Smaller update this time around, but I can't break up the next chapter, so we'll do one short, one long again. Thanks to those who reviewed the last chapter!
X
Reyna was used to unpleasant surprises. She could handle most news with unphased professionality, maybe a sigh here or there. Actually, if she was going to be honest, it usually involved a sigh.
The changes after the Giant War had come with their fair share of unpleasant surprises and challenges, one of which being the Greek's Iris Message system. She could appreciate how easy it made communicating, and certainly understood why the Greek half-bloods had looked pained at the thought of not being able to use it to contact the Romans. Reyna would have been equally inconvenienced if she had to go from a method of such fast communication to something more reserved.
But the problem with it was that, while the demigods at Camp Half-Blood could contact her easily enough with the Iris Fountain they had given her, she had a much more difficult time contacting them. The fact that denarii didn't work on the fountains was the first hurdle; the second problem was that the connection was just plain lousy when she was the one to make the call.
That said, she had grown decidedly skeptical of the entire method of communication. The same could be said about her opinions of shadow travel, Nico Di Angelo's prefered form of transportation. She had done it twice, and neither experience was enjoyable. It was cold and dark and left her reeling. She had opted out of it after the second time, when they stepped out of a shadow just beneath the lava wall at Camp Half-Blood and her praetor's cape earned a scorch mark.
Reyna was happy to go through her daily routine without either of these things, but after searching for two days to find her fellow praetor and friend, Jason Grace, she found herself desperate. Especially after Hazel Levesque vanished clear out of the barracks, in what two witnesses described as "a swirl of smoke".
She paced in front of the Iris Fountain and rubbed her thumb across the surface of a cold drachma. She had used two already, but she couldn't seem to get through-Iris, apparently, didn't feel the need to connect her call if she wasn't Greek. Frustrating though the shoddy service was, Reyna was quietly relieved. What would she say? That Jason was missing, again, and she didn't suppose they had seen him? What if she came off as accusatory?
Then again, a very small nagging voice wondered if the Greeks did know where he was. He never failed to make his visits to Camp Half-Blood perfectly clear to everyone. The schedule was up in the Principia, after all, and if the stay was more than two or three days, he would check in with the same fountain that Reyna was now pacing back and forth in front of. But Jason's confidence and the positive experiences with the Greeks from the Giant War hadn't obliterated all of the doubt. If anything, it had chased it into the shadows, hiding in corners, lurking in the backs of everyone's minds. The memories of the Argo II attacking New Rome hadn't faded just yet, it seemed.
Besides, the cultural differences between the two camps was enough, if she was being honest. Camp Jupiter was order, precision, discipline. Rank was everything, power was sought after, rules were followed. It worked like a well-oiled machine, all the cogs running together in a practice as old as... Well, as old as Rome.
But Camp Half-Blood was different. Almost entirely so, and it had thrown Reyna for a serious loop when she had seen it all on her first diplomatic visit. Camp Half-Blood was campfire songs and chariot races and canoeing, complete with a volleyball court. The mentality was All For One And One For All, and it explained why Percy hadn't shown much interest in the praetorship when she had first offered it to him all that time ago. Percy had come from a place that felt like a family, not a cohort. In fact, he had described the differences between the camps best, the last time they had discussed it.
Camp Jupiter is a military camp, he had explained, and Camp Half-Blood is a summer camp.
The relaxed nature at the Greek camp made Reyna suspicious, because it wasn't the whole truth. The Greeks liked to laugh and lounge and break rules, but beneath that, they were just as efficient and dangerous and experienced as Reyna's camp. It worried her, as well as others at Camp Jupiter.
She was brooding over all of this when a light appeared beside her, just over the fountain. She stopped short in front of it as an image appeared, sharpening until she was staring at one Annabeth Chase.
"Oh, good," the blonde exhaled, the relief of having caught Reyna temporarily softening her concerned features, "you're by the fountain. We need to talk."
Reyna looked over her shoulder briefly, but the room was still empty. Her two dogs perked upwards at the sound of another voice, their ears flattening as they rose and growled in the direction of the Iris message.
"I was just thinking the same thing," Reyna sighed, turning back toward Annabeth. She didn't even try to keep the exhaustion out of her tone-not when the daughter of Athena sounded exactly the same. "I don't suppose you've had any campers go missing."
Annabeth looked momentarily strained, as though Reyna's comment had delivered news that she had anticipated. "That's the last thing I wanted to hear," she sighed, running a hand through her messy hair. "Let me guess: Jason and Hazel?"
Reyna's chest tightened. Her quiet concerns that the Greeks were in on it started to get louder. "How would you know that?"
Annabeth looked, momentarily, like she wanted to punch something. Apparently, she had been praying for Reyna to say no. Then she schooled her features from pissed back to stressed. "Percy and Nico vanished right before my eyes this afternoon. They had said something about having the same dream, and apparently Nico had spoken to Hazel, because she had it too."
Reyna chewed on this for a moment, absorbing the information as quickly as she could. Unpleasant surprises, and all that. "Jason went missing just yesterday," she admitted. "And Hazel today. Something tells me you have a theory as to why?"
Annabeth pursed her lips and nodded."They're all children of the Big Three," she explained, earning a strange look from Reyna. "The Greek Big Three," she amended, and the two of them took a moment to curse their cultural differences.
"Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto," Reyna ventured, earning a nod from the other side of the message. "Are they still children of your Big Three if they're Roman?"
"Same blood," Annabeth sighed. "The Hunters of Artemis reported Thalia missing, too."
"So all of them have just vanished?" Suddenly, something clicked in Reyna's mind that made her chest tighten again. Her found it hard to focus on anything in particular while her mind began to race with the thought that had occurred to her.
