostrils quivering. He tilted his head.

His face flushed a bright green. He emitted a distressed bark, then dissolved in a swirl of leaves.

Meg shot to her feet. "Where'd he go?"

Apollo scanned the woods. He suspected Peaches had done the intelligent thing. He sensed danger near them and fled. He didn't want to tell Meg this, though. She had grown fond of him.

"Perhaps he went scouting," He lied. "We should—"

APOLLO.

The voice reverberated in his head, as if someone had installed Bose speakers behind his eyes. Unfortunately, it was not the voice of his conscience. His conscience was not female, and it was not that loud. Yet something about that woman's tone was very familiar.

"What's wrong?" Meg was clueless.

The air turned sickly sweet. The trees loomed over him like trigger hairs of a Venus flytrap.

"We can't stay here," Apollo said. A bead of sweat trickled down the side of his face. "Attend me, mortal."

"Excuse me?" Meg demanded.

Apollo winced. "Uh, I mean come on!"

They ran, stumbling over tree roots, fleeing blindly through a maze of branches and boulders. They reached a clear stream over a bed of gravel but he barely slowed down.

The voice spoke again: FIND ME.

This time it was so loud, it stabbed through his forehead like a railroad spike. He stumbled, falling to his knees.

"Hey!" Meg grabbed his arm. "Get up!"

"You didn't hear that?"

"Hear what?!"

THE FALL OF THE SUN, the voice boomed. THE FINAL VERSE.

Apollo collapsed face first into the stream.

"Apollo!" Meg was alarmed. She rolled him over. "Get up, I can't carry you!"

And yet she tried. She dragged him across the river, scolding him and cursing, until, with her help, he managed to crawl back to shore.

He laid on his back, gasping and shivering. His soaked clothes were so cold they burned. His mortal body was trembling so much it reminded him of an open E string on an electric bass.

Meg traded his wet winter coat for the warm dry fleece.

"Keep yourself together," She ordered him. "Don't go crazy on me."

His own laugh sounded brittle. "But I—I heard—"

THE FIRES WILL CONSUME ME. MAKE HASTE!

Apollo doubled over again. The voice splinted into a chorus of anger whispers. Shadows grew longer and darker. Steam arose from his clothes, smelling like the volcanic fumes of Delphi. His vision blurred and his ears rung.

Part of him wanted to curl into a ball and die. Another part of him wanted to get up and run wildly after the voices—to find their source—but he suspected that if he tried, his sanity would be lost forever.

He felt a strong hand pull him up and over someone's shoulder. Apollo could barely process what was happening around him. He couldn't see anything but blackness and he couldn't hear anything but the voices. They whispered and argued, tearing off little pieces of his mind and carrying them away into the forest. Soon he wouldn't have much left. He might as well just wander off himself into the woods. The idea was hilarious to him. He began to giggle.

The longer he was carried by his unknown saviour, his vision began to lighten up. He saw the person holding him was wearing brown combat boots and black jeans. He noticed something shiny in the person's boots, looking very much like the handle of a dagger—a dagger that had special engravings on it, meaning it could only belong to one person. He laughed hysterically at the mere thought.

Apollo continued to laugh like a madman as the three of them stumbled out of the forest straight toward the campfire, where a dozen teenagers were gaping at them.

He grinned at them from where he hung upside down on Charis Grace's shoulder. "Oh, hi! I'm Apollo!"

His eyes rolled up to the back of his head, and he promptly passed out.

—

Let me know if you see any mistakes, as this is unedited.