Percy Talking

Percy Thinking

Adamos Talking

Adamos Thinking

Chapter 44

Violent Accusations

"Well, you're not bleeding internally so that's good." The medics tone was bland as he finished inspecting my torso. A large purple bruise sat just below my right peck, slowly yet visibly shrinking with each passing minute. "That water that cushioned your fall healed your ribs to just some minor fractures so just take some nectar and you'll be fine in half an hour."

"Thanks doc." I said as I put my shirt back on, feeling a sharp stab in my side that I ignore. The medic leaves without another word, probably to check on the others were injured fighting the ants.

And wasn't that a WTF moment.

When our group made it back to the makeshift fortress, we expected to meet a victorious yet tired group. Demeter kids weren't really known for fighting and so while we expected them to be fine, we did generally believe that we would find them a bit beaten.

Holy shit where we wrong.

The entire forest was basically bathed in gold dust and ant carcasses with none of the Demeter kids being excluded. Their skin and clothing were practically dyed a dark gold while some of them wore the different body parts of the fallen Myrmekes like war trophies, like they were tribal barbarians.

For a brief moment I thought that someone drugged up the Ares Cabin and sent them into the fray to kill as many as they could before reality reasserted itself and I saw the once peaceful tree hugging campers dancing on the corpses of their enemies.

I can never unsee that now.

"Yo Jackson you alive?"

I heard the shout of one Thalia Grace as she walks into the makeshift room of the fortress with—

"Are you sucking on a battery?" I ask in disbelief as in-between her lips is a double AA battery. She rolls it around to the other corner of her mouth like a lollipop. I really worry about the safety of such a thing as I'm pretty sure that batteries are poisonous to consume.

"Yeah? So?" Thalia says, waving the act off like its somehow the most natural thing in the world.

"Isn't that dangerous or something?"

"No more dangerous than you taking a dip in a pool." She shrugs. I was still confused and it must have shown on my face as she continued, explaining further. "I've heard that you heal in water. Just think of it like that. Its not as effective as shoving a fork into a socket but it works."

I…had so many questions that I wanted to ask but I felt like the answers would be ridiculous, one of which asking how she doesn't get lithium poisoning. Instead, I asked the only question that I could think of that applied to the current situation. "So, you're alright?"

"My head still hurts a bit but I'm fine." She waves off the concern as she leans against the wall. "Not that that's going to stop me when we go grab all the treasure." A small eager glint passed through her eyes at the thought of all that gold and weapons buried beneath the earth.

Or maybe it was just because of the robo-dragon head?

"Well, I hope you brought a truck or something because I don't think I'm up for carrying ALL of it back to camp." I pointed to my bruised ribs to make a point.

"As a matter of fact, I did order a truck." She said smugly before her smile faltered slightly. "Well, it's a delivery van actually."

"We have a car? Since when did we have a vehicle?" I stood up and walked out of the room and into the sunlight with Thalia right behind me. I swivel my head, looking in all directions until my gaze came across a large white van with a cartoonish strawberry drawn above the camps official logo for the mortals.

"Once everything calmed down, I asked Beckendorf to grab it since he's the only one who knows how to drive." She explained as we walked up to the vehicle.

As if on cue the tinted window of the van rolled down to reveal a very golden and tired Beckendorf sitting at the wheel.

I looked him up and down and I couldn't help what came out of my mouth. "You look like a Twilight reject."

The son of Hephaestus snorted in amusement. "And you look like ant food." He shot back though he wasn't really wrong as my clothes were torn apart in various places while being covered in dirt and other things found underground.

"Do you actually know how to drive that?" I ask as I look at the van. It looked like it had been in service for more than twenty years though there were signs of constant maintenance and care for the aged vehicle.

"Chiron taught me how to drive last year and I've been helping with the deliveries." He explained.

I guess that makes se…

"Wait. How did he teach you if he can't—"

"UGH! Less talk and more driving!" Thalia pushed me impatiently into the cab and right next to Beckendorf before jumping in after me and closing the door. The entire vehicle shifted as what I could only assume multiple people filed into the back.

"But I still wan—" "Lets go Beck." Thalia cut me off with an order. The son of Hephaestus just shrugged and pressed the pedal.

"I don't think I'm ever gonna learn how Chiron fits into a car."

