Sapphire X
The first thought that Sapphire had upon entering was that Annabeth would love Brooklyn House. Her second thought was 'oh my gods that flying Thermos is going to hit me'. Instinctively, she threw out her hand and a shadow snapped up, hitting the Thermos and smashing it into the stone floor.
It wasn't her greatest idea. The room immediately started spinning and she squeezed her eyes shut. Note: Using Underworld powers right after nearly being reduced to your DNA is not good for your health.
By the time she was able to open her eyes without feeling like the world was turning into an apocalyptic merry-go-round, the three magicians standing in front of her had regained their power of speech.
"What was that?" exclaimed a dark-haired guy with an Irish accent. He was holding his staff like a baseball bat and had apparently been trying to knock the Thermos out of the air. The other boy ran towards the downed Thermos and started stamping on it, crushing it to pieces. Penguins also attempted to help destroy the Thermos, though they weren't as successful.
"That was awesome!" the boy shouted as he jumped up and down, ice leaking from his feet to freeze and brittle-ify the mangled metal and plastic.
"That was stupid." Ed muttered. "No offense."
"I've been hit with enough flying pieces of metal this summer." Sapphire replied. "Cut me some slack."
The blond girl who was standing behind the Irish guy looked at Sadie and Walt. "Why did you bring mortals here?" she asked, gesturing towards Lacy.
"Demigods, Jaz." Lacy corrected. Sapphire snapped her fingers suddenly.
"Jaz, Felix, and Sean from Dublin. ad iudicium!" she said. Her completely random comment worked just as she had intended, refocusing the attention of all seven people in the room and uniting them in puzzling through her randomness.
"'To judgment'?" Lacy asked. Ed looked at the three magicians who weren't Sadie or Walt, blinked once, and then nodded to himself.
"How do you know our names?" the Irish guy, Sean, asked.
Sapphire shrugged. "I read."
"A lot." Ed added. Jaz gave a small smile and Sean slowly lowered his staff. Felix stopped jumping on the Thermos' remains.
"Cleo is going to like you." Jaz said to Sapphire.
"Gods I hope so." Sapphire replied seriously. Cleo had possibly the most deadly fighting style out of everyone at Brooklyn House, not including Anubis. Sapphire had no desire to become a bath mat with intestinal problems.
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Sean gave them a tour of Brooklyn House while Sadie and the others gathered the rest of the Nome together. The mansion was huge, and Sapphire knew that she'd manage to get herself lost without a map of the place. Ed, of course, seemed to already know the entire floor plan of the mansion.
Children of Hermes, the only demigods who are always good with directions (unless they are the Stoll brothers).
While Sapphire was trying to figure out which way was north (yes, she had gotten that turned around), Lacy was trying to get Sean to tell them everything about himself. Thankfully she didn't have charmspeak, because if she did then poor Sean would have been talking till kingdom come. All she managed to get him to say was that his last name was Elegy, he was fifteen, a water elementalist, and following the path of Tefnut, the goddess of rain.
"And here's the dining room." Sean narrated. "Over there you'll see Philip of Macedonia, our albino crocodile. Don't mention the albino part to him, he's sensitive about it." Philip blinked his big pink eyes up at them and splashed a bit in his pool. He was a lot bigger than the crocodiles Sapphire had seen at the Toronto Zoo, and it seemed that he could easily swallow all three demigods in one gulp.
"He does only eat bacon and hapless waterfowl, right?" Sapphire asked Sean, hoping for confirmation. She did not expect him to grimace. "What?"
"He ate a magician that was trying to break in here a few weeks ago." he said. "It was…disgusting, really messy." Lacy seemed to be imagining exactly what that would look like and her face slowly began turning green. Normally blood-and-guts talk didn't get to veteran demigods, demigods who had fought in either of the recent wars, so Lacy was probably only nauseous as an aftereffect of their ride in the Grey Sisters' Taxi. Still, changing the subject was probably a good idea. Fortunately Sapphire didn't have to make a fool of herself to introduce a new topic, because at that moment the magicians of Brooklyn House started filing into the room. One of them, a little girl who was probably about ten, ran straight up to Sean and the demigods.
"Are you the half-gods?" she asked excitedly. When Sapphire, Ed and Lacy nodded, the girl let out a squeal that rivalled that of a dying empusa. "It's so great to meet you! I've never met a half-god before!" She jumped up and down excitedly, her pigtails quickly becoming a safety hazard.
