Chapter 26 - How Many People Can You Apprentice To?

I woke up the next morning bright and early. It was cold for January, but I knew I only had today left at camp before I headed back to school. I'd be back next weekend, but I needed to get a headstart today. I pulled on a heavy jacket and headed to Bunker 9. I wasn't surprised to see Leo there. I was pretty sure he had been sleeping in the bunker. I had to admire his dedication. I stepped around his sleeping form and started looking at the blueprints. Then, I started sketching some designs. Leo was good at machines, but he was still inexperienced in design. His original blueprints wouldn't fit all the rooms we'd need. This was one area that I could help. I drew out the blueprints to include cabins for all seven demigods as well as one for Coach Hedge, our self-appointed chaperone. I drew everything as carefully as I could, knowing my measurements would need to be as exact as possible if we were going to fit everything onto the war ship.

When Leo woke up he and I got back to work on the engine until breakfast. The engine was going to be a marvel. It needed to power oars that could work in the air or the water. It was extremely intricate and I knew it would take most of our time together to work on it. We came right back to it after breakfast, while our cabins continued working on the hull of the ship. It was starting to look very much like a ship. The Hecate cabin had decided that they also needed to enchant the wood to hide demigods, so it was taking a bit longer today. But since I didn't exactly want to know how many monsters would be attracted by the seven most powerful demigods in the world, well, I decided not to complain.

After lunch, Piper and I practiced her charmspeak again. I ended up cleaning and polishing all of Percy's armor and weapons by the end of our hour together and Piper was getting a lot better with making me move automatically. She had worked up a sweat, but her smile was gleaming. It felt good to help my friend with something. We talked for a bit longer after our practice, about Piper's life before coming to camp. She was from California, so we had that in common, at least a bit.

When Piper had left to go back to her siblings, I decided there was someone else I needed to check on. I walked to the sword fighting arena to find the Ares cabin. I looked around until I spotted Jess. I pointed to her, then to the woods. She nodded and went to ask Clarisse for permission. Clarisse glared at me, but nodded, which I figured was as good as we were going to get.

Jess pulled me into a tight hug once we were away from her cabin mates. I was a bit surprised. Of the three demigods I got to camp, Jess was the least affectionate.

"Hey!" I told her with surprise. "You doing ok? I just wanted to check in, make sure you were settling in ok."

She nodded at me. "I'm really loving it here. It's safe, and I'm learning who I really am. I got a letter back from my mom. She's cool with me staying here, at least until fall. Then I'm going to go try the mortal world again."

I nodded. Jess hadn't talked a lot about her mortal life before. I was curious, but knew better than to pry. Jess would open up to me, or not, in her own time.

"I'm learning how to use a battle axe." Jess said.

I grinned at her. She would be good at that, I could tell. Her eyes lit up just thinking about it.

"That's great!" I told her. "I'm horrible with an axe."

We chatted for a few minutes, before I heard Clarisse bellow for Jess. She looked at me before she turned to go. "Will I see you around?"

I nodded. "I'll try to be back most weekends. I hope we can be, well, friends. Now that the scary almost-dying part is over, or at least, on the back-burner."

She grinned at me. "I'd like that. Even if our cabins aren't supposed to get along."

I waved my hand at that comment. "I'm dating someone I'm not supposed to get along with. I've gotten over a lot of that. My mom's feuds are her own. My friends are my own. Now get back to training before Clarisse murders me!" I joked.

She grinned and took off.

I walked to the Apollo cabin and knocked on the door. Will opened it, as I had hoped.

"Annabeth! Uh, injured -" He looked at my shoulder. "Or…."

I shifted nervously. "We know who some of the seven are. Percy, Jason, Piper, Leo, Me. That's five. We don't know about the other two. But chances are…" I took in a breath. "Well, chances are we might not have a healer. Or if we do, we may need two. I'm not…." I tried again. "I don't have, you know, godly power in this area, but I was wondering…. That is, I was hoping…" his eyebrow raised. "Could you teach me? Some more than the basic first aid, I mean."

Will smiled and nodded. "Consider yourself my trusty apprentice whenever you are here."

Leo had tried to call me the same thing. So did Jason as he taught me Roman myths last night after dinner. By the time the Argo II sailed, I was going to have been apprenticed to a lot of people, it seemed.

Will threw an arm around me and led me inside. "Let's go over some of the first-aid basics first, ok? Now, let's pretend someone, I'm not saying who, decided to go up against a giant scorpion single-handedly."

I rolled my eyes at him, but he just smirked and continued. "This person has a giant gash on their shoulder. Let's pretend no poison, at least for now. What do you do?"

Will and I reviewed the basics for a couple hours. He seemed to find some kind of guilty pleasure in reminding me of all the ways Percy and I had been injured in the past. Someone has ribs broken by a Cyclops, no Golden Fleece available. Someone took on the minotaur with no prior training. Someone decided it was a smart idea to take on a god, one-on-one. Someone gets impaled by the spike of a manticore. Gets covered in lava by telekhines. Stabbed by a rogue demigod. Decides it's a smart idea to hold up the weight of the sky. It was a long list. And I realized that in order to get Percy back, as well as to fulfill the destiny I had chosen as one of the seven, I was going to probably add several more wounds to that list. It was good to review all this stuff with Will. By the time we were done for the day and the conch blew, signalling it was time for dinner, I was feeling more confident that this quest could actually succeed. The boat was starting to look like a boat. Granted, it wasn't flying yet, but it would. Piper's charmspeak would be a powerful weapon on our side. I would learn to heal the others, as best I could. We could make it. Maybe.

After dinner I heard a knock on my door. Jason. I still felt weird about the guy but I tried my best not to let him know. He was Thalia's brother, and I still felt that maybe I had filled his role for her. He was Percy's unwilling replacement. I didn't like that at all. He was Roman, and Greeks weren't supposed to get along with Romans. Still, I tried to trust him, or at least, not let him on to my true feelings.

Jason had started to come by my cabin in the evenings each night during winter break. We would review all the Roman and Greek gods and the differences between them. While I enjoyed it and loved feeling more prepared for the quest, I'll admit that it hurt too. It felt way too much like when Percy first arrived at camp and I went over all the myths with him for the first time. I kept waiting for Jason to make silly remarks about the gods that I would roll my eyes to, but he didn't. He wasn't Percy. And every time he came by it was a stark reminder of the fact that he was here as a sort of replacement. I shook off the thoughts and turned to Jason.

"So, want to do military history, differences between the gods, or what kind of monsters may kill us this time?"

He grinned, then explained casually, "I was thinking, maybe tonight we don't do any of that."

I looked at him puzzled. "Ok. So what do we -"

He held up a couple badly done drawings. "Want to talk about the architecture of New Rome?"

He had me there. I grinned at him and pulled up a chair. He sat on my bunk. "Ok. So these aren't as good as yours, but it'll give you an idea of the city. This is the main Forum. It's like, the city square. Tons of great shops around here. There's this one coffee shop…."

We talked for a full hour before I had to leave back to school. I really didn't want to leave - there was so much to be done here, so much I had to learn. But I knew Chiron would not approve if I stayed. So I went to Blackjack, apple in hand, and flew back to my dorm before lights-out. It had been a good weekend. I could only hope the rest of the spring went by so fast.