Hey there!
I just wanted to say how much I appreciate everyone's interest in this little fic. I really hope you are all enjoying reading it as much as I am enjoying writing it. Huge thank yous to Followers and Favorite-ers these past few days. And even more thank yous to my loyal Reviewers: liaregie, prince of the seas, MoonLightShadowNight123, and dogbuscuit1967.
Dogbiscuit- Thanks! I really like Will and I wanted him to be more involved in my story. And lovely suggestion... you might be on to something... or maybe you can read minds... We'll just have to see...
This one is all Alec!
12. Alexander
"You know it doesn't matter," Will smirked at me as we walked to the more advanced archery targets that were set up by the training arena.
"What doesn't matter?" I hadn't really been listening to what we were talking about; my brain had been in hyper drive since last night. We had won capture the flag, Penelope had been mauled by a hellhound, we found out that water heals her up better than ambrosia…
Oh yea! And she got claimed by Poseidon, the God of the Sea, earthquakes, storms and horses.
"That PJ's a child of the Sea God. You're not really going to let some fight between Poseidon and Athena dictate who you're friends with, are you?"
I smiled tightly, "No… well… Ok, I'm trying not to…"
I realize it might sound a ltitle stupid for me to allow a centuries' old fight between two Gods effect who I'm friends with; but the Gods can be easily offended. I wanted to bring honor to my mother and make her proud, and for some reason being friends with PJ made me feel like I'd done something to betray Athena's trust. Will noticed how much I was struggling with this, so he tried to change the subject.
"How was your meeting with Chiron this morning?" Will strung his bow and let fly a perfectly shot arrow. It hit the center of the bullseye… of course.
I huffed a little as I strung my own arrow, "Horribly. He wouldn't even give me a second to speak. He just told me that there would be no more discussing or even mentioning the big prophecy until things had been sorted out with PJ."
My arrow hit the white edge of the target.
I rubbed my hands over my head and tried to clear my mind.
"Since we're on the subject… Do you think someone summoned the hellhound to kill PJ?" I felt my stomach tense and I glared at him. Will wasn't fazed by me at all; almost like he expected my reaction, "That's one of the more rational rumors floating around camp."
"That's rational?" I tried to aim another arrow, but it ended up lodged in the ground right in front of the target this time.
"Compared to someone's suggestion that one of the campers thought it was just a regular dog or that Mr. D though it would be funny to see us all freak out; yea, being summoned to kill PJ is at least plausible."
I hated how even Will's voice is while he talked; but I really shouldn't be reacting this badly to everything. We're demigods; bad luck followed us everywhere and there was always something that wanted to kill us.
The archery practice turned out to be a lost cause. Most of my arrows ended up stuck in the ground in front of the target or lodged into the fence post right behind it. Will and I silently collected the arrows as Penelope came storming into the area with Grover in tow.
"They won't even talk to me, Grover! I packed up all my stuff in complete silence. It's like they're afraid to even look in my general direction," PJ sat down on one of the haystacks that lined the fence. "And cabin three is too quiet. I hate being by myself; it's like being back at Yancy again. And the only reason I got a single room there was because my stupid roommate actually asked for a new person to bunk with..."
Penelope wasn't crying, but she looked close and completely defeated. Her face fell into her hands.
"So I take it you got to move into your new cabin today…" I sat down next to her on the hay bale and twirled one of my arrows around in my fingers.
"Yea, it's huge and empty… I get to make all my own schedules and rules… and I hate it," Penelope's hands fell away and her legs started to bounce up and down as she tried to control the flood of emotion that was crossing her face.
"Well, there hasn't been a child of any of the Big Three in a while… and after what you did last night to Clarisse and what happened with the Hellhound… I don't think anyone really knows what to make of you, PJ," Will, of course, was the voice of reason. I may be considered the smart one, but Will was much better with emotions and reading the situation.
Penelope looked really confused, "Yea, why is that? I thought the Gods had tons of kids with mortals. I mean at least they did in all the myths. Why am I so special?"
I involuntarily cringed at the tone PJ used; no one should talk about themselves like that… with so much anger and hate.