"Shelby, calm down." Sadie ordered. "Remember that time when you turned Carter into a pig?"
"Oh." Shelby immediately stopped jumping. "Right. Sorry."
"Agh." said the one baboon in the room, sitting down at the long dining table. The magicians followed his lead and the three demigods quickly claimed three seats facing towards Philip's pool. All of the magicians were looking towards the demigods with interest, which made Ed squirm uncomfortably.
"Maybe we should start with introductions?" Lacy suggested to the almost silent room. "I'm Lacy Vogels, daughter of Aphrodite, goddess of love"
"Ed Newton." Ed said quickly. "Son of Hermes, our god of travellers."
"Sapphire Banks, daughter of Hades, lord of the dead." Thunder rumbled and Sapphire flinched. Apparently she was only going to get away with just naming one of her parents once that day. "Hades and his wife Persephone, but I'm still a demigod. Don't ask how."
Walt cleared his throat. "OK. I'm Walt Stone, the Eye of Anubis and the follower of his path."
"Are we really all going to introduce ourselves like that?" Sadie asked. Lacy turned and presumably gave her a look that Sapphire didn't see because the daughter of Aphrodite was turned away from her. Sadie coughed. "All right. I'm Sadie Kane, former Eye of Isis and speaker of the Divine Words."
From across the table Felix raised his hand. "Me next! I'm Felix Shaw, ice elementalist, follower of the path of the ice god, once I find out who they are."
"Jaz Anderson, healer, follower of the path of Sekhmet."
"Cleo Gomes, I follow the path of Thoth, our god of knowledge."
"I'm Julian St. Cross. I'm a combat magician and a follower of the path of Horus."
"Alyssa Morgan. Earth elemantalist and follower of the path of our earth god,Geb." Here Sapphire had to interrupt.
"You're not related to a Mike Morgan, are you?" Alyssa looked confused, but she answered.
"I have a cousin named Mike, why?"
"There's a Mike Morgan at our camp." Ed said. "Son of Hecate. You have the same eyes."
"And you've been looking at Mike's eyes why?" Sapphire muttered to her friend. Ed noticeably blushed. "I thought so."
"Oh." Alyssa said. "Who's Hecate?"
"Our goddess of magic." Sapphire told her. "Her kids are the only demigods who can do real magic."
"Lou Ellen likes to turn people into pigs." Lacy said to Shelby. "It drives our activities director nuts." Shelby giggled. Sapphire grumbled. Lou Ellen had turned her into a bat last summer, accidentally, and she did not like the idea of being turned into any sort of animal.
They continued going around the table and each of the two dozen or so magician introduced themselves. Paul Dewar was an air elementalist who was following the path of Shu, Tucker Van Buren was a charm maker, Khufu the baboon grunted enthusiastically, and Shelby identified as an animal charmer, though she followed the path of Ptah, their god of creation.
"So, exactly why are you here?" Julian asked when they had all been introduced. "Sadie and Walt weren't very specific."
"We're on a quest." Sapphire explained. "We're a preemptive peace envoy, trying to create an allegiance between our factions."
"Basically, we're here to make sure that Greeks, Romans, and Egyptians don't become enemies and start World War Three." Ed translated. He blinked suddenly and swore in Ancient Greek. "We were supposed to IM Camp Jupiter when we started talks."
"Have we started talks?" Lacy asked.
"Yes." Sapphire said. Felix interrupted with another question.
"What's Camp Jupiter?"
"The Roman camp." Sapphire said, digging into her bag for a drachma. "Ours is Camp Half-Blood." She successfully extracted a drachma and Lacy helpfully held up the prism that she had packed. A rainbow stretched through the air between them.
"What are you doing?" Sadie asked.
"Iris Message." Lacy told her. "It's like how you guys use scrying bowls to communicate, we use IMs." The magicians looked slightly less confused. Sapphire flipped the drachma over in her gloved hand.
"Should we call Frank or Reyna?"
"Frank." Lacy and Ed chimed. Sapphire agreed. Calling Frank and telling him that they were sitting in a stronghold of the Egyptian gods was probably less dangerous than calling Reyna and telling her the same thing. Chiron was supposed to have told both praetors about the quest, but Reyna would probably not be happy about being told after they'd already gone.
