I won't talk much here, for your sake. Here's Chapter 11 - PART TWO... under the guise of Chapter 12...
One minor note, however, there is a curse word. But just one. Just read and you'll understand. (please don't hate me).
Chapter 12: "New Insight" or "Smoke in the Attic"
Annabeth had been looking forward to this moment her entire life. Here she was, standing in the very spot she'd yearned to be in for years, and yet she felt empty. She'd expected to be entirely awestruck and mystified, but instead, she felt incomplete, hesitant, and frankly a bit frightened.
She silently admitted to herself that she'd led Percy on. Finding a weapon for him wasn't her sole intention for coming up to the attic. An idea had been tugging at the edges of her thoughts since breakfast that morning: a silly idea; an unbelievable idea; a so-totally-impossible idea that she had no choice but to try. It ate away at her thoughts and slipped its way out of the back burners in her brain until it consumed her. The security there was never too strong anyway.
"So this is her," she mumbled, only vaguely aware of Percy standing beside her.
She had to admit, she'd expected more. She'd heard stories of the shriveled hag in the attic that spouted riddles, but for something so intriguing and shrouded in mystery, she'd anticipated something a little more...well, impressive.
What she'd gotten instead was a musty old mummy in a tie dyed sun dress baking in the sunlight that was streaming through the only window, which was magnifying the stink by a thousand times. It didn't surprise her that rats and bugs hadn't come to devour her flesh in the last 50 years. Even if she was a creature of vermin, Annabeth would not want to go near that thing if she had a choice.
But with her mind, it was either this or living without knowing what could have happened. The choice to her was obvious, but she still couldn't believe what she was about to do. Annabeth had heard stories of people who had come up here to consult the oracle, and they'd come back down half-insane from the things they'd seen. There was even a rumor going around camp that one kid had actually died, and even though she doubted it was true, it was pretty easy to believe in her current situation. There was no doubt that this was gong to be dangerous, and she would be lying if she said she wasn't scared.
Only the pungent odor of the mummy before her and Percy's presence beside her kept her focused.
"So who is she?"
Annabeth turned to see Percy's nose scrunched up against the smell also.
She took a deep breath through her mouth before she answered, "She was the oracle."
"The oracle?" Percy bent closer to get a better look at the decaying woman before him, so much that he had to pinch his nose closed with his fingers. "She doesn't look like much."
Annabeth inhaled sharply (not willingly) and slapped Percy's hand away from the mummy's beads. He looked up at her and raised an eyebrow as if to say "She's a stinky old skeleton, how much trouble could she be?" She sighed wistfully at his innocent ignorance. If only she knew that little to not have to worry about being at the brink of death after every decision she made.
"The oracle has powers only the gods can understand. I'm not even sure if they even know anymore she's been sitting here for so long."
He looked the oracle over again. "That's why we came up here, isn't it? You knew we wouldn't find any useful weapons."
Annabeth nodded.
"Why can't you people just tell me things? What's with all the secret keeping around here?" she heard him mumble. Then louder, "So how does she work? What do we do?"
At those words, the mummy jumped to a standing position and opened it's mouth, spouting smoke of a putrid green color and emitting a faint hissing like the collective noise of a thousand snakes. It was enough to send shivers down Annabeth's spine. The smoke slowly snaked around the room and scared Percy into falling backwards over a low table.
"I think it's okay, it's not dangerous," she said, trying to focus her attention on the oracle in front of her; she was quickly being obscured by the thick tendrils she was secreting. Annabeth clenched her hands to try to keep them still, but they still shook like the earthquakes they had at her dad's house in California. She squeezed her eyes shut and took deep breaths; Focus, Annabeth, she told herself. Then another voice invaded her thoughts.
Immediately she knew it belonged to the oracle.
It was cold, and it echoed, like several hissing, raspy voices were speaking to her at once. Annabeth was unsure if that was the way it was supposed to sound, all mysterious and almost creepy, or it was just a bit rusty after having been out-of-use for a while. She decided not to dwell on it as the oracle planted words in her head.
"I am the spirit of Delphi, speaker of the prophecies of Phoebus Apollo, slayer of the mighty Python. Approach speaker and ask."
