Chapter 33 – Unbound

'There shall ever be four Horsemen of the apocalypse. They shall ride when the end days have come, and at the forefront of the worlds shall be the pale rider.'

'Death'

Whispering voices crept through Lucifer's ears as he neared the barrier over Camp Half-Blood. This is where Death grew up as a child before he became Death. This was the origin, the home, of the boy known as Percy Jackson. That was the boy that Lucifer had come to hate when he'd stormed through Hell, through HIS domain.

But no longer. No, Lucifer was a part of that very same person that had gone from the boy who saved Olympus to the eternal reaper. All those years in Hell fighting against each other and it turned out that once Lucifer had been reaped from his life, he was reborn again from the fragments of Death's mind.

It was funny to think that at one time they had been such mortal enemies but was it really him? Had that really been Lucifer causing all that pain to Percy and the ones he loved? Lucifer was the one who orchestrated the theft and removal of Death's seals. He was the one who had whispered into the mind of the younger son of Poseidon and caused him to betray Percy and become a host to the Sin of Envy.

It didn't feel like him, it didn't feel like they were things that he had really done. Death had reaped Lucifer's entire essence, the Lucifer from before their imprisonment inside Death's head.

He felt like someone else. His once blackened heart was corrupted by Death's moral judgement perhaps?

It no longer mattered, he didn't want to consider himself as the same being that those who once knew him. He was no longer Lucifer the devil, he was now going to make sure that people knew him as the Lucifer that came back into reality because of Death.

Lucifer the Angel.

Conquest had acompanied Lucifer to Camp Half-Blood. "There's a Dragon over there." He pointed with a slight grin.

"So there is. Would you like to go and say hello before we walk through this barrier?" Lucifer asked with hidden snide.

Conquest's grin grew ever wider. "There's no promise we can actually get through this. It was designed to keep out anything but a Demigod unless you've got express permission to enter." The Angel laughed.

"Fine. I suppose I'll just go and ask that Dragon for permission then." Lucifer sighed before marching over to where Peleus was keeping a keen eye on the new arrivals. He knew that they weren't expressly here to cause harm to the camp but he also wasn't sure exactly how he should be reacting to them.

Lucifer marched right up to the Dragon that looked more confused with each passing moment. "Hello Dragon. I'm here to find someone very important, now, I promise not to harm any of the other idiots inside, I'm really only here for the one. Now, please may I enter?" Lucifer gestured towards the barrier with raised brows. He gave the Dragon approximately no time to react before stepping through the barrier.

"Well it didn't exactly reject me. Must be a good sign, right, brother?" Lucifer smiled suavely before getting his bearings. His plan was more or less to march right through the cluster of life signs in the centre of the camp and see if he could single out a reaper among them.

Before they got much further there was a very tired looking man suddenly standing among them.

"What are you doing here, and did you bring any wine?" He asked, almost with desperation hinting in his tone.

Lucifer looked over at Conquest who had just walked through the barrier. The Horseman among them simply shrugged, he didn't know who it was, he definitely didn't recognize him from his last visit to the camp.

"Well I AM the devil so I'm sure I could sort something out for you. I'm here looking for my brother, he used to be a Demi-god at this little hideaway." Lucifer explained with what felt like extra charisma but in fact was most likely just his recent change into a somewhat more suave British persona.

"What makes you think that they're here? Almost all of the Demi-gods that leave do not come back." The ragged being told them almost sadly.

"Yes but he's different. You see he was tricked into Hell by a Titan you knew as Kronos, then he fought his way to the top before eventually overtaking the mantle of the Primordial entity known as Death. Then a hop skip and jump later a few of us had a huge fight and essentially he has wiped his own memory and rendered himself almost mortal so we believe he might have reset himself in a Demi-god camp, which means that you wouldn't even know who he is, SO, do you have any new arrivals?" Lucifer asked, loving every moment where the ragged man was being overwhelmed by the continually growing sentences that Lucifer was throwing at him.

"You'd better come over to the yard and sit down with me for a while, I feel like I'm going to need a few more specifics than that. Chiron would be able to help you locate someone like that IF they'd come here." He told them, turning to lead the way.

