Percy Jackson and the Champion of Gaea

by tipofthepencil

Summary:

Percy Jackson is a son of Neptune with roughly fifty bad ideas that maybe form an even worse plan. It's not really his fault, he doesn't have a lot to work with.

Or, Percy wants to survive the sudden influx of mythos in his life. Camp Jupiter wants to survive him. Since they have similar goals, they should get along, right?

Notes:

I wish I knew what limited cast I had to work with before I started This Mess (tm) but I didn't and now I'm two chapters in and committed. Cheers.

Chapter 1: I say goodbye a lot

In my dreams, I stand by a shore I haven’t seen nearly six years. Despite that, there’s no doubt where I am. Montauk always had this peculiar, extra-fishy smell to it. Peculiar, in that it was less of a smell and more of a feeling, the quiet bubbling of life nearly drowned out by the lapping of the waves. Montauk was also always especially clear and blue whenever Mom brought me out for a trip. She joked, ruffling of my hair, that the beach was always on its best behavior for me.

(Or, well. I thought she was joking.)

In my dreams, however, my mom isn’t there, even though it had always been just me and her since the moment I was born. In her place is an enormous beached whale, planted right in the center of the beach. In my dreams, the sand is clumped in little red fistfuls, and the waves don’t lap, they hurl themselves against the shoreline, trying to reach something that’s theirs but far too far away. However the whale had wound up on shore, it clearly couldn’t reverse it, and the massive beast thumped wearily against the hot sand it laid on. 

Before I knew it, I was running. That was the one constant in my dreams. Amidst the darkening sky, my feet pounded on searing hot sand as I raced to the beast in time with my heart beat.

I had to get it back. I had to return it to where it belonged. It needed to go back.

Sometimes the dream ended there: I don’t even make it to the whale, and instead wake up panting and strangely exhausted. More often, like this one, I collide with the whale at near full speed, hands pressing into sun-dried and rubbery skin with barely an impact. I alternate between soothing it and pushing as hard as I can, but that had no more of an effect than my collision.

“You’ll be okay,” I told it, grasping desperately for the hope that this time I’d be telling the truth. “I’ll get you out of here. You’ll be just fine.” I turned my back to the beast and tried to dig in my feet. The sand beneath me gave first, and suddenly I was up to my knees in it.

“Somebody, help! Help me!” I shout to the lonely and empty beach, hands scrabbling for purchase against the whale. The creature turns its massive eye on me, something resigned and defeated in its large pupils.

No. No, it couldn’t end like this. I needed to get it back. It needed to go back .

The sky was completely clouded over, and faint rumbles of thunder foretold a storm. Rain. I bit my lip, and pushed harder. Where was the rain?

The whale turned its massive eyes to the sky and crooned mournfally.

Where was the rain? Why wasn’t it raining yet? I pushed again, and sucked in a breath.

“PLEASE!” I shouted in the general direction of the sky. “HELP ME!”

A gust of wind passed me by, bringing with it the crackling sound of shifting sands and the stale scent of rot. My vision began to blur.

Why, Perseus , a voice crooned. You need only ask.

In the space between the whale and the sea, the latter of which had over the course of the dream picked up into a frenzy, a mound of sand began to rise. It was just as wide as the length of the whale, but growing rapidly taller. I froze, watching as sand fell down in wet, red clumps, until the structure that was left was distinctly hand-shaped.

There was a beat. Then.

Moments before the gargantuan hand slammed down on us, I opened my mouth and

I jerked awake with a short, muffled cry, reflexively trying not to wake up my mom. Then the musty smell of the underground barracks hit me. My eyes registered nothing but the dusty wood of unused bunks. In the room adjacent, I could hear low muffled snarls and yips.

That’s right.

I’m not with Mom anymore. Haven’t been, for weeks now.

I released the back of my hand, wincing at the dents left by my teeth, and laid back down. The sun had not yet risen, and it was dim moonlight that filtered through the barred windows. I stared at the streaks on light against my threadbare blanket, and breathed.

I ran my hand through my hair and sighed. It was a good thing wolves were nocturnal, or else I’d have woken the whole lot of them up. The air felt a bit lighter than usual, and less dusty, so it stood to reason that Lupa must have led the rest of the adult wolves on a hunt. Does she ever sleep? No matter what time of day I saw them, Lupa would be up, every bit as alert as early morning me was not. After a few grueling hours of training, dodging, and mopping the floor, I was usually exhausted enough to pass out the minute my head hit the bunk, yet Lupa didn’t seem bothered in the least.

Must be a god thing. Just the thought of doing anything else after scrubbing the scent of blood out of the stone made me want to sink into my hard mattress.

I must have fallen asleep again, because I woke up again to the feeling of one of Lupa’s pack sinking their teeth into my leg. I yelped, and in my haste to extract my body part ending up tumbling out of bed. Adolph yipped, puppy-like, before baring his teeth at me in what was probably supposed to be a smile. We’d been working on it, but between our sleep schedules and his natural aptitude, progress was slow.

“Err,” I started, before deciding why the heck not. It was my last day here anyway. “Not looking bad there, buddy. You’re gonna make a lot of friends.” I added in a thumbs up for good measure.

Adolph thumped this tail against the ground, pleased and ears flicking. The grin that he sent me this time looked less homicidal and more roguish. Aight. Barking two short times, Adolph gently bit my leg again before bounding off into the adjacent room.

I dusted myself off, and stumbled after him.

Lupa pinned me with an unimpressed stare when I entered into the eating hall. I was pretty well versed with her wolf stares by now, and this one said, Well? What are you waiting for? Looked like she wanted me to go to her. I gently stepped over Clell, who’d lain out sprawling by the doorway, and made my way over.

Adolph had already gone ahead to nab some of whatever the kill-of-day was, and was doing his best to cover his snout in blood. I rubbed the side of his man with my knuckles as I passed, and was rewarded with a bloody slasher smile.

Just before I reached Lupa’s side, the wolves around her stood up and wandered away. I knelt on the ground, and bowed my head to her.

In these months that you have spent with me, I have taught all that I can , Lupa told me, her piercing yellow eyes boring holes into me. It is time for you to put that to the test. We part today .

I keep my head down, and nod. In some ways, this was a long time coming. I might not have been Lupa’s best student, but I always picked up her lessons one way or another. In other ways, well.

If Lupa didn’t maul me for the sentiment alone, I might miss these wolves. Making sure that my throat didn’t choke up when I spoke, I bowed. “Thank you for everything, Lupa.”

A warm tongue dragged over my forehead, unheeding of the grime in my hair. Eyes up , she commanded, and I looked up. It’s all on you now. Remember, conquer —

“—or die,” I finished. The smile came a little easier this time. “I’ll be sure to kill the biggest and baddest monsters in your name,” I joked. “Keep an ear out, I’ll make you proud.”

Do not be arrogant. She nipped my ear warningly, and flashed her claws at me. Then she settled, her great body leaning back to rest on her haunches. Go eat. She turned her head towards the stone table, where the human food was. Probably because Lupa secretly liked to throw people off their game, she waited until I was just out of the dog pile before chuffing. You already do, pup .

The pressure on my throat returned two-fold, and I managed to croak out something resembling an “okay, thanks” before proceeding to turn red. Lupa seemed amused as I sped away from her. For that matter, so did her pack. Out of the corner of my eye, I spied Rudie dropping herself next to Adolph, proceeding to groom her son despite his whined protests.

Today must not be my day, because I felt my throat tighten at that casual display of maternal affection too.

I soldiered on, pouring out some cereal to eat. In less than an hour, I was going to be on my own, trekking south through several spawning grounds towards a camp I was only distantly aware of.

Conquer or die.

And I sure as heck wasn’t going to die.

O-o-o-o-o-o

Confession time: despite everything that’s happened, to me, my mom— heck, to that hissing snake in my playpen back in preschool— talking wolf deities still caught me by surprise. And so did the whole, my-dad-is-a-mythical-hotshot, don’t get me wrong, but that still feels pretty abstract. I mean, how’d you figure? I went from a virtual nobody to the child of a god. And not just any god, but the ruler of over two-thirds of the world. Try to one up me, I dare you.

But I digress. Unlike my dad, Lupa is very...well, present. Imminent. My mom and I barely entered into St. Helena, California when our convertible got waylaid by a pack of potentially immortal and definitely territorial wolves, led by a pissed alpha three times larger than any dog.

I don’t know how much my mom knew about what was going on, but if the large, snarling wolf goddess fazed her she didn’t show it. As it was, she grabbed one of my plastic baseball bats, told me to stay put, and exited the car. After a long, surprisingly civil conversation, Mom opened my car door and pulled me into a tight hug.

“Mom?” I had asked, bewildered.

“Be good, Percy,” Mom had said, the haste in her voice belied by the calm, steady way her hands unbuckled my seatbelt. “Lady Lupa will explain everything to you, so listen to her, okay? I don’t have copies of our new apartment keys yet, but I’ll get you one as soon as I can.” She pulled back, and began fixing my shirt. She looked me in the eye as steadily as she could. “Don’t ever be afraid to come home.”

She wiped at some smudges on my cheeks, and pulled me into another hug.

“Mom,” I whispered. “What’s going on?”

She shook her head. “I can’t explain it better than Lady Lupa can. But know that my door is always open to you. I love you.” With a kiss to my forehead, she gripped my hands tightly once before letting go.

The last I saw of her was her waving frantically at me while I was ushered away at tooth point by a gang of wolves.

Your mother is strong, boy , Lupa had told me with what I’d later identify as great approval.  You are very lucky to have her.

Please. Like I needed a mythical goddess to tell me that.

The point of this recount is that my mom had always been great at taking things in stride. When I was younger, I got in trouble in school a lot. And by a lot, I mean expulsion worthy levels of trouble. It wasn’t just once, either. I’ve never lasted longer than a year in school, always ending up in some freak incident or another once late April started to roll around.

Case in point: back in second grade, I nearly drowned my entire class at an aquarium in New York. So if you’ve ever wondered how a second grader can get expelled, there you go. In fourth grade, after we moved from Ohio to Iowa, my class went on a field trip to Shiloh National Military Park and I ended up firing a cannon into our school bus. Then in fifth grade I accidentally incited a riot in the penguins and the geese at the Sedgwick County Zoo. Between getting my school a five year ban from the premises, being indirectly responsible for little Beth’s new haircut, and having a “weird accent,” I wasn’t a very popular kid.

That was the other thing about my mom: forget moving schools. My mom moved entire states. The minute I got my expulsion letter saying in no uncertain terms that I was not welcomed to attend another year, my mom started to look into job offers and began packing. I didn’t quite understand what was so strange about it until a girl in Lake County, Colorado asked what my mom did that made her move so much.

Spoiler alert: it wasn’t her job. That much I could figure out. Mom had been, from what I remember and in sequential order: a baker, an assistant florist, and accountant, and most recently an emergency dispatcher. If there was anything that was making us move six times in six years, it was me.

I did my best to take us moving around in stride, but I’m kind of ashamed to admit that I didn’t always manage. Ohio was passable since we were situated only a thirty minute drive from Lake Erie. Once we moved into Iowa though, I started losing it. I’d wake up periodically, and sporadically, in a cold sweat, dreaming of being buried alive. Nothing helped, not even hugs from my mom, because I just couldn’t shake the feeling of dirt on my skin. It was all so subtle too, like a tie around your neck that you’d only remember when there’s nothing else catching your attention.

I pleaded with Mom to take me back to the sea. It had to be the sea; aquariums didn’t cut it anymore, nothing did. The first time we accidentally detoured into a fish market, Mom had to pull over so I could blow chunks into the grass. It was also the last.

I mean, I eventually got better. Six years was a long time to adjust. Plus, there was always a tense undercurrent of urgency to our move that made it easier to ignore the discomfort that came with being landlocked. I wasn’t too torn up about the friends that I left behind, mainly because I had none. I moved to frequently to make any, and I usually was too different to be instantly popular with the kids at my latest school.

As long as I had my mom, the rest didn’t matter.

If my life sounded hectic, then it was probably just the way I presented it. School was difficult, and words danced off the page if I lost my focus for even a second, but in general I had very little stress. Nothing to really explain the haste and deliberateness of our moves, or why we were slowly but surely making our way to California. We weren’t being chased by ninja assassins, I’ll give you that. The most life-threatening to happen to us was that time we were caught up in the tail end of a landslide while leaving Colorado, but even then the road was far away enough that the worst that happened was our car was pushed onto its side and we got jostled a bit. The authorities found us pretty quickly, and that was that. Not even our car came out too worse for the wear.

And now, two years later, I had landed in the Golden Coast and was about to go on a soul-searching scavenger hunt armed with nothing but a small, imperial gold dagger (wonder how much it’d sell for), a pen Lupa said my dad left me (which, sure, why not), and well-cultivated wolf instincts. Or so I hope.

Waving goodbye to the pack, I notice that one of their number was missing. I didn’t have time to feel stung when I realized it was Adolph, because the wolf in question had bounded out of the house and over his packmates to run towards me. I barely avoided getting bowled over when he skidded to a stop and shoved something papery and slimy into my hands with his snout.

Surprised, I looked down. It was a piece of elk antler that he was always gnawing on, and had the grooves to show for it. And the smell. “Aw, buddy. I can’t take this with me. This is your favorite chew toy, isn’t it?”

Adolph shook himself out, and nosed insistently at my open palm, snapping his jaws when it looked like I was going to give it back. I apparently was not going to leave without his memento.

“...Thanks,” I said, finally. I put it in my bookbag, in the inner pocket where I kept my mom’s new keys. Sorry Mom. The note with the address was probably going to unreadable after this, but I already memorized it. “I’ll treasure it.” And despite the smell, I meant it.

Adolph gave me a fierce, wolfy grin, before bounding off to where Lupa was watching us, amused. He has grown attached , she commented, mildly, bending down so Adolph could lick at her snout.

“I think I did too.” I’m gonna miss trying to teach him how to smile. He was an enthusiastic student, even if he wasn’t a natural.

Then perhaps you’ll meet again. Now stop dawdling. Lupa lifted her head and in the backdrop of the rising sun she looked just as awe-inspiring as her occupation said she should. Go , she raised her snout and howled.

A chorus of howls rose up to meet her, and with that I began my journey.

Chapter 2: I receive an unenthusiastic welcome

The less said about my journey to Camp Jupiter, the better. In between the highway, the monsters, and that poor grandma on the side of the road, I’m almost certain I’m on a one-way ticket to a jail cell.

In my defense, getting to San Francisco Bay required something critical that Lupa did not think was important enough to send me off with. That’s right, money. I was under the impression that I could leg it, since it shouldn’t be longer than a day’s trek, but when I tried to get directions from students of a local high school it turned out that the institution was also an empousa nest.

Then I really had to leg it. The head cheerleader nearly kicked a hole through a tree with her donkey leg, and startled me out of my trance pretty effectively. I was not interested to see how my feeble body would hold up against that, so I booked it while her groupies were attempting to extract her hoof.

The cheerleaders gave up the chase after a few miles of marathon running, and that’s when I came across tall, dark, and ugly. The Roman mythos is kind of absurd when thought about, what with all the...unique hookups the gods like to have, but it’s nothing compared to that one crazy lady who thought a giant bull was the perfect bed partner.

(So uh, editor’s note. Apparently the reason that lady went cow crazy was because my dad got her cursed for something her husband the king did. Sorry Pasiphaë.)

(Editor’s note again: never mind, I take it all back. Screw you, Pasiphaë. Go to the crows.)

And the smell. Styx, the smell . Two or three times the Minotaur got close enough that I could feel its hot and rancid breath, and each time left me less willing to experience it again. Holy cow did that dude need some Listerine. I could swear the dandelions were wilting when that thing got close. It took some innovative thinking, some flea-bitten curtains from the local scrapyard, gravity, and a really unfortunate tree, but I managed to trap it in a tree long enough to kill it with Imperial Gold dagger. Or, at least, I’m hoping it’s dead. There aren’t many other ways to explain the golden dust the monster dissolved into. Most of it, anyway. I didn’t know why its left horn decided to hang around, but after a brief moment of contemplation I decided it was finders keepers. I worked my butt off to get that kill, I deserved a memento.

I wondered what the grandma thought was barreling past her at seventy miles an hour. With any luck (though, not mine), it wouldn’t be a dumb twelve year old hanging for dear life off a one horned bull.

She wasn’t the only mortal whose early morning I interrupted; the others just weren’t worth repeating. I’d taken some shady shortcuts while I was still back in Glen Ellen, the kind where gangsters liked to lurk late at night and early in the morning. A twelve year old must have seemed either like easy prey or just homeless, but three months with Lupa have perfected what I called my wolf stare: No matter how bad you think you are, I’m worse. It didn’t need to make them back off completely, just make them pause enough that I could make a clean getaway.

A somewhat uninterrupted sleep and a few more minor scrapes later, I stood on top of the Caldecott Tunnel entrance with my instincts pinging like crazy. No matter where I looked, I couldn’t seem to find the camp, yet everything was telling me I was already there.

I gnawed at my lip, and decided to make another loose circle on the grass. Maybe there was an entrance I missed? A rabbit hole, a la Alice in Wonderland?

Whatever I was missing, I needed to find it fast. I had around thirty more minutes before my Eau de Demigod began attracting some more unsavory characters and I’d need to vacate the area.

I yelped when I stepped wrong on a jutting rock, and the sudden shift in weight sending me to my knees and on the verge of rolling down the hill. I had stabbed the Minotaur horn into the dirt unthinkingly, which was thankfully enough to stop my momentum before it could begin. I was close to the tunnel entrance, which made the hill a bit too steep to shimmy my way back up. My feet couldn’t find any solid purchase. I grunted in exertion, before deciding it was a lost cause. Might as well slide all the way down, and climb up some other way. I heaved the Minotaur horn back out and let it roll its way downhill. I heard a loud clang soon after, and with a grimace, began to maneuver my way down as well.

When I finally reached the bottom, I straightened out to find myself face to face with some oddly specific vandalism on the tunnel supports. SPQR , it read, framed by two wheat stalks, then beneath: Camp Jupiter, first service entrance ahead ↑.

With disbelief, I peeked into the tunnel. Sure enough, around twenty feet down I could see a shimmering service entrance sign. Sometimes it read “Caldecott Tunnel Service Entrance: Authorized Personnel Only.” Other times, in shutter motion, it’d say “CAMP JUPITER: WELCOME, DEMIGODS! GLORY TO ROME!”

I gaped a bit, before some irate driver behind me blared his horn. Stupid kid in front of the tunnel! I’m late! I let the hypothetical jab at my intelligence pass. I sure as Pluto felt dumb.

Sighing, I stuffed my Minotaur horn in my bookbag (I think I should name it, at this point), stuck as close as possible to the walls, and walked towards the camp.

Little did I know the trials that were waiting for me on the other side.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Just kidding.

Once I passed the entry way into the demigod pickup center, there was a long and dark dirt passage that turned and twisted for what felt like an eternity. I must have spent ten minutes walking and trodding before I finally cleared it.

Camp Jupiter, when I finally saw it, stole my breath away. It was beautiful, if in an excessively Spartan way. I had no complaints about that; it almost felt right. But more than anything, what rendered me speechless was river that wound its way around the camp. I hadn’t seen a body of water this unpolluted in...well, since Montauk, and even that was seasonal. Someone was doing some serious environmental upkeep, and the sight of the clear, running liquid was a feast for sore eyes.

For a river, it was deceptively shallow looking, yet I found that I couldn’t see the river bed. Walking closer, it seemed that the bottom was covered by a counter-current flow of streaks and wisps of fog. Or maybe there wasn’t a bottom at all; I certainly didn’t know how magical rivers worked. I dipped my fingers in and shivered. The water was cold , and the chill seemed to shoot up my fingers and into the rest of my body. I finally remembered that I hadn’t had a decent shower in forever; the Wolf House was not exactly up to date on its plumbing.

I was considering whether it was worth discarding my clothes and going for a swim when someone cleared his throat. I startled, only to find a thirty-something-year old across the river, raising his eyebrow at me.

“Oh.” I said, feeling a flush of embarrassment fight its way onto my cheeks. “Um. Hello.”

“Good afternoon,” the man said, clearly unimpressed. Gods know why I incite that reaction in every serious adult I meet. At least it wasn’t as bad as with Lupa. I doubt I’ll ever encounter a relationship with as rocky a start as mine and hers, but I didn’t dare say it out loud and jinx myself. “Can I assume you’re here for Camp Jupiter? And that you’ll be heading over before sunset?”

“Ah.” I said, fumbling with my words. “Yes. I’m going. To camp. I’ll head over to camp right now.”

The man nodded, barely, before turning around and walking away. His purple cape fluttered in the wind, which was admittedly pretty cool.

I shook myself out of it, and began walking along the river. There was a small stone bridge up ahead. It must be the entry point, because there were no other bridges I was allowed to use to cross. I couldn’t explain how I knew this, but that fact settled with a certainty in my mind. I just knew.

Crossing the bridge felt like someone dumped a bucket of ice water on me and scrubbed me to an inch of my life. For a brief, terrifying moment, my vision went white and I was convinced I was standing stark naked. Then I stood on soil from the other side, and the sensation gradually fell away.

Wow. That was...wow. I couldn’t stop tingling. When I could finally make myself take another step, it felt like years of grime had been sloughed my skin. I almost skipped.

The man from before was standing a little ways before me, talking quietly to a smiling woman who also looked to be in her thirties. She was also wearing a purple cape, and now that I was paying attention I realized it was held together by a golden eagle clasp. They were standing underneath a marble-carved gateway, and looked up as I approached.

“Hello there,” the woman greeted. “We don’t usually get new arrivals at this time of year. Name, age, and godly ancestor?”

The sudden spotlight was unnerving. “Uh, my name is Percy Jackson, I’m twelve, and Lupa said Neptune?”

“Is that a question?” the man asked, flatly.

Which side of the bed did he wake up on this morning? I instinctively straightened. “No, sir.”

“Not bad,” the woman said thoughtfully, beckoning me to follow her “if a little wordy. We haven’t had a new one of Neptune’s line in quite a while. Do you know how many generations down you are? Who your direct ancestor is?”

I furrowed my brows. “Uh...one? Zero? Neptune’s my dad. Apparently.” I nearly crashed into the two of them when they suddenly froze and whipped their heads around to stare at me.

“A son of Neptune,” the man whispered underneath his breath. He turned towards his companion. “We haven’t had a child of the Big Three in—”

“—decades,” the woman finished grimly. “The augur should be informed. Perhaps the next war is coming sooner than we think.”

I let them talk over me. It wasn’t exactly anything new; my teachers used to do it all the time at parent teacher conferences. Sometimes it paid off to be quieter, to see what sort of things they’d say if they forgot I was there.

They didn’t continue, however, and the woman turned to me with another smile. “Well, Percy Jackson, let’s get you registered, situated, bathed, and then I can tell you about how this camp operates. That work for you?”

My respect for her instantly went up several notches. “Yeah, thanks. Uh, what are your names?”

“I’m Olivia,” the woman introduced cheerily. “I’m the female praetor of Camp Jupiter, this would be my tenth year of service. My great-grandfather was the son of Pax. My partner here is the male praetor.”

“I’m William,” the man offered. “I’m a descendant of Perseus, the son of Jupiter.”

“That’s my namesake,” I blurted out.

William gave me a flat smile, the first of the night but no warmer for it. “Is that so.”

I could get a hint. I closed my mouth and followed the two adults down the cobblestone path. The camp looked even grander up close. Towards our left I could pick out what must be the residential area, which had several heavy set, dark brown wood buildings. There were campers milling about, and a consistent background of chatter and clangs of swords.

That was the structure closest to me. Back in the opposite direction, there were several imposingly large temples grouped together, their white marble squeaky clean enough to almost glow in the dying sunlight. Ahead, getting closer with every step we took, I could see some truly massive constructions. A large, bonafide Roman building that looked a lot like that outside of a court. Next to it were several large pillars that reached up to the sky without supporting anything. And further behind it...was that an aqueduct ?

How did the Mist hide all this?

“Grand, isn’t it?” Olivia put a voice to my thoughts. “This is the pride and joy of the Twelfth Legion, and what our ancestors left to us. Up ahead is the Senate House, which is where we’re going. Next to it,” and she nodded towards the standalone pillars, “is the Forum. Then the Circus Maximus. The Coliseum.” She pointed at them in turn. “Further ahead is where all our main shops are. You’ll find it’s quite busy at night.”

“Halt!” I snapped to attention to see a Roman bust statue in our path. I was about to ask who spoke when the statue narrowed its eyes swiveled towards me. “You there. No weapons allowed in the Senate house. Divest your dagger, sword, and,” if a statue could sniff, then that’s what this one did, “bovine artifact. Immediately.” A threaded bag that looked like a flour sack floated up to us, snapping itself open with solid smack.

“Lord Terminus,” Olivia said with a sheepish smile. “Perhaps we could leave this for later? I’m sure Percy has had a long day, and we still need to debrief him.”

“Don’t talk back to me, young lady,” the statue snapped. “You’re due for an inspection yourself.” He turned to William, who looked chagrined. “Don’t think I forgot about you either. Snap to it!”

With a sigh, Olivia took out a dagger and dropped into a floating bag. Terminus cleared his throat and William reluctantly took out his small blade and dropped it in as well.

Then the attention was all on me. I unhooked the dagger from my belt and handed it over, then hesitated. Since Terminus had specified the Minotaur horn, I slung my bookbag over and pulled it out, frowning when it caught on some other miscellaneous junk inside my bag. Both Olivia and William breathed in sharply.

“Never mind.” Terminus declared, wrinkling his nose like the horn mortally offended him. “So it was a spoil of war. Very well then. Just deposit your sword, submit to a pat down, and then you may proceed.”

I couldn’t help it. “A pat down? You and what hands?” Then another thought occurred to me. “I don’t even have a sword.”

“Terrible attitude. I ought to deny your entry on principle,” Terminus said, suddenly popping up in front of me. I took a step back in surprise. “Straighten that slouch, I don't want this to take any longer than it has to. And take that contraption out of your pocket already.”

I reached into my pocket, frowning. I resisted the urge to sigh when my fingers wrapped around the pen. I had no idea why my dad gave me a ballpoint pen of all things, but it had proven to be useful, if infrequently. The only problematic thing about it was that it would sometimes randomly disappear, only to reappear in my pocket. I had thought it was a fluke at first, and that I was just being extremely forgetful, but as a test I double zipped it in the same pocket as Adolph’s elk antler and sure enough, it popped into my pocket five minutes later.

Then I remember what Terminus said and frowned deeper. This thing was a sword? Figuring that I’d investigate later, I dropped my pen into the insistently waiting sack. Then came the pat down. I was about as enthusiastic to have invisible, disembodied hands patting me down as Terminus looked to be the one administering it. I tried not to feel offended when he grimaced. To be entirely fair, I don’t know where I’ve been either.