Annabeth made eye contact with Percy through the mist and his pale face and wide expression told her that he was hearing the same thing. She took a defiant step forward and faced the oracle.
"What needs to be done to save the camp? How do we help the gods? Tell us our destinies!" Her voice rang out with such courage and confidence that it surprised her; she felt anything but.
Yet the mist only encompassed them more, until their vision was almost entirely shrouded in a musty green cloud.
"Annabeth," she heard Percy's voice ring out, "what exactly was supposed to happen?"
She was at a loss for words. Maybe they ought to get out of there? Annabeth scrunched her eyes to think. Their situation was getting more dire the longer they stood there, but if only things had gone the way she'd hoped. Just a little longer, she thought. She counted to ten as panic started to set in. Any second now.
"Annabeth?" Percy's voice was tight with worry. She opened her eyes to see what was wrong, but she could barely see a foot in front of her. She could only just make out the green glow of the oracle's eyes. They stared into her mind as if plotting her and Percy's ends up here in the attic.
"Percy!" she called out. She turned to where he ought to have been standing a second ago, but she walked into the corner of a table and fell sideways over a pile of boxes. A loud thump came from behind her and she knew Percy was trying to get to her as well.
"Stay where you are, Percy. I'll come to you." She collected herself and felt her way towards her friend, the smoke becoming denser with every step. A few feet down, she bumped head-first into a bookshelf that shouldn't have been there. She didn't remember seeing a bookshelf there on the way in. If she was where she thought she was, the trap door down from the attic was a few yards ahead of her, slightly to the left, with no obstructions. Confused, she groped the book case around her. Maybe she just mis-shot the aisle where she should have been. Nope. Straight bookshelf on either side.
Now she started to panic. She'd thought she'd prepared for almost anything during her years at camp, but if she couldn't even navigate the attic blind, how was she going to make it in the outside world?
No doubt about it, this was one of the worst experiences of her life.
As if sensing her distress, Percy called, "Annabeth? I'm over here. Is everything okay?"
"Y-yeah." she stuttered. Remembering she wasn't alone up there sent her fear right out of her. She was actually surprised how much trust mutual there was between them already. Enough to escape a smoky attic and a potentially dangerous mummy.
With her thought cleared, she could focus so much better. At best, the average human's memory from vision was only about 70% accurate, lowering as time went on, but Annabeth was no ordinary human. She closed her eyes again - it didn't matter now anyway - and imagined coming up the attic ladder with Percy. She'd walked down this aisle, then that one, turned here, and met the oracle there. She scowled. Where was this book shelf?
She went over the route a thousand times more in her head and felt the shelves in front of her for something else to try and focus on. Jars. Lots of jars.
Oh. It was that bookshelf.
She'd only come up here to the attic once before on a "favor" to the Stolls. After she came down white as a sheet and trembling for her life, Thalia had scolded them so harshly they didn't talk to either of them for weeks.
She shivered from the thought and put it out of her head. She wouldn't - couldn't - think of it now. There was something else she needed to do, and once again the thought of Percy brought her back to her senses and calmed her nerves.
Curious.
"Annabeth?" She could hear the panic starting to creep into his voice, and she felt the sudden urge to be beside him, to comfort him.
"I'm here, Percy. I'm okay. I'm heading towards you."
There was a slight clunk and she wondered what he could be doing. She was only a few steps away from him now.
"Annabeth?" He said again, but this time his voice was tight with fear. "The trap door won't open."
Honestly, her first thought was "shit".
Then, "What am I even thinking?" She was a daughter of Athena, and if anyone could get out of her current situation, it was her. All it needed was a bit of quick thinking. No problem or predicament was impossible to solve.
She felt her way the remaining steps to Percy and knelt down beside him. Just to make sure, she tried the handle. Nope. Still stuck. She stood up again and cleared her mind. Were there any other exits in the room? Yes, one, the window behind the mummified oracle. No good.
Percy banged and kicked at the door in an attempt to get it to swing open, but he stopped when it only sent his blows bouncing back. He sat back in a coughing fit.