X

We arrived to the location that Thalia and I marked, and we all got out. Once we found and marked the outline of the entire room on the surface it took me maybe twenty minutes to raise the entire floor to the surface. By the time that everything was raised everyone was eyeing all the loot with a particularly enthusiastic gleam before diving in to start hauling it back.

I however didn't jump in. Between the exhaustion of pulling it all up and the pain in my ribs I was far to tired to participate like everyone else. Instead, I sat with my back to a tree while watching everyone try to sort through everything.

Thalia coerced (forced) two others to help her load the dragons head into the van before anything else, with her carrying one end while they struggled to carry the other end.

Over all it took us a little over three hours, multiple round trips, even more people lending a hand with wagons, and myself joining halfway through before we were able to clear it all and bring it back to camp.

To say that everyone else was surprised would be an understatement. Never before had they seen so much equipment and treasure gathered in one place which only seemed to emphasize how many resources the camp had been deprived of over the years.

Magic armor, weapons, a chariot, drachmae, monster parts and so much else that Chiron had to request that the camp build more storage to hold everything. The weapons and armor were set in the armory where they would replace almost 70% of the current stock with almost new equipment while the older more worn stuff were sent off to either our own forge or outsourced to Olympus for heavy duty repairs and refurbishing.

It was only later that day when I was pulled over by Chiron along with Thalia, Annabeth, Beckendorf and the Stoll's that what we gathered amounted to roughly over two hundred grand in the mortal market and even more from the markets of Olympus.

Chiron had no idea where all of the treasure had come from as according to him the camp has never really held onto such valuables in the long term. Any treasure found and brought back that wasn't a necessity to a quest belonged solely to the finder and was up to them on what to do with them.

It's the reason why my cabin is allowed such nice things compared to everyone else.

However, I do have a theory that Adamos very much agrees with on how the ants managed to gather such riches. My theory is that with the presence of the labyrinth under the camp the ants made use of it to spread themselves across the country to gather what they wanted. What I don't know is how they managed to get through it as I needed divine intervention just to make it to camp but they somehow managed to navigate that ever-shifting hellish mess of hallways.

It's probably pheromones or some other bullshit.

After that, things went back to normal, er, well as normal as things can get at camp. Pranks went abound, we went through various projects to fix up and improve the camp, and I sparred with other campers though it was mostly Thalia as she would insist on sparring with me to the point that I think she's purposefully matching our schedules.

Not that I'm complaining as she along with the older Ares campers were the only ones to give a challenging fight. She seemed to have a growth curve equal to that of the Ares and Athena campers when it came to combat, making her more a bit more difficult to take down each time. She always came back stronger, faster, tougher and with a ferocious drive that I actually lost a few times just from how hard she pushed herself.

Adamos insisted that we fit our parentage perfectly in how we fight, likening myself to a tsunami that beats down everything repeatedly and Thalia to a thunderstorm, hitting hard, fast and direct.

Something I would learn when she tracked me down for our first lesson in magic and literally wouldn't let me leave until I taught her.

X

"How about now?" Thalia passed me the stone tablet that she was working on for me to look over. On it was the entire alphabet that I used for runes and I could only say it looked like…

"Crap." I didn't mince words as I looked over her work and made marks on the mistakes. Some of the letters were written backwards while others were jagged straight lines, as if she tried to force the carving knife in uneven jerks. I know that this is supposed to be her first lesson but Adamos was hellish when it came to my own training in the craft so I can only blame him for having his perfectionist tendencies bleed over. "None of these lines are smooth, you added an extra line to a few."

"What!" Thalia snatched the board from my hand and began to look at it and compare it to the reference sheet I made for her.

"Fuuuuuck! Why is this so haaard." She let both fall out of her hands as she let her head hit the table. We had been going for maybe twenty minutes and she was still no closer to making an actual rune.

Thalia turned her face, slightly glaring at me (though it kinda looked like a pout) with an expecting expression. "You're the teacher here Fish stick so why don't you teach me something?"

I raised a brow at the rather rude demand but didn't comment. Instead, I grabbed one of the spare pieces of paper that I brought with me and held it in front of her. I traced a lesser than symbol, an arrow head pointing to the left, on the paper and held it for her to see the entire process. A faint glow followed my finger as I willed the rune into existence.

Whenever my own ADHD acted up Adamos always did the same thing to get me to re-focus. He made a random example of what could be done.

"This is the rune Kenaz." I explained as the she looked at the glowing symbol. "It can literally be translated to 'Torch' or esoterically translated to concepts such as knowledge craft, and controlled fire."