After that the awkward inspection finally passed, William nodded respectfully to Terminus and Olivia waved me over. They were already standing on the other side, having cooperated and easily passed, and had watched my inspection with barely concealed amusement.

“That was Terminus, the God of Boundaries.” Olivia explained before I could ask. “Every legionnaire who comes here undergoes the same rite, so don’t worry, you’re not being singled out. He guards the borders and sanctity of our camp, as well as our central hub of legislation.” She gestured before us, hands making a sweeping gesture over the grand, imposing structures.

I followed her as she made her way to the Senate House, the one that looked like a Supreme Court. As we got closer though, it began to have the same feel as the court too, with the heavy feeling of judgement dawning on the three of us. How a building did that, I couldn’t tell. This definitely looked like a place where people gathered to make heavy decision. I wonder if that was what I was: a decision.

“Are the senators present?” Olivia asked, looking towards William.

He nodded. “I’ve notified them of our new arrival. They should all already be gathered.”

We stopped just before the large, marbled entry way. There was no door, allowing me to make out shadows in the yellow light. I could also hear a low murmur as the people inside were passionately debating with each other, or possibly just gossiping. I’ve learned not to assume. Olivia turned to me and smiled, but this one took on the steely quality of a leader, or maybe a mother. I’d seen something similar on both Lupa and my mother, and it both reassured me and set my nerves on edge.

“Welcome to New Rome, Percy. Let’s hope you enjoy your stay.”

Notes:

Edited 08/17: I forgot Julia was only one year old when Percy was twelve, so assume her to be temporarily retconned

Chapter 3: I stand at trial and get my future read

The Senate House didn’t look as big on the inside as I would have thought. There was a podium at the center of the room, and three or four rows of audience seats, but everything was all in all confined to half the room. It didn’t look cramped, not by a long shot, but I couldn’t help glancing back at the bare half of the room we just walked through. Seriously, what was it for? 

“Senators,” Olivia called, her voice echoing through the building. Before us sat a bunch of people with what looked like bath towels draped over their shirts. “We are gathered today to welcome a new addition to our camp. Before you you have Percy Jackson, Son of Neptune.” She turned to me and smiled. “Come here, Percy.”

I walked up to where she stood, and Olivia nodded at me approvingly. She faced the Senate. “The first order of business is the rank we’re bestowing on him. The floor is open.”

“What, we’re not going to vote on whether we’re accepting?” A guy with shoulder freckles and curly brown hair asked with a snort. He was one of the younger Senators there. “Does the esteemed Twelfth Legion Fulminata just take any old Joe who finds their way here now?”

The Senator closest to him scowled. He was wiry with slightly larger hands. He looked like he was around Olivia’s age. “Take this seriously. If Neptune decides to punish this camp again, will you bear responsibility?” 

There were uneasy murmurs among the gathered people, some of whom gave me the stink eye. Apparently, my dad’s reputation was doing about as well as that of a school yard bully. Great to know.

“No, Sam is correct.” Olivia said calmly. “I was being too hasty. Those in favor of accepting Percy Jackson, Son of Neptune, into Camp Jupiter?”

Every hand in the room, with the exception of Olivia’s, William’s, and mine, shot up into the air. Olivia nodded, seeming satisfied, whereas I was just irked that “Son of Neptune” seemed to be my title now.

“Very well,” Olivia said, turning to a bespectacled teenager. “Mark down that the Senate votes twelve to none in favor of accepting Percy Jackson.”

“So now we need to talk about ranking, huh?” A girl with a brown hair and short bob cut commented from her place in the back, resting her face on her palm. “Has he been claimed yet, Praetor Osbourne?”

Olivia shook her head. “He hasn’t.”

Shoulder Freckles frowned. I tried in vain to remember his name, but couldn’t. “Did he present a letter of sponsorship?”

William finally participated in the conversation. “He hasn’t done that either.”

Shoulder Freckles slapped his knee. “Are you just taking his word for it about his lineage, then?”

Olivia and William exchanged significant looks, before Olivia shrugged airily. “It didn’t seem like he was lying.”

“Praetor Osbourne,” Large Hands bemoaned, evidently displeased.

“I also do not believe he is lying,” a middle-aged Senator with sandy blond hair and a bracelet of feathers chimed in. “I’ve foretold the coming of the water-born for weeks now. The circumstances aligns. I believe this is him.”

“What water-born? You said ‘moth worm’!” A young woman with her black hair in a ponytail and a studded collar accused. “And you’ve been saying that every week for the last month!”

Feather Bracelet shrugged, in the same careless way Olivia did. Now that I thought about it, they look somewhat related. “Augury never paints a clear picture. And they say hindsight is 20-20.”

Studded Collar didn’t seem happy. “Oh for Jupiter’s sake—”

Bob Cut interrupted before the conversation could continue to derail. “So basically, we don’t have any proof that he’s actually a son of Neptune, correct?”

Olivia nodded. “Correct.”

Bob Cut leaned back against the marble and waved her hand around. “I vote in favor of making him a probatio then. He also looks to be what, eight? We should just put him in Cohort Five and call it a day.”

The general atmosphere of the room turned approving, with the exception of Glasses, who shrunk into his seat, and I bit back my retort. I could recognize when someone was trying to get under my skin, and had the feeling that Cohort Five was not where anyone wanted to be.

“Shall we proceed, then?” a bearded man said, speaking for the first time. He looked like some old European History professor, prompting some instant dislike on my end. “Praetors, call the vote.”

“Sure,” Olivia said, with a smile that seemed to imply she found the whole situation amusing. “Before we do however, I just wish to present all the facts. Percy, if you could take out your spoils of war?”

“My what?” Then I remembered what Terminus had said. “Oh, the horn?” I fumbled with the book bag strap for a moment, trying to pull out the Minotaur horn with one hand and hand it over to Olivia.

I think I’ll call it Freddy.

Olivia took Freddy with a smile, and faced the gathered Senators again. The room had gone silent.

“What, is that.” A young woman who looked vaguely Asian asked flatly. She had been content to sit out while the other Senators were discussing, but now she leaned forward in interest. I caught a glimpse of a jade necklace slip out from behind her towel toga while she did so.

Olivia hoisted the horn up higher, so the Senators could catch a better glimpse. “It’s the horn of a Minotaur.”

Large Hands leaned back and looked disbelieving. “That’s not possible. Are you saying this kid already slew the Minotaur before reaching camp?”

“Yeah, that’s right.” Bob Cut pitched in. “The Minotaur was last spotted on the East Coast by some centurions from my Cohort, several years ago. Why would it have moved to California?”

Studded Collar grabbed that detail like a lifeline. “Right! It probably wasn’t even the actual Minotaur, and just some anatomically similar copy.”

William shook his head. “Terminus had verified it. I asked.”

“I don’t know if this means anything,” I offered, addressing the towel squad. “But I used to live in New York”

Two dozen eyes snapped to me, stricken.

Studded Collar began, hesitantly, “If he’s a Son of Neptune, his scent would be many times more attractive than an ordinary demigod.”

“By that logic he would already be dead!” Shoulder Freckles rebutted. “The Minotaur can run up to twenty miles per hour! Who is this kid, Usain Bolt?”

I didn’t say anything more, numbed by the thought of a monster that somehow followed me from one coast to another. Was my scent really that powerful? How many more were there?

Jade Necklace cleared her throat, getting the attention of the rest of the Senators, and looked at me approvingly. I stared back at her, blank. “Well if this kid really defeated the Minotaur, then there’s no need for the probatio tablet. He’s already got more guts than half the fully fledged legionnaires.”

Olivia grasped the opportunity. “I think that is very sound, Miranda. Percy Jackson should begin as a fully initiated legionnaire. All in favor?”

There were several moments of hesitance, but eventually all hands but one went up.

Olivia nodded. “Eleven in favor,” she said to Glasses, who inclined his head and wrote it down. “Lucas, am I right in assuming you’re dissenting?”

Beard Guy nodded. “Yeah, I don’t agree with the Senate’s decision.”

“Would you like to provide the dissenting opinion?”

The man shrugged. “I just don’t think he’s old enough. We’ve had campers older than him who started off as a probatio , some of whom are still serving right now.”

“Careful,” Shoulder Freckles said, with a mean sort of smile. “Your grievances are showing.”

Beard Guy furrowed his brows and stared at the other speaker. Shoulder Freckles raised his hands in a clear indication that he was backing off.

“At any rate,” Olivia said, pointedly, “the vote is eleven to one.” She smiled at me. “Welcome to the Twelfth Legion Fulminata, Percy.”

“Where’s he staying?” called Bob Cut. “We could use a kid like him in Second. Victor?”

“I can sponsor him for the Fourth,” Feather Necklace said agreeably.

Jade Necklace smiled. “The Third Cohort has room for one more.”

They all turned to look at Shoulder Freckles, who looked uncomfortably towards William. The male praetor crossed his arms and shook his head. “His accomplishments are impressive, but no recommendations, no entry. The self-important ones from the First Cohort will complain.”

There was a round of easy chuckles, except for Large Hands, who looked a bit disgruntled. If you had asked me a second earlier, I would have thought William to be one of those self-important ones. Who knew he had a sense of humor?

“Well I guess it’s up to Percy then!” Olivia said cheerfully. “Who do you want to go with? All three of them are the Senior Centurions of their respective Cohorts.”

I stared at her blankly. Was she really expecting me to make a decision right now? I barely knew anyone’s name, let alone something substantial enough for me to choose something like who to go with. I also didn’t miss how no one was looking at Glasses and how no offer from the Fifth Cohort that was mentioned earlier came.

Olivia smiled at the look on my face. “Well actually, I’m willing to sponsor you too. I was from the Third Cohort, and I can also help you get settled in. What do you think?”

None of the others, barring Jade Necklace and those who simply didn’t care, seemed too happy with this.

“Hey!” Studded Collar stood up, the loudest protester. “Liv, that’s cheating. You didn’t even let us introduce ourselves! Praetor Dane!” William only shrugged helplessly.

Olivia’s offer was as good as any. “Sure. Thanks.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

As promised, Olivia and Miranda—Jade Necklace—introduced me to the Cohort Three barracks and got me with among a group of older teenagers whose names I could not remember for the life of me. Miranda assigned one of those teenagers to bring me to the Bath House and let me tell you: I’m a shower guy but that hot bath was almost a religious experience. I had spent nearly fifteen minutes just soaking when a knock on the wooden door got me moving again.

Olivia was waiting for me outside the bathhouse with Target bag slung over her shoulder and a really amused look on her face. I didn’t bother to think about what facial expression I was making, since it couldn’t have been anything good.

Olivia was nice enough to let it pass. “Next up, we need to pay a visit to Temple Hill.” She gestured to some of the large Roman structures I had seen on our way to the Senate House. “It’s a good practice for new arrivals to honor Jupiter and Mars as soon as possible, since they’re the two that can bless us with victory when we go to battle. You’ll even get your fortune read!”

Though uncertain why she was selling it to me like it was some sort of theme park, I was nonetheless intrigued. The walk to Temple Hill couldn’t seem to end soon enough.

There were two people already there, pouring over something on the podium of the last and largest temple, which was Jupiter’s. The first was Feather Necklace—or, Victor, I think—and the second a lanky, blond haired boy who didn’t look much older than I was. They looked up as we approached. Maybe-Victor smiled and waved at us. The boy next to him lifted his head haughtily, as if we were beneath him.

“—finally!” Victor was saying. “What took you so long?”

“Percy really likes our Roman baths,” Olivia said easily, mercilessly throwing me under the bus. I didn’t even have a chance to defend myself.

Victor nodded. “Well, I don’t blame him. They really hit the spot.” He turned to me as he said the last part. “So Percy, this is Octavian, our apprentice augur. Octavian, that’s our newest camper, Perseus.” I almost startled at the mention of my full name.

“I’m a descendant of Apollo,” Octavian said, making an extra effort to keep his chin high. “You might have heard of my ancestor. Cesar Augustus?”

“Uh,” I honestly was not doing so hot in my non-existent Greek Mythology classes. Mom tried, but she didn’t exactly have enough time to cover everything. I caught Victor giving me an exaggerated shrug: what can you do ? “Wow. That’s impressive. My dad is—”

“Neptune,” Octavian said, sounding irritated. “I already know. We’ve been predicting your arrival for a month now.”

“Predicting?” I asked, trying to focus on a safe topic despite how badly Octavian was giving off punch-me vibes.

Octavian smiled smugly. “I am an apprentice augur. I was blessed since birth with prophetic abilities, much like the Oracle you hear about in the myths.”

“Oh,” I said, somewhat remembering an important woman with that name. “Neat.”

“I’m the current augur,” Maybe-Victor said, inserting himself into our conversation. “Octavian here’s going to take over my post in a few years time, but he’s pretty much got the whole show down pat. Which is why, actually, I was thinking if it was okay if he did the divining this time?”

Olivia seemed a little surprised, but agreed easily. “Sure, why not? Octavian’s thirteen, actually, not far from your age. Maybe you and Octavian will become fast friends, Percy.”

Yeah, no thank you.

Octavian seemed pleased enough with the praise that nothing else snide made its way out of his mouth, even though I doubted he would be all that happy to be my friend.

Olivia smiled at me and leaned down. “Octavian is from the First Cohort,” she whispered, almost inaudibly.

“That explains a lot,” I whispered back, just as low. I was beginning to build up a pretty strong image for the Cohort in my mind.

It didn’t prepare at all for the image of Octavian heartlessly gutting someone’s Build-a-Bear and slamming the bear and its stuffing guts down on the pedestal.

“Hmm, yes,” Octavian muttered, using his dagger to poke and prod at the massacre before him. “So if that’s there then… I have divined the message.”

“Yeah, Octavian!” Victor praised, not missing a beat. “You go! Awesome!”

“Quiet,” Octavian hissed, his cheeks turning a blotchy red. “I do not need your ruckus!” When his eyes landed on me, the blue of his iris looked almost pitying. “It seems like your stay will be short. Jackson. In your future, I see betrayal.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

“It’s two large fluffs and one small one, located in north by northwest!” Octavian snapped at the older man. “I’ve known this sign since my first week of augury, I didn’t make a mistake!”

“I’m not saying you made a mistake!” Victor whispered furiously back, stealing glances at me. If he was trying to be stealthy, he was failing miserably at it. “I’m saying you might be jumping to conclusions. Look, look, what about this southwest cluster?”

Octavian looked incensed. “They mean the same thing! And that might mean friend, but it could also be a fluke with the way I spread the fluff. It doesn’t change the betrayal in the corner!”

 “Let’s say it is friend, alright? There are plenty of messages with betrayal and friend that don’t end up being about actual betrayal. Maybe he steals the last slice of someone's pizza, I don’t know—”

A hand dropped on my shoulder, startling me. Olivia looked down at me, face inscrutable. I stared back up at her, bewildered.

After what felt like a minor eternity, and Olivia’s face broke out into a smile. “While they’re getting that figured out, why don’t we go to the other temples?”

I didn’t have any better ideas, so I followed.

Mars’s temple was significantly smaller, and had a red roof. Bellona, the goddess of war was slightly smaller than that, and had a yellow roof. Both temples looked well kept, and fresh fruits were placed next a steadily burning fire in both. Pluto’s temple, in contrast, was clad entirely in cool blue tones and generally emanated an air of doom. It was also well kept, but there was no getting around the darkness that seemed to cling to it. The temple also had no real altar, and no fire.

The less said about my dad's shrine the better. Between the damp, molded wood and the fruit that certainly wasn't the pick of their litter, I had the feeling the Romans were doing all they could to say 'up yours' to my dad without actually saying it. I don't know how a shrine could look reluctant, but this one sure did.

“I wouldn’t worry too much, Percy,” Olivia said finally, once we completed paying our respects to all the temples. “Prophecies have a weird way of playing out, and the first interpretation is very rarely the correct one.”

“Oh,” I said. “Thanks for letting me know.”

Olivia nodded. “I think you’re a good kid. Victor will figure it out, you’ll see.” She lifted up the oddly shaped Target bag that she had kept on her person this whole time, and handed it to me. I took it and looked inside, and was surprised to see Freddy. “I was thinking you could dedicate your victory to one of the gods, since we’re here. You don’t have to,” she added, hastily. “I don’t want you to feel pressured. You can also just keep it, since it’s your spoil of war.”

I gripped the handles of the bag. “Would you recommend it?”

Olivia looked thoughtful. “Well, it never hurts to have a god regard you favorably. If I were you, I’d probably sacrifice it to Jupiter.” She nodded towards the Jupiter Optimus Maximus, where it looked like Octavian and Victor’s arguments were winding down. “Any of the others are just as good, however.”

I looked down at Freddy, and an idea began to take root in my mind. I mean, I had promised. “What about Lupa?”

Olivia blinked at me, surprised. She recovered quickly, and smiled. “You could sacrifice to Lupa also. I’m sure she’ll appreciate it. Come on, I’ll show you how to make a sacrifice to a god without a temple.”

We ended up stoking the fire in an independent altar to the right of the Mars Temple. I dropped Freddy into the flames and muttered, “For Lupa.” I could almost see Lupa receiving it through the fireplace, and her pack startling before sniffing curiously at the intrusion. I fought back the smile at the thought.

Maybe Adolph could use it as a new chew toy.

Notes:

finally a canon character!!

Chapter 4: I nearly get skewered

Notes:

did I retconn Julia from existence in Chapter 2? you bet I did.
In an attempt to stick as close to canon as possible, I will be editing my work as inconsistencies are made apparent to me. Hopefully, the reread will become less cringey over time...
If anyone notices any inconsistencies, I'd be much obliged if you could let me know!

This chapter got a bit long, and thus was broken down into two parts. Hope you enjoy!

When Olivia and I made it back up the stairs to the Jupiter Optimus Maximus, Victor and Octavian were waiting expectantly for us. Octavian was even tapping his foot, like I was wasting precious time.

Victor rubbed the back of his head guiltily. “Sorry about this Percy. I really tried, but it really does seem like you’ll be betrayed by a friend in the future.”

“ Or, ” Octavian interrupted, with an infuriating smirk. “He will betray a friend. Smaller details are often foggy.” 

I don’t think we had the same definition for “small”. Either way, it looked like friends were a no-go for the foreseeable future. “Gee, thanks.”

Octavian eyed me critically, and sneered, as if I haven’t said anything. “Though I do have my suspicions, seeing as you are a Son of Neptune...”

Victor hissed and grabbed Octavian’s shoulder. “Stop that!”

Octavian shrugged him off angrily. “ Unhand me. It’s not like I said anything wrong!”

“Octavian, please, have a little tact—”

“Perhaps if you finally gain some dignity!”

“Boys,” Olivia said, her voice cutting through their squabble and brooking no argument. The two of them immediately separated and stood to attention. She rubbed the bridge of her nose. “Victor, you’re nearing thirty. Stop acting like a child.” The man blithely looked away, which didn’t go far in disproving her claim. “Octavian, you’re making a very serious and very unfounded accusation against a fellow legionnaire. Do you realize?”

Octavian immediately dipped his head. “My apologies, Praetor Osbourne,” he said, his tone almost sweet. “I must have gotten too worked up. I would never cast aspersions on the character of my fellow augur.” I noted with some disgruntlement that he didn’t say anything about me.

Olivia shook her head, exasperated. “The attitude on this kid,” she sighed, low enough that I didn’t think I was supposed to hear it. “And Percy,” I straightened when her eyes turned to me. “I know this isn’t printing a pretty picture for you, but our augurs very rarely make mistakes. Not about something this serious. Until we get this cleared up, I urge you to be careful.”

I nodded to show I understood. It wasn’t my imagination that the way she looked at me was slightly colder, either. I can’t picture traitors having that good of a rep around here.

Olivia looked grim, and addressed all three of us as a whole. “Suffice to say, we will not be informing the rest of the legionnaires or officers until my say-so. I will not stand for dissension in my ranks.” When Victor hesitantly raised a hand, she sighed. “I will inform Praetor Dane myself. But not a word from the rest of you. Am I understood?” Victor and I mumbled our assent, and she turned to raise an eyebrow at the only one who stood silent. “Octavian. Am I understood ?”

Octavian fidgeted a bit, before sighing. “Yes, Praetor Osbourne.”

“ Good . Dismissed.”

While Victor and Octavian made their way back to the Cohorts, Olivia motioned for me to hang back. When the two were safely out of earshot, she gestured again for me to follow and said, “I figured I should tell you this now, rather than later. I don’t want you to be surprised.” As she spoke, I realized that we were heading to one of the shrines near the edge of the hill. “Neptune is not a very popular among Romans.”

I bit back the you don’t say? that was right on the tip of my tongue.

Olivia must have seen the look on my face, however, because she smiled weakly. “I guess it was obvious. It’s not that we don’t respect Neptune. We fear him a bit too much not to.”

This felt like a weird reversal of the typical parent teacher conferences. Instead of my teacher airing their grievances about me to my mother, my leader was sighing about my father to me. “Did he...do something?”

“Something.” Olivia’s lips quirked up without humor. “Yeah, that’s one way to put it. One of his legacies caused an earthquake back in 1906. It was so strong that our entire base of operations was destroyed and subsequently flooded. Even now, when we hear Neptune, we think back to the sheer devastation of that day.”

I swallowed. Octavian’s snide commentary made more sense now. “Oh.”

We stopped in front of the poor, dilapidated shrine that belonged to my dad. Olivia looked at it emotionlessly. “At any rate, I believe in giving everyone a fighting chance. You’re going to get enough grief about who your dad is, and I don’t intend on adding more by revealing what happened at tonight’s divination. The Senators are usually elected for their maturity, but a good number of them aren’t exactly pleased to have you here. If things got too bad, well. It wouldn’t be the first time we kicked out a relation of Neptune through popular majority, and I don’t think you deserve that.” 

Was it just me, or did I hear an unspoken “yet”?

“You know,” Olivia picked up again, this time with a lighter tone. She walked away from the shrine, cloaked in none of the deadly seriousness she was carrying before. “Romans hold grudges a bit too long anyway. It can get a little ridiculous.” She smiled at me. “Sleep on that, yeah?”

I took the dismissal for what it was, and she led me back to the barracks.

Later that night, I laid in bed with my mind racing. There was a lot to digest, and I had a feeling that Olivia’s late night gossip wasn’t even the half of it. Not to mention the divination. I trusted that Olivia would do as she said, and keep it confidential. She gave off the aura of someone who held herself to her word. By extension, I also knew that Victor wouldn’t be saying a word. Octavian, on the other hand, was a different story.

Judging by the face he was making as he left, I wouldn’t be too surprised if he “accidentally” let something slip.

o-o-o-o-o-o

It wasn’t too hard to see what Olivia meant. The first day, I arrived late enough that there wasn’t enough time to do any grand introductions. The next morning was a different story.

I was still used to waking up at the crack of dawn. Luckily, there were enough friendly early risers that I could ask around and steadily navigate my way to the bathrooms and back. I made it as far as the main food court before introductions were in order and the camp’s attitude collectively flipped on its head. People who had been looking at me curiously now watched me cautiously. An older teenager who’d call my Minotaur horn “wicked cool,” and invited me to hang with him during breakfast, suddenly lost any recollection of ever meeting me.

I felt like a zoo attraction, sitting there eating my breakfast. Which wasn't fair, considering I'm pretty sure the camp was haunted by purple ghosts. Paranormal activity aside, people couldn’t decide whether they were fascinated by me or thought I was the second coming of the Earthshaker. If they kept this up, I couldn’t make any promises. It was almost like there was a part of them that wanted to fear me, and another part that smarted from being afraid of a twelve year old kid.

I had a few older legionnaires come up to me and size me up while I was eating. I didn’t know what they wanted, but probably wasn’t a kid with wide eyes and a mouthful of waffles.

After breakfast, I got my tattoo (by Pluto it stung . Victor winced at me sympathetically as he helped me apply it) and came back to learn that the rumor mill was working full time. Suddenly everybody and their mother knew of how I slaughtered the Minotaur. Some people were even claiming that I gored it with its own horn, which was stretching it a bit. I broke off the horn first, yeah, but I had a perfectly serviceable dagger on me.

I almost wish I did though. That would have earned me some serious street cred.

The upside was that while some campers really began avoiding me like the plague, others finally decided I was a cool enough specimen to actually interact with me. I had to field some pretty uncomfortable questions about my battle prowess (I had none) but at least now I had people who could point me to places, like where Latin classes were. There was also the Field of Mars, or the sparring grounds, which I was really itching to try out.

Oh yeah. Guess who I found in Latin? None other than Octavian himself. We were among the youngest kids there, and he was one level above me. I ignored him as best I could, trying to keep all of my non-existent attention span on the lesson, but it didn’t stop him from coming up to me after class.

“I’ll be keeping an eye on you, Jackson” he told me quietly, almost viciously. “Whatever it is you’re planning, you won’t get away with it.”

I watched him walk away in disbelief, because that had felt like it came straight out of movie. Could you get anymore cliché than that?

On my way back to the food court for lunch, I saw an elephant.

No, I’m not exaggerating.

It was gigantic, and had this thing that looked like a bulletproof vest and read “ELEPHANT”. Yeah, no duh. 

There were a group of demigods trying to herd it away from the barracks and in a direction between where the Cohorts and New Rome was. Some of the demigods have this little stone tablet clipped on them. I squinted and could barely make out the Latin scrawl on it. Probatio .

The ones who didn’t have the tablet were laughing among themselves, shouting some words that were too distant for me to make out and not very polite, judging by the way the probatios faces paled.

I had a pretty low tolerance for things like bullying. Call it personal, but I was not about to let it happen on my watch.

“Hey,” I shouted, picking up my pace. “ Hey ! What’s going on over here?”

The whole group of them glanced over to me, then visibility startled. I didn’t move my eyes away from the legionnaires.

“What’s it to you, kid?” The leader of the clique of legionnaires said, after a moment of stunned silence. He had tangled brown hair and a mean scar on his temple. “We’re just offering some friendly tips on how to care for Hannibal. We were in their shoes, once.”

“Yeah?” I asked. “That’s what you were doing?”

The probatios were looking at me like I was crazy. I heard the term “Son of Neptune” being tossed around, and ignored it. The elephant, seeming to wonder why no one was bothering it, turned back towards us questioningly.

Head Scar stared at me like he didn’t know what to make of me. “Why do I have to justify myself to you?” he asked, incredulous. “Didn’t you just become a legionnaire yesterday? I’ve been one for five years now—”

“Are you done?” I interrupted.

“Huh?”

“Are you done giving advice?” I clarified.

Head Scar exchanged looks with his groupies, one of whom went as far as to shrug at him. “Yeah. I guess.” He didn’t sound very certain.

I simply said, “Okay,” and waited.

It took a few long seconds, but eventually Head Scar rubbed his head and walked away, the rest of his friends following him. That left the three probatios , who all spurred into motion when the elephant realized the show was over and started to move again.

