Standard disclaimer applies. Enjoy!
Chapter Three
They had been waiting for Basil the satyr for over forty minutes.
Percy sighed. Chiron had set up the meeting and given them the time and place, and Percy was starting to wonder if there had been some sort of lapse in communication. They had already missed one satyr, and this one Chiron had gotten lucky to catch – the satyrs were all pretty busy these days. It was also possible this satyr really couldn't keep track of the days like Grover when he'd been out in the wild long enough.
At any rate, Percy could have slept in, and by the looks of it Clarisse seriously needed another five minutes. She was stalking around the meeting spot, spear gripped in her hand, mad and grumpy.
Actually, it was probably a good thing it was so early – there were no children around for her to scar permanently for life.
"Do we have any way of contacting this stupid satyr?" Clarisse demanded.
Annabeth, who had been standing next to him rambling about all the buildings she hoped they could see before leaving London, shot an irritated look at Clarisse for the interruption.
"No," Annabeth replied curtly. "We'll give him another twenty minutes, and go from there."
Percy wasn't worried. Annabeth had backup plans for her backup plans, and with his knack for drawing any and all trouble in the area, they probably didn't even need to meet this satyr. Clarisse wasn't happy about this, though, and commenced stomping around with her spear. Percy wasn't sure why she bothered – they hadn't really run into any monsters in the little time they'd been there, and nothing big. It was kind of nice.
"Shut it, punk."
"What?" Percy blinked at her. "I didn't even say anything!"
"But you were thinking something stupid."
Annabeth elbowed him sharply in the ribs.
He rolled his eyes. Yes, he knew she was trying to start a fight out of boredom. And he honestly wasn't going to rise to the bait. He settled against the bronze statue behind him, the fairies and rabbits on the thing digging into his back.
Of course Basil the satyr had wanted to meet the demigods at the Peter Pan statue. It looked nothing like the Peter Pan in the Disney movie; even the reed pipes were different. While Percy was distracted, a satyr stumbled out of the bushes.
"Oh! You're here!"
Percy and Annabeth glanced at each other.
"Are you Basil?" Percy asked.
The satyr nodded, twigs falling out of his hat and hair. They introduced themselves.
"I'm glad you've come," he began, "as you know, we satyrs have been charged with protecting the wild places and finding new half-bloods. Usually I protect this park, but I keep a lookout for demigods."
Clarisse huffed. "Yeah we know. What do you know about the people who kidnapped Prissy over there?"
Basil looked a little indignant.
"I was getting to that. They're an odd situation. Technically, they belong to Hecate – the influence of our gods were pretty strong here."
Percy wasn't sure where he was going with this. What, they were only half Hecate's?
"And?" Clarisse was getting impatient.
"Well…magic existed here, and other places, well before Hecate arrived. They mixed, but it's different. And the people who kidnapped you," he nodded to Percy, "have their own magic and monsters. They're a blend of their old magic, Hecate's, and mortals."
Annabeth tucked her hair behind her ear, obviously thinking hard.
"So are you saying these people are more like mortals than demigods?"
"Yes. They have magic, but the Mist mostly works on them. They can see some of our monsters, but not all of them. And they deal with monsters we don't."
That kind of made sense to Percy. Where the flame of Western Civilization had moved, Chiron had said, so had the gods. But it wasn't like some of those places hadn't already had some previous gods or whatever around way before their Olympian parents arrived. So instead of these people's magic being entirely absorbed or faded, it had blended. And now these people were running around using it.
"And this has been going on since Rome conquered Britain?"
"The Olympians only had a brief foothold then, but it did start to change things," Basil told Annabeth.
"Are we going to have to deal with these people?"
Clarisse had asked the exact question on Percy's mind. Scary.
"I don't think so," Basil said, fiddling with his hat. "Your coming here stirred up some things that were dormant since the Olympians left Britain. I think everything will settle down once you get rid of the monsters."
"Chiron was kind of worried about these people, though. I may not be the first demigod, or even the last, that these guys have run into," Percy said. "I mean, it was all this giant mess of mistaken identity, but we should probably check them out."
Basil winced at this. He seemed more than a little reluctant to talk about Percy's strange magic wielding kidnappers. He started wringing his hat in his hands, and was staring determinedly at the statue behind Percy.
"When the Olympians were here, they were here a long time. But while they wielded their influence here, they never really took over the, er, people you ran into. Their magic was pretty strong. Some of Hecate's children joined them, and influenced their community, both culturally and the way they used their magic."
"But?"
"But the Olympians decided to basically leave them to themselves," Basil said. "They have run into demigods before, and just chalked them up to being very strange foreigners. Chiron doesn't have to worry – they never figured it out then, and they won't now."
This didn't look like an acceptable answer for Annabeth, but she seemed willing to drop it for the moment.
"Okay, then," she said. "Where are these monsters you want us to get rid of?"
Basil looked relieved.
"I spotted a few on Piccadilly, which isn't too far from here."
"Picca what? Pickles?" Percy knew he heard that wrong.
"Save it. We've got monsters to kill."
With that, Clarisse brandished her spear and they headed out.
Review please. I seriously want to know what you thought of this chapter. I know it was a lot of explanation, but it should pick up again next chapter.