"On we go." Conquest muttered cheerily as he followed them both further into the camp. He couldn't help but feel that War and Famine were having more luck over at the Roman camp.

Over at the Roman Camp, Artemis had stopped searching and instead sought out what she'd figured had been Reyna's old room. She needed to stop and take everything in as she'd been going a million miles and hour since getting back from the battlefield only hundreds of yards away from where she was finally sitting.

Upon her return to Olympus she'd been sought out by a floating soul that needed a host. In that moment she'd become the Horseman of War, inheriting millions of memories of a life lived not by her.

Then straight from there the four of them had rode to the edge to make a stand against Void who wanted to erase everything unjustly, then straight to a different realm before everything had changed once again.

She could feel that Percy was around somewhere, she just didn't know where. She still couldn't quite figure out what his plans had been as none of this made sense.

She felt a faint buzz of energy shoot through the air that caught her senses immediately. It wasn't familiar to her but she had nothing else to go off so she followed it without hesitation.

Her short trail had led her to a bustling street full of Romans that were going about their day, all of whom had either come from or were going to the forum. This was a quicker way to get there and the street even linked to the cohorts about a mile down.

"-so that's how I ended up here. True story."

That voice hit Artemis like a slap in the face. It was him! She'd found him. She spotted Reyna closing in on the same location with surprise written all over her face.

The two of them converged on the same point to see a leather bound man standing incredibly close to a group of girls that were no doubt Venus spawn.

"Percy!" Artemis began before Reyna quickly put her arm on Artemis' shoulder.

"Oh please no." Reyna muttered quietly.

"What? Who's Percy? Hey, what are you two FINE individuals up to?" The man asked with a lustful grin on show for them both.

"This shouldn't be possible." Reyna's tone was starting to worry Artemis. The Horseman of War had to really think about what it was that Reyna was seeing that she wasn't and slowly it started to piece together in her mind.

"A Sin? You're right, that shouldn't be possible." Artemis confirmed, disappointed that this wasn't the right man. A fragment of him, but not the whole man.

"Look, I don't know what you're talking about and it literally kills me to say this but I'm not the guy you're looking for, if however you fancy cutting some corners on that and making me your guy then say the word, we can make room for three if you like." He said, eyeing up Reyna as he did so.

"Let me just get something straight before I punch you so hard that your body explodes. You have absolutely no idea who I am, do you?" Reyna asked, already fearing the answer becoming more and more like a reality.

"Absolutely none, beautiful." The Sin chirped back happy as ever, either oblivious to Reyna's direct threat or simply not caring.

"This was never supposed to be a possibility, I don't know what would have happened if he split right at the moment that he tried to erase Void. It either means that there's seven Sins and our Death or that there's simply seven Sins that don't even know that they're Sins." Reyna muttered. She wondered whether or not all of the Sins would flock to the Demi-god camps as if drawn to power.

It would certainly make their searching a lot easier, now all they had to do was roundup all of the Death look a likes and determine their strongest characteristics, it was evident that they'd found Lust, now they just needed six more and Death before they could figure out how to permanently bond them all back together.

"This is now what I was expecting to be doing after the fight." Reyna muttered to herself again as she figured out what her next move would be. Artemis was too far caught up in her emotions to find Percy rather than be the Horseman of War right now, and Reyna still needed to assess how much collateral damage had happened throughout the rest of the universe as the balance was something that they needed to keep in check no matter what happened.

"So anyway, there I was in this room with half a dozen other dudes that look identical to me, right, and all of a sudden-AH!?" The Sin found himself being dragged away from the daughters of Venus by the ear.

"Where exactly did that happen? It's imperative that we find ALL of you idiots and make you the same again." Artemis told him. The glare in her eyes promised a fiery death if the Sin did not comply.

"Listen hot stuff, you might be a big shot from wherever you're from, but where I'm from, wherever that is, I'm pretty sure I could probably have held my own, moral is what are you doing later on?" He asked, clearly getting heavily distracted from having an argument into trying to have it on with her.