“Heel!” The lone girl of the trio said, frantically. “Heel, Hannibal!”

I was not trained in the art of elephant rearing, so I awkwardly backed off and left them to it. Before I took more than a few steps away, the taller of the remaining two boys suddenly called out to me.

“Son of Neptune! Thank you!”

“You’re welcome!” I called back. “And the name’s Percy!”

The elephant stomped its foot in frustration, and my reply was probably drowned out in the trumpeting as it threw a minor tantrum. The three of them nodded at me, awkwardly, and didn’t offer me their names back. I heard some yelling, and watched a purple ghost come barreling in, beelining for one of the male probatios.

“Good luck with that!” I shouted, gesturing to the whole situation, and headed off to lunch.

The rest of the day was spent on classes like Republicanism 101 (the Roman government, not a political party), Mythological Creatures and You, and Proper Weapon Etiquette: Caring for Your New Best Friends. Okay, so maybe I was embellishing their names. The original names were much more boring.

It wasn’t until I was laying down on my bunk that it finally sunk in how homesick I was. Not even just for my mom; I was slowly getting used to that. But also for Lupa and her pack. The snores of my fellow legionnaires threw me back to puppy piles Adolph would sometimes invite or physically push me into.

I wish I had a friend like Adolph here. I hope he was doing alright.

I wonder how long it would take before he forgot me.

I clutched at the elk antler (thoroughly rinsed and disinfected), and laid there until I fell asleep.

o-o-o-o-o-o

The next day came with weapons training, and I was down for it. Lupa beat endurance and physical fitness into with everything she had, but didn’t really teach me how to use a weapon beyond “stab” and “stab harder.” I was pretty stoked to get my hands on something larger than a dagger.

I probably shouldn’t have raised my hopes too high though, because the overall weapon selection process was just short of a disaster. I just couldn’t seem to mesh very well with traditional Roman weapons.

Spears were alright if used for less than five minutes, after which I’d usually end up chucking them at something and rendering myself weaponless. They shifted me to the other frontline weapons after I was put at spearpoint the third time in a row. I had an uncanny pilum throwing arm, but was absolutely abysmal at the bow. 

There was a time when I was startled while firing an arrow, and the projectile ended up stabbing into the ground behind me, narrowing missing my archery instructor by an inch.

It deemed safer that I didn’t try anymore.

The only area that I truly excelled at was sword fighting, and long sword fighting at that. A spatha in hand felt right in ways I couldn’t explain. The instructors didn’t look very pleased with my weapon of choice, but couldn’t deny my natural ability with it. I was told I could trade my archery classes for spatha lessons instead, an offer which I took gladly.

Next were the drills. The sergeant there was a legacy of Mars and absolutely ruthless, and refused to let my entire Cohort go until everyone was on the same page. If even one foot was out of position, she had us running through the motions for another twenty repetitions.

Something primal in me was convinced that these things were a matter of life or death, so I didn’t complain. Much.

I continued to acclimate to the camp over the course of the week. The only thing of note was that Octavian was almost always around whenever we weren’t doing Cohort specific activities. He really intended to keep an eye on me, and I couldn’t figure out a way to tell him that he was probably just wasting his time.

We even managed some civil conversations on days when he decided to tone down his superiority complex.

“Today is your lucky day, Jackson” Octavian began conversationally one day. “They found you an instructor for your spatha lessons.”

I paused in my chewing, and swallowed. “Woah. Really?” My surprise was excusable. Despite the original promise, spatha instructors were apparently as rare as unicorns. “Who?”

Octavian sniffed, relishing in the fact that he knew something I didn’t. “I suppose you’ll just have to find out. I’ll see you later, Jackson.”

My instructor turned out to be William, Praetor extraordinaire, who I hadn’t seen since that first night. I had to wonder why he agreed, because he really didn’t look that happy to see me.

“Thanks for helping me out, Praetor Dane.” I said, to break the awkward silence. “I didn’t know you used the spatha .”

“Hm.” He was a man of few words.

He didn’t let that or his prejudice hinder his ability to teach, though. Under his tutelage, I was improving by leaps and bounds. Some moves were easier to pick up than others, but all of them were leagues easier than using the pilum or the gladius .

From our third lesson onward, we started attracting an audience. William shooed them away the first few times, but eventually gave up and let them gawk. Today, we were going over how to disarm your opponent. The move was hard to wrap my head around, using a flat blade to somehow hook and twist the weapon out of your opponent’s hand, and William was experiencing some rare frustration in trying to explain it to me.

“New approach,” he told me. “Armor up, no shields. We’ll spar in twenty minutes.”

I wasn’t the only one excited by the idea. By the time I suited up with some old, hand-me-down armor, our little section in the Field of Mars was completely enclosed by an audience, purple togas and purple glowing people alike. A little nerve-wracking, but Lupa and her wolves had done worse.

“ Paratus ?” William called over from the opposite end of the field, his voice slightly muffled by his helmet.

I tightened my grip on my blade. “ Ita. ”

“For the Glory of Rome!” The phrase echoed like a gunshot, and then we were both off. The crowd roared behind us.

The distance between us was closed quickly; William had long legs and I had good reflexes. My strength, on the other hand, couldn’t match up to his, so the first time our blades crossed my fingers went numb.

I backed up before I could lose my grip, holding my spatha before me defensively. William didn’t pursue his advantage, waiting for me to take the lead.

I danced a bit to his left, before taking a large step forward and jabbing my spatha forward. William parried it easily, then just as casually blocked the high-speed slash I followed up with.

I clicked my tongue, and switched my blade back over to my right hand. We’d found out that despite my right hand being my dominant hand, I was near ambidextrous when it came to swordfighting.

We kept it up for a while, stabbing and deflecting each other’s attacks, pushing each other back. William did more of the latter than I did, and with my stellar evasion ability we’d traversed half the circle in under five minutes.

The crowd had fallen silent as to not disturb our concentration, but I had already forgotten that they were there. My entire vision narrowed down to the swinging blade in William’s hand, tracing its path in almost slow motion. I subconsciously catalogued the way his arm muscles tensed, the positioning of his feet. My chance was coming. I hunched my stance.

He took a step forward. I took one back, and braced the leg. Almost.

William took another step forward, and that’s when I struck. I shot forward, slamming the flat of my spatha against his, planting my feet, and twisting —

It wasn’t enough to knock it out of his hands, but it was a good hit nonetheless. William wasn’t expecting the sudden offense, and fumbled with the hilt. I switched my spatha to my other hand, and pursued my advantage, honing in on that small gap in the side of William’s chest armor.

A sudden blow slammed the spatha right out of my hands. My hands stung from the impact, and I was too confused to react when a sharp pain came from my right. Distantly, I realized it matched up with the gap where my old, borrowed armor had rusted.

The field had gone utterly silent. I barely even noticed. The slim shadow cast over my face was all the warning I had for a hard, ringing blow against my skull.

That was the last I knew.

o-o-o-o-o-o

"Follow my finger. Good, like that. Alright, this is going to be a bit bright but hang in there."

"—looking good, but I'll keep him under until the ambrosia wears off—"

“—nasty scar, but it won’t affect his mobility—”

“—a concussion, William! What were you thinking —”

“—please calm down or leave, Praetor—”

“—better than this!—”

“—sorry—”

“—don’t see—”

“—be alright?”

“Yeah, he will.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

I woke up feeling like a Pegasus was tap-dancing on my skull, and groaned. The smell of antiseptic, while bringing with it some bad memories, clued me into my new location. I didn’t think I’d be visiting the medical center this soon.

“Oh good, you’re awake.” Hands helped me into a sitting position, and handed me a small cup with a sippy straw. “Drink that up, and we’ll talk about what you remember.”

I did as I was told, and groaned for a completely new reason. The drink tasted startlingly like my mom’s cookies but in liquid form. It was absolutely delicious, and I found myself dejectedly trying to get at the remaining few drops. It had been gone before I knew it.

A stern-faced old man with grey hairs walked into my line of sight, holding onto a stethoscope in one hand. When he saw me looking at it, he shrugged. “Ambrosia is usually a cure-all, but just to be sure. Take deep breaths.”

I breathed in and out slowly as the cool metal pressed against different points in my skin. I tried to remember what happened. I was…sparring, right? Against William. Did he put me in here?

The doctor must have found whatever it was he was looking for, because he put away the stethoscope with an approving nod. “Looks like you’re all clear. Sit tight, there are some people that want to talk to you.”

I nodded at him distractedly, before laying back on the bed. A sharp pain shot up my side, followed by a dull ache, and I suddenly remembered William stabbing me there. I furrowed my brows. What had happened? William was usually so in control, and was always very precise and methodical when he taught. Was it his intention to put me in the hospital?

He didn’t seem like the type.

The door to the hut eased open, and I looked up to see Olivia gently making her way in. She smiled when she saw that I was awake. “Hello, Percy.”

“‘Lo,” I croaked, my voice a little raw from disuse. “‘Long was I out?”

Olivia walked up to my bedside. “Doc kept you overnight, if you mean overall. From being knocked out? About 10 minutes. William hit you very hard on the head.”

So it was him. “Why?”

Olivia looked like a strange mixture of sad, disappointed, and absolutely furious. “That’s something you’ll have to ask him yourself, Percy. Rest assured, it will never happen again.”

I must have been out of it, because it took me a while to realize that Olivia was looking at me expectantly. “...Sorry, did you need something?”

“Not exactly.” Olivia said, then: “William’s waiting outside. If you want to see him.”

It hadn’t even occurred to me to not want to see him. “Yeah. Uh. Send him in.”

Olivia gave this partly affectionate, and partly proud look that I didn’t really know what to do with. I hoped I wasn’t turning red. She didn’t say anything as she made her way to the door, and the next thing I knew, William was shoved into the room with the door slamming decisively shut behind him.

We stared at each other mutely for a few seconds before William sighed, and ran a tired hand through his hair. “Can we talk, Percy?”

Chapter 5: I get promoted to errand boy

Summary:

Percy meets a god, reunites with an immortal. It's a wild time.

Maybe it was the fact that William was asking me to talk as if we were equals, but I instinctively sat straighter. "Sure."

William looked somewhat defeated when he sat down at my bedside. He laced and unlaced his fingers, staring down at them consideringly. I waited for him to speak.

“Do you know how old I am, Percy?”

That wasn't the question I was expecting. Was this a trick question? Did the rule about asking a woman her age apply here? I decided to play it safe. “...twenty-five?”

“Try thirty." I blinked. William didn't look ancient, by any means, but I didn't expect a thirty year old to already have streaks of grey. Then I remembered that my mom did, and suppressed a wince. Raising me must have not been easy. William continued speaking. "I was using the sword for longer than you've been alive. I never slacked in training. I might even consider myself a master at it.”

“You’re really good." I reassured him. There was no doubt in my mind he'd always gone easy on me, our last lesson excluded. And even then, I doubt he gave everything he got. "I could barely touch you.”

“You weren’t supposed to." William didn't look up. I tried not to wince, but that was pretty harsh. "Call it arrogance, but... I never even entertained the thought that you could land a hit on me. The difference between our expertise should have spoken for itself." He sighed, wearily. "Do you know how humiliating it was that you almost disarmed me? No," he corrected, "that you did disarm me? You? You're twelve .”

I didn't know what to say to that. Suddenly I was beginning to regret this conversation. I figured William would say something like, "Sorry I tried to cave in your skull," and I could reply, "Nah it's cool, I forgive you" and we could put this behind us.

William drew in a shaky breath. “Gods, Percy. I’m so sorry. I started, I started moving , trying to suppress the fear that you were about to surpass me, and I did this to you. I’m just. I shouldn't be making excuses. I’m so sorry.”

It sounded like he was really beating himself up about this. I couldn't help but feel bad for him. “It wasn’t too bad. All I have is a concussion and a stab wound, right?”

“It was exactly that bad." William disagreed, vehement. "Percy, that was the sort of wound you’d bleed out from . And...Whether it was the concussion or the stab wound, it never should have happened. I never should have lost it like that.”

“I forgive you,” I tried.

William finally met my eyes. He looked terrible. His eyes were reddened and he looked like he hadn’t slept for a week. His jaw, however, was set. “...I thought it over while you were unconscious, and I decided. I refuse to become that sort of man. Instead, I want to be happy for you. I want to guide you. I’ll make you the best swordsman the Romans have ever seen. I’ll help you become greater than I’ll ever be.” 

I gaped at him.

He looked embarrassed. “That is, if you’re still willing to spar with me. I can find a different teacher if you’re not comfortable with it.”

“Dude,” I managed, finally. My mouth was on autopilot. “That’s...that’s great. Really cool of you. Thanks. I’d appreciate it, Praetor Dane.”

William offered me something like a smile, but it was still tense and weary. “Let’s get along, Percy.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

That conversation filled up my quota for “personal talks” for the week. William hung around for a bit more, giving me the details on what my new schedule would be like, before he left. When he did, I leaned back against my pillows and just felt drained.

The doctor came back shortly after William walked through the door. I didn’t even realize when he left. It was too awkward for me to ask, so I kept silent. We were currently checking my nerve sensitivity in my side.

“A little sensitive than expected, but still normal,” the doctor had decided, after a hard press left me hissing and flinching away. “Now you just have to rest and let this heal properly. I’ve told your Cohort Leader to exclude from the drills for a month.”

“A month?” I protested, the words coming out before I knew it. “That’s way too long!” It had finally sunk in what William was offering me, and sue me but I was excited.

The doc peered at me over his glasses, eyes cold. “‘Too long,’ is it? Listen here, in this room, my word is law. Keep up this rush and if you don’t pull those stitches, I will, boy. ”

I shut my mouth.

The doc shook his head. “Honestly, what’s the hurry with all you kids?”

He packed up his devices with practical efficiency, and turned back to me. “Someone will be by to bring you your dinner. Any questions before I go?”

“Uh, yeah.” Snippets of conversation from when I was unconscious slipped into my mind. A voice, male but younger than William or the doc. “Did someone else visit? Besides the praetors?”

“You mean the augur boy?” the doc asked. I furrowed my brows. Victor? “Yeah, he came around once or twice. Good on you for having a friend, kid. Treasure them while you still can.”

Something about his last statement had me whipping my head up, my breath caught in my throat. Did he know…? No. Olivia would have told me if someone let it slip. And the old man blinked at me, giving nothing away in his blue eyes. 

Then I paused for a different reason. He had put away his glasses, and the startling blue of his eyes, wide and childlike, felt like a distant memory was unlocking. He suddenly looked imminently familiar, even if I’ve never seen him before today. He also looked unreachable, with the solemn face and bright, unsmiling eyes, like some historical figure from long ago.

My mouth was dry. I didn’t care. “Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Not in so many words, no,” the doctor said.

I pressed on. “Could you remind me of your name?”

The doctor turned away, and it felt like some spell was broken. I was suddenly confused on where my sudden interest came from. “Didn’t give it. You should know it with as much certainty as your first word, anyway.”

The memory finally came to me. My mom and her popup storybook on Roman gods, coming to a pause on a young, gleeful toddler. Percy, do you know who this is?

A fake god , I remember declaring confidently. The people made him up .

Then by that definition all gods are fake gods , my mother said, amused. Not fake, Percy. A god created by the people. The Romans wanted their children’s first words to be special, and so created a god for it.

I was young, so I think the moral of that story was something like “you can do anything if you put your mind to it!” I had long since grown out of fairy tales, but I still remember the name because of its resemblance to a more often used word. “Fabulous. No, Fabulinus. You’re Fabulinus, right? The god of a child’s first words?”

The doctor went still, and turned around. “Well that’s not something every kid knows these days. Who taught you about me, child?”

“My mother.” I frowned. “Why are you a doctor? Why is a god here in Camp Jupiter?” Then I remembered Terminus, and corrected myself. “Another god?”

“Because I don’t belong anywhere else.”

I blinked. “What?”

Fabulinus looked at me, raising an eyebrow. “You said it yourself, didn’t you? I’m a fake god.”

I started, ready to protest that I did no such thing, when I realized he was referring to the memory he jarred loose. I tried not to blush. “I was really little. I swear I didn’t mean it.”

Fabulinus shook his head, and grabbed his glasses. “Perhaps not. But others who’ve lived far longer than you do. I don’t blame them. I manifested straight from popular culture, when much of the Roman mythos was already established. Battles had already been fought, sides had already been chosen. And all I could do was listen to children babble. I was quite a laughing stock, you see.”

Now that was just unfair. “You don’t have to take that from them,” I told him. “You’re important in your own way.”

The doctor had put his glasses back on. “That’s kind of you to say. But habits don’t change, boy. Vices of a millennium are harder to undo than you think.”

“That’s ridiculous. Everyone needs to start somewhere, right?” I insisted. “Being a god isn’t an excuse for being a jerk.” Thunder rumbled in the distance. I didn’t pay it any mind.

Fabulinus didn’t seem that enthusiastic about continuing our conversation. “I think that’s enough. I’ll let the guest waiting outside know he can come in.”

“Wait!” I called, but he didn’t so much as look back. The door slammed on me, throwing the room into sudden stillness.

Then the door opened again, and Octavian poked his head in. Taking in the disarray of my bed sheets from when I tried to get up, he raised an eyebrow. “Am I interrupting something, Jackson?”

“No,” I said, finally, and left it at that.

Turns out, Octavian was the one to bring me my dinner. He acted snide about it and my general inability to leave the bed, so I got fed up and asked him why he bothered.

Octavian sighed. “Who am I to deny Praetor Osbourne? She was under the impression that we were friends. Do you have any idea why, Jackson?”

I was scarfing down the pasta after realizing how famished I was. “No idea,” I told him around a mouthful of carbs, and went back to business. 

Then I paused.

“So,” I began, and Octavian looked up from his copy of San Francisco Chronicle . “Why are you still here?”

Octavian’s lips twitched. “Perhaps I just wanted to check up on you, Jackson.”

“Pull the other one,” I told him flatly.

“Did you provoke him?” Octavian asked, a gleam in his eyes that I couldn’t interpret but didn’t like. “No, you must have. He would never lose his temper like that otherwise. That was quite dastardly of you. What did you say to him?”

I stared at him. “To who?”

Octavian’s look told me just how highly he was rating my intelligence right then. “Praetor Dane, Jackson. Did he really knock out your last remaining brain cells?”

“Hey,” I scowled. “And I didn’t say anything. He was just acting on instinct.”

Octavian scoffed, giving me a critical once over. “Really. He did that to you on instinct.” It sure didn’t sound like a question.

I shrugged. “There were some extenuating factors. He must have been under a lot of stress or something. I don’t know.”

“So basically you believed whatever lie he fed you.” Octavian said, unimpressed.

“No,” I said, starting to feel irritated. “Because I don’t think he lied to me. Why would he have it out for me?”

“No? No reason at all?” Octavian’s eyebrow raised higher. “No prophecies or anything? No betrayal you’re trying to commit?”

At this point, I didn’t even know who Octavian was trying to dig up information about. Was he just excavating whatever he could like some demented miner? “No,” I said slowly. “Because I really doubt someone who fears what I’ll do in the future would offer to mentor me in swordsmanship.”

The augur blinked in surprise, then leaned back and smiled like the cat that ate the canary. “Oh, now I see. So this was your goal all along then, Jackson?”

He’d finally gone crazy. I stared at him again. “What?”

“You...really don’t have a mind for politics, do you?” Octavian asked, finally.

I frowned. “You know, that just sounded really insulting.”

He waved me off. “Don’t you worry about it then. Pluto knows I don’t need competition.” Then before I could say anything, he switched subjects. “What will happen in five years?”

I was speechless. “You really need to work on your conversational skills,” I told him. “I literally cannot follow your thought process. Is this a quiz? I don’t know. What’s happening in five years?”

Octavian rolled his eyes. It was the most human thing he’d done all day, and I was beginning to think he was an alien. “If I knew, why would I be asking you , Jackson?”

Never mind. He was absolutely incomprehensible. “ You —”

“Now though, I see that this entire endeavor was useless. I don’t know why I suspected otherwise. Later, Jackson.”

By Jupiter’s Grace, I hoped that I wouldn’t be that annoying when I turn thirteen. Then I remembered something that Fabulinus said, and felt my suspicions form into something improbable but possible. There was no way, right?

“Wait, Octavian.”

He turned around, expectantly. “Jackson, I don’t have time to cater to your whims. What is it?”

I had to go for it. “Did you visit me while I was unconscious?”

His shoulders tensed, immediately going on the defensive. A dead giveaway.

“It was you,” I realized. Before I could stick my foot in my mouth and ask something like why in Pluto’s name Octavian had already huffed and turned around angrily.

“That thrice-damned doctor needs to mind his own business,” he snapped, and strode through the opened door. For the second time today, a door slammed on me.

I laid back down on the bed, stunned. A faint conversation played in my head.

Will he be alright?

Yeah, he will .

Suddenly, I remembered Olivia joking that Octavian and I would be fast friends due to our closeness in age. Or maybe, as it turned out, she was deadly serious. He checked up on me. He brought me dinner. I was also beginning to doubt Olivia asked him to, since she didn’t seem like the type to delegate personal tasks like this. It all amounted to one central conclusion.

“Well, Styx,” I cursed to the empty room.

Octavian and I were friends.

o-o-o-o-o-o

The next morning, I was released from my hospital bed by a doctor/god who refused to speak to me, and made a beeline for New Rome and the food court. I found Octavian playing with his food while his usual crowd, a group of loud, buff First Cohort people were laughing and talking to each other loudly. Everyone else was giving their table a wide berth.

I walked up and put my food tray on the table. The table collectively went quiet, then eyed me warily. Probably wondering what the Son of Neptune was doing at their table after the Praetor that came from their Cohort brained me with his sword. I had heard some mutters that I was there to extract my vengeance or something equally outlandish. Did no one know how to whisper quietly?

I ignored them all, and focused on the guy I was currently across the table from. “Octavian,” I said. “Do you have time to talk?”

One of the loud and buff people finally seemed to notice me and, by extension, him. “Octavian, that someone you know?”

“I rather think everyone knows the Son of Neptune,” Octavian said snidely, before freezing and snapping his mouth shut.

Before the quip could settle in the wrong way, I continued bulldozing my way in. “Yeah. Son of Neptune. Rawr, scary. That’s me. Do you have time for a talk or not?”

“Well, I guess I can’t help it.” Octavian sighed, picking up his tray. “I’ll take my leave, legionnaires. My deepest apologies for interrupting your meal.”

Ego stroked, the others at the table didn’t make much of a fuss. One even nodded at Octavian and wished him luck. With me, presumably.

“Well, what is it, Jackson?” Octavian asked, once we were safely out of earshot of the food court.

I eyed him sideways. “Is that really the crowd you hang out with?”

Octavian raised an eyebrow. “Why, do they not meet your standards?” he sneered.

“Actually, yeah.” I told him frankly. “Those are the people I saw picking on probatios the other day. All they do is brag about who their great grandaddy are. They have maybe three brain cells between them. You’re the ambitious sort, right? Can’t you do better than that? Than them?” I corrected.

Octavian turned away pointedly. “It’s none of your business.”

“Definitely not,” I agreed. “I just. I don’t know. They kind of suck. You’d suck too if you turned out like them.”

“Because your approval means so much to me,” Octavian said wryly. “Jupiter knows what I’ll do without it.”

“Probably more than you’d do hanging out with them.”

Octavian fell silent. I had no idea if what I was saying was sinking in, or if he was reconsidering following me. "Is this all you wanted, Jackson?"

"Not even close." I told him. Belatedly, I realized we had both orientated ourselves towards Temple Hill. "Yesterday, you said something about five years. What is that supposed to mean?"

Octavian muttered something about not saying anything under his breath, before turning to me. "What do I get if I tell you?"

"How old are we?" I asked, incredulous. "Do we have to sign a pact in blood, too?"

He gave me the stink eye. "I think, Jackson, you'll find that this is the way the adult world works." He said icily, before dropping the pretense. I didn't like the look in his eye. "If you don't have any ideas, how about a favor? One I can cash in in the future."

"I'm not selling my soul like that." Part of me wondered what favor I could even do for him. Did he want me to hand out flyers while he ran for Praetorship or something? "And you know, you could just ask ."

Octavian's reply took a while to come. "There's no fun in that," he said dismissively. "Now will you or won't you, Jackson? I don't have all day."

"A favor of equal or less worth to the information you provide." I bargained. Sue me, but I was curious.

Octavian had the nerve to look surprised, but didn't argue. "Deal."

The end of our journey approached, and soon we were standing before the Jupiter Optimus Maximus. A purple ghost startled when we approached, and fled down the fields. I really should ask someone about that.

"Victor tried to divine your future again, after that first day." Octavian said, staring at the pedestal. "This time, the consultation only returned one message: five year's time ."

Wow, great. Now I had a time frame to betray or be betrayed. I frowned. "That's it? There was nothing else?"

Octavian nodded, contemplative. "That was it. It's frowned on to question the messages of the gods, or else Victor or myself would have tried to gather more information. The uncertainty of it is normal, but frustrating. Which is why I asked you."

"Huh." I was beginning to think that augury wasn't all it was hyped up to be. I had finally remembered the story of the Oracle. She had been blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed in that no one wanted to believe her. She ended up watching many people, good and bad, toss themselves into horrific endings by the Fate's choosing, helpless to redirect them (Mom’s words).

Sometimes, gods were cruel.

Something that sounded like a flap, like a whipping fabric in the wind sounded from behind us, minus the breeze. Octavian and I stiffened, and turned around. The apprentice augur took a step back in shock. I was stunned too.

Standing before us was none other than my sixth grade pre-Algebra teacher. Except she had claws. And bat wings. It began to seem more and more likely she wasn’t my pre-Algebra teacher.

“Mrs. Dodds ?” I asked anyway, flabbergasted.

Octavian pulled me back and hissed, “Who in Pluto’s name is Dodds, Jackson? That’s a Kindly One! How did it get into camp?”

“Kindly One?” I repeated.

“One of Lord Pluto’s servants. Very hostile to half-bloods.” Octavian explained tersely, carefully reaching behind him for the sacrificial dagger. I hadn’t brought any of my weapons, seeing as I was going to walk past Terminus this morning. That’s definitely a habit to change, if I survived this encounter.

“Perseus Jackson,” my monstrous Algebra teacher cackled out. “How very nice to see you again. You look delectable, honey. My master has an errand for you.”

“How does she know you?” Octavian asked furtively.

“She was my pre-Algebra teacher,” I whispered back. “Back when I was in Colorado.” Then, louder. “By master, do you mean Lord Pluto?”

“Now who else could it be?” Mrs. Dodds rolled her shoulders in one inhuman thrust. Now that I was looking at her more clearly, she didn’t look all the way there. The edges of her form were wispy, like shadows. In fact, her entire visage felt translucent and darkened. “But you see, I don’t agree with my master’s suggestion. What can a demigod do that I, Alecto, cannot?”