I knew that Chiron had sort of glazed over the subject when he told Penelope about the cabins, but I guess he didn't go into any detail about it. I sighed heavily and decided that if Chiron wasn't going to tell her, we had to, "Any child of the Big Three, Zeus, Poseidon and Hades, are way more powerful than regular demigods; like dangerous levels of powerful."
Penelope shifted nervously beside me.
She looked to Grover; as if she needed him to confirm what I said.
Grover silently nodded his head, "A while ago, they decided that the children of the Big Three were affecting the course of world events too much. So they all made an oath that they wouldn't have any more affairs with mortal women. They swore it on the River Styx."
"Sounds…" thunder crashed over our heads, "... Sounds serious…" PJ looked like all the blood had drained from her face. "So, what made them… what forced them to make such a crazy oath?"
"World War II," Will sat down on the ground in front of our hay bail and explained, "World War II can be boiled down to a ridiculous fight between the sons of Zeus and Poseidon and the sons of Hades. So after Zeus and Poseidon's side won… they kind of bullied Hades into making the oath too; no more demigod children for them."
"And the other two kept their oaths?" PJ looked around at us in complete shock. I guess she was terrified of the idea that her godly father was the only one to fall off the wagon.
"No. Zeus broke the oath about seventeen years ago. He had a daughter with some movie star he couldn't say no to." I really didn't want to talk about this anymore. I knew what the next question was going to be…
"What happened to the girl?"
Will and Grover stared at me. I clinched my fists and took a deep breathe to calm myself. I shared a look with Grover and quickly gave him a sad smile to let him know that I didn't blame him, "Thalia, that was her name… Thalia was faced with a horrible fate. She ran away from home and was chased by a lot of different monsters as she tried to find her way here. A satyr was sent out to guild her and she found two other demigods along the way who helped her fight and survive. But…" my voice cracked, and after I cleared my throat my voice seemed to be gone.
Grover hung his head, "But all three of the Kindley Ones were after us."
Penelope's jaw dropped and her eyes were wide as saucers; she realized what Grover was admitting.
"There was a pack of hellhounds tracking us too. Thalia knew that she was the one that was being hunted; so she told me to take the other two demigods to safety and I crossed them into camp. Thalia fought the monsters back by herself and was mortally wounded. When she took her last stand on the top of Half-Blood Hill, Zeus took pity on his dying daughter and turned her into the pine tree. He saved her spirit. And now she helps to protect the camp. She… she had the greatest power we'd seen in decades, she also had the strongest aura that I'd smelt until… well until you…" Grover paused to look at Penelope's reaction.
To her credit, PJ didn't look frightened at all; she looked pissed. Her forehead was creased and her eyes were narrowed.
She looked terrifying.
"Why was Thalia punished because her Dad couldn't keep his hands to himself? How was that fair?!" Penelope's voice shook as she spoke. "That's why everyone is treating me like a leper, isn't it? They either think I'm too much of a danger myself or that I'm going to attract something just as terrible into camp again."
None of us could look at her.
"Well, we don't think that you're dangerous… you can't seem to fight without falling over, so you're more of a threat to yourself than others," Will somehow cut the tension and got a smile pulling at the edges of PJ's lips.
"Yea, how powerful can I really be if I can't even stay standing?"
I think we all knew that what was being said wasn't completely true. But Grover, Will and I knew that Penelope needed assurances that we were still her friends… and she really needed a laugh.
I have to admit it felt pretty good to see PJ feeling better. Being friends with a Child of Poseidon didn't seem complicated or difficult at all in that moment.
The next couple days were tough for Penelope. She sat at the Poseidon table in the mess hall by herself a few times, thankfully Grover joined her for lunch the second day and had been eating with her every meal since. All of PJ's training classes were now one-on-one because everyone was too nervous to be around her. Will and I tried to sneak into her classes as much as we could, but we were supposed to stay with our own cabins when it came to the schedules.