She would have liked to be involved in planning.
"Iris, goddess of the rainbow, please accept my offering." Sapphire tossed the drachma into the rainbow. Tucker, who was sitting on the other side of Lacy, ducked, and then looked embarrassed when the gold coin disappeared into the rainbow. "Show me Frank Zhang at Camp Jupiter."
Frank appeared in the rainbow. He was holding a scroll and was waving it angrily while he shouted at a cowering legionnaire. Through the window behind him they could see stars twinkling. "…have any idea how much damage you've caused?!" They had apparently not chosen a good time to call. The magicians stared. Sapphire coughed loudly and Frank noticed the IM. "Go outside and stand on one foot until I've decided on a punishment!" he said to the legionnaire, who scrambled to leave. They heard the sound of a door closing and then Frank turned to look at the message.
"Hi Sapphire." he said, sounding completely wrung out. Sapphire frowned.
"Hi Frank. What's wrong?" Frank sighed.
"Descendant of Trivia summoned a bunch of venti and destroyed half of camp. We've been digging people out of the rubble for ten hours." Sapphire flinched.
"Yikes. How many injured? Do you need extra medics?"
"At least fifty. More medics would be nice, but I think Reyna is organizing that." Frank looked over her shoulder. "You're not at camp." he realized.
"We're at Brooklyn House." she told him. "Me, Ed from Cabin 11, and Lacy from Cabin 10. We're on a quest to ally with the Egyptian magicians. How much of Camp Jupiter was destroyed?"
"The entire camp of the Legion, the unicorn corral, and most of the roads. Hannibal's enclosure is a scrap heap. "
"New Rome? The aqueduct?"
"Untouched. We're operating out of the Senate House. You're with Egyptian magicians?"
"Didn't Chiron tell you?" Frank thought for a moment.
"Yes he did. Sorry, it's been crazy around here. Reyna and I agreed that you guys can keep doing what you have to do."
"Thanks. I'll let you get back to work."
"vale. Good luck." Sapphire cut through the rainbow with her hand, ending the call.
"That sounds bad." Walt said. "Will they be alright?" Sapphire tugged on her braid.
"I hope so. A least the city wasn't hit, that would be really bad." She realized that Frank hadn't said anything about Hazel, and hoped that that was because she was completely fine.
"What are venti?" Sadie asked. "A type of monster?"
"Sounds like an evil espresso drink." Sean commented.
"Her boyfriend said the same thing." Ed said, pointing his thumb towards Sapphire. "We call them anemoi thuellai. They're chaotic air spirits, only the wind gods can control them."
"And Jason Grace." Lacy added. "He's the son of Jupiter."
"It was stupid to summon them." Sapphire muttered.
"Air spirits." Cleo murmured. "They wouldn't happen to look like horses, would they?"
"The more chaotic ones." Sapphire told her. "Why do you ask?"
Cleo's eyes widened behind her glasses. She looked at Sadie. "You really have to talk to Carter. We have this scroll in the library... but I'd need his permission to show it to you."
"Where are Carter and Zia?" Ed asked. "Walt mentioned that Carter was away…"
"They're in Egypt." Felix said. "Pharaoh stuff." Ice penguins danced on the table in front of him. Actually, most of the magicians weren't listening to the conversation anymore. They were talking among themselves, practicing spells, and in general acting very much like ADHD demigods.
"They should be back in a few days." Walt told them. "You could stay here in the meantime."
"We could teach you magic!" Shelby suggested excitedly.
"They can't do magic Shelby." Sean reminded her. The smile on her face drooped.
"We can't do Greek or Roman magic." Sapphire said. "I don't think any demigod has ever tried Egyptian magic."
"So, you'll stay?" Shelby asked. Sapphire looked at Ed and Lacy, who both nodded.
"Sure." Sapphire said.
"Agh!" Khufu grunted, slapping the table.
"Then it's settled." Sadie announced. "We have rooms free, each of you can have one."
"One room is fine." Lacy said for all three of them. They were outside of camp, and it would be better for them to all be together if they had nightmares.
"One room then. But first, it's time for dinner."
Food appeared on the previously empty buffet table. Philip splashed in his pool, and snapped up a duck that had gotten too close. Everyone grabbed a plate. Non-deadly chaos soon ensued.
The demigods felt right at home.