She was also looking more opaque by the second. I suddenly felt a small, elliptical weight settle into my pockets and breathed out a sigh in relief. Riptide . William had recognized the Greek artifact easily enough when I finally remembered to pull it out, but made me promise to refrain from using it on account of the Roman hatred for all things Greek. Which was a shame, because Riptide really was a thing of beauty.

By now, Mrs. Dodds was fully tangible. The flap of her bat wings sent an actual breeze flying our way. “I always did say...that the only thing demigods were good for was to be eaten!” She opened her mouth wide, all hundred of her razor sharp shark teeth on display, and stormed at us like a demented fruit bat.

I whipped out Riptide, the pen changing naturally into a sword in a single swing, and I caught my pre-Algebra teacher and part time Underground henchwoman in the shoulder. The vision of her flickered as my sword cut through her like a hot knife through butter, and she shrieked inhumanely. She began twisting away from us in two halves, pulsing between a shadowed form and tangible monster flesh, before her body decided to give up and burst into golden dust.

Octavian made a quiet noise that I wholeheartedly emphasized with as we were covered in golden dust. The sound of sand sifting over stone caught our attention, and we turned back to the pedestal in the Jupiter Optimus Maximus.

We watched, stupefied, as some of the golden dust arranged themselves into readable words.

AD DOMUN LOTOPHAGI
LAS VEGAS, NEVADA

Well. As far as messages and prophecies went, it didn’t get much clearer than that.

“Since then messenger decided to shoot me,” I began, quietly. “Does this mean I can refuse this quest?”

Octavian shot me a look: you think? , it seemed to say. Or maybe, you just killed a math teacher from hell and this is what you ask about?

Yeah, I didn’t think so.

Chapter 6: I get sucked into a pyramid scheme

Half a month after I arrived at camp, I found myself standing in front of the towel squad again. This time, Olivia and William were sitting in the audience seats, giving us encouraging smiles. While, Olivia did, at any rate.

Octavian was next to me, patiently repeating the sequence of events that led up to us standing before the Senate. It was already his fifth time, and I had been banned from speaking after I asked one of the Senators if he was deaf.

Speaking of, Beard Guy interrupted us again. “Are you sure that the Kindly One addressed Percy Jackson and only Percy Jackson?”

“Yes, centurio Byrn.”

“Very well. Continue.”

In some ways, this was an improvement. Before I was non verbally told to shut up, Shoulder Freckles and Studded Collar were demanding evidence that I wasn’t the one to summon the Kindly One, seeing as we apparently knew each other. Apparently, ‘I can’t control shadows’ was considered a barely passable excuse.

Octavian finished his recount once more, and waited before the Senators for their decision. You really had to admire him for toughing it out like that. He started clenching his fists about the third repetition, but it didn’t show on his face.

We’d tacitly agreed to leave my very Greek weapon out of this, and say I slew Mrs. Dodds with the sacrificial dagger. I couldn’t imagine how long this would take if they knew about Riptide.

I noticed William boring holes into me. When he saw that he had my attention, his eyes flicked down to my pockets. I nodded slightly at him, and after a thoughtful pause, he nodded back.

Olivia clapped once, the sound ringing through the contemplative silence. Her face was unsmiling. “I think the situation is very cut and dry, then. Isn’t it, Senators?”

William pitched in, quietly. “Legionnaire Percy Jackson has been entrusted a task by Lord Pluto. As it is the will of a god, we should allow Percy a temporary reprieve of duties to attend to this.”

They both looked at Miranda, who nodded agreeably. “I’ll get one of his bunkmates to pick up the slack.” I had a feeling I wasn’t going to be too popular with my Cohort after this.

“Perfect,” Olivia said. “Do we have any dissenters from the council?”

Bob Cut raised her hands. “No dissent, but who else are we sending on this quest?”

“Octavian is staying here,” Victor said immediately. “I don’t care that he was present at the scene, he’s not done with his apprenticeship.”

Octavian’s shoulders slumped slightly in relief, and I side-eyed him. So this was as far as his loyalty extended, fleeing at the thought of the first inconvenience. He must have caught on to my thoughts, because he shrugged in a what can you do sort of way.

Studded Collar crossed her arms. “Well, I for one don’t think this should be spread any farther than this room. A monster in camp will cause panic.”

Large Hands nodded. “ Centurio Okada has a point. I believe we should send legionnaire Jackson on this quest alone, as the Kindly One had requested.”

Olivia looked like she was about to protest, but William was quicker, settling a hand on her shoulder. “Does anyone in the Senate raise a dissenting opinion?”

No one did, either too apathetic or too comfortable with the current state of things to do so.

William looked at me apologetically, and turned back to the council. “Very well. What about equipment?”

Shoulder Freckles frowned. “Equipment? The traditional Roman way—”

“Legionnaire Jackson is allowed to bring any weapons and armor assigned to or belonging to him,” Miranda, the senior centurion of my Cohort, said simply, with an undercurrent of steel. “We Romans aren’t thieves and would never deny him his belongings. Right?”

The shade thrown was so overt even I picked up on it. Some of the Senate shifted uneasily, but did not dare raise a protest. I was suddenly beginning to see what Olivia meant about how not every Senator was enthused to have me around.

“And what about currency, esteemed Senators?”

It took me a second to realize that it was Octavian who was speaking this time. Judging by the faces in the audience, others were similarly surprised that he took the initiative. Large Hands and Shoulder Freckles were among the most startled.

Olivia didn’t miss a beat. “In today’s society, we cannot expect Percy to navigate to Las Vegas without any money. Centurio Johannes, how much are we under in this year’s spending reports?”

Glasses choked when he was suddenly put in the spotlight, and fumbled with his clipboard. “Uh, a hundred fifty two dollars and thirty two cents, Praetor Osbourne.” 

Olivia’s answering smile was bright and harsh. “A hundred dollars seems adequate.”

It took a moment for the implications to settle in, but when it did several Senators immediately stood up in protest. Olivia’s smile didn’t waver, but I could tell from William’s tired expression that we were in for the long haul.

Later, after the Senate was successfully argued down and I was granted fifty dollars and thirty two cents, I ran into a whole different opponent: my godly doctor.

“No,” Fabulinus was saying. “Absolutely not.”

“Dr. Sermo,” Olivia said, voice tight. Octavian watched their interaction with fascination. “Please don’t be difficult on this. Lord Pluto decreed it.”

Fabulinus snorted, showing exactly how much he valued ‘Lord Pluto’s decree.’ “My patient, my rules. He just left my care today. Unless you perhaps want him to pull a stitch?”

Olivia slumped. “Fine. When’s the earliest he can leave?”

“How urgent is it?” Fabulinus countered, but he was looking at me.

I considered the assassination attempt by math teacher and Pluto’s reputation. “Kind of very urgent.”

The doc didn’t look too happy. “He can leave in two day's then,” he conceded. “But I want one more check-in the morning of.”

“Will do,” I went through the motions for a sloppy salute. No one seemed too happy with my cheek, but nor were they inclined to scold me for it.

William was the one to extract me from the situation, using the excuse of running more drills. Actually, that was misleading. We really did go through the drills, making sure that my side didn’t bother me too much when I attempted to block or strike. But while he made sure not to overtax me, there was a strange urgency in his commands.

During one of my breaks, William sat down next to me and offered me a water bottle. I took it gratefully, but couldn’t help but wonder where all this niceness was coming from. Did he actually feel that bad over knocking me in the head?

When I asked him as much (somehow, it was much easier being honest with him), he shook his head. “Not quite.” He raised an eyebrow. “Is my ‘being nice’ making you uncomfortable, legionnaire?”

“No, of course not, Praetor Dane,” I denied.

William sighed in such deep exhaustion it took me back, and tilted his head back. “I thought I’d have more time to show you the ropes. I thought I had years. And now it turns out I have little more than a day. How am I supposed to do this in a day ?”

“There’ll be more days after I come back though,” I said, confused.

“Will there?” He said, distantly.

Somehow, I understood the morbid turn his thought process took. Then something else became clear to me. Olivia’s frigidity in the Senate meeting, William’s resignation. The glances that the Senators snuck at me that in hindsight began to look a lot like pity. Victor’s vehemence.

I wondered if Octavian knew that the Senate thought they were signing my death sentence. I hoped not. I swallowed, trying to move past the lump in my throat.

“I’m not letting you weasel out of it,” I told William finally. “You said you were going to train me, and I’m going to hold you to that.” 

William didn’t look at me, and took a sip from his own water bottle.

“I’m coming back.”

His frown deepened.

“You should have more faith in the student you chose,” I said, a little affronted.

When he finally met my eyes, he just looked sad and defeated. “Yeah, I should, shouldn’t I?”

This time, I was the one to frown.

His face turned grim. “Nothing to it, then. Get up, Jackson. Fifty more repetitions.”

I followed him up. “Yes, sir.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

I had quite an important crowd show up to my send off. The godly doctor, the apprentice augur, and both Praetors all found time in their schedules to say goodbye. Octavian was angrily gritting his teeth, which was enough to give me a little hope. I squashed it down. I couldn’t afford to be disappointed.

I had my spatha (I had finally named Lagoon, a name that was just as long as it was), the dagger Lupa gave me which I was temporarily calling Fang (unoriginal, I know, I know), and Riptide. There was around fifty dollars sitting in the inner pocket of my backpack. It was also more money than I’ve ever had on me at once.

Olivia came up first, and bent down to give me a hug. “Be safe, Percy,” she whispered. When she pulled away, she gripped my hand and slipped a folded paper with something round and flat in it. I closed my hand around it. Several things. Denarii.

“Hopefully, it can help you out.” My praetor smiled weakly, but then it fell flat. “I’m sorry, Percy. You’re still so young.” She sucked in a breath. “I would go with you, but. I’m a praetor. I cannot abandon Rome unattended. I’ll pray for your safe return.”

A part of me felt irritated at the meaningless of that statement, but another part appreciated the sentiment. For what it was worth, I could tell she was sincere. I didn’t know how to respond, so I nodded and waited for Olivia to go.

William came up next, and dropped some jackets and scarves into my arms. “It’s cold out there,” he said. Considering that it was late November and thus ‘cold’ could at times be an understatement, I took them and slipped the large sweater over my breast plate.

When the Praetors departed for their other duties, Octavian stormed up to me. “I overheard a conversation yesterday,” he hissed accusingly, as if it was my fault he was eavesdropping. “They said sending a son of the big gods alone out of camp was suicide. Did you know, Jackson?”

I shrugged, and had to stifle a smile when the motion appeared to piss him off more. I was probably just extremely happy I didn’t lose the only friend I managed to make. “Praetor Dane dropped some hints.”

Octavian—I kid you not— growled . “This is preposterous,” he declared in that same angry, hushed tone. “You’re younger than I am, how could they?” Then he glared at me. “You’re just fine with this?”

In all honesty? No. But dying in service to Rome was probably the worthiest ending for demigods like us, and there was some distant sense of peace at the thought. However, I still wasn’t going to go that easily. “I’m coming back, Octavian.”

“You better, Jackson,” he snapped, and strode away, still seething.

“The augur boy has quite a temper,” a mild voice observed next to me, and I spun around to see Fabulinus regarding Octavian’s back with interest. “If he doesn’t reign it in, he’ll never go into politics.”

I blinked at the assessment. “Ah,” I said, and then tried to defend. “He’s usually better at this. Today’s a bit of a special case.”

“Hm,” the god hummed in acknowledgement. He switched topics. “You have quite a few people seeing you off, child.”

Seeing his wide and childish eyes behind the glasses, I suddenly remembered something. “Hey, Fabulinus. Yesterday, Olivia called you Mr. Sermo, right? Does she not know that you’re a god?”

Fabulinus’s lips twitched up. “As far as many in the camp are concerned, I’m just a doctor that’s been around as long as they can remember.” At my astonished look, he elaborated, “Small applications of the Mist are enough to adjust my age ever so slightly. If no one investigates, then nothing will appear unusual.” He shook his head. “But, that is not what I’m here for. Take this, child.”

I received a small, strangely colored Ziploc bag of something enclosed in napkins. Curious, I pried it open and lifted the corner at one corner. I sucked in a breath when I realized it was a thick square of ambrosia. I had no idea how much of this the camp had in stock, but the semi-divine cure-all probably couldn’t be handed out like candy. “Fabulinus—”

He raised a hand to his lips, stopping my next words. “Let’s keep it a secret between us, Percy.”

I nodded dumbly, clutching the bag tighter. “Thank you, sir.”

“Just Fabulinus is fine.” He didn’t smile, but his eyes gentled. “Good luck out there, Percy.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

One of the cardinal rules of being a demigod was that you didn’t use the network. Any network. You didn’t make phone calls, and you definitely didn’t use the internet. It basically made you into a living hotspot, attracting all sorts of monsters to your location in around half an hour.

Which meant, of course, that I entered into the first payphone booth on my route to the bus station I was taking to Nevada. I figured with my more potent scent (apparently, I reek to monsters) I had maybe ten minutes. So, I dropped in a quarter and called up my mom. I hadn’t spoken to her since June.

The call was picked up three rings in, and the voice that came through was pretty sorely missed. “This is Sally Jackson. With whom am I speaking?”

“ Mom ,” I said in a giant breath, relief making my knees weak. She sounded good. Healthy, and more importantly, alive . “It’s been a while.”

“Percy!” Mom’s voice sounded relieved too. “I’m so glad to hear from you, honey. But I thought you weren’t allowed to use cell service. Did something happen? Are you doing well?”

“I’ll make it short,” I assured her. “And uh, yeah. I’m on a quest right now, and thought I could might as well make a call.”

Mom didn’t sound too happy. “A quest? Percy, you’re only twelve! Is there anyone else with you?”

I looked down at the bump in my pocket, and felt for the sewn flap in my shirt that my dagger currently rested in. “Yeah, mom. I’m not alone. They’re giving me some privacy so I can make a call.” Before she could question me further, I continued. “Actually I had a reason for calling you. Do you know anything about the Lotophagi ?”

“The Lotophagi?” Mom repeated. “Do you mean Lotus Eaters? They’re a race of people in the myths, who trap you into—” She suddenly paused, and spoke away from the receiver. “Oh, thank you Paul. Red wine works perfectly for me. I’m sorry honey, where was I?”

I suddenly registered the smooth jazz filtering its way through the payphone, and several things clicked in place. “Mom,” I said, urgently. “Mom, are you on a date ?”

“Oh, um,” Mom went silent and I heard a male voice say, amused, “ your call, Sally, ” after which my mom came back on the line. “In that case, I’m terribly sorry, Percy. It appears that I’m indeed on a date. I had no way of contacting you, honey, or else I would have let you know—”

“What, no, don’t be!” Definitive proof that I was her son aside (people never believed that I got my mouth from her; heck, sometimes I didn’t), I was positively delighted. My mom had never gone on a date in all the time I knew her, even though any guy would be lucky to have her attention. Yet another thing I was holding her back on. “How’d you meet?”

I could hear her smile through the phone. “Paul’s here for Thanksgiving. He’s an English teacher, actually. We found each other in a little bookshop on Valencia and hit it off right there.”

My cheeks started to hurt from smiling, and I ducked into the payphone booth, glancing around to make sure no one was looking my way. “That’s great, Mom. I’m really happy for you.”

Mom sucked in a breath. Her next words were a little shaky. “Thank you, honey.”

I couldn’t help it. “And if that Paul guy makes you upset, you should let him know I’ve been taking fencing lessons—”

“Percy!” my mom said, sounding scandalized. I heard her date laugh in the background. “I’m so sorry, Paul, I swear he was raised better—”

A large black blur caught my eye, and I froze. It had its massive head pressed against the asphalt and I could hear the growls from here. 

“Mom,” I said, interrupting my crash course in manners. “Mom!” She must have sensed my urgency, because she fell silent. “I got to go. There’s this giant dog. I don’t. I think it’s after something. I think it’s after me. Us.” Right on cue, the massive head lifted and pinned me with sharp yellow glare.

“GO,” my mom said, the vehemence in her tone startling me out of my paralysis. “Percy, drop the phone. Go!”

The hellhound raised its head up and howled. 

I bolted before it could finish, the corded phone swinging morosely in its booth.

It took some help from the local, tacky fountain at a benign little playground before I finally put the dog down for good. I didn’t know what the Mist was making them see, but a crowd of kids burst out crying while another group burst into applause. All the parents, on the other hand, were unanimously giving me the stink eye.

I slunk away as best I could, and tried to figure out how far I was chased off my original path. I also felt really bad for disturbing my mom’s date. It couldn’t have been easy to explain why her kid called about some mythical creatures and then freaked out over a dog.

One thing was for sure though. I’d rather make a house call next time.

The journey didn’t get easier from there, but it didn’t get harder, either. Olivia had, in addition to denarii, given me a note with buses and railroads that went east. I had to stop a few passerby in the streets to ask for directions, and then flee before they started thinking I was a runaway and acting on it. In their defense, people don’t usually ask for directions to freight trains.

On an unrelated note: I don’t get carsick, but the minute the train bulldozed past the “WELCOME TO NEVADA” road sign, I had to fumble my way out or start hurling onto somebody’s Amazon packages. I hoped not every kid of Neptune had to deal with this. It sucked. 

Luckily, the train slowed enough on an uphill climb that I could roll my way out with minimal injuries.

It took me another day to reach Las Vegas, but let me tell you. If people were suspicious about what a kid was doing asking about railroads, it didn’t hold a candle to what they felt when a kid asked them for directions for Las Vegas. I more or less insinuated that I was here with my stepdad, who “liked playing card games with his friends.” The second lady I asked eyed the scrapes on my hands and pulled out her phone.

I thanked her, and quickly left before she could separate me from my non-existent stepdad. I think I’ll call him Gabe.

Once I was in the Gambling Capital, I found my destination without much fanfare. I mean, the golden dust had told me to go to the House of the Lotus Eaters (loose translation, don’t trust me on this). I stood outside the Lotus Hotel (and Casino, but that part was less important), and went in.

Once in the gold-plated, shiny interior, the only expectation I had was that I was about to be kicked out. I hadn’t brushed my hair in two days, nor had I taken a shower. The only solace I had was the fact that I didn’t sweat all that much in winter, and my stint with the freight car made me smell more like sawdust than anything. 

Apparently for the Lotus Hotel, any customer was a king. A bellhop boy tried to take my bookbag before I glared him away, and the receptionist handed me a luxury room key and a golden credit card for their arcade.

“We hope you enjoy your stay!” the receptionist said cheerfully, immediately setting me on edge. “Elevators are right around the corner; they’re the doors with the lotus carvings.”

“Yeah,” I said, and because it was only polite: “Thanks.”

I went to my suspicious, luxurious room despite my misgivings; I really needed a shower. Once I was done, the water had left me in a new state of alert. Now that I’m in, what was I supposed to do? There was no way Lord Pluto sent me here for an all-expense paid vacation.

I slung on my bookbag again and paused before I left the room. The golden card laid on the drawer stand next to the closet, beckoning.

The receptionist had mentioned an arcade, hadn’t he? Then I scolded myself. I wasn’t here for fun and games, I was here to complete a quest that I didn’t have the first idea about.

I still grabbed the card as I left.

When I went downstairs into the arcade, I was struck by how massive it was. There must have been several hundred people down there, and yet not every machine was being used. In fact, and I blinked hard to make sure, it almost seemed like there were more machines than there were people.

Though I was far from an expert, I could swear that there were classics in there that had long since stopped being reproduced. For every empty machine I walked by, I found another being played by people from all walks of life. There was a guy in a tracksuit next to a lady in a suit and dress, who in turn was next to an elderly grandfather furiously playing a first person shooter. He wore a thick fur coat I’d only ever seen in history books.

When I made a loop and found no hints as to what I was looking, I looked back towards the hotel lobby and wondered if I should ask the receptionist. I’d prefer not to, since I wasn’t kidding about the guy giving me the creeps, but if anyone knew anything about mythical gods it’d probably be the people who ran this place.

I froze. 

The people who ran this place. Who were they? What were they called? I distinctly remembered making a call to my mom about it, but I couldn’t for the life of me remember what she said. Did she ever get around to it? Or was I interrupted before she could finish?

A female voice was snapping, “—off it, you egg! If it weren’t for my hair, I would have made you eat my dust!” The speaker was a tanned woman with a large, puffy hairdo and a tramp stamp on the motorcycle race game. Yet another thing you don’t see often.

“Gon’ keep making excuses, miss?” Her opponent laughed meanly, and kissed his fist exaggeratedly. “Ain’t beatin’ me today.”

She huffed. “I’ll be back after getting a wig chop.” She said threateningly, picking up her leather purse and stomping away.

I intercepted her, “Excuse me, ma’am.” There was a pit of wrongness in my gut that I couldn’t shake. I thought about asking her if she’d seen any Lords of the Underworld around, but decided to play it safer. “Um, what’s a wig chop?” 

“Huh?” She looked at me like I was crazy. “What, kid, you living under a rock?’

I gave her my best smile. “Humor me?”

She snorted. “I picked it up from a snot nosed kid like you. It means getting a haircut, doesn’t it?”

A kid like me? I had a sinking suspicion. “And uh, what year is it?”

“1952.” She said promptly, before shaking her head in disgust. “Oh, I get what this. Making fun of my mental facilities because I lost that game? Get the hell out of my way, kid.”

I let her go mutely. How could that be? 1952? She didn’t look anywhere old enough to be alive in the nineteen fifties.

The guy who was her opponent was adamant the year was 1975. The guy in the tracksuit rolled his eyes at me but told me it was 1999.

What was going on?

I speed my way out of the arcade, pausing by the elevators. The carvings on the door suddenly jolted my memory, and I distantly registered the elevators dinging and door opening. The Lotophagi . Lotus-Eaters. My mom saying something about them setting traps.

I had to get out of here.

When I started moving, someone else sprinted out of the elevator and ran right into me. I heard someone immediately apologizing as I fell down hard, until the dagger that I hadn’t secured yet went clattering across the hallway.

The weight on my abdomen followed the pugio ’s trajectory and then looked back at me, alarmed. “Why do you have a weapon? Are you a criminale ?"

How were they able to see it? The Mist should have made the mortals see something more inane and harmless, or else my stint with the hellhound would’ve incited more than just mild disapproval.

“Nico!” A female voice shouted, worried and angry, and the boy who’d knocked me down was hoisted up fiercely and shoved behind a girl who bore a strong familial resemblance. The girl stared me down, angling herself between me and my pugio , shaking. “W-who are you? What is your purpose here?”

I wasn’t the type to jump to conclusions, but between their ability to see the pugio , their looks (olive skin, dark eyes, darker hair), and the way the air seemed to grow heavier, quietly rattling with something grimmer and more frightening than the darkness, it couldn’t be any clearer that they were demigods. To be more exact, the demigod children of Pluto. 

And the only reason the daughter didn’t call for security was probably because I looked to be her age.

I raised my hands slowly in surrender, and with a steadiness I didn’t feel, said, “This is going to sound crazy, but the year is 2006. Your dad sent me.”

Chapter 7: I go from easy mode to hell mode

Summary:

another chapter got broke up!
I take all criticism seriously. if you have an issue with my characterization, feel free to speak up.

In the end, it was the coins that convinced them. Not the denarii Olivia gave me, which were minted sometime in the 800s AD, but the remaining eight pennies I got from the treasury. None of them were minted in 2006, but enough of them were made in the late 1990s that the girl reluctantly had to believe my story.

The first half of it, at least. According to the two siblings, their dad was dead before they arrived at the Lotus Hotel and Casino. Meanwhile, I tried to figure out if they were technically correct.

Eventually, I decided to leave it be and offer them a deal: if they come with me for a day, I’ll find a way to prove that what I said was true. If I don’t convince them, I’ll bring them back to the Lotus Hotel and Casino.

The girl raised an eyebrow. “If this place is really that bad, then why would you take us back?” she demanded.

She had a point, so I amended my statement. “Or I’ll personally bring you to any place you want to go.”

She wasn’t satisfied with this either. “So you’re expecting us to go with a stranger for who knows how long either way?”

Throughout this, her brother had stayed silent and half hidden behind her. I caught him peeking at me, but he always ducked back when we made eye contact.

“You’re right,” I agreed. I slipped the dagger back into its pocket, and held out my hand for a shake. “Let me introduce myself then. My name is Percy Jackson. I was sent to bring you to camp.” Probably. Then, realizing she had no idea what Camp Jupiter was, I corrected. “To safety.”

The girl eyed my hand suspiciously.

I hurried to assure her. “You don’t have to give me your names. You should give me something to call you though, other than ‘you’ or ‘girl’ or ‘boy’.”

She crossed her arms. “How can I trust you?”

I thought quickly, but how did that phrase go? Go big or go home? “I swear on the Styx I’ll bring you to a place safe for you and your brother.” When they both startled at the sound of thunder rumbling through the walls of the gleaming hallway, I continued, looking her right in the eye to convey the seriousness of what I said next, “That was a binding oath. I can’t break it without terrible consequences.” If Lord Pluto didn’t get to me first, anyway.

That little show was thankfully the tipping point. She slipped her hand in mine, cautiously but firmly. “...My name is Bianca di Angelo.” She turned her body slightly. “And this is Nico di Angelo.”

When I offered him the same handshake, he brightened and gripped it tightly.

“Are you taking us on an adventure?” he asked me eagerly.

I thought about all the trouble a fully aware son of Neptune and two mostly ignorant children of Pluto could attract. “...Yeah, let’s call it that.”

When I told the receptionist in no uncertain terms that the three of us were checking out, he looked devastated.

“We’re truly devastated to be losing valued customers like you,” he told me sadly. “We would love feedback on our service and your stay here. The Lotus House is throwing in a limited edition Platinum card at no extra charge. How about it?”

No amount of funds, even unlimited, was enough to convince me to trap myself in here. I had a duty to fulfill. “No thanks. I’m good.”

The receptionist studied me like I was some sort of curiosity, before his attention drew to my imperial gold pugio and he sneered. “Ugh, Romans. You people are never any fun,” he complained. “It’s always ‘for the glory of Rome’ this, ‘for the glory of Rome’ that. Not a bone of relaxation in your body, unlike the others ones.” He slammed his pen down on the desk, startling the siblings. “Just go already. I have no patience to deal with you.”

Others? I wanted to ask, but the receptionist had completely lost his friendly demeanor. It was better not to risk it. We exited right as the sun was setting.

Since Camp Jupiter was only a day or two away, I figured I could introduce them to the modern age first and see how it went. Las Vegas wasn’t exactly child friendly, but there were enough casino-less and bar-less streets that something worked out.

Bianca had ‘eep’ed really quietly and stuck close to me when we passed by some well-dressed women in slim, low-cut tops. “That’s so scandalous,” she whispered, trying not to look but sneaking glances anyway. “How can they wear clothes like that outdoors? Nico, don’t look!”