"Concepts?"

I nod at the question. It was one that I had a lot of trouble wrapping my head around when I was first learning and even now, I have some trouble so instead I just repeated what I was told during my lesson. "Runes have a literal meaning as well as a conceptual meaning. The concepts help translate the action better when it comes to stringing runes together in more complex ways. This however…" I activated the rune on the paper and the symbol began to glow before igniting, flames spreading from the rune to the entire page and rendering it to ash.

Thalia's eyes widened as she watched the entire process, transfixed on the entire thing. She then grabbed one of the spare pieces of paper and drew the symbol on hers, or she at least tried. Despite the simplicity of the rune hers came out with shaky lines.

"Come on. Come on! Work you little fucker." Thalia muttered. She tried to activate it and I didn't try to stop her. I knew it would fail and I was proven right as the rune dully glowed, producing a few flickers of heat before ultimately dying. She clicked her tongue and looked at the reference paper before trying again. To my surprise there is a noticeable improvement to the rune this time, though it was still shoddy enough to fail.

Thalia began working with renewed vigor on that single rune, making small improvements each time. It was a rather remarkable pace for improvement and I actually believed that she would be able to make an almost decent rune by the end of the day if not tomorrow.

I just hope she doesn't set the cabins on fire with all the sparks that she's producing.

X

Its actually kind of nice hanging out with someone again, as there always feels like a thin wall between me and the many of the other campers.

Adamos however thinks that she's spending because she's interested in me. That she's playing some kind of trope called a 'soon-dur-a?' and he won't stop teasing me about it.

But he's obviously wrong, we're just learning off each other…right?

A-Anyways, other than that, there has been no difference in my schedule. Though for almost a month I have been getting the strangest feeling whenever I head down to the private beach for my training. I never saw anything out of the ordinary but the feeling never went away even after I got fed up and spent some time last week of looking around the area.

Now here I sat in my cabin waiting for the moment to come where I would make way back to that beach for more bone breaking labor.

"What's the plan for tonight?" I asked as I laid in my bed with a soda in my hand that I kept perfectly chilled. I had started to work on manipulating temperatures in water recently and the process has been long and difficult. I understood what Adamos was teaching but trying to shift the state of water required a lot of attention, hence why I was constantly freezing and unfreezing my soda.

"We'll be increasing the level of your exercises again." Adamos said and I rolled over and groaned into my pillow, though he ignored me and continued. "After that is more hydro-kinetic training as you are progressing fine in temperature control, followed by weapons training, and after that I think, we can try to advance your work with magic."

"I thought I already knew all the runes?" I asked as I had long since learned to write the runes to his exceedingly high standards. "What more is there to learn?"

"You know how to use the runes but you still don't know how to properly string them together into something greater. You know basic configurations but now we'll try something more advanced as well as some other things."

I felt two different emotions at that moment, a mix of anticipation of learning more about the magic and dread that I would most likely have to sit through more lectures on the grammar and rules of a practically dead language. "Can we at least skip the archery?" I pleaded. It didn't matter how insistent the deity was, the bow was never something that I was going to pick up.

"Just because you don't like it doesn't mean that it isn't useful to know." Adamos chided. "You never know when—"

Adamos stopped mid sentence and I could feel his attention dragged away from the conversation entirely, which was concerning. Something that I learned about the gods is that they are capable of splitting their attention to insane levels, multitasking at a level that, for them, allowed for them to focus on dozens of different things around the world.

"What's wrong?" I ask as I sit up in my bed, my hand already reaching around and grabbing my sword and shield to be put to use.

"Someone is trying to break into one of my temples." His voice was faint, like answering me was an afterthought but I could feel the swelling of anger from within. The anger felt like a burning flame that was steadily getting closer, becoming more dangerous by the moment. "No. They're trying to break into that temple." He practically hissed and I could only imagine how important this place is if it has him this pissed.

I had no idea what exactly was so important to elicit this intense of a response but if it is in fact a temple, I could only guess that I would be traveling. I knew he had the vaults scattered around the world so a temple wouldn't really be different. Did the Vatican count as his temple?

"Percy. Gather what you need. We're leaving immediately." I didn't question the order. The seriousness of his tone belayed just how dire the problem was and so I practically sprinted around my room grabbing all the standard items that I would require for any lengthy traveling and stuffed them into my bag.