"Yes," Annabeth said, "since you just confirmed that Hazel and Jason are missing. We believe it's..."
"A summoning spell," Reyna said gravely, speaking up when Annabeth paused to think of a good way to phrase it. Through the mist, the blonde blinked.
"Yes. You're... familiar with it?"
The question didn't need to be answered, because from the look on Annabeth's face, she'd suddenly figured it out. Reyna set her jaw and looked very closely at the mist in front of her, studying Annabeth's eyes. They seemed to arrive at the same conclusion about five seconds apart, and when Annabeth reached it, she visibly paled, even though the Iris message.
"Unfortunately, yes," Reyna said, her tone hard. "And I think we both have a suspect in mind."
X
Jason could think of exactly thirty-seven different places that he would rather be, and as the silence stretched between the group, that list grew. He took his time with each desired location, considering the weather at each one, the things he could do there, and who he would do them with. Most involved Piper. He knew he should be focusing on the problems immediately in front of him, but the uninterrupted stretch of tunnel was monotonous, and he found his mind wandering.
In front of him, Thalia lead the group quietly around pitfalls and crevasses in the cave floor. Hazel and Nico walked just behind her, the two of them keeping relatively close. Every so often, their hands would link, just long enough to help each other's fingers warm before they would release one another and keep walking. Jason brought up the rear.
No one spoke. Mostly because every time they struck up conversation, they seemed to alert every ogre in the cave system as to where they were. But it had been a good two hours now, and not a single monster had reared it's ugly mug. In fact, it was as if they had all retreated.
Jason considered this. They had things to discuss, after all. For instance, where exactly were they going? Jason understood that Nico and Hazel were better at navigating underground, and that Thalia was a Hunter and could track with amazing precision, but he wasn't happy about being delegated to 'the muscle'. Especially if there was nothing to fight.
"What if we haven't run into any ogres because they're all concentrated around wherever Circe is, and we're moving away from it?"
He didn't try very hard to keep his voice down, which earned him a sharp look from over Thalia's shoulder. Jason ignored it-he hadn't realized how much he needed to hear words spoken out loud until they echoed off the walls around him. From the look on Hazel's face when she glanced back at him, he wasn't the only one.
"That's a bad thing?" Nico muttered, his voice at a safe, quiet volume.
"It is if that's where Percy is," Jason replied. At the front of the precession, Thalia stopped short. He expected some sort of impatient comment, but he stilled when he saw the tension in her shoulders. She didn't turn around right away, her grip tight around the bow in her hand. She took a deep breath, and then turned, her bright blue eyes hot with emotion.
Jason, Nico, and Hazel waited silently for Thalia to say something. Her jaw moved as if she were about to start a sentence and then thought better of it. It happened for a few seconds, her face a non-specific blend of pained emotions, before finally she settled for a sharp exhale.
"That jerk had to go and get shot," she said, her words clipped. "I don't know what that damned arrow did to him or where it went, but I know an easy kill when I see one. Couldn't even stand," she huffed, keeping her tone from wavering, though just barely. "It... It must have taken his powers. He didn't have any in the dream, and now we know why."
"A magic arrow," Hazel asked, though it didn't sound like her question needed answering. Jason watched his sister closely, trying to remember the last time he had seen her so upset. She looked like she wanted to behead something, but underneath the frustration, worry churned on her face.
"Why not," Nico sighed, looking down the tunnel the way they had come. "The amount of magic it must have taken to summon us all here... Not to mention the sacrifice. Circe has to have been planning this all for a while."
"The tunnels to 'keep us busy'," Hazel nodded. "And some sort of cursed arrow, to make sure Percy wouldn't ruin it all for her."
"He's good at that," Nico agreed, his voice quiet and far away. The crease between his eyebrows was not lost on Jason.
"What do you mean, sacrifice," the blond asked, dreading the answer. Nico was still for a moment before looking toward him.
"Summoning spells use a lot of magic, and require a lot of payment. Usually in blood."
The answer wasn't particularly thrilling, and Jason didn't want to linger on the implications. Blood sacrifices usually involved innocent things dying, and even though Octavian had used stuffed animals to read his auguries, something told Jason that the same modern adjustments wouldn't work with the kind of spell Nico was describing.
"Let's stay on task," Thalia said, reining Jason back in from an unpleasant train of thought. "Nico, can you feel if he's still alive?"
Nico pulled out of the same line of thinking and nodded, though the frown seemed to deepen. "Yes, he is. But, just like in my dream, I can't feel his strength."
Thalia was still for a moment, her expression unreadable. "Meaning he has lost his powers."
Nico took an audible breath. "I suppose so. I know you can't all feel it, but demigods walk around emanating a sort of aura. The stronger we are, the more obvious that aura is. Percy's has always been... Well, it's very, very hard to miss, even from far away."
He glanced at Jason as if the same applied to him. The group was silent for a beat before Hazel cleared her throat.
"If he doesn't have his powers, wouldn't that make him... mortal?"
The word hung in the air like some sort of new-found obscenity. Nico nodded slowly.
"I guess that would make sense," Jason said. "If Circe's plan is to lure Annabeth down here with Percy as bait, than she'd have to be careful to make sure Percy can't just turn around and kill her himself."
A faint noise echoed passed, so quietly that they almost missed it. It could have been a rock falling from the ceiling somewhere down the tunnel, but from the way Thalia tensed up and ducked her head, it was something else. No one moved or made a sound for a long few moments. Then, more sounds, still far away. Metal, yelling. Not coming toward them, but somewhere off in the system of caves, something was happening.
"Come on," Thalia said, hefting her bow. "It sounds like Seaweed Brain has done something stupid."
X
he totally has it's great
