Drowning on Dry Land
For a fleeting second, Apollo imagined that he was in one of his gilded marble temples. This was just another petitioner come crawling on their knees for a miracle from the great Apollo. Then the second passed.
The walls were the impersonal, antiseptic white of the Apollo Teaching Hospital, not the carved marble of a Roman temple. At his side wasn’t a stone altar but a creaky metal examination table on the verge of collapse. And he wasn’t the Olympian god Apollo but the grandson of Koios, the Titan Lord of the North, eking out his survival by virtue of his mother’s tears and his grandfathers’ forbearance.
“Ms Percy Jackson.” Apollo addressed the eighteen-year-old. “As often as you visit, I’m starting to think you just want to see me.”
Kronos won the war before the Olympians even knew there was one. Stripped of most of his domains and stuck performing menial tasks for the Titans' entertainment, Apollo is desperate for any change. And then he finds a demigod he just knows will be important.