Nico, meanwhile, was completely engrossed by all the sights and completely oblivious, so much so that I had to do full time to making sure he didn’t unwittingly step into the street. Suddenly, he stopped and tugged at my sweater. I had given Bianca and Nico the two jackets and two of the scarves William dropped on me, and Nico in particular looked positively dwarfed by it. I hope William wasn’t expecting to get them back. “Hey Percy, can we go to that one?”

I looked up. It was a card game shop, and its logo was a green dragon wrapped snugly around a small brick cottage. “Uh, if Bianca is cool with it. Bianca?”

We had just walked by a man and woman blatantly making out against the bike racks. Bianca squeaked and tore her eyes away. “Yes! A-anything’s fine!”

Since we were all on board, I stopped Nico from charging across the and found a crosswalk. It took me a while to break out of my habit of jaywalking, but several years in the Midwest had trained me to at least suppress. Mom joked that it was in my blood, but I caught her stepping on the asphalt while the light was still yellow, so she was somewhat of a hypocrite.

The interior of the game shop was loud and bustling. I’ve noticed that neither Bianca nor Nico liked crowds, so it wasn’t surprising that they stuck close once we entered. I didn’t have an interest in card games, so I just let Nico drag me around while Bianca followed us from behind.

“Boring,” Nico declared, putting a game of Werewolves back on the shelf. He scanned the rest of the shelves with a frown. “That’s boring too. Boring, boring, boring.” He complained, suddenly, “Why do all the games need more than three players? That’s too many!”

Oh. Oh . Nico wanted to find a game that the three of us could play together. I felt touched, and maybe also a little worried. I didn’t know if the 1930s had the concept of ‘stranger danger,’ but Nico warmed up to me pretty fast. “You could play chess,” I suggested, trying to remember a game that needed only two people.

Nico’s face scrunched up in disgust. “Never!” he declared vehemently. “That’s for boring old people.”

“Nico,” Bianca said warningly, trying to stealthily away a game of Risk. I raised my eyebrow to let her know I saw her, and she looked away. “That’s not nice to boring old people.”

Nico snickered, but his eyes caught on something noteworthy enough that he let go of my sweater to promptly rocket off.

“Nico!” Bianca hissed, but was too late to catch him. I was already in pursuit.

When I caught up to him, he was clutching at a colorful red box and already looking at me pleadingly. “Can I get this? Please? Please please please?”

You had to reward good manners. Amused despite myself, I asked him to show me what he had. I was almost thrown when I saw the words “Mythomagic” splashed across the cover. Inside the box, there was a small bronze colored figurine of a bearded man clutching a lightning bolt. His plaque read ZEUS, KING OF THE GODS. Next to the figurine, and separated by plastic, was a stack of five or ten cards. The topmost card was facing us, and showed a reclining, stubbled man in a purple toga, hands holding a glass of wine. The name of the card was Dionysus, Lord of Grapes (I figured it was because alcohol wasn’t kid friendly enough) and he had 500 attack points.

I wondered if that was high or low. Probably high? Lord Bacchus probably already got enough grief as it was from being demoted to the lord of grapes.

Then I remembered that I never had the mythology talk with these two. The less you knew about who you were, the less monsters you’d attract. It was Demigod 101. If I were to get all of us to Camp Jupiter in one piece, I would have to aim for as little animal magnetism as possible.

Nico must have sensed that I was hesitating. “ Please ?” he asked desperately. “I’ll be good. I won’t complain about anything.” When he noticed that his sister, looking put upon, had finally navigated her away around the board games to us, he immediately added. “Don’t listen to Bianca! I really can be good!”

Bianca immediately flared up, while I decided to relent. It was the god’s Greek form anyway, so I still had some leeway. “Okay, okay. You can get this. Want to go to the checkout then?”

“Yeah!” Nico took three steps forward, then paused. He glanced down at the red box in his hands, bit his lip, and looked consideringly at the remaining boxes. There were other colors, with different figurines and different exposed cards.

I had just been wondering if thirty five dollars was enough to get all of us a bus ride to Camp (the Mythomagic set cost 15 dollars), when I suddenly had an idea. The Lotus Hotel and Casino never did ask us for our arcade cards back. “Nico, grab as many boxes as you want. And maybe find a backpack. Bianca, is there anything you want?”

The two of them looked at me with delight and disbelief respectively. Nico immediately ran back to find ones with different figurines. Bianca hesitated.

“Trust me,” I told her.

With a slow nod, she also went off.

As I suspected, the Lotus Hotel cards were nothing less than an unlimited, virtual cash supply. Since it was what allowed the people in the hotel to play endlessly, the card’s monetary value was probably also endless. The cashier’s eyes glazed over when he saw the astronomical value that got rung up.

It was still an arcade card, though, so it wasn’t like I could withdraw a cash amount. I told him to keep the change. The three of us were treated like VIPs from the checkout to the door. The cashier even personally left his station to grab the door for us.

Because I was probably asking for too much, we ran into some basilisks a few blocks away from the store. They kept screeching something about free dinner, but were dispatched by me easily enough. These were small fries among monsters and unfortunately also everywhere; one of the more hated probatio duties were clearing out their nests around Temple Hill.

I only realized my mistake after the last snake went down. While I had remembered to evacuate us into less busy streets, I'd forgotten that Bianca and Nico were new to this. I shoved my pugio into Bianca's hands as insurance but completely neglected to explain what was happening.

"W-what was that?!" Bianca asked half hysterically. "Those snakes talked! What was for dinner? Were we dinner?"

Nico, meanwhile, looked at me with wide eyes. Solemnly, he asked, "Between you and Batman, who would win?"

"Those were monsters," I told Bianca. "I'm not going to tell you their names, because it attracts them and they're annoying to deal with. There are other monsters who are more dangerous, which is why I was sent for you." Or so I'm assuming. Then I turned to Nico. "I don't know. Batman from which universe?"

His mouth dropped open. "There are more than one?"

Oh shoot. Was that spoilers?

"No. Absolutely not. Nico, not now, please." Bianca shot a look at her brother, before clamping a hand around my arm like she was trying to stop me from leaving. It was the most physical she'd gotten with me yet, and we were in an alley. "You're going to explain things a bit better than that, Percy. Or we're not going anywhere."

I looked at her incredulously, and she looked back at me sternly. It was suspiciously similar to my mom's Perseus Jackson, I brought you in this world and I can take you out stare.

Helpless, I conceded. "Okay, fine. I'm holding back some details though, for your safety and mine."

I eventually ended up telling them that their dad was a bigshot with a lot of enemies ("Supernatural enemies?" Bianca asked pointedly, to which I nodded.) and I was tasked with bringing them to a place that was safe for them. The other people couldn't see the monsters ("Supernatural enemies!" insisted Nico.) because they were merely ordinary mortals and the three of us weren't.

Nico was fascinated. "Is our dad a vampire? Or! No! Werewolves are cooler! No, wait, only vampires are undead, right?"

Anything to throw them off the trail a little bit longer was good in my books. I looked at him as seriously as I could. "If I tell you, you'll be put in more danger. Possibly more than I can protect you from."

Nico nodded hurriedly and mimed zipping up his mouth. Bianca was eyeing me suspiciously.

By the time the sky turned black, Bianca decided that she believed me, despite my less than optimal persuasion skills (her words, not mine). A nearby clock display showed that it still only eight, so I offered them a deal. If they went to sleep now, we could wake up before the sun rises tomorrow and start making our way West.

We ended up sneaking onto the grounds of an artificial beach, since I felt most secure next to a sizable body of water. The two siblings looked mildly uncomfortable, probably due to their parentage, but since it was only a fake beach they settled easily enough, finding a spot under a palm tree.

Nico, for all he warmed up to me, inched towards his sister when it came time for us to fall asleep. Bianca made room for him without a comment, and watched him quietly as he made himself comfortable.

The flood of envy that crashed through me temporarily left me unable to breathe. I turned my head away.

Nico's breathing soon even out, while Bianca struggled to stay alert. She succumbed shortly after.

As for me, I'd master the art of power naps under Lupa's care, and could handle a little sleep deprivation. I waited for the darkest time of night to pass. It was when monster activity was the highest, particularly those of the underworld. I figured with two children of Pluto with me, it wasn't very likely for us to come under attack. I still wasn't taking any chances.

A little after the beach's neon sign read 2 a.m., I relaxed and let myself sleep.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I stood alone in the desert. There was no sea. There was no whale. What there was, and I realized this with a trickle of cold horror, was a loose circle of red sand before me, about the size of an enormous cetacean. I take a step forward, and look back at the yellow sands I was standing on.

The footprints I left behind were also stained red.

Oh, my dear grandson, the voice said, barely distinguishable in the sound of sand in the wind, yet undeniable, so terribly amused I could feel the joy trickling down my skin. So proactive and yet. Do you know what position you've placed these children in?

I swallowed. “I thought you were gone.”

The dunes shift, undulating independent of the wind. How unkind of you, Perseus. Are you trying to get rid of me?

The short answer was yes. The long answer was yes. I didn’t dare say it. Fear enclosed my throat in a vice grip, and every breath of air felt terribly thin. I opened and closed my mouth. Opened it. Closed it. Why now? After an entire year of silence, why did the voice reappear now?

A wave of sand sunk me down to my ankles. We made a deal, did we not, Perseus? Do you not remember what you swore to me?

“What...” My throat was dry, but I forced myself anyway. “What do you want?”

Kill them .

My next words were out before I even registered the sentence. “No.”

Kill them.

“No,” I said, a little more firmly. The sand buffeted me harder, and the wind wailed angrily.

The voice never broke from its soft drawl. Kill them, and you’re free, Perseus. Isn’t that a good deal?

I clenched my teeth. “Too bad,” I declared, with confidence I didn’t feel. “Kill me if that’s a dealbreaker for you. I’m not touching them.” The di Angelos were innocent. They had nothing to do with this. Bianca and Nico wouldn’t be ones paying for my mistakes, no matter what.

You swore on the Styx. The voice suddenly sounded less amused. The sky darkened slightly, but the main indicators of discontent were in the way the sands slammed into me, almost toppling me over, and the sound of coyotes howling in the distance. They had nothing on the performances Lupa’s pack gave. I gave you more time with your mother, did I not?

“It wasn’t yours to bargain!” I gritted out, covering my face and closing my eyes against the storm. The grains felt like they were forcing their way into every gap in my clothes. Some probably got into my ears. “She would have been fine without your interference!”

It’s hardly my fault if you didn’t realize, son of Neptune, the voice chided harshly. An oath is an oath. Is your mother’s life not worth theirs?

My mother’s life was worth anything . But I wasn’t that reckless, terrified seven year old anymore. I’ve learnt better. I knew what I couldn’t say, what the Styx couldn’t bind me into. “Less than or equal to!” I reminded the sand. I couldn’t see so much as my hand, and it felt like I was shouting into the unhearing void. “My mother is one person! How can one life be equal to two?”

Then, why don’t you pick one to kill?

The wind died. I went cold. I couldn’t feel anything, only hear a ringing hollow. The distant rumble of thunder. The Styx considered this exchange acceptable.

Kill Bianca, and leave Nico all alone with his sister’s murderer? Or in reverse: kill Nico, and leave my blood on her hands? Tear them apart right when they’d begun to trust me?

I would rather die .

Before I could say as much, the dunes rippled again. Laughter filled the air. Oh, I wonder at the look on your face. Do not take me so seriously, Perseus. They’re more useful to me alive.

I couldn’t speak, but this time in inarticulate rage. I felt a sensation travel down my spine, there and gone like a phantom. I grasped onto it. Every desert was once an ocean.

After all, they’re the children of the prophecy .

More laughter. I released the hold I had on the phantom sea in shock. The red-stained sand, which had moved so strangely in spite of the wind, trembled as one.

The lips I was standing on offered me one last smile before it all went black.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I woke up to the sound of water thrashing. I turned to the artificial sea, of which the waves were roaring at the shoreline. The air was humid, and I noticed dark clouds slowly closing in, turning the brightening sky as dark as night.

I took a breath. And another. And another.

I kept breathing slowly until the waves settled and clouds turned white again.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Bianca and Nico slept soundly, somehow unbothered by the weather and my poor control. They woke up together, and after exchanging a weighted look, turned to me. Bianca reached into her coat pocket, and seemed both shocked and resigned when she pulled out a pure black folded slip of paper.

Turning to me hesitantly, she started. “Last night, did you…?” She fell silent.

I cleared my throat. “Uh. Did I…?” I probed encouragingly.

Nico fumbled with his jacket, and soon pulled out another slip of paper. “It’s really here,” he said wonderingly. He eyed me suspiciously. “You didn’t put this in my pocket, right?”

“I don’t even know what that is,” I said honestly, scooting closer to see. I craned my neck. “What is it?”

“I think,” Bianca said, quietly. “I think Nico and I had a visit from our father.”

I took the note from Nico and nodded knowingly. “Supernatural dreams come with the package.” And how. “Did you get a chance to see what these say?” I unfolded his note and came to a stop. In silvery ink, it read: 

Delphi Strawberry Services
Farm Road 3.141, Long Island, NY 11954

“Dad says you need to bring us to this camp,” Nico said, excitedly, peering over my arm. “Hey, isn’t New York really, really far away though? Do their strawberries taste good?”

I replied back with something on autopilot, but my mind was still reeling. Camp? In New York? Why wasn’t Lord Pluto asking me to bring his children to Camp Jupiter? Why were we being sent all the way to the other coast, to New York?

Unbidden, I remembered the Lotus Hotel clerk saying something about the others. Other what? Other legions? The twelfth legion fulminata was said to be the last of the original Roman army. Could another division have survived, and set up a new camp elsewhere?

I didn’t feel too confident about dragging two children of Pluto on a cross-country road trip, especially if they kept getting exposed to mythical figures. And gods, Nico’s Mythomagic game.

I cursed in Latin, before telling the two siblings to pack up their things.

If we were going to make this trip in one piece, we needed to move fast.

Notes:

Osbourne: William, don't think I didn't see that. How many jackets did Percy really need? Why did you give him all your scarves too?
Dane: ...yes.

Chapter 8: I blow up a river

Notes:

tfw you're not sure how to write an action scene or heart to heart talks.

Before we set off, I caught a glimpse of a passing newspaper. My heart nearly leaped out of my chest when I saw that it was somehow already December first, but then I remembered that time worked differently in the Lotus House. I didn’t even want to imagine what the di Angelos were going through, having been displaced entire decades.

Bianca told me she was born around 1930. If she hadn’t been placed in the Lotus House, she might have been somebody’s grandma. It was weird.

Slowly, however, I was realizing there was something off about these siblings that had nothing to do with the hotel. It was the small things that drew my attention, but they were so subtle I didn’t even know what I was noticing at first.

For example: some of the Mythomagic cards were of a higher rarity than others, and one of the packs we bought apparently had a glossy version of Lady Minerva, complete with some greek text in the background. She looked foreboding and judgmental, and I was willing to bet that whatever her text was saying wasn’t much nicer. I couldn’t make heads or tails of it though, and was content to let it remain a mystery when Nico started mumbling.

“Teen ah-no-lia...augh-no-ee-ah? Ti reee-za? Reeeezah?”

I didn’t have the faintest clue what he was doing, and was currently PVP-ing him since his sister was sick and tired of the game. I was also losing, and pretty badly at that. “What are you doing, Nico?”

“I’m trying to read this,” Nico said, unhappily. “But I don’t know what this letter is! Percy, do you know?”

I gave the card another look. Still looked like gibberish to me. “Don’t have a clue. Greek is kind of hard to read.”

Nico frowned, and tucked the card back into his hand. “At least it’s easier than English.”

Or this: once when we were in an empty freight car, hitching our way to the next state, I noticed that the sky was exceptionally clear and gestured for Bianca, who had difficulty sleeping on a moving vehicle, to come and see. The moon was nearing full, and the glow from it was enough to almost drown out a neighboring cluster of stars, the Pleiades.

“There’s a goddess, right?” Bianca asked, suddenly. “For the moon? Nico’s still missing her card.”

I hadn’t had any longer than five hours consecutively for the past few days, and was feeling it when I thoughtlessly answered, “You mean Lady Diane?”

Bianca looked at me, confused. “No, the other one.”

“Oh, Luna?”

“No, the one that shoots arrows? She has a twin?” Bianca mimed pulling back an arrow string.

I stared at her blankly. “....Diane?”

“Is that her name?” Bianca looked back up at the sky, clearly unsatisfied. “That’s not right.”

I didn’t get my confirmation until harpies attacked us on a moving bus in Nebraska. They kept referring to themselves in the third person, and like the basilisks, were very interested in the idea of free dinner.

“Half-blood!” they kept on screeching. “Full bellies for harpies tonight!”

There were a lot more than I was able to handle, especially if i needed to protect the two siblings while I was at it. I tossed Bianca the spatha this time, since she’d need the extra reach. I’d already passed Nico my breast plate (it was also large on him) and the pugio but still kept the two of them within my sights. Bianca, completely unfamiliar with the sword, gripped it like one would a chainsaw.

As for me, I uncapped Riptide for the first time in a while and got to work. When the harpies saw it, they nearly scattered, screeching about a ‘son of Zeus.’ They rallied soon enough, since I guess I just didn’t give the right vibes, but that was enough to get me thinking.

Later, when we were regrouping and I was washing our scratches in a nearby water fountain, Bianca pulled me aside. We watched Nico take off his jacket and flap it to get the golden dust out.

“Our father isn’t a vampire, or a werewolf,” Bianca said with certainty. “Is he?”

I looked at her and said nothing.

Bianca idly wrung out a torn piece of my sweater we’d repurposed into a washcloth. “If you can’t say anything without putting us in danger, that’s fine. But I,” she hesitated. “I just wanted to let you know. That I might know.”

I licked my dry lips. “Don’t...don’t think too deeply on it,” I told her. “I’ll handle whatever comes, so don’t worry about it.”

(If I had known that I’d be eating those words later, I wouldn’t have jinxed it.)

Bianca nodded after a long pause. Nico walked up to us and she bent a little to wipe at his face. He protested that he could do it himself, but it was half-hearted. “Where did you get that sword from? I’ve never seen you use it before.”

“Oh, yeah!” Nico piped up, turning his face away from the makeshift towel. “That was really cool! You were like ‘swoosh!’ and ‘bam!’ and ‘woosh!’”

For some reason, I thought she was talking about the spatha , which I had definitely used before. Then I realized she was talking about Riptide.

I took out the pen and twisted it, and the two siblings watched in interest as the writing implement grew into a sword. I wonder if some of that interest was some primal recognition. A memory stirred. What had the clerk said? ‘Unlike the others.’ Something other than a Roman demigod.

“It’s a legendary blade,” I said, cautiously. William had told me some stories about it in private, about how it was the sword Herakles used in one of his quests. Romans in general weren’t very big on stories of mortal conquest. “You might actually know it by its native name, Anaklusmos —”

“Riptide,” Bianca said, then blinked. “I, uh, I really don’t know anything about it. The name just popped into my head.”

I pressed on the hilt and watched it turn back into a ballpoint pen. “Nah, that’s to be expected.” I told her. “It’s a supernatural thing.” Inwardly, I was screaming and very, very confused. 

Some way, somehow, somewhere along the way, I had picked up Greek demigods.

o-o-o-o-o-o

The part where it all came to a head was just by the Gateway Arch. Since it had been built thirty years after the di Angelo dropped off the timeline, Bianca was interested in seeing it. We had infiltrated a tour group after we got off the bus, and Bianca was skeptical of the claims the tour guide was making.

“Six hundred feet?” Bianca repeated in part wonder and part fright. “It can’t be true. Where would they put that thing? What if it falls?”

“But, but! The Empire State Building is a thousand feet!” Nico chimed in. “I saw the newspapers! Hey, Percy, did they finish it yet?”

I replied in confirmation, and Bianca shivered. “That’s even worse! Why would anything be so tall?”

Bianca was too hesitant to get close, and if I were honest the thought of being so high up was dizzying. We convinced Nico we could come back another time, and instead walked along a grassy stretch just by the railroad on the other side of the Mississippi.

Bianca had been worriedly glancing towards the Arch in the distance, convinced it would collapse at any minute, when a plus sized lady with a boa and her tiny chihuahua came up to us. My hair immediately stood on end. The di Angelos also tensed.

“Oh, don’t be so alarmed!” The lady said laughingly when she saw our faces. “Sonny here is very well-behaved. He won’t bite if I don’t tell him to.”

“Sonny?” I asked, stepping forward and signaling Bianca behind my back. Every instinct of mine was telling me to run. “Is that his name?”

The lady smiled. With a jolt I realized her teeth were all sharp. “No.”

I shoved Nico behind me and Bianca pulled out the pugio I’ve left in her custody.

The lady frowned exaggeratedly, and the chihuahua at her feet started snarling. “Now that’s not nice. It’s an honor to have me meet you personally, you know. Very rarely do I get to test the mettle of half blood these days. Especially not three children of the Big Three.”

“What do you want with us?” I demanded. “We haven’t done anything to you or your dog!”

The lady smiled wider, her cheeks bunching up and her eyes going squinty. “Your lunch hasn’t done anything to you either,” she said, cheerily. “Don’t worry. Sonny is hungry, so this will be quick. Sonny,” and the chihuahua turned into a massive, two headed snake tailed beast between one growl and the next, “dinner time!”

Bianca screamed, or maybe Nico did, because one head, the goat-like one, turned towards us and expelled fire. I whipped around and knocked them to the ground, but the fire passing overhead still licked at our clothes. It was sweltering.

“Get up,” I chanted, forcing Bianca on her side. “Get the pugio , get up get up get up.” I rolled quickly back onto my feet, and ran forward. “Nico, stay back !” I shouted, my spatha in position. I reached out blindly. The Mississippi was to our left. 50, no, 60 feet. Could I move it?

“Oh dear, you shouldn’t have evaded that,” the fat lady told me pleasantly. “Now it won’t be as fast.” The monster next to her shook out its blood crusted mane, and roared. It rested back against its haunches, and then leapt forward.

I managed to move so that it barely grazed me, but five hundred pounds was enough to toss me back even as a glancing blow. I was going to bruise tomorrow. I was barely able to nick it in the shoulder, and it roared angrily. Bianca and Nico would be at its mercy if it leapt forward again.

“What was that?” I yelled at it. “That didn’t even touch me! Those harpies did worse than you!”

Thankfully, the beast seemed to understand my words, and the next snarl sent spittle flying out. Good. Be angry. Its tail hissed furiously in barely contained serpentine fury. A clawed paw the size of my torso slammed into the concrete where I had just been. I frantically backtracked. Forty feet. Thirty nine. Another swipe. Too close, and I think it broke skin.

Pain responses are suppressed in high stakes situations. I stabbed my spatha forward, and nearly lost it when it sunk in and the chimera twisted its body. Chimera. The Chimera.

The lady looked amused. “What a naughty boy you are, taunting my son like that. Sonny,” she called, and the beast paused and looked up. “Leave him for last, my boy. Why don’t you fill up on the others first?” 

She was looking towards Bianca and Nico, who were terrified and frozen. Neither of them knew what to do because I barely taught them how to fight, because I was overconfident, because I thought most monsters were small-fry, and all she had was a puny little dagger .

The beast swiveled in one smooth, powerful motion, muscles rippling, and in desperation I shot after it. “NO!”

The tail slammed into me, and I barely stopped the fangs from sinking their way into me by pulling out Riptide and lodging it into snake flesh. I let go and lunged towards a hind leg, my spatha swinging forward to bite into the tendons.

A pained roar, and the muscled leg kicked out, clipping me in the shoulder and sending me back. I watched the Chimera go as if in slow motion, pain searing its way up my right shoulder. 25 feet. It might be dislocated. It had to be enough.

Bianca’s eyes widened, and she screamed for Nico to run. I wasn’t going to make it.

The Mississippi wouldn’t respond. I wasn’t going to make it .

Come. Come. Come come come coME COME COME COME

In transition to its next leap, the Chimera suddenly yowled and slammed its paw down on the ground. Yowling again, it lifted its front paw. Something was lodged in it. A bone?

COME

The ground rumbled, and fractured. More milky white bones forced their way to the surface, crowding around the Chimera and the di Angelos. A good effort, but not enough.

Something responded. An answering tug in my gut. I pushed myself onto my feet.

“What are you doing?” The lady demanded, composure finally broken. She was staring off into the direction of the Mississippi, whose waves began to churn. “Cut that out right now young man! Sonny!”

The Chimera was in pain and absolutely pissed. In its thrashing, its tail had somehow dislodged Riptide and sent the sword flying down an alleyway. My vision started to form spots.

“Kill him!” commanded the lady.

My shoulder was definitely dislocated. I couldn’t get a solid grip on the spatha , and nearly dropped it. The Chimera seethed. The Mississippi seethed back, bubbling until it was nearly frothing. One last push. I wasn’t going to make it, but I could take them down with me.

Before the Chimera could launch itself at me on its two limping legs, it yowled again. I snapped my eyes towards Bianca. In my blotchy vision, I could see Bianca shaking, determined, and weaponless.

Pugio. Where?

A glint in the sun. The Chimera snapped and bleated and hissed at its backside, in which a dagger was lodged.

I tried to be relieved, or terrified, but I was too far beyond either.

“Fine! I’ll just do it myself!” I heard the Chimera’s mom say, distantly. “I have to do everything around here!”

She might have been making her way towards me, or maybe not. By then, my vision was all but grey.

With one last, monumental tug, the Mississippi exploded. Water, defying every law of physics, slammed into us with more momentum than would ever naturally occur. In that instant I ditched my awareness to work with the river. Two forms in the water. Three. Five. I felt for the ones that didn’t scream ‘MONSTER’ and dropped them elsewhere.

Then I pulled the remaining three back into the river with me.

“I AM ECHIDNA!” one of them screeched. “I WILL NOT BE FELLED BY A MORTAL!”

Like the anteater? I thought distantly. The question slipped away from my mind soon after. I wrapped the high pitched form in water, and reached. A gold spatha . Adequate. With the river holding it still, I stabbed it. It fell silent.

The other had gone from roaring to whimpering to choking. I squeezed all the air out, and let the bubbles float to the surface. I pulled out my pugio , and golden blood trickled out. It thrashed, sending water everywhere. I took my spatha and stabbed it into its head. Then the other head. I moved to end the last head, but it reached and clamped its jaws around me in its last moments. I watched it silently, then used to water to coax the poison back out.

Eyes peered at me. The original owner must have traveled upstream to see what was up with the mess I was making.

“Sorry,” I told the river nymph sheepishly. It felt surreal and slow, like I was in a dream. “I was in a desperate situation.”

She stared at me blankly, then pointed at a glass vial containing a lime green liquid and a bubble filled with golden dust.