"Do you seriously not remember anything?" Artemis asked him almost through gritted teeth.

He simply stared at her for a moment in silence before speaking up, "So were you just not listening to my story, or…?" He let the question hang in the air for a moment, somewhat enjoying how wound up the silver woman in front of him was getting.

"You're really cute when you're frustrated." He told her, already reverting back to his relaxed persona.

"For what it's worth, I would not miss you if you never merged with Death again." Artemis told him through an intense glare.

"I have no idea what you're talking about but I'll take your word for it." He laughed at her.

'Do you want me to try and feel the presence of any more sins? It'd take a lot of focus to be able to detect people that don't know who they are.' The voice inside Reyna's head casually piped up. She'd been silent for such a long time that Reyna had forgotten that the previous Horseman of Famine was sharing a body and mindspace with her.

"No, that's OK, we'll find them quickly as it is. They'll naturally be drawn to us." Reyna replied out loud, earning her looks from both Artemis and Lust.

She quickly tapped her head, "Previous Horseman. I didn't devour a soul like you did, we still share a mind and body." Reyna explained quickly.

"So it'd be a threesome anyway?" Lust grinned, easily dodging the fist that had struck out to silence him. He didn't have to put any conscious thought into dodging the attack which was a positive sign that he was just as powerful as he was before, whether he knew it or not.

"I'm not usually into fisting but perhaps for you we can make some kind of deal." He told her with no sense of sarcasm present.

Artemis punched him in the face which caused his body to collapse. He turned into black grains of sand before his body had even hit the floor.

"Not used to your own strength, huh?" Reyna asked as Artemis stood there staring at her clenched fist in total disbelief that a half-assed punch had obliterated one of Percy's Sins.

"Great, now we've lost our only lead!" Artemis huffed in defeat.

"Give it a second." Reyna replied.

"What?" Artemis asked in exasperation. She was in a bad mood to begin with but recently she'd felt like her mood swings were coming in far more regularly, which was something that she wasn't ready to address just yet.

"No, really, give it a second." Reyna told her again with a knowing look.

"I don't know what you're talking abo-" Artemis was promptly cut off by a pink cloud erupting in their vision.

When it cleared they saw Lust lying on his side, clutching his head in his hand as he casually sipped from a goblet that held some kind of strong smelling wine.

"And THAT is what a unicorn fart looks like." He told them with a wink.

"You are such an ass." Reyna told him with the smallest of smiles breaching her lips.

"True. Story." Lust finished his quip. "Gods damn it's good to be back." He told them before getting to his feet and stretching out in an overly sexual way, something that only he could seem to have done.

"So you remember everything?" Artemis asked him skeptically.

"Yup, all it took was a good case of total death. Who'd have thought?" He laughed, "And before you ask I have no idea where any of the others are. I expect that they'd have been like me, mind wiped until forced to engage with a source of familiar power. I don't even know where we'd begin to-Hey, name's Lust, who are you?" He asked, noticing the daughters of Venus who had been present for the entire weird exchange.

"Can you please focus!?" Artemis demanded, snapping her fingers in front of Lust's face.

"Probably not, I haven't gotten laid in what feels like an eternity. I swear I'm going to wake up with an erection that could cut diamonds." Lust yawned, not caring for how much that might offend the present company.

"You are SO crass." Reyna muttered in shock and disbelief.

"I am literally the Sin of Lust, don't act like you don't like it. I KNOW what you're into." He said, pointing at Artemis who promptly blushed immensely.

Reyna gave a judgy look at the 'virgin Goddess'.

"Shit happens, get off my case. Look, we need to go and find the next Sin or we'll quickly get nowhere. I hope Conquest and Lucifer are having more luck over at the other camp than we're having with this idiot." Artemis moaned as she turned her back on Lust and they promptly started to make their way towards the forum in the distance.

It was mostly a question of how long Artemis could last before she would inevitably obliterate Lust from existence, if only for a few short moments.

She wasn't in any way prepared for what they found next.

A/N: I had a LOT of fun writing Lust again. What do you think?