Some of her lessons weren't even able to be held. Clarisse wouldn't have anything to do with Penelope. Though I'm not totally clear if that was due to PJ attracting horrible monsters into our safe haven, or from the embarrassment Clarisse still had from the capture the flag game.
Will had suggested drilling Penelope on the climbing wall instead to build up her strength. "It doubles as a great learning exercise for conducting first aid on yourself, PJ," Solace sounded so upbeat by this possibility it was kind of scary.
Penelope widened her eyes but agreed to the training.
PJ got second degree burns on her right leg after her first go around with the Wall, and Will forced her to address the wound the godly way…
"Ow… ow… ow…" Penelope picked the bits of lava rock out of her scraps and poured a little of the Nectar over the burns on her calf.
Will rolled his eyes, "I've seen you go through so much worse; I know you're just being a big baby." He huffed and walked over to the Wall to train a little himself.
Penelope smirked and called after him, "Never going to let me live the whole hellhound thing down, are you Solace?" She poured a few more drops of the Nectar over her leg.
"I'm ignoring you," Will shouted to no one in particular; though one of the Hermes kids standing next to him looked a bit confused.
PJ silently stuck her hand out in front of me, and it was my turn to roll my eyes, "You know if he finds out, we'll both have to sit through really long lectures about the importance of knowing the basics of demigod first aid. And I've already sat through it twice… it's even worse than it sounds."
But I hand over my water bottle anyway. She took a huge swig of the water and I could see the redness of her leg begin to fade.
Penelope's wore one of her huge smiles, but there was a hint of scheming in her eyes. "Sorry; you guys are just way too easy marks sometimes. Though I guess I shouldn't piss off the only people at camp that even bother talking to me," PJ picked at some grass in front of her and let it catch in the slight breeze that surrounded us.
"They're just… worried. No monster has ever gotten through the magical barrier before," the look on Penelope's face let me know pretty quick that I hadn't helped any.
"So they really are scared of me. They're all scared of me."
I tried to use humor, like Will had, to turn the conversation, "There loss though, right? Just means you're stuck with Will, Grover and me for a while."
I'm surprised to see a smile pull at one side of Penelope's mouth, "Yea… totally the worst thing, ever. A medical prodigy, a borderline genius and an insanely supportive satyr… yea, I think I could do way worse."
The horn sounded singling that it was time for dinner.
Will came down off the wall completely unscathed. He inspected Penelope's healed leg with a strange glare… I'm pretty sure he was on to us, but he didn't say anything. He lead the way over the river toward the Mess Hall.
Grover met us halfway looking pale and twitchy, but he wore a strained smile as he greeted us all. He came up beside me, pulled me aside slightly and mumbled, "Need distraction… PJ can't see…"
Thankfully, I had some experience with Grover's shorthand, "Hey PJ, can you get that ancient mythology book that I lent you. Ben and I got into a debate about something at lunch and I need the book to prove him wrong."
"Yea, sure," She kept walking toward the Mess Hall, but then noticed that the three of us were still stopped a few paces behind her. "Oh, you mean right now? … Um, ok. I'll be right back," Penelope shoved her hands into her pockets and hurried off to her cabin.
When PJ was out of ear shot, Will and I turned to Grover who had dropped his fake smile and now just looked angry and confused. "I found this on the doormat of cabin three when I went to see if you guys were finished with the Wall," Grover handed over a folded up page of newspaper and glanced around nervously as Will and I laid it flat to read.
It was the metro section of the New York Times and the headline read 'Mother and Daughter Still Missing.'
It all seemed normal enough until you began to read the soundbites that the reporter had woven into her article. Soundbites from some horrible guy named, 'Ugliano' who insinuated that Penelope was violent and was probably involved in the disappearance of her mom.
I crumpled up the page until it was a tight, dense ball. My insides felt like they were burning.
PJ was not going to see this stupid paper.
So close to prophecy time and begining the quest!
Please Follow, Favorite and REVIEW! I would love to hear what you all think about where this is going, and I'm open-minded to suggestions. =)
Always,
Misha
Ps. Check out my other stories: 'Life as Demigods,' 'Thrown Back' and 'Begin Again.'