“Ah,” I said, belatedly. My tongue felt like lead and tasted like iron. “You can have those?”

The naiad rolled her eyes. Goodbye, Perseus Jackson . Without further ado, both myself and the bubble were tossed out of the river.

I blacked out a bit, and when I swam into consciousness, I found two pale faces peering at me worriedly. The di Angelos were soaked to the bone, and the entire street we were on was ankle deep in water. People were coming out while on their cell phones. I heard mutters of a “crazy storm” and someone complaining about his insurance. That’s when I realized that it was raining.

Someone came by, probably to ask why I was laying on a water logged street. Or maybe why I didn’t look that wet. I should probably fix that. I relaxed my hold on my powers, and my shirt immediately soaked. The chill was a great relief against my skin.

I wasn’t sure what was happening after that. Hands poked and prodded at me, and I felt myself being pushed upright. A sharp pain sprinted up my right arm as something grounded into place. I wondered if I was being mugged.

I idly hoped they didn’t question the weapons I had on me, and closed my eyes.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I woke up submerged in a bathtub in the dead of night, with my shoulder back in place and the di Angelos sleeping fitfully on a bed in the adjacent room. I dried myself off (I could do that now. Cool.), and tried to take inventory. I found a sandwich with my name written on the wrapper, and immediately felt guilty when I realized that Bianca and Nico must have dragged my sorry butt into this place, and then bought food all on their own.

It was ridiculous. Bianca was at least my age, and Nico was probably two or three years younger. Maybe it was their naivety, or the fact that they were clearly still adjusting to a modern age, but I couldn’t help but feel responsible for them.

I paused when I reached into my jean pockets and found Riptide in pen form. I looked at it, and felt cautiously for the slight aura of power and otherworldliness that usually accompanied it. I came to a decision. “You’ve served me well. You saved my life,” I told it. “But I don’t use you that much, and I think there’s someone who’d make better use of you.”

I didn’t know what the etiquette was for passing on swords given to you by fathers, but I had a feeling Riptide approved.

o-o-o-o-o-o

“We would have given you the bed,” Bianca confessed early next morning, looking very embarrassed. We were on our way out of the apartment complex after thanking the host profusely. “But you kept telling us to put you in the water. So we placed you in the bathtub.”

“I filled it up with water!” Nico chimed in, helpfully.

"Thank you," I said, genuinely moved. I felt almost as good as new after that soak. "But, how did you pay for all this?"

Bianca blushed. "I tried the same trick you did, with the Lotus Hotel card," she explained.

"I'm honestly flattered," I told her.

She smiled, pleased.

We were silent for the rest of the journey, up until I called for a stop on top of a grassy hill. The sun was high in the sky, which helped to warm us up in the cold December air.

I dropped my backpack and sat down, turned so I could look at the two siblings. “Alright, spill.” I said, direct. “Why are you two being so quiet?”

Nico looked towards Bianca, who looked at me with an indecipherable emotion.

“Well?” I prompted.

“I think we should part ways,” Bianca said, finally. “I talked to Nico about it, and we think we can make the rest of the journey by ourselves.”

I was completely thrown. Did I hear right? “I’m sorry, what?”

Bianca swallowed, hard. “We’re parting ways,” she said again. “Nico and I can do the rest ourselves. Thanks for bringing us this far.”

“Thank you, Percy.” Nico echoed, quietly.

I felt like someone dumped cold water on me. “No,” I said, my heart pounding. “Why would you say that?” I ran over everything that happened that could have brought this on. “Is it because of yesterday? I’m so sorry, I know I put you two in danger, but you really can’t go on your own. It’s too dangerous. Give me another chance,” I begged. “I’ll do it better next time, I’m sorry—”

Bianca suddenly fell to her knees. I was startled into silence by the motion, and didn’t know how to react when she grabbed my hand with both of hers. Nico fidgeted, now the tallest of the three of us.

“ I ’m sorry! I’m so sorry. Thank you,” Bianca said in a rush. “If it weren’t for you, Nico and I would have been dead! Thank you so much!”

My cheeks felt hot, and my heart was still racing. I was also confused by the sudden shift. “I-if it weren’t for you, I would be dead,” I said, aiming to be light. “We’re pretty even.”

“You...” Bianca shook her head, clutching my hand tighter. “You were so hurt yesterday. When you came out of the river and stopped moving, I thought you died . I thought you died protecting us. I. I don’t get it. Why are you doing this? Is it just because you promised our father? Because you made that oath?”

Nico sniffed, quietly. I whipped my head up to see him rubbing furiously at his eyes. He looked away.

“I’m not doing this because of your father. I’m not being forced to help you,” I said with emphasis. Maybe in the beginning, when I had been sent to Vegas without so much as a clue, it had been about helping Lord Pluto. But once I met the di Angelos, knowing that they were half-bloods, knowing that they were like me but even more lost, it became personal. “I’m doing this because we’re friends. Even if I hadn’t made that oath to you, I would still do the same thing.”

“That’s not right! Is a friend worth your life ?” Bianca denied, desperately.

I looked her in the eye. “You are.” Glancing up at Nico, I added, softer, “You both are.”

“I,” Bianca blinked away her tears, “I wish I was stronger! I wish I could protect Nico on my down, so I won’t feel so terribly relieved when you say that!” She inhaled deeply, and exhaled shakily. “Why is there such a difference between us? Why can’t I be strong like you?” she asked, broken.

My heart broke for her, yet I felt contradictorily warm. “You will be,” I promised her, as gently as I could. “You’ll be just as strong with some training, and then you’ll be able to protect yourself and your brother. I’ll just stick with you until that happens, alright?”

Bianca lowered her head, and loosened her grip. Her shoulders shook and she choked out, “.... thank you .”

Nico crouched down, eyes rimmed red. He sniffed again and lightly patted his sister’s back as she tried to reign in her emotions. “I’m also going to be useful, too,” he told me, solemnly. “I’ll stop playing Mythomagic and help you fight monsters in real life.”

I couldn’t help the smile. He fidgeted, and looked away again. “I really appreciate it, Nico. But you can keep playing Mythomagic if you want.”

He ducked his head. It looked like his ears were red. “I think you’re cooler than Batman,” he mumbled.

I smiled wider. “Thanks.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

After a quiet moment in which we recovered from our heart to heart, I rallied us up and got to the point of the detour.

“Take this,” I told Bianca briskly, thrusting Riptide into her hands. “This is yours now.”

Bianca looked down in surprise, and then nearly dropped it. “I-I can’t,” she stammered, “Isn’t this a legendary sword? You shouldn’t give this to me .” She tried to shove it back into my hands, and I grabbed her wrist.

“Bianca, look at me.” I looked her in the eye. “I only have three weapons on me. Riptide, my spatha , and my pugio . I watched you chuck my pugio at the Chimera—” she blushed in mortification and looked away. “No I’m not mad, Bianca, I told you you saved my life— and that’s not happening again. You and Nico were stuck there, on a flat grassland with no cover, without a weapon .” 

Bianca tried to protest, “But you were the one in danger!”

“We were all in danger,” I told her evenly. “But I knew how to fight. You don’t. Which means ,” I raised my voice pointedly when Bianca opened her mouth again, “that I need to train you.”

Her mouth opened and closed like a goldfish. “You’re,” she began, then stopped. Then she tried again, “You’ll really train me?”

I smiled at her, “Didn’t we just talk about getting stronger? I can’t always be there. My spatha and pugio won’t be there if you toss them.” She turned red again, but didn’t turn away this time. “But Riptide has an enchantment and will always come back. Which is why you’ll be taking it.”

Bianca pursed her lips, looking down at the pen in her hands. The way she cradled it was sort of comical, since it looked for all intents and purposes like a cheap ballpoint. “Okay. I...thank you, Percy. I will take care of it.”

Nico, who’d remained silent while Bianca and I were having our hushed talk, suddenly spoke up. “That’s not fair,” he complained, and the two of us startled. “What about me? What do I get?”

“Uhh,” I exchanged looks with Bianca and she shrugged, hesitant. Despite everything, I wanted to keep Nico innocent a little bit longer. “You get to hang around me more? You wouldn’t want to be in range of your sister when she’s doing her swings, trust me.”

“But I said I’d fight, too!” Nico argued earnestly, but for some reason seemed pleased enough with my offer. I tried to convey my confusion to his sister but she only looked at me with a knowing smile. I felt a tug on my shirt and found Nico looking at the ground, my shirt in his fist. “Can I also watch Bianca’s lessons?”

It wasn’t like I could put him with anyone else. “Yeah, dude. Of course.”

Nico’s cheeks reddened with his smile. Bianca tried to cover hers with her hand. I didn’t really think anything of it.

For the next few days, in thirty minute intervals, I taught Bianca to fight defensively, to keep the sword between her and her opponent(s) as often as possible. I showed her how to recover from a blow, how to dodge, and how to strengthen her grip and twist her body so the force transferred away from her and into the ground. Most importantly, I forced her to stay alert on all angles by enlisting Nico into throwing pebbles at her. He seemed a bit too happy to participate.

I had her do mock fights with me until her instincts were ingrained, with me doing all that I could to get inside her guard and her practicing maneuvers to evade. Nico cheered for one or both of us interchangeably, and always seemed happy no matter who won.

“Go, Bianca!” he shouted through cupped hands. “Win or I’m eating your cookie!”

“Don’t touch my cookie!” she snapped back in between heavy breaths, leaving enough of an opening that I could slam Riptide out of her hand. “Oh, Styx.” She picked it up from me, probably.

“Yay, Percy won!” Nico cheered, before turning and running off. “I get Bianca’s cookie!”

Bianca didn’t have practice marathon running with a wolf goddess for three months, so she tired a bit faster than I did. While she rested, I pulled Nico aside and showed him how to deal as much damage as possible to an attacker from any angle with a dagger. The answer was almost always to aim lower, or for the torso.

Bianca wasn’t exactly a genius at sword fighting (I could see William shaking his head at me in my mind) and I was definitely not the best teacher, but she worked herself to the bone to learn whatever she could.

Around four nights after the Chimera attack, when Nico was asleep and after we had just fended off a few angry storm spirits, she stayed up with me. She looked tired, but was unwilling to close her eyes. “We’ll be in New York tomorrow,” she said suddenly.

I blinked, wondering where this conversation was coming from. “Yeah.”

“Are we also going to reach camp tomorrow?”

I looked up at the sky through the window of our temporary shelter. “Yeah, hopefully.”

It was too dark to see her face. “Can you come with us? To this camp?”

I winced. “I can’t,” I said, truthfully. “I don’t belong there.” If my suspicions about their parentage was right, at least.

Bianca hummed. I could see the silhouette of her face turn upward. “You know, it’s always been me and Nico for as long as I can remember. In my first memory, he was there. Mamma always told me to take care of him and to stop arguing with him. She told me I should give him whatever he wanted, because he was younger and I was his older sister.”

I nodded, though she likely couldn’t see. She wanted to get something off her chest, and I was content to listen. “Ah.”

“When mamma and papà died—ah no,” she corrected. “When I thought they died, and left me to take care of Nico, I was so angry. I had to do everything for him, but this time by myself. I thought I’d never be free of him. I thought my purpose in life was just ‘Nico’s older sister.’ It was so unfair. Why did I have to share everything ? Why couldn’t I be my own person for once?”

I stayed silent.

Bianca’s voice turned softer, thickened with love. “But I’m the only one he has. He’s the only one I have. No matter what, we’ll be in this together. It’s hard being an older sister, but. I think I’d do it again, if I had the choice. It would have been so lonely otherwise.”

I made a noise of vague understanding. I couldn’t relate, being an only child. I wondered what it must have been like, to have someone who was so close to you it was stifling. To know someone who would always know you.

“I just wanted to tell someone,” she said, “about those terrible thoughts I used to have. And that I sometimes still have. I also wanted to let you know—I’m glad you’re in this with me. Nico is too. Despite all the dangers being a half-blood has put me and Nico in, I don’t regret it. If we were mortal, we might have never met you.”

I wasn’t expecting to be addressed. I turned to look at her in the quiet darkness, surprised.

I could see the outline of a smile. “We’ll part tomorrow, but it won’t be the end,” Bianca declared, voice strong again. “With the way Greek mythology works, we're family now, aren’t we?”

The last part was said with a hint of doubt, as if she were waiting for me to deny it. Though her mythos was slightly off, her point was no less true. I hoped she could see my answering smile in the darkness.

“Yeah,” I replied. “Family.”

Despite the chill in the air, I felt warm.

Notes:

[BREAKING NEWS] Unnatural Flooding of the Mississippi, the Worst It's Ever Been in Earth's History, Says Meteorologists

Percy: Hey so, what do you know about Anaklusmos?
Octavian: Anaklu-who?

Chapter 9: I get a new party member

Notes:

chap's a bit shorter than usual

We crossed the bridge into New York City on the NJ Transit and with little fanfare. It was around five in the morning, and we had snuck on the train platform after convincing the early morning employee that we were the ghosts of kids who died too young. We sweetened the deal by throwing in a few skeletal parlour tricks. The MVP was Nico, actually, who had taken to summoning the undead like I had taken to soaking. 

Bianca and I had a hunch that it had also been him back with the Chimera, after Bianca summoned a rib bone and suddenly partial skeletons starting appearing.

The transit employee might have fainted, and frankly I didn’t know what I would have done if I were in his position. It’s one of those things that you had to be there to see it.

Another illegally acquired transfer and an unlimited arcade card bribe later, we were in a taxi car playing against Nico in the backseat. The taxi driver was driving like the hellhounds were on his tail (highly unlikely, given the di Angelos’ presence), and it wasn’t long before we came to a before a large hill with a lone tall pine tree.

I asked the driver to wait five minutes (I still needed a ride back), and motioned for the siblings to exit the car.

Ever since we hit the Big Apple, I’ve been feeling uneasy. It wasn’t too noticeable, and I would take this slow steady sensation of indigestion over being landlocked anyday.

Standing before the hill magnified that sensation by a hundred times. I was starting to get a headache, and there was the sensation of someone watching me. It sent shivers up my spine. I tried to take a step forward, but it was almost like trying to walk through jello. Bianca and Nico had taken several steps forward with no apparent issue other than gravity, and turned back to look at me.

“Looks like this is as far as I can go,” I told the siblings. I pointed towards the tree, where the Mist was faintly shimmering. “You two should continue until you’re past that tree.”

Nico looked confused, lowering the arm that was holding the Zeus figurine. “You’re not coming?” 

I had forgotten that I didn’t have this conversation with him yet. I offered him a weak smile. “No, sorry.”

Nico’s lips formed into a sharp frown. “Why not?” he demanded. “Where are you going?”

Bianca also frowned. “Nico, don’t take that tone!”

I wasn’t offended. “It’s cool,” I said easily. “Sorry Nico, but my home’s somewhere else. I can’t go with you.” A day after the Chimera incident, after our first training break, I tried to explain what camp would be like, using my personal experiences. I couldn’t get the word ‘camp’ out before the ground began to quake and I collapsed in a dead faint. Bianca blamed overexertion, but the sensation was too similar to swearing by the Styx. I didn’t mention my concerns, but I knew how to take a hint.

Nico set his jaw. “Come with us,” he insisted. “Please?”

“I really can’t, buddy,” I told him helplessly. “I need to go home.”

“But Bianca and I need you !” Nico stomped his foot on the grass, making a muffled thump. “You can’t just leave!”

I pressed my lips tightly together, and looked him in the eye. Bianca glanced between us worriedly, having taken Riptide out and was currently fiddling with it.

Nico deflated and turned sullen. “Why can’t you stay with us?” he asked, accusingly. “We’re friends, aren’t we?”

“Dude, of course we’re friends,” I assured him, and he looked hopeful for a second. “But it doesn’t have anything to do with that. My home is just...elsewhere.”

“Then we’ll come with you!”

“Aren’t you also a demigod?” Bianca asked, unable to hold herself back. “This can be your home, too, can’t it?”

“Demigod?” Nico echoed, puzzled.

I sucked in a breath. “Not that kind of demigod,” I said, finally. “This place doesn’t welcome someone like me. And I already have somewhere to return to.”

Bianca looked confused, and glanced between me and the pine tree uphill. I wonder if there was something behind the Mist that she could see and I couldn’t. She seemed to have come to a realization and looked back at me with wariness.

She wet her lips. “Then...thank you, Percy. For bringing Nico and myself here.”

“Bianca!” Nico complained, betrayed.

“Nico, please,” Bianca told him softly. “Don’t make this difficult for him, okay?” She turned towards me as Nico faced away angrily. “Thank you for your lessons too. And for lending me Riptide.” She held out the enchanted pen. “I will return this to you now.”

I took a step back. “What, no. Bianca, I told you this was yours now.”

For some reason, she looked even more upset. “I can’t take something like this from you,” she argued. “You’ve already done enough for us.”

“I’m not taking it back.”

“Isn’t this your sword?” Bianca pressed.

“Not really,” I shrugged. “My dad gave it to me, but I really have no use for it. Trust me, Riptide is better off with you.”

Bianca slowly closed her fingers around the pen again. “Our father told us that gods couldn’t interfere in the mortal world,” she said, pointedly. “Isn’t this interference?”

“What are you talking about?” Nico interrupted suspiciously. “When did dad say that?”

“You woke up right before this,” Bianca told him. “Percy, is it true or not?”

I nodded knowingly, then shrugged. “Your dad is right. There’s usually some exception or loophole,” I said, mind thinking back to Lupa. That was definitely not ‘non-interference.’ “This probably applies.”

Bianca didn’t look appeased. “You can’t stake things on a ‘probably’!” she objected. “Aren’t there consequences?”

“I don’t know what’s going on!” Nico shouted in frustration.

I could sympathize. Somewhere along the way, we had begun to have different conversations, and I couldn’t figure out why she was so upset about me giving her a sword my dad gave me. Riptide was clearly fine with it. I noticed the taxi driver tapping rapidly on the steering wheel. I was on the verge of losing my only ride.

“Okay, okay,” I said, appeasingly. “How about this. You’re fine with me lending Riptide to you, right?”

“...Right,” Bianca confirmed with uncertainty.

“Then I’m lending it to you,” I concluded. “Just return it to me the next time we meet. I really have to go now, the taxi driver’s getting impatient.” Nico looked like he wanted to reach out, but his hands were gripping his figurine, so I pulled him and his sister into a loose hug. “Take care of yourselves, alright?”

While I was walking away, Nico shouted, “Wait!”

“Nico, you have to let him go ,” Bianca said, frustrated.

Nico ignored her. He stared at me hard for several seconds, before his shoulders slumped. “Who’s going to protect us when you’re gone?” he asked, quietly.

My heart went out for him. I almost did want to stay, but I couldn’t. Not with the uneasiness slowly building to more I hung around. “You will,” I told him simply. “Bianca will protect you, and you’ll protect her. You don’t need me, Nico. You’ll be just fine.”

I tried my best to ignore the two of them standing abandoned on the grassy hill as I went to open the backseat of the cab. I motioned for them to start moving, which they did with great reluctance.

The taxi driver looked frustrated but also somewhat sympathetic. “You their caretaker or something?” he asked, trying to make conversation. “Is this your first time being apart?”

“Something like that.” I waited for them to walk up the hill and go past the tree, whereupon they suddenly vanished from sight. I breathed out, slowly. “Can you take me to Montauk, mister?”

I wondered if I’d ever see them again.

The taxi driver eyed me suspiciously. “Wouldn’t you rather me take you to your parents?”

I would, but my mom was all the way on the other side of the U.S. “Montauk Beach, please.”

“Alright, alright.” He shifted the car into reverse, and we went back downhill. “Montauk it is. I really don’t know how your parents can do this. Rich people.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

Montauk was nice. The waves probably forgot who I was, and were a murky gray instead of the translucent blue-green of my memories. I didn’t want to try and enter the water. My dreams had always taken place on this beach, and I was worried that just by entering, the sea would come to know what I’ve done. The foolish promise I made to the voice under the cliffed overpasses of Colorado, before I understood what it was.

Some days I couldn’t shake the feeling that someone knew. Or everyone knew. Only the fact that I was still alive gave me hope that my secret was safe.

Traitors to Rome didn’t have a happy end, after all.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I was just about ending my mindless stroll when I heard a loud whinny and distant shouts of alarm. It sounded like it was just ahead, so I picked up my pace.

I stopped incredulously when I saw a group of teenagers attempt to drag a pegasus mare onto a cruise ship. The pure black creature was shackled down by several golden brown chains, and she was fighting for all she was worth, stamping her hooves and twisting her wings this way and that. 

I didn’t think there was an existing slave market for mythical creatures, but maybe the Greeks did things differently around here.

With a sensation that was more of an abstract tug than a true feeling, I raised the water gradually, and near effortlessly. The demigods wrestling with the pegasus were distracted with their quarry, and didn’t notice the growing wave until someone from the cruise ship ran over and shouted something down.

Too late.

I released the clench in my gut and watched the wave come crashing down. In a second, I was the wave, and I quickly directed it into the chains. Some parts were rusty. I helped it along. Others had tiny gears and loose pieces. I forced the water through and pried it open.

When the wave cleared, the cruise liner was being pulled back out to sea, and the demigods were half buried in sand. The mare raised her pitch black wings and flapped it hard, achieving takeoff in one move and flattening her captors further.

A job well done, I turned around and left.

(Looking back on it, maybe if I turned around I would have seen golden eyes looking at me.)

A few minutes later, I realized I had made a mistake.

That was really cool of ya, boss! I thought I was monster chow for sure. Unless they wanted to ride me into glorious battle. As people they still seriously suck, though, so I woulda kicked one of ‘em off and be turned into monster chow anyway.

Not in saving the pegasus, who was pretty annoying, but in assuming the guy’s gender. Apparently, the pegasus was a very energetic male, and he flew after me to thank me for saving him. Also apparently, horse-whisperer was on the list of powers I inherited from my dad.

You listenin’, boss?

“I’m not your boss,” I muttered to him for the fifth time, glancing down the street to see if anyone was looking at me weirdly. They were, but probably not because I was talking to myself. “My name’s Percy .”

Oh, okay. Hey, boss Percy! The pegasus said seriously, trotting alongside me and attracting all the stares. I wondered what the mortals were seeing. That’s kinda a mouthful, don’tcha think?

“Cool, great. Now can you leave me alone?”

A black blur suddenly pivoted in front of me, wings outstretched. I startled into a stop and the pegasus snorted and clopped his hooves on the ground a few times. No can do, boss Percy. I always repay my debt. And the faster I do it, the faster I can go hit it up with some mares.

“You don’t have a debt,” I told him, exasperated. “You’re welcome for what happened before, so just go on your merry way.”

The pegasus looked at me I was an idiot. Ya really don’t listen, do ya, boss Percy?

I clenched my jaw. Who was talking? Why were all mythological creatures this persistent? “Can you stop calling me that already? Here, let me break it down for you: I. Don’t. Want. Anything. From. You.”

The pegasus stopped, causing him to lag behind as I picked up my pace. I had thought the whole matter was done with when a voice spoke in my head again.

Tell ya what. Why don’t ya make me your steed? For the low price of a box of donuts a week, I can take you anywhere, anytime .

He sounded like an infomercial, but I had to admit it wasn’t a bad deal. Having my own ride can be kind of cool, and plus I was several weeks overdue to return to Camp Jupiter. “How fast can you go?” I asked, finally.

The pegasus whinnied haughtily, unfurling his wings. Why don’t I show ya?

o-o-o-o-o-o

We took off to a policeman yelling at me to show him my license, and landed in New Jersey in a little under ten minutes. I was beyond impressed, and surprisingly not nauseous at all. Maybe a little winded, though.

“Okay,” I said after catching my breath. “ Okay. I can work with this. What’s your name again?”

Name’s Blackjack, boss! The pegasus stomped on the ground proudly and flicked his tail. Good to meet ya!

o-o-o-o-o-o

I called it a day after we crossed the border between Ohio and Indiana through a mix of non-stop flight and less exhaustive walking. I still had enough cash (though mostly denarii) in my pockets to get Blackjack and myself some food, though Blackjack turned up his nose at anything not a dessert and preferred to munch on some hay. He was also a vegetarian, though luckily he didn’t mind the smell.

I was just delighted to have fried chicken again after several months.

If I thought things were smooth sailing after that, though, it only took one night to prove me wrong.

I didn’t really open my eyes so much as I suddenly became aware that I was in a dark, dank room. I wasn’t alone, since before me was a shadowy figure on his knees before a pit in the ground. Actually, that was probably underselling it. Even from here, I could feel the empty hunger of that pit, and shivers ran up my spine from the undeniable suffering of what lies inside. It smelled a little like dirt and iron.

Or blood.

The shadowy figure was talking, and every now and then the flames off the wall hit the person just right that I could somewhat make out blonde hair. “—some hippocampi, and the pegasus. Only the monsters with an affiliation with the sea were able to escape. No lasting injuries, but one of our forces almost drowned.” The voice was male.

How fortunate , a deep and smooth voice emerged. It startled me, because I couldn’t see the speaker. Until I realized the voice echoed weirdly, and was coming from the pit itself. What’s on your mind, boy?

The man hesitated. “My lord, I fear that this could be the work of Poseidon. It might not be safe for us to camp in his waters anymore.”

The ancient laws bind him, as they do me, the voice dismissed. No, it is not the work of my son. Rather, the culprit is here with us right now. Aren’t you, Perseus Jackson?

I startled, and took several steps back. Goosebumps rose all over my body, and I could barely breathe. How? How could he have known?

“H-he is?” the man asked, equally startled. “Who is he?”

None other than the son of the god we’re talking about .

Who, Poseidon? I thought hysterically. If I had any lingering doubts about the existence of the Greeks, they were all dispelled.

“Poseidon doesn’t have a son. Especially if he was that powerful,” the man denied. “I would have known if one arrived at camp!”

It felt like someone had a freezing cold vice grip on my throat. I couldn’t say anything, merely watch.

The son of a different sea, perhaps. What did your mother say? ‘An ancient enemy arises from sleep —’

“— beware the mortal son of the western sea ,” the man finished, so quickly I didn’t think he was even aware of it. He recovered soon enough. “But if not Poseidon, than what god? Could it be a titan? Your brother, my lord?”

The force on my throat suddenly pulled me towards the pit. The man didn’t seem to be able to see me, but shivered anyway. I had my own problems: namely, the cold golden eyes peering coldly at me from inside the pit.

I suppose it’s about time I told you about the others, the voice mused. But this is a conversation you already know, Perseus Jackson. Why don’t you move along now?

The grip on my throat suddenly tightened, and I truly began to choke. I had no real body, and couldn’t get the fingers to loosen no matter what I tried.

I look forward to working with you, son of Neptune.