I had done this routine so many times that at this point I could do it with my eyes closed and by the time it was all packed away barely more than a minute had passed. I then slung my backpack over my shoulder and stepped out of my cabin.

"Alright. Where exactly are we going?" I asked as I stood outside of my door. A warm breeze blew past me as I watched the area around me for any of the harpies that patrolled at night.

"We're going to the beach. From there we can reach our destination."

"Should we tell Aunt Hestia?"

"No," He denied without hesitation. "We're on the clock as is. We can't afford any detours."

"Alright." I sighed and walked off, making sure to stick to the darker areas as I moved quietly, though for some reason that uneasy feeling hit me once more.

X

Thalia watched as Percy Jackson exited his cabin with a bag over his shoulder, muttering something before walking off. He moved through the camp grounds like a like some kind of ninja, sticking to the darker areas and maneuvering himself into the blind spots of the cabins and the patrols.

If Thalia hadn't spent the last month following him from the shadows to learn where he goes every night, she would have probably lost him. Luckily for her Annie always leaves her cap by her window when she sleeps making it pretty easy to steal once it goes dark.

She's probably going to have to have a talk with her about that.

But for her purposes it would help immensely in following her target. A target who doesn't even know that she's been using whatever excuse to get closer to him to learn his weaknesses and see if he truly is some kind of spy for the titans, sent to subvert the loyalties of the other campers.

It was only a bonus that she actually enjoyed their spars together in the morning(especially when she won), as well as the magic lessons because now she could set shit on fire with a drawing while not looking like a complete dope.

He even made arts and crafts lessons not seem like a waste of time if only because she could laugh at how bad some of his things come out as.

"Where's he going?" Lou Ellen shimmered into existence right next to Thalia eyeing the path that Jackson had taken.

Ah right. Her tag along.

A common problem that Thalia had come across during her nightly tailing (not stalking) of her target was that as soon she followed him into the forest, she would get all turned around and end up back where she started.

It was a problem that only became more infuriating the more she tried to solve it. She tried feeling the wind, tracking the bioelectricity in Percy's body, and even manipulating the Mist to allow her through but everything seemed to fail.

Oddly enough it was the lessons in magic that she learned from Percy that allowed her to figure out that there was some kind of barrier surrounding that section of the forest and preventing her from following after him.

But she was a novice just barely starting on the path of magic, hence the need for assistance. The little witch was undoubtedly the best user of magic in the camp outside Chiron and Mr. D and was her only chance of actually getting through the barrier. Though there were mentions of another kid of Hecate, a boy named Albuquerque or something that was just as good but he disappeared years ago.

When Thalia came up to the younger girl, she had expected to expend a lot of effort to convince her to go behind her friends back. She had a line of arguments and in bribes that she could use to hopefully convince her to cooperate with her goal despite going against one of her closest friends.

But it was all apparently unnecessary because by the magic users own words 'Percy was sneaking off to do cool shit without her' and that was all the reason she needed.

Now here they were invisibly stalking the most powerful boy in camp.

"He always goes into the forest but never with the bag." Thalia whispered, wondering what was inside.

Together the two of them stealthily followed after the son of Poseidon, dipping behind cover whenever he showed the barest hint of awareness at their presence. It was annoying but necessary as Percy had a decent enough instinct to know that he was being followed but not the years of experience that Thalia had to recognize it.

Neither did Lou Ellen but Thalia was there to pull her back if she became too exposed.

As the two of them watched as Percy entered the forest the slowly followed after him only to stop at the entrance. Thalia knew that this was where her part ended. If they went into the forest they would be turned around and would end up exiting in a random part of the camp.

Lou Ellen walked forward and let the invisibility around her fall. Her eyes glowed a rather poisonous green as she peering into the forest, seeing something that Thalia herself was blind to.

"Holy shit!" Lou Ellen said with whispered breath as she weaved her hands through the air doing…something. "This is amazing! I've been in this forest dozens of times but I've never even noticed that it was here. I don't think I've seen anything like this outside of Circe's private books."

"Yeah yeah, that's great!" Thalia whispered impatiently. She didn't bring the little witch here to gawk at the problem. "But can you get through it or not?"

"I-Yeah I think I can. Give me a moment." Lou Ellen's voice sounded distant while her hands glowed the same green as her eyes. Her fingers dexterously moved, like she was typing a keyboard, as some kind of orb formed between her hands. The girl began to mutter words to quickly for Thalia to understand and the orb began to light up randomly before pulsing brightly and then dying into a faint light. The entire process took maybe five minutes but it felt like so much longer and while Thalia had no idea what happened, whatever it did left the shorter girl looking very tired.