Now her mind was frantically searching for ways of escape. Groping the table beside her she found an old shield spattered with dried blood and jammed its edge along the crack where the door met the floor. She banged it on the handle in an attempt to get it loose, but it was all for naught. The shield clanged and rang out with every strike, and with every bounce-back, Annabeth's face got redder and more desperate. Then, out of sheer frustration and anger, she stood up and hurled the disk away like a frisbee as hard as she could, and she let out a curse in ancient Greek that her mother would have surely punished her for.
Panic froze her mind again as she let her new friend down for the second time that week. She turned in his direction, to the shadowy silhouette that she could just make out behind the curtain of green smoke between them, and dropped weakly to the floor, her chest rising and falling more erratically. Percy's hand came into sight through the fog and rested itself on her shoulder. At his touch, it felt as if a great weight had been magically lifted off her back, like she'd been trying to lug around a huge dining table, and Percy had suddenly picked up the opposite end. It dawned on her that he was there for her as much as she was there for him. She'd been thinking about their relationship entirely the wrong way. He'd originally offered to help her, but she'd gotten so caught up in her own personal mission to keep him safe that she'd forgotten. They were carrying each other, sharing the collective weight of all their struggles. Annabeth's mind cleared with that single touch, as if the smoke in the attic had suddenly disappeared.
And then it actually did.
The pressure in the room began to drop, and Annabeth felt that familiar pop in her ears as her body adjusted. Percy scrunched up his eyes and wiggled his fingers inside his ears in an attempt to get over the discomfort, but when he opened them again, he jumped back in alarm at the clarity. Annabeth almost backed into a table when her vision cleared. All of the smoke seemed to have gone from the room, condensed into a cloud hovering over the trap door. She stood up and brushed the dust from her jeans before helping Percy up too.
"You okay?" he asked.
Annabeth nodded solemnly before turning to inspect the cloud. It sparked and crackled like a thundercloud, spinning and churning like it was forming a storm. Out of the tumbling puffs, Annabeth swore she saw a resemblance to Clarisse. Then Thalia. Then Chiron? What she hallucination? Maybe the smoke was more dangerous that she thought. But Percy seemed to recognize them too.
"Hey," he pointed out, "isn't that...?"
The cloud suddenly swelled and grew a cluster of heads, like Mount Rushmore, of Annabeth's old friends. Clarisse, the Stolls, Selina Beauregard, they were all there. Their eyes were hollowed and their faces expressionless, but the green glow of the smoke made Annabeth feel like they were staring right down her throat to that little spot just below her heart, the spot where happiness lived. Their pale luminescent eye-holes looked all the way down to her soul and planted a feeling there that she didn't like. It gave her a sense of foreboding and dread, and she knew that whatever was about to happen was not going to be good. On the far left of Mount Demigod-more, Clarisse opened her gaseous mouth and the oracle's voice rang out in her mind again:
"A half-blood of the eldest gods
Shall reach sixteen against all odds,"
As Clarisse finished talking, Will Solace from the Apollo cabin and one of the best healers at camp, took up the chant on the opposite side of Chiron:
"And see the world in endless sleep.
The hero's soul, cursed blade shall reap,"
Will's mouth closed and from the center of the group, Thalia turned her gaze to Annabeth to finish the prophecy. Thalia's usual friendly expression was absent, and it was replaced with something unfamiliar. It sent shivers down her spine. The people before her looked like her friends, but they were something else, composed of the darkness bubbling up from inside the oracle for centuries:
"A single choice shall end his days
Olympus to preserve or raze."
When not-Thalia finished, the group of Demigods vanished in a swirl of sickly green, as if it was just flushed down the toilet. The air around them was still, almost too still. The mummy-oracle glared at them from down the aisle with a faint smile that made Annabeth feel like she - it? - was alive. Suddenly she was anxious to leave.
She turned to Percy, whose face was whiter than a sheet.
"Let's get out of here."
...And the prophecy is revealed...(on the Ides of March no less, how ironic and unplanned...!)
Anyway, thanks for reading! Let me know what you think by leaving a review. I always respond! Feel free to suggest anything you'd like me to include!
Also, I'm available as a BETA reader if anyone is interested! Free advertizing in my Author's Notes is included!
You can expect at least an update every month or so. Keep in mind I am a student, and my studies are important also.