I woke up with a mouth of scratchy hay, with a beady brown eye worriedly peering down on me. I yelped and tried to back away, only for my makeshift bed to give way beneath my hand. Hay landed everywhere, between the gaps in my clothes and all over the creature who had been observing me.

Woah, boss! Easy up there! We can talk this out!

He had black wings.

Blackjack.

I’m awake.

I breathed in and out heavily, trying to get my heart beat under control. I was suddenly angry. Between the cow man, that voice in the pit, and the mouth in the sand, I was getting sick and tired of being stalked by all these myths.

Ya were tossin’ and turnin’ a lot. I was just checkin’ in on ya, promise!

I finally realized I had my dagger gripped tightly in my right hand. I let it drop, to Blackjack’s obvious relief.

The stallion inched closer, cautiously, never taking his eyes off the imperial gold dagger. Ya okay, boss? he asked, hesitantly. Bad dreams getting to ya?

I took another deep breath. “....Something like that.”

Yeah? Blackjack said, as sympathetic as an equine could be. Wanna talk about it? I heard it helps.

I shook my head. “Just some,” I fumbled for the right words, “visits from extended family. I’ll deal.”

Blackjack didn’t look too happy with my answer, but suddenly his stomach grumbled. My stomach replied with an answering growl.

“Why don’t we get some food?” I suggested.

Blackjack shot me a disapproving look, but was too hungry to protest.

I felt a surge of envy for the di Angelos, and not for the first time.

I would much rather have my dad in my dreams than these faceless monsters.

Notes:

Nico: I look like I'm upset (because I am (not at you though)), but also I'm excited to meet you because you're my favorite card in Mythomagic even though you have the lowest attack and defense in all the gods. I just think your character is really cool, please can I get your autograph?
Mr. D: ...who put this small sassy child in my way?

Bianca, doing the laundry: ...why do these tags have 'William Dane' on them? Did Percy steal these??

Chapter 10: My dad gives me a warning

I was flying over the Mississippi when a watery hand rose up, grabbed me, and plunged me under. I could hear Blackjack neighing in alarm, but it all happened too fast for me to react.

I was otherwise occupied with the anteater mom and her son and my general lack of consciousness the first time I took a dip in the Mississippi, but during my second impromptu dip I was startled by how filthy the waters were. If you could name it, it was almost sure to be in there. I spotted bicycle tires, stray water bottles, candy wrappers, cans—just to name a few.

I could acutely feel several liquids in the river that were most definitely not water, but I wasn’t too enthusiastic about identifying what they actually were. It honestly made me sad. The Mississippi was such a powerful and plentiful river, and now look what the people have done to it.

Quite so, Perseus .

I whirled around to face the voice, and came face to face with two water nymphs. The left one looked a little sloppy and apathetic, and I recognized her as the nymph who threw me out of the river the first time. The second one had a tranquil, salty white glow to her, and my breath caught when I finally made out her face past the light show.

“—Mom?”

I blinked a few more times, and felt immediately disappointed. It wasn’t my mom. From what I could tell, the nymph was probably a saltwater nymph from the sea; the water around her just felt salty. She was pretty, in that traditional, motherly way. At the same time, she looked young enough to be my sister.

I didn’t get it either.

I’m not your mother , the nymph told me. Though it is a humbling comparison, to look a woman Lord Neptune is taken with.

If I were honest, I didn’t know what to think about the guy my mom hooked up with that one summer. Sure, he was a god. You couldn’t get much better than that for someone who likes you. But there was a small part of me that still resented him for not hanging around after I was born. My mom is objectively the best person I’ll know. She worked her way up from having no living family but an uncle with cancer, got herself a college degree all on her own, and baked blue cookies for me when I don’t feel well. Sally Jackson deserved the world.

And privately, more so than a god, I think she deserved somebody who’d stay.

“That’s cool,” I said, after a long silence in which they seemed to be waiting for my reply. “You’re a Nereid, right? Why are you get all the way up here, in a freshwater river?”

I come bearing a message from your father, the Nereid told me, with a pleasant smile. But it must be quick. Though I have aid from my freshwater siblings, I cannot tolerate the pollution much longer.

The Naiad that was with us rolled her eyes and promptly phased out. The Nereid frowned slightly, but didn’t say anything. Instead, she raised her hands and a large, mirror-like object was in front of her and facing me. Where the mirror should be was instead this thin, liquidly film that seemed sort of reflective.

A bearded fisherman in a Hawaiian shirt suddenly snapped into view. I didn’t know who was more surprised, since the fisherman’s mouth opened slightly when he saw me. He blinked twice.

I thought the Nereid was playing a prank on me, and that I had effectively shocked the living daylights out of some random mortal, when I finally noticed the faint golden glow around the man and the fact that he was standing upright while surrounded by water. My weird water powers were telling me that I was looking straight at the Atlantic Ocean.

My eyes drew back to the fishing rod, which looked weathered but still well-cared for. “You eat fish?” I blurted out. “Isn’t that weird?”

My dad the fisherman had already collected himself. He snorted. “Is my brother not allowed to eat chicken?” he asked, rhetorically. “Can my sister not eat cereal?”

I closed my mouth sheepishly. Point taken. I myself enjoyed a good fillet. I bowed. “My Lord.”

The fisherman looked at me strangely, and there was a weight to his gaze that I didn’t know how to address. He suddenly took a few steps forward, and everything around him shimmered. When the not-mirror stopped rippling, his fishing rod was gone and his Hawaiian shirt was now a full set of deep blue armor, Roman-style.

His eyes were more of an icy blue than sea-green now, probably tinted because he was now clearly in an underwater palace. Which, speaking of, looked really cool.

The visage brought to the front of my mind a strange memory, one that felt so surreal that I never know if I hallucinated it. I remembered being in a crib, with a blue mobile with dolphins, clownfish, and orcas spinning merrily around. I remembered a warm glow and a hand reaching through the bars to rest on my chest, where my heart pounded. A hand larger than my entire torso.

When I was younger, I was so certain that my dad knew me as a baby. Mom claimed otherwise, saying that he had to leave a few weeks before she gave birth to me.

I couldn’t help but think, and maybe hope, that for the first time, my mom might have been wrong.

“You’re very small,” my dad observed, and I jumped. I was too busy drinking him in to remember that we should be speaking. “I have not sired a child in millennia. Are they all as small as you?”

I opened my mouth, and closed it. “I-I think so?” I tried. I think it was more like he was very big. Even behind a screen, something about him seemed larger than life. A detail stood out to me. “That can’t be right. Wasn’t Shen Lun a legacy of yours? He was just at camp about a hundred years ago.”

Neptune raised an eyebrow. “Truly? Who are his parents?”

“Er,” I thought quickly, but couldn’t remember anyone telling me. “I don’t know.”

“Are they not also my legacy?” Neptune asked. “Then which child of mine is he a descendant of?”

“I don’t know.” At his look, my cheeks burned. “No one told me anything.”

“Because no one knew. Shen Lun is not mine. Not like you are.” I whipped my head up to see my dad staring at me intently. “My counterpart is the one from whose loins our children are sired,” Neptune explained, which was all but said that he knew that I knew. Which meant now that I knew that he knew that I knew. I thought the whole thing might have been more secretive. “I thought myself to be impassive to mortal affairs for many years. It pleases Salacia enough. And now there is you.”

The intensity of his gaze made me uncomfortable. “So...what changed?”

“My counterpart fell in love and a prophecy frightened him,” Neptune said, looking almost disgusted. Then he sighed, wearily. “Your mother was—no, is —a queen among women.”

“Yeah?” I was thrown by the sudden change in topic, but found that statement easy enough to agree with.

Neptune looked at me solemnly, and before his eyes followed the bubbles that were leaving my mouth up to the surface. “Perhaps there is no force in existence that can deny Sally Jackson,” he mused, contemplatively.

I watched as he reached his hands out into the water, and a thousand tiny bubbles shot towards it until they formed a vague, three-pronged shape. His hands closed around a trident, gleaming oddly in the distorted light underwater.

“Perseus Jackson,” my dad said, the booming quality of his voice causing disturbing the illusion. “I bear you a message. You are the mortal son of the western sea, but I am not my brother and I will not destroy you for what you have not done,” at those words I jolted—they sounded so familiar, “though it may be wiser. Instead, I will see what you do, and should the time comes I will show you no mercy.”

The trident sliced through the image of my father, leaving glowing sea-blue eyes and one final parting: “ Brace yourself .”

The frame of the not-mirror promptly shattered into small seashells. I stared blankly at the space where he had just been. My ears were ringing, my heart pounding.

He knew. How much did he know? Did he know about—

No. Impossible. If he did, if he had concrete proof, then he wouldn’t have warned me. I would have been turned into a puddle right then and there.

I forced down that hurricane of emotion, and tried to act calm. Think. How much does he know? How much did anyone know? A son of the western sea—why that phrase? 

Where have I heard it before?

I took a deep breath, and felt filtered oxygen flow through my lungs. “Well,” I said, extremely grateful that my voice didn’t shake. “That was fun.”

The Naiad from before slowly faded back into view, wincing and rubbing at her own ears. The Nereid from before was nowhere to be seen. Well? her arched eyebrows seemed to say. I got the feeling she wanted me out of there.

“When you tossed me out of your river,” I asked, instead. “Did you keep the Chimera poison? Or did I just misplace it?”

The nymph looked at me, and lifted her hand. In between her curled, oily fingers, a bottle filled with lime green liquid shimmered into view.

I eyed her suspiciously. “What are you even going to do with that?”

She bared her sharp teeth at me. What’s it to you?

She had a point. I pondered briefly whether it was worth it to speak in protest of the poor souls the naiad was planning to poison (I heard Chimera poison hurt like nobody’s business), but if they were polluting her waters and close enough for her to grab them, then that was their problem. It would most likely be monsters, anyway.

I bid goodbye to the naiad and found Blackjack trotting nervously around the riverside. He lit up in relief at the sight of me, and together we set off for the west again. I really hoped I stopped getting these social visits.

Which was, of course, when I jinxed it yet again. But more on that to come later.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I woke up with a groan, and didn’t reach for my dagger when I spotted Blackjack hovering over me again. My neck and shoulders ached. I couldn’t wait to finally sleep in a real bed soon. We were almost at the border between California and Nevada, before Blackjack finally crashed from his sugar high and stranded us at the side of a highway. I told him the all-you-can-eat-dessert buffet was a terrible idea, but he insisted.

“Mornin’” I told him around a yawn. “Wassup?”

Blackjack looked alarmed. Extended family again, boss ?

I was confused. “What?”

Ya were apologizing and begging really quietly last night, Blackjack told me, tail twitching nervously. Somethin’ about a missus Sally and a river. I tried to wake ya up again, but ya told me to get you a Fillet O’ Fish and went back to sleep.

Now that he mentioned that, I did remember dreaming about standing in front of my dad the fisherman, only this time he was my dad the McDonald’s worker and no less terrifying. I couldn’t remember what preceded it, but “my mom and a river” seemed on par for the course. I used to have trouble sleeping when I was younger because of those dreams, but I don’t think they were as symbolic as my beached whale nightmares.

Sometimes, dreams were demi-godly dreams. 

Other times, they were just your run-of-the-mill nightmare.

“Wait.” I stopped the pegasus for a second. “What do you mean, ‘again’?”

Blackjack lifted his head from where he was trying to smoothen out his feathers, and looked confused. When we crashed in old man Bandicoot’s barn? Ya had a nightmare then too?

“For the last time, his name’s Bandfoot,” I said, exasperated. “Here, let me get that for you.”

Those words did seem strangely familiar, but every time I tried to remember I came up short. I remembered thanking the old man who owned the barn for letting me and my “horse” stay for the night. I remembered him frying up some eggs for us for breakfast. I remember sleepily trying to skewer Blackjack with a pugio because of a bad dream.

I couldn’t remember anything about the dream in question, only the barest hint of something dark and cold. An underwater cave, maybe?

I straightened out the secondaries on Blackjack’s other wing. He taught me a lot about feather types these past few days, and I figured I owed it to him for all the muscle work he’s been putting into this.

That’s the spot. Blackjack neighed blissfully. Boss, think ya can get that itch right on my left flank? Pretty please?

I complied easily, and with some amusement. Though, from the looks of it, both Blackjack and I desperately needed a bath.

Ya got magic fingers, boss, Blackjack told me seriously as I rinsed us both off with a nearby fire hydrant. I bet your popular with the critters.

I couldn’t help the snort. Between Echidna, her son, the Minotaur and heck, even Lupa in the beginning, I really doubted I had any sort of animal magnetism. The opposite, maybe.

When I told him as much, Blackjack cocked his head. Lupa? he asked around a mouthful of corn. Whozzat ?

I was pretty bemused myself. How was it possible that Blackjack didn’t know one of the major Roman goddesses? “She’s a wolf?” I tried. “Sometimes growly, most times a slave driver?” Inwardly I hoped no wolves were around to hear me say this. Lupa might actually come over to smack me over the head.

Ohhhhh, that Lupa , Blackjack made a belated noise of realization. Ohhhh, so ya were the other kind, boss! I was wonderin’ why we were heading west!

I stared at him. “What other kind?”

The Greek ones, Blackjack explained. Thought ya were one of ‘em since I found ya on the East coast. Then he froze and looked frantically up at the sky. Aw, heck, I wasn’t supposed to tell ya that.

Oh, that was what he meant. “It’s cool, Blackjack—”

It was nice knowing ya, the pegasus told me sadly. If you see any o’ my old girls, tell ‘em I lived a nice life.

“—Blackjack—”

I’m really going too young, boss, Blackjack neighed mournfully , think about all the donuts I haven’t eaten! Don’t wanna ask to much of ya, but make sure to make me a grave, boss. Put a new donut on it every month or somethin’, I won’t be too demanding.

“—Blackjack!” I shouted, long-suffering. He turned wide eyes on me. “It’s alright! I already know all this!”

Blackjack’s attitude immediately became skeptical. Personally, I didn’t think I warranted that much distrust. ….Ya do? When are ya dying then?

“I’m not dying, I was on a quest sanctioned by the big guys up there.” I said, feeling a headache begin to form. Then I remembered my dad’s cold words and colder eyes. “I hope.”

I probably shouldn’t have said the last part. It sent Blackjack into another round of hysterics.

o-o-o-o-o-o

Lady Lupa really made you sleep outside on the ground? Blackjack asked, perplexed. He’d finally calmed down after seeing that a lightning strike wasn’t frying the two of us anytime soon, but still avoided any cloud cover like the plague. I thought she only did that with kids she didn’t like.

“We had a rough start,” I admitted. For some reason, every other legionnaire in my Cohort I’ve spoken to claimed that it never happened to them. “And it was the summer, so it wasn’t too bad. She eventually let me move into a bunk when the weather got colder though, and I think we get along pretty well now.”

Ya don’t get it, boss , Blackjack denied. Lady Lupa does it to kids she really don’t like. I heard she does that to people she don’t want to be Romans. So the local baddies can finish ‘em off or somethin’.

It felt like the weather got chillier all of a sudden. I tucked myself in closer to Blackjack’s heat, mind racing. “...yeah?”

Ya must have pissed her off bad, boss , Blackjack decided. His tone suddenly turned gleeful. What did ya do, boss? Ya can tell me! I can keep a secret!

“I really didn’t do anything!” I protested. I couldn’t see Blackjack’s face, but I could feel his disbelief from here. “...Not at the beginning,” I conceded. “But she deserved it.”

Under Blackjack’s pestering, I finally gave in and told the story. So the thing was, sometimes a Roman’s birthday happened while they were under Lupa’s tender loving care. I’d asked several campers about it, and most of them had a similar experience. On their birthdays, Lupa had given them an Imperial Gold dagger, and guided them through a special birthday hunt. Almost all of them caught a feral chicken and cooked it for dinner. Olivia had her own spear and snared a rabbit. I had asked about William, but he was sponsored and so never had to go through Lupa to enter Rome.

For me, Lupa sort of tossed me and an Imperial Gold dagger out the door and told me dinner was on me. I didn’t know the first thing about hunting, and instead pawned off the dagger at a small jeweler’s about twenty minutes away, and bought myself two cooked ducks and a scooter.

Needless to say, Lupa nearly tore me a new one. I had to set aside time from training to do odd jobs and earn enough to buy the dagger back. My scooter summarily had to be returned and refunded.

It wasn’t all bad, though. Adolph was apparently enough of a foodie to be won over by roast duck, and followed me when Lupa shoved me outside for bedtime. I also got to keep the dagger after I finally made up the cost of the two ducks, since according to Lupa it was my purchase now.

And that was the story of Fang the pugio , I guess. I would probably sound ungrateful if I said this out loud, but I truthfully considered my pugio to be more meaningful than Riptide. Riptide was an amazing sword, and a well-balanced weapon, but I never really earned it like I did my pugio and later my spatha . Maybe I would have been worthy of it, a few years down the line, but that’s irrelevant. I had already said this to her, but I truly believed Bianca would wield Riptide better than I ever could.

Call it a gut feeling.

o-o-o-o-o-o

For the record, a shadowy hand did not pluck me off Blackjack when we went over Los Angeles, no matter what he says. What did happen, was that I got up close and far more personal than I ever wanted to with Mrs. Dodds when she snatched me off the pegasus in mid-flight.

I was disintegrating her left batwing with my pugio when she suddenly screeched in my ears and dropped me. I landed not on concrete, but on a weird, wispy substance that had the texture of a too-hard mattress. There was a grave, helmeted man draped in dark black fabric standing before me. I couldn’t see his eyes, but I got the feeling they were as black as my dad’s were green.

I rolled onto my feet and kneeled. “Lord Pluto.”

He didn’t say anything. Now that I was this close however, I realized that his cape was almost...moving. I caught images flashing by as if in stop motion, but I couldn’t identify them before they were gone again.

“Was there something you needed?” I prompted.

A deep frown etched itself onto the god’s pale face. I could see where Bianca and Nico got their complexion from. I couldn’t tell if he was actually standing before me in person, or if this was an illusion. The sheer denseness of his presence made me think it was the former. “Most gods would have struck you down for your impertinence,” he informed me, grimly. His voice was so deep it almost seemed to reverberate. “But you have done me a favor, and so I will spare you.”

Gee, thanks. I knew better than to say that though. “It was my honor,” I said, trying for respectful.

“As it should be,” he replied, sounding almost satisfied. Then: “I am here to tie up loose ends. You have been made aware of a secret the gods have been keeping for centuries. Therefore, measures need to be taken.”

It sure didn’t sound like he was sparing me. Actually, this almost sounded like the climax of a spy movie, where the main character gets offed for knowing too much. “You just said you weren’t going to kill me though,” I protested. “You need to be consistent.”

I could see Pluto’s nostrils flare. “Do not test my patience.” Did he have a notebook with all the top ten villain monologues or something? “But I do keep my word, unlike my brothers.” He sounded quite bitter about it. “Swear an oath on the Styx, Perseus Jackson,” the god of the underworld commanded. “Swear to secrecy what you have learned about the other camp, and I will let you go on your way.”

I couldn’t help it. “And if I don’t?”

A massive, dark black sword was raised and pointed right at my face. Distantly, I could hear Blackjack whinnying in alarm. “Then you will perish.”

See? Consistency.

I swore the oath, of course.

Afterwards, when the weird tar-like ground finally disappeared and Blackjack was able to touch down, Pluto came up to me again. This time, the helmet was off and looked a bit different, and the sword was nowhere to be seen. The images on the cape solidified, and my stomach lurched when I realized they were screaming faces. The god’s eyes were still dark and intense when he looked at me, but the difference between now and before had me wondering about my own dad’s shift from fisherman to underwater king.

Maybe the divide between Greek and Roman wasn’t just a demigod thing. Maybe it was a god thing too.

Pluto waved his hands and sudden Mrs. Dodds and what looked like her equally aged sisters popped up to shove a large brown paper bag in my hands. I opened the top to find that the bag was filled with food. Plastic wrapped hamburgers, fruits, and interestingly enough a whole cooked lobster. It smelled surprisingly good despite all the food that shouldn’t be able to go together.

I tried not to drool. I haven’t eaten since last night, and I think I heard Blackjack’s stomach growl. “Thank you for your generosity, my lord.”

“My children requested that I give these to you,” Pluto said, sounding almost disgruntled. “Consider the debt of the blade settled.”

I didn’t bother informing the god that I didn’t consider Riptide mine anymore (and neither did Riptide, considering my pockets have been empty for a week now), or that food probably didn’t add up to the value of a legendary weapon. I didn’t have time to, considering that Pluto was beginning to glow. 

I instinctively closed my eyes and turned away. There was a bright flash behind my eyelids, and when I opened my eyes Blackjack and I were alone in an alleyway. To our right was a side entrance reading “DOA Recording Studios” in big letters.

Blackjack gently lifted his wings from his eyes and peeked out. When he realized that Pluto was gone and the bag of food was still there, he seemed pretty delighted. Good going, boss! he praised, as if I were the cause for either.

I was feeling pretty giddy myself. I had finally reorient myself, figured out where I was relative to my destination. Two more hours until Camp Jupiter.

I was almost home.

Notes:

broke: sacrificing food to your godly parent
woke: sacrificing food to your friendly neighborhood hungry mortal
bespoke: bartering sustenance in exchange for a legendary weapon of priceless value

Chapter 11: My horse files a missing persons report

Notes:

it's 2 AM, I have a midterm tomorrow, but I haven't updated this in three weeks. My priorities are very reasonable, thanks

I arrived at Camp Jupiter shortly after midnight. Since the camp had pretty strict curfew, I decided not to test my luck and wait until morning to cross the Little Tiber. The last thing I wanted was to come back to hundreds of sleep deprived demigods coming to investigate an intruder alert.

William was the first one to find me, face down in the little Tiber as the sun was just beginning to rise. I think the fact that I was a son of Neptune must have slipped his mind, because I woke up wheezing against the intense, on the cusp of painful pressure on my chest.

"S- stop —"

It immediately disappeared.

"...are you trying to give me a heart attack, Perseus?"

I squinted up at him, coughing, but couldn't make out a face in the dim lighting. "Were you trying to break my ribs ?"

“Gods forbid I was concerned,” he said, pointedly, but it came off as more of a murmur to me. My mind was still fogged with sleep. “What in Pluto are you doing in our river, Perseus? Get yourself into bed.”

“I can’t,” I whined. William’s hands were trying to get me to sit up, but I let my body fall like dead weight against it. “I haven’t taken a bath in ages.”

“Then go take a bath.”

“But I’m tired,” I complained, voice now slightly muffled by someone’s shirt.

I felt a huff of breath dust the top of my head. “What are you, an infant? Even my eight month old is more mature than this.”

“You have a child?”

A sigh. “Times like this I remember how new you are to camp. Yeah, I have a kid. She’s already quite a troublemaker. I don’t know who she gets it from; both my wife and I claim to be good kids. It’s a running joke that she’s actually adopted."

By now, I was awake enough to realize I was a few feet higher than I should be, and that my legs were not reaching the ground. I was not, however, awake enough to register what this meant.

“That reminds me. Is that yours?”

At the nudge, I squinted into the dusk and spotted a lump of shifting muscle and feathers not too far away from us. It snored, and neighed quietly along with its exhale. Blackjack.

I felt a twinge of guilt. That position did not look comfortable. “Oh, yeah. He’s my friend. Brought me back home.”

“So he’s your steed,” William said. “I’ll get someone to prepare a stable for him. Is he friendly?”

What William said wasn’t quite right, but it was getting hard to think. Blackjack wasn’t really mine, so much as he was in for the donuts and I needed a ride. He was a pretty chill pegasus, when you weren’t attempting to gut him in your sleep. “He’s not a threat, promise.” But speaking of sleep.

“I meant to other legionnaires,” someone said, exasperated. “Perseus, stay with me, I need to do logistics and consult with the stable Lares…Percy!”

o-o-o-o-o-o

It took until I was unceremoniously dumped into the hot water of the camp’s bathhouses that I realized William had carried me the whole way over. I couldn’t make myself get out of the water until the flush in my face died down. It took me even longer to make my way out and leave behind the marbled walls of paradise, but for a different reason.

Waiting for me outside was a slightly older girl with long blond hair. She perked up when she saw me. “Percy!”

I eyed her warily. “Uh, hello. Do I know you?”

“Nope,” she said cheerily. “But the name’s Gwen! Thank you for what you did for Dakota the other day, by the way.” I blinked at that. Who? “Anyway, I was sent to fetch you because your pegasus is giving Praetor Osbourne some trouble, and no one knows why.”

I sucked in a breath. Aw, crap. “Where are they?”

“On the other side of the Little Tiber,” Gwen informed me. Then, since I started running, she shouted: “It’s not that serious! No one’s dead!”

I picked up my pace. Somehow, that didn’t really reassure me.

It took me a while to get back to the entrance to New Rome, and the physical exertion more or less made my bath useless. By the time I got there, I realized that Gwen was right and that it wasn’t actually all that serious. Though there was a crowd, the dominant emotion was confusion and not panic.

Blackjack was nervously fluttering his wings and seemed agitated, but not like he was on a warpath. He was conversing with a brown pegasus I’ve never seen before. Olivia was standing next to the unfamiliar pegasus, and mostly just looked lost. She noticed me quickly, and her face brightened.

I pushed my way through the ranks of half-armored demigods. As I got closer, I could make out Blackjack’s distressed voice.

— kinda small, I dunno. I looked under all the rocks on this side of the river already. But I swear Boss was right here, man, I only closed my eyes for a bit.

The brown pegasus nodded his head seriously. I had to say that his coloring reminded me of peanut butter, the extra creamy kind.

Like, for a size comparison, Boss is ‘bout as small as that kid over there. Blackjack gestured his snout at me, before doing the equine equivalent of a doublet take. Oh, wait a minute. He lowered his head and squinted. Boss?

Underneath the prying eyes of my fellow legionnaire and my confused praetor, I weakly raised my hand. “Hi.”

Boss! Blackjack looked like he was over the moon. He trotted his way to me, prompting the other to follow. Boss, I thought the bird-people got ya cuz ya were out after curfew! Ya look so clean, I didn’t recognize ya for a hot second. Oh yeah, come meet Skippy —

Scipio , the other pegasus interjected, running his back hoof through the dirt. His tail flicked and he looked me over and he seemed generally unimpressed. Once again, story of my life.

— I was just tellin’ him about ya.

“You sure were,” I confirmed dryly, under my breath and hyper-aware of the people and purple ghosts around us. I was already being called the Son of Neptune and the Kid Who Was Also A Bullfighter; I didn’t want to add ‘horse whisperer’ to the list. “And uh, nice to meet you, Scipio?” I quietly addressed the last part to Scipio, who slightly tilted his head.

“Your pegasus seems to have calmed down,” Olivia remarked as she walked up to us. She began to stroke Scipio’s flank. She made a motion with her other hand and the other Romans slowly began to disperse. “I wonder what was making him so agitated earlier.”