"It's done." Lou Ellen breathed and staggered a little. Thalia moved to hold her up but the effort was unneeded as the girl had already reoriented herself. "The field around the forest is still up but we should be able to move around normally."

Thalia nodded and placed her hand on the girl's shoulder as the invisibility went up again. The two entered the forest and Thalia felt something wash over her skin, like a thin film was spread over her and only now she could feel the pressure of the magic around her.

Wordlessly Thalia took the lead and lead Lou Ellen down the path that she remembered Percy taking. It would be wrong to say that she never made any success as each attempt to tail the demigod was meet with a bit more success than last time until she reached a certain point where no progress was made.

But with this protection she would hopefully go all the way.

Percy had long since been through the forest by the spot that Thalia usually considered the turnback point but for the first time Thalia could see the marks that Percy passed through. With a slight tug she pulled Lou Ellen along as she looked for further clues and spread her senses into the wind for sounds.

She found a few broken branches in some bushes that she pointed out and followed to an off beaten path further into the woods before something reached her ears.

Lou asked what it was but Thalia silenced her with a shush before reaching out further into the wind, trying to gather a more precise direction of where the sounds were coming from. It was there, just barely at the edge but she could hear his voice, lowly muttering something, dropping and rising erratically as he was having an argument with only himself.

Thalia took Lou Ellen's hand and the two slowly walked through the brush towards the sound. A moment later the sound of waves joined in Percy's muttering followed by the smell of the beach. It sort of made sense in Thalia's head, that Jackson would do whatever he needed by the beach where he was strongest. Though now that raises the concerns as he's in his element which means that Thalia is going to have to blitz him hard the moment, he tries something.

The two of them stopped when they made it to the edge of the brush, not daring to tread further onto the beach. And for good reason as the two of them looked over the various changes and creations that had been applied to the stretch of surf. The stretch of sand was littered with holes and piles of sand, like a warzone had been focused in the area, while logs had been chopped down and arranged around in some sort of jungle gym/obstacle course. The course actually looked really well done, like an actual team of carpenters and construction workers took the time to make it.

Thalia felt a tug on her sleeve and looked to where Lou Ellen was pointing.

A hut.

An actual hut with roofing and brickwork settled onto the beach with a round table that looked like it was carved from a single stone sitting in what could be considered the front porch. It looked quaint and homey, the kind of place she wouldn't mind relaxing in for a day like she was on vacation.

But the fact that it was here meant that the area had a dedicated resident. Probably whoever Jackson's potential contact for the titan army is.

Speaking of Jackson.

That sneaky son of a bitch was in plain view on the beach, kneeling over a square stone surface that seemed to have been placed into the sand, as if he had taken the time to dig a hole and bury the stone surface.

"-alculate by the position of the stars…and planetary axis, right? There, that shoul…right, right that's wrong. There we go I think that works. You sure there isn't another way…I guess." The wind carried his words directly to Thalia's ears and she felt her curiosity rise. He was clearly doing something with magic but it sounded like high concept stuff. Thalia looked at the magic caster next to her with the intention of getting her opinion only to see her dazed and interested expression.

"Uhh…"

"The calculations…" Lou Ellen's voice was soft as watched with intense interest. "Dimensional movement between folded space and..." Thalia had no idea what she was talking about, electing to let the girl ramble, but it sounded like something to do with teleportation which was a pretty big deal.

A conclusion that would prove true as the air practically hummed with the spike of magical energy. The ground began to glow as something began to happen, and Thalia would bet a week's dessert that whatever Percy was doing was activating.

Not wanting to waste a single moment on the chance of wither letting him get away or bring someone here Thalia went with the single most used solution in her life as a demigoddess.

She tackled it head on.

The daughter of Zeus burst out from her hiding space, ignoring the yelp beside her as she charged.

Jackson turned around with a surprised look on his face. "Thalia?!"

He was too slow as Thalia leapt and bodily tackled him to the ground with enough force to make a football player wince.

She straddled his waist and pinned him to the ground with her forearm against his throat. Behind her she could hear Lou Ellen's footsteps come closer.

"Thalia stop!" Lou Ellen called desperately as she came up to her side and tried to pull her away.

"Not now Ellen!" Thalia snapