Kay, so apparently updating didn't work out… yea… I guess I forgot to mention that my parents like to "seize the summer" and go on as many trips as possible. Like 10 states and a billion weeks later here you go.

*PERCY*

The only words that could really describe the feeling of climbing up that rickety old ladder back into the attic again after so long were really and strange. The small room looked just slightly emptier than the most recent time I'd been up there but that was hardly noticeable. Despite the minute difference, the musty old room still had plenty of junk in it. It was filled to the brim with old trophies of old campers who probably never were able to grow old.

Holding my breath as much as possible, I slowly wove my way through the mountains of dusty relics and miscellaneous pickled body parts towards the freaky, mummified hippie woman propped up against a three legged stool.

It was really trippy to see her as a mummy again. Over time I'd gotten pretty used to Rachel as our resident prophet. Since the spirit of the oracle had moved bodies, we didn't really have a need for her old vessel. I'm not quite sure what happened to the thing in my time, but I guess she stayed up in the attic, collecting dust while becoming yet another memento of a time that had come to pass.

When I was close enough to touch the decaying corpse's tie-die dress, I heard the all too familiar whisper in my head that always made me shiver. I'm not ashamed to say that I jumped back at least a foot or three when I heard the voice saying.

Perrrrcy Jackssson you have traveled from verrry farrrr approach and assssk.

I couldn't help but flinch at her words. She knew my secret. I really couldn't say that I was shocked at the revelation, but I had only told Chiron and wanted to keep it that way. Some really old spirit that had a habit of speaking at the worst times wasn't on my number one list of people who should know really important stuff about me.

What I wanted to say was "Oops wrong room. See ya lady." And high tail out of the attic, but I swallowed my fear and took a shaky step forward until I was at half an arm's length from her ugly face before I carefully whispered,

"I want to know how my quest will turn out."

For a second I thought maybe she hadn't heard me so I stepped back a bit and started to repeat my question a little louder.

"I want to kn-"

I was cut off by a stream of misty green smoke shooting out of the oracle's mouth. The smoke swirled around until it formed three figures.

I sharply inhaled and quickly backed up even more. These figures were people, all fellow campers, who I couldn't save in the end. They were all sitting in a field of faceless wisps of humans and I immediately recognized their location as the fields of asphodel.

The first one, Charles Beckendorf opened his smoky green mouth and spoke with the raspy voice of the oracle.

For this quest I don't know what is best for you,

Some things will be the same and others new.

Selina was the next figure and she, like her boyfriend solemnly delivered her line in the prophecy.

Of the lost friends you can help only two,

Will come back to life and into your crew.

I bit back a gasp of anger at the gods when she finished and stared expectantly at the final ghost that had always haunted me most. Luke Castellan looked as serious and blank-faced as the others but something about him appeared sad as he gave his portion of the prophecy.

Who you will choose I cannot say,

But choose wisely hero for there will be a price to pay.

As suddenly as they had appeared, all three of the ghosts exploded into one last swirl of green smoke and I was unceremoniously flung to the floor, hitting my tailbone.

I let out a high pitched scream that I didn't know my body was capable of and when I opened my eyes I was alone with the creepy mummy and hundreds of haphazardly thrown souvenirs.

Getting to my feet I started to scramble towards the hatch that would lead to the outside world when I paused and quickly turned around. On a spur of the moment decision I ran over to the Oracle and grabbed a particular piece of jewelry from around her neck, shoved it in my pocket and sprinted away from the room full of bad memories.

On my run back to Chiron I ran straight into Annabeth who looked like she had been waiting for me to return. After I helped her off the floor stammering out apologies, she pushed me away and gave an expectant look.

"Well?" she said, angrily brushing the dirt from the filthy floor off of her shorts.

"What?" I stupidly asked.

"What do you mean 'what?' you idiot." Annabeth shot at me, "The oracle, what did she say?"

"Oh… yea… well it was weird." I answered. "The prophecy was… different."

"How?"

"Actually, it was entirely changed from last time. She told me about our quest."

Luckily Annabeth was smart enough to know what I meant by our quest.

"Tell me everything she said exactly." She said quite seriously.

As we stood there in the hallway of the big house I quietly told her what the Spirit of Delphi had said and she nodded and occasionally gave me an 'uh huh?' as I relayed the mummy's message. When I was finished she stared off in thought for a moment before she sighed and replied.

"Well… what do we tell the others?"

"That's all you have to say?" I asked. "I tell you that we can't save everyone and you can just say that?"

"There isn't anything else to say, Percy." She shot back frustrated. "Two people is better than no people… You know what? Just let me do the talking when we get back to Chiron and Mr. D."

I reached out and took her hand and she led the way to give the news to our directors.

Honestly, if I didn't know better, I'd say that the two hadn't moved since I had left.

The god and the centaur were still lounging around the pinochle table and appeared to be discussing game strategy. Mr. D was animatedly waving around a can of Diet Coke and Chiron was pointing at a card that was resting up against a paper weight.

Annabeth let go of my hand with a small smile as we entered the office. It sometimes amazed me that she could go from an exasperated teacher to a sweet and kind girlfriend in less than a second.

Chiron looked up at us and waved us in.

"Ms. Chase, how nice of you to brink Mr. Jackson back to us." He greeted as if he had no clue that we knew each other. It also prompted Annabeth to explain her presence.

"Oh, yeah. I just saw him wandering in the hallways and he seemed a bit lost so I brought him here. He told me all about the quest." She smoothly replied.

"Yep." I added before being silenced by a small glance of annoyance.

"Anyways Percy got some information on the quest from the Oracle. Tell them what she said about the stolen thing."

I caught that as my clue as to which prophecy I was supposed to tell them.

"Uh… well she said that… uh..." I racked my brain for a line to come to mind for the next few seconds before Annabeth had to step in.

"Are you really that dense, Percy?" She gave the adults a sorry grin that clearly read 'Excuse my silly friend. I'm pretty sure he's missing a few brain cells.'

"He said that the spirit told him to go west and that he would succeed in recovering the Lightning bolt."

That was all it took for the memories to come flooding back.

"Yeah! She said

You shall go west, and face the god who has turned,

You shall find what was stolen, and see it safely returned,

You shall be betrayed by one who calls you a friend,

And you shall fail to save what matters most, in the end.

For a short amount of time both Mr. D and Chiron were completely immersed in thought until, surprisingly, Dionysius broke the silence with the parting words of.

"Well isn't that grand, you can run off and start your silly little scavenger hunt now. Ta-Ta."

"Wait what?" I questioned. "You're just going to say bye? What about advi- nope never mind I'll just go now." It was best to speed things up. I started out of the door before Chiron's voice drew me back in.

"Percy," he called. When he had my attention he gave a goodbye wink and informed me that

"You might want to know that you may take two other campers with you on your journey best of luck."

I admit that I was a little shocked that they were just letting me go like that, but I also couldn't help but feel relieved that we had privacy. I accepted his gift of knowledge and took it out the door and towards my cabin where Annabeth, who had slipped out a tad before, would hopefully be waiting.

Sure enough both she, and a bouncing clearly informed Grover were waiting at the doorstep of Cabin Three awaiting my arrival. My satyr friend was a bundle of nervous energy and couldn't stop buzzing with questions about the quest that I decided to brush off. Knowing that we had no time to waste, I jogged into the building and grabbed a spare shirt or two and a small bag to fill with some of Annabeth's supplies.

We made our way towards the border of camp and Annabeth told Grover the rest of the information that would come in handy for the retrieval of the lightning bolt. We had agreed to leave him out of the loop in our big picture so Annabeth stuck to the basics.

When our group finally reached Thalia's pine, I turned to face them.

"Well," I said. "I guess we should go." And took a step over the line into the rest of the world.

I promise, right when I got home from my last trip I told myself that I would only take a day for Tumblr and reading fanfictions but that very quickly turned into a week. Until next time….