“Er.” I wondered how I was supposed to answer that. I decided to go for the truth. “I think he was just anxious because he couldn’t find me.”

Olivia’s eyes crinkled in her signature smile. “That’s sweet,” she said. “Say, have you met Skippy yet?” Blackjack whinnied in amusement, while Scipio chuffed in resignation.

“Uh, I haven’t. Why’s he called Skippy?” I asked, feeling pretty amused myself.

Olivia smiled. “His full name is actually Scipio. But my successor thought that he was just the right color for peanut butter, and so nicknamed him. I thought it was cute, so I kept it.”

I frowned in confusion. “Your successor?”

Olivia looked puzzled, before realization dawned on her face. “Oh, I keep forgetting that you weren’t around that long,” she exclaimed, lightly smacking her own head. “This is actually my second run at praetorship. Usually the position only lasts five years or so, but my successor resigned in order to devote her time to being a mother. I picked the position back up in a unanimous vote about a year ago. Have you met William’s wife yet?”

I blinked at her. “...Praetor Dane is married?” Except now that I thought about, I somewhat recalled William saying that he had a daughter. When did that happen?

“Yep,” Olivia affirmed happily. “They even have a daughter now. Julia is just the sweetest child, you should meet her one day.”

“But,” I began, somewhat awkwardly. Something still didn’t add up. “Aren’t you and William...together?”

Olivia looked amused. “It’s not uncommon for praetors to form that sort of partnership,” she told me. “But you’ll find that I’m around four years older than him. His wife was the one who came after me. Or well, before me if we are talking about the present time.”

My head was starting to feel stuffy from all the loops this conversation had taken. “I...what?”

“Don’t worry about it, Percy,” Olivia said, waving her hand in a dismissive gesture. “All you have to know is that I’m your praetor and you listen to me.”

“And Praetor Dane?”

“And Praetor Dane,” Olivia amended with a smile. “Now where was I? Oh, yes, Skippy. I’m actually not sure how old he is—”

And I won’t tell , the brown pegasus told me a little haughtily, snout tilted slightly upward. I had almost forgotten that the two horses were still around.

“—the steed of all female praetors—”

He’s about a hundred, boss , Blackjack said easily. He says he was born before the first Dunkin’ ever opened. Isn’t that so weird, boss? A world without donuts! I can’t imagine.

Somehow, I didn’t think Dunkin’ Donuts were the origins of the first ever donuts.

“—last thirty years or so. He’s served us faithfully for quite some time,” Olivia finished, stroking Scipio’s mane. 

The double conversation was making me dizzy, but I felt like I got the gist of it. I nudged at Blackjack to be quiet, and he dutifully turned his head the other way. “That’s pretty cool. But camp hasn’t been in a battle since the 1940s, right?” Or so I remembered from Roman-American History 101. “Does he ever get a chance to go out?”

Olivia’s hand settled heavily on my shoulder. Looking up, I caught an unfamiliar and almost unsettling gleam in her eyes. Her gaze was like Lupa’s before a hunt. “Oh Percy,” she said. “I have got to introduce you to the camp War Games.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

“The War Games?” Octavian repeated, scowling at a particularly at a particularly stubborn speck of dirt on the armor. The amount of force he proceeded to apply was something that I doubt William would approve of. “ Oh . That’s right. You’re new. For a second I thought you were being stupid.”

“Can we have a discussion without all the insults?” I asked. “Remember that I’m doing you a favor.” I held up a pilum pointedly.

We were in the armory polishing the used armor and weapons from the week’s training. I was surprised when Olivia eventually told me that Octavian had been spending the week on armory duty as punishment. I wasn’t surprised about Octavian doing something to earn himself extra chores, but I was surprised to learn that Victor was the one to assign it to him.

I don’t mean this in an offensive way, but Victor seemed a bit too nice to hand out punishments, despite being a senior centurion. After I got Blackjack settled into the stables and was assured that he would be given the best cure and weekly donuts, I set off to find Octavian. 

Somehow, I had been persuaded into giving him a hand. I wasn’t entirely sure how the topic shifted from his punishment to a recount of what I’d been up to the past two and a half weeks. Octavian was pretty miffed when I told him I swore an oath to secrecy, but let it go after thunder began to rumble. I told him a bit about meeting my dad, and the big fight that went down in Mississippi. I figured those were safe topics.

“The War Games are a camp-wide activity for some of the legionnaires to sate their incessant need to pick fights,” Octavian said, with no little amount of disdain. “We cycle through different variations of it, like deathball—think paintball with acid and poison—gladiator fighting, and chariot racing. The next one is probably going to be Siege. Cohorts are split into two teams and they each build a fortress, and later a bunch of Romans smack each other around until one of the fortresses have fallen. Usually the praetor’s cohort of origin are grouped together against the other three.”

“We’ll have to talk about deathball again,” I told him. Poison? Acid? “But otherwise it doesn’t sound like you like these events.”

Octavian looked at me dryly. “They’re for people who exercise their muscles more than their brain. Terribly sorry if that’s not my preference.”

I felt doubtful. “I don’t know. Praetor Osbourne seems to really enjoy it.”

“Praetor Osbourne is different,” Octavian insisted. “She’s the great granddaughter of Lady Victoria, of course she’d enjoy a competition.”

He had a point there. Then I had a different realization. “Oh, will we be on the same team? Praetor Dane came from Cohort One, right?”

Octavian paused in his polishing. “...I suppose this will be interesting.”

We polished in silence for a few minutes. It wasn’t an uncomfortable silence; there was just nothing to really say.

Actually, that was wrong. I still had a burning question that needed to be answered. Octavian had dodged the question the first few times I brought it up, but sue me I was still curious. “So what did you do to make Victor mad? I didn’t think he had it in him to punish anyone.”

Octavian scowled again. “None of your business, Jackson. Since I allow you to keep your secrets, allow me to keep mine.”

“I literally told you everything I could,” I reminded him. “Everything I left out was because I swore an oath.”

He stared at me. “Jackson. You really expect me to believe that you defeated Echidna and the Chimera, flooded the Mississippi, and met Lord Neptune and Lord Pluto all over the course of two weeks.”

“I mean, I had two weeks, didn’t I?” I snapped. I had to be honest, I felt a little stung that Octavian looked so disbelieving. To be fair though, I don’t think I would be any more gullible if I were in his shoes.

“How does that have anything to do with what Lord Pluto requested you to do?” Octavian demanded. “Or why you were on the East Coast?”

“I told you, I can’t say anything!” I protested. Then I paused. “...How did you know I went to New York?” I asked, suspiciously.

Octavian tensed up. “I didn’t until you just told me.”

“No,” I denied. “How did you know I was on the East Coast? I definitely don’t remember telling you this.” I had been too worried about accidentally triggering the oath to allude to any place beyond Mississippi. I definitely didn't have my debriefing with the Council yet, so there was no way he heard it from them.

He stayed silent.

Octavian was put on probation for something he did about a week ago. About a week ago, I was almost definitely in New York. Slowly, I began to connect the dots. “...Were you spying on me?” I pressed. “Using your augury abilities? Can you even do that?”

More silence. Octavian seemed content to making the helmet clean enough to shine.

I took that as confirmation. It suddenly all made sense. “Is this why Victor got mad at you?” If nothing else, Victor was very rigid when it came to the traditions involved in being an augur. I found myself cracking a smile. “Dude, I didn’t even know Victor could get mad. Was it worth it?”

Octavian slowly relaxed. “Don’t get a big head, Jackson,” he muttered, without much heat. “I was just attempting to see if expecting you to return was a waste of time. I only got punished because I was out past curfew.”

“You could just say that you were worried,” I told him, unimpressed but still touched. It was a weird combination, but Octavian was pretty weird himself. Then I hesitated. “And...I guess I’m sorry for making you worry.”

Octavian shrugged. “I knew you’d be fine.”

We worked in silence for a few more pregnant pauses.

“I really wasn’t lying about the Echidna and Sonny, though.”

A snort. “Keep dreaming, Jackson.”

o-o-o-o-o-o

I peeked my head into the Medical shortly after dinner, and was at first disappointed to see that the place was empty despite the lights being on. The furniture even looked a bit dusty, which was strange.

Then a throat cleared behind me. “Looking for something, boy?”

I whirled around to meet baby blue eyes hidden under the glare of his glasses. “Oh, uh, I was looking for you actually. Sir.”

“Just Fabulinus is fine,” the god said, brushing past me to go into the room. I trailed after him. “What can I do for you?”

Reaching into my back pocket, I pulled out a few squares of ambrosia wrapped tightly in some paper towels. “Just returning this.” I immediately felt a little sheepish at his raised eyebrow. “Uh, it turned out that I didn’t really need it. But thank you, I really appreciated it.”

“Well now that’s strange,” Fabulinus commented calmly. He pulled open a drawer and took out a clipboard. It was filled with rows and rows of data, and he flipped slowly between one page and the next. “It appears all my ambrosia squares are accounted for. I wonder where those came from.”

“You gave them to me…?” I trailed off uncertainly at his look.

It took me a while to realize that he meant for me to keep the squares. In fact, he had to outright explain it to me before I got it. He even told me wryly that I was no son of Minerva.

I wasn’t too good at reading between the lines, but even I can decipher what a jab at my intelligence sounded like.  

Soon after, I visited Blackjack to make sure he was being fed and settling well into his stable. I felt a little bad for Scipio, since it sounded like Blackjack had been talking his ear off non-stop ever since I left them alone. After receiving a very enthusiastic review from Blackjack about his new accommodations, I headed back to my Cohort’s barracks.

Considering that I had been up since the crack of dawn, I was more than ready for some quality snooze time.

Notes:

wake me up
before you go-go: Blackjack
WAKE ME UP INSIDE: Scipio
when September ends: Hannibal

Chapter 12: I do some schmoozing

Summary:

a lot of thievery abound

Notes:

did some more retconning. i forgot Lares were a Thing. percy also did NOT get knocked out for 3 days, that's called a traumatic brain injury. other than that, we have pretty much the full cast we'll be working with for the next few chapters. expect time skips....two chapters from now maybe? it's such a struggle to not try and populate all the narrative holes.

so actually it's been a while. i don't really remember what that last part was supposed to lead to, and my notes aren't very helpful (they've never been). i'll let y'all know when i've figured it out, but other than that i have this SUPER incredible title planned for the next chapter (imho. opinions may vary.) so... yeah.

thanks for sticking around honestly. I'll go reply to some comments.

constructive criticism welcome! even if it's something like "hot damn your pacing is slow."

also yes. the canonical 2nd cohort female centurion is actually named ida. would have been nice to know BEFORE i started this fic but i guess Mr. Riordan works at his own schedule

“Did you think I was a fool, brother?” a voice boomed. “Did you think I couldn’t figure out whose children it was that crossed camp borders those weeks ago?”

“Oh, don’t pretend,” hissed another voice. “If that Hellhound hadn’t forced my hand, your bloated pride would have been none the wiser.”

“ You dare !”

A quiet yawn.

I found myself yawning too, and the voices faded into the void. I drifted, languidly, in the sweet embrace of… wherever I was… until another boom brought me aware again.

“—should not smite them where they stand!”

A snarl. “You are a hypocrite , little brother. You parade your little Graces around camp all you like—”

“Parade?!”

“—but the second my children show any promise—”

“My daughter got turned into a tree !”

“—you completely disregard that they were conceived before the prophecy even spoken, before there was any oath to even break—”

“And what ‘promise’?! Commanding a monster isn’t ‘promise’, it’s a threat to the gods!”

“—and you turned your own thrice-cursed daughter into a tree! And monsters are my domain , little brother, not a subversion of your authority!”

Another yawn. I metaphysically shrugged and took the cue to fade back out.

It was really calming here.

“Poseidon, stop yawning.”

I snapped back. What…?

A sigh. “Brothers, do I really need to be here for this?”

Sputtering. “Do you need to—you must be joking. My Bolt has been stolen by some petty little thieves, but do go on, is something more important happening to you right now?”

Quietly, under the breath. “Narcissist.” Then louder. “I know you must not be referring to my children with that statement, considering that they did not steal anything and were not even in New York at the time ! And quit disregarding my stolen helm, little brother!”

“One of your blasted minions must have passed it to them! They were in attendance as well, were they not?!”

“By that do you mean my Furies ? My immortal, bound-by-the-same-ancient-laws-as-we-are Furies?”

“Wouldn’t you know best, as the orchestrator of it all!”

“Oh you insufferable —”

Sigh. I sighed too.

“Stop sighing !” The space around me trembled and I grumbled at it. It was annoying.

Oh?

Sea green peered at me. It flickered a deep ocean blue, once, twice, before settling on a color in-between. The turquoise of a shallow tide.

“Alright, that’s enough of this. Salacia would not be pleased to learn that your squabbles were holding me up.” The same voice turned to me. You are eavesdropping on a conversation not yours to hear, demigod.

“What the— Neptune ?”

“How? But we’re still…”

I wasn’t trying to overhear though. I don’t even know how I got here!

“Put it this way. Zeus, you need your bolt back. Hades, your helm is missing and apparently your children need to prove themselves in service of the gods.” …I see. Perhaps it is my doing then. I’ve been known to call on the sea if my mind is given cause to wander. “I do not need to put this together for you two, do I?”

“Well, no, but shouldn’t we address something else first?”

Oh. That’s neat. I think I did the same thing back in Las Vegas.

“You are Neptune, correct?”

Is that so. Well, you are my son. And a powerful one, at that.

I fidgeted. I think I would be blushing if I had a body.

…I won’t keep you longer. Erase this excursion from your mind, Perseus. You have no need for it.

Oh. Okay.

…Sleep well.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I woke up at an unknown time in the morning feeling a little bleary, and it didn't help that I also got dragged to yet another Senate meeting shortly after the crack of dawn. The frankly grueling debrief that followed made the Mrs. Dodds fiasco felt like cakewalk, and this time Octavian wasn’t there to be a buffer. I wondered if I could convince him to outlaw senator meetings once he became praetor or what power grab plan he had that was years in the making.

My only two saving graces were this: a good three-fourths of the questions could be answered with “I was sworn to secrecy on the Styx by the gods” (cue thunder), and the praetors and an unfamiliar lady in a pantsuit cutting in and making people stop asking me questions about the one-fourth I could talk about after the tenth rendition.

By the end of it, Praetors Osbourne and Dane looked as bored as I was. When the meeting finally adjourned, Olivia gave me a smile and a pat on the head and William squeezed my shoulder and told me he would meet me on the training grounds at noon.

…that part wasn’t too bad, actually.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I feel like in stories like this, the main character, after surviving a trial of life and death, usually gets a large welcoming ceremony upon their return to their hometown. Some of Camp Jupiter was quite happy to see me around again. For others, it might have been worse than before I left for the quest.

"I'm not sure what you expected," Octavian told me during one of our catch-up sessions. "By Jupiter's grace, Jackson, you have to subtract before you add! I've told you this so many times!"

"But that isn’t PEMDAS," I protested. Then I paused. "Huh, my answer is wrong."

"That is PEMDAS! Addition and subtraction are done chronologically. Chro-no-lo-gi-cal-ly." Octaviann snapped irritably. He slumped down into his marble seat. "Anyway, it would be one thing if one of the tripartite assigned you this quest, or if you brought back a spoil of war. But rather than Jupiter or Juno or Minerva, you've decided to strengthen the camp's ties with Lord Pluto. Forgive them if some campers aren't exactly comfortable with that."

Put like that, it explained why the majority of the purple ghosts had warmed up to me. They went fleeing whenever I got close to nodding at me from a safe distance away.

But also personally, the way I saw it, a god was a god was a god. What did it matter that the god wasn't part of the Roman "Big Three"? Even the weakest god was more powerful than the strongest demigod.

(A small, small part of me whispered that it wasn't true. That if given a chance, I—)

I forcefully ended that train of thought. Ever since…ever since the quest, there's been a small part of me that's felt uneasy. Unsettled. Like there are bugs crawling on my legs, making me want to shake them off. Run. Do something. Do anything.

I didn't know how I could explain that I didn't want to sit around doing homework anymore, especially since Octavian was being "nice" enough to "tutor" me.

What can I say, he got frustrated easily. To be fair, I don't think I would have done any better.

Eventually, he called a break for lunch. I complied readily—anything to delay the impending doom that was math.

Despite my half-hearted complaints to Octavian, I wasn’t all that put off by the other legionnaires' attitudes towards me. I think the stigma of being a son of Neptune was just never going to wear off, and I got over the hurt pretty quickly. The people who stayed were who really matter.

I didn’t even get a bite into my hamburger when two people plopped themselves down at our table. Octavian frowned almost immediately. I put down my burger. “Oh hey, Gwen, Dakota.”

“Percy! Having fun with remedial lessons?” Gwen inquired cheerily. Then she turned towards Octavian, and her tone became noticeably less chipper. “How are you doing, Octavian?” Gwen was the one who was sent to get me during the Blackjack Incident. She had her arm slung around Dakota, and he looked faintly embarrassed. When she first introduced me to him and he thanked me, it took me an absurdly long time to place who he was. As in, we had lunch three or four times before I finally realized he was one of probatios I met earlier with Hannibal. He had a few more months before his service was officially over.

Octavian muttered something like “doing well” or “glowing bell” under his breath. He abruptly pushed his chair back and started packing up his lunch. “I have other things to attend to, Jackson,” he told me curtly. “I’ll see you around, legionnaires. Probatio .”

He moved so fast that before I knew it I was already watching him go. “Uh, don’t take that to heart,” I told the two. “I know I keep saying this but I can swear to the gods it’s not that he hates you—”

“—he just doesn’t feel comfortable around people he doesn’t know,” Dakota finished, an impish grin growing. The minute Octavian left, the son of Bacchus’ shoulders had slumped in relief. “One of these days you’re gonna have to face the truth: Octavian’s secretly a prickly cactus.”

Gwen tutted at the younger boy good-naturedly, but she too had privately confided in me that she never thought Octavian was willing to associate with anyone outside Cohort One. I shook up the status quo just by existing, it seemed.

“Mind if I join you for lunch?” someone asked and plopped himself into Octavian’s empty seat. It was Hank, who had been indirectly introduced to me on one of those days he was shadowing Miranda, the Senior Centurion of our Cohort. I’m not sure if he started deliberately seeking me out afterwards, but I’ve definitely been seeing a lot more of him than I used to.

Gwen perked up. “Oh hello, Hank!”

Hank nodded back at her peaceably. “Gwendolyn. Hope you’ve been doing well?”

From what I heard, Hank and Gwen had a time when their stay at the Wolf House overlapped and so knew each other before they even reached camp. Gwen had been there longer though, and so she left earlier.

Gwen waved him off cheerily. “Ah, fifth cohort stuff, you know how it is.”

Dakota, meanwhile, seemed to be intensely focusing on his Kool-Aid, his probatio tablet glinting in the sun. He had a tendency to tense up when confronted with people who non- probatio s, non-Gwen, and non-me.

(No, I don’t know why me. Maybe for the Hannibal incident? Maybe because I was actually his age? The possibilities are endless)

I think it says something about his experiences so far, and I kind of wish he’d be able to relax a bit. Then again, I never went through a probatio phase, so I probably would never understand the stress that came with it. One wrong move could revoke your citizenship to New Rome and make your name cursed at by generations of demigods to come.

Oh wait.

Yeah, I had an inkling of what Dakota was going through.

After we subtly coaxed Dakota into relaxing some more, the conversation started flowing again and we ended up organizing a raid of the toiletries closet.

More on that at six.

o-o-o-o-o-o

It took me a while to realize this, but I actually met all the unofficial “centurions-to-be” at one point or another during the two weeks after I returned. Basically, the people who were all but official proteges of the current generation of senators and senior centurions.

I met Freddie and Larry from Cohort Two when they were sweeping the temples under the supervision of an uncharacteristically serious Victor. I had been curious about the state of Pluto’s temple after hearing Octavian grumble about it. I didn’t see Bob Cut, the female centurion for Cohort Two, anywhere (I still don’t know her name, sorry Bob Cut).

“Perseus!” Victor called, waving me over. “You haven’t met Freddie and Larry yet, have you?”

He was half-correct. Larry and Hank were the “dude-bros”, the completely no-homo equivalent of best friendship in the male specimen, or so I was told, and so I ran into Larry briefly when relaying a message to Hank.

I raised my hand awkwardly. “Hi.”

“No worries, Victor, I got this!” Larry said, before ditching his broom and rushing down the marbled stairs. The girl, who I’m assuming to be Freddie, followed after him after chucking her own broom aside. When they reached where I was, Larry bowed mockingly. “At your service, the name is Larry.”

“Never would have guessed,” I told him dryly.

“I’m Freddie,” said the girl. She had brown, pig-tailed braids and a cool scar on one cheek. “I’ve heard many things about you, Perseus.”

“You can call me Percy,” I told her. I had said the same thing to Victor, but maybe it was an adult thing because no one above twenty was willing to do it. “Only good things, I hope.” 

Freddie shrugged. “Depends on the perspective.”

That sure didn’t sound reassuring.

Larry nudged Freddie with his elbow. “Hey, tell him who your godly parent is.”

Freddie flushed. “Oh, stop doing this already, Larry! It’s not that bad! He’s literally your dad too. You tell him!”

“Come on,” Larry insisted. “If it’s not that bad then you should just tell him!”

Freddie huffed. “My godly parent is Mercury.” When I blinked at her, she rounded on Larry. “See, you’re the only one who finds this funny!”

Larry, meanwhile, was eyeing me with something like disappointment. “What, nothing? Freddie? Child of Mercury?”

“Um,” I said. When he continued to look at me expectantly, I thought back to everything else they said and tried, “it’s cool that you’re siblings?”

Larry shook his head sorrowfully. “Your generation marks the death of popular culture.”

Freddie whacked him on the shoulder. “We’re the same generation!”

So, yeah. Interesting people.

Putting that meeting aside, it was actually Octavian who dragged me around to meet the rest of them. He was, to my complete lack of surprise, the strongest candidate to centurionship in the First Cohort, and would shadow Shoulder Freckles when he wasn’t learning augury with Victor or trying to… ingratiate?... me with the next generation of centurions.

“Huh. You’re a busy guy, aren’t you?” I commented.

Octavian sniffed, “Not at all. I can handle this much. I understand if you can’t say the same, however.”

“You’re a jerk,” I told him.

Studded Collar (“Oh for Pluto’s sakes, Jackson, just remember their names. ”) was the female centurion for Cohort One, and was holding off on her choice of successor. Namely because the first Cohort was very testosterone heavy right now, and also because she had her eye on a young legacy still living in New Rome.

I thought about this. “So. Two questions.”

Octavian rolled his eyes. “Fine, out with it. I don’t have all day.”

“Isn’t that nepotism?”

“What isn’t nepotism around here, Jackson?”

Well, he had a point. “And why aren’t there more female demigods in Cohort One?”

To his credit, Octavian actually paused to think on this one. “There tend to be more male demigods with recommendation letters, and Cohort One is barred to anyone without one. So to summarize, sexism, probably.” At my look, Octavian grimaced. “Look, Jackson, nobody claimed New Rome was perfect.”

Gwen, centurion hopeful for Cohort Five, had confirmed that recommendations tended to skew male. But she also added, with a wrinkle to her nose, that any female demigods with recommendations tended to avoid Cohort One like the plague, herself included.

Bob Cut and Large Hands (“ Jackson. ”) headed Cohort Two, and I already met Larry and Freddie. Miranda and Beard Guy (“Your own cohort ?”)—okay fine , Lucas Byrn—headed Cohort Three, who currently only had Hank in training. 

Miranda often said that if I were a girl I’d be right there with Hank, if only because having a Minotaur slayer on their council would do wonders for their rep. Lucas, on the other hand, hated my guts. He’d been the one senator to vote against granting me legionnaire status right away.

Victor was the head of Cohort Four, and his partner centurion was someone who I hadn’t met until my debrief meeting. Apparently, they were attempting to do a census of New Rome when I arrived and the female centurion had taken charge of it. The whole thing ended up taking about a month to wrap up. 

Emilia was actually really cool. She was a hispanic lady who often had her hair slicked back and wore a pantsuit four out of seven days a week. I got the feeling that between her and Victor, she took charge a lot more.

“Victor is very committed to activities he finds worthwhile,” Emilia had told me diplomatically as she walked me back from the Senate meeting about my quest. “His augury, for example.” And then she very noticeably did not mention the Cohort. Instead, she directed the conversation to talk about a Daughter of Ceres she’d taken under her wing, Leila.

Victor looked very sheepish when one of my conversations with him somehow landed on the same topic. “Ah. Yeah. I promise my protege will be better about it.” He didn’t have a protege. 

Cohort Five was the only Cohort that only had one acting centurion: Julian, or, as I had known him up until Gwen introduced us, Glasses. The female centurion had resigned to attend college, and there was no one really trained to step up into the role. So Gwen was currently undergoing some kind of crash course in senatorship and expected to pick up the position in about a year or so. This meant that Julian didn’t have any time to look into finding his own successor though.

Poor guy, he really had a lot on his plate. Cohort Five was also the biggest Cohort by far. 

I wished him luck in my mind.

o-o-o-o-o-o

I've checked the Medical multiple times these past few days, but for some reason could never catch Fabulinus. He didn't mysteriously appear behind me either.

I've asked around, but everyone just shrugged and told me that he does that. Some even went as far to reassure me that the doctor always reappeared when he's needed. Plus, the Roman nurses and field medics were usually sufficient in terms of response, since usually the worst to happen was a minor scrape. Nothing some ambrosia couldn't fix within minutes.

Then they remembered who they were talking to, and reassured me that my last medical stint was a once in a century occurrence. Totally made me feel a lot better.

I nodded at the last person's explanation and headed on back to the barracks. Something about the dustiness of the medical room still feels off to me, but the god in question wasn't around for me to ask for answers from.

Entering into Cohort Three's barracks, I immediately felt like something was off. There was no one around, but I didn't think the feeling came from that. As I got closer to my bunk, that feeling got worse.

I ducked my head beneath the second bunk and stiffened.

Someone had overturned my mattress. My pillow was pulled out of its pillow case, and my blanket was in disarray. My clothes were scattered all over the frame.

My anger was slow, but unstoppable. I gritted my teeth and set about putting my bed back together. I tried to take an inventory of what was missing, but no one really kept much more than their clothes and their sleep gear in the barracks. Weapons were either always on you, or stored away in the armory. I knew of some people who kept minor spoils of war under their sheets, but I'd already sacrificed mine to Lupa--

Wait.

Lupa.

I rummaged through all my possessions one more time, and rattled off every curse I knew. 

Adolph's bone was missing.

Notes:

octavian: friends ... without political gain??? inconceivable. disgusting.
percy:
octavian: do it again

Notes:

Not beta'd, so please excuse my grammar. If anyone would like to though...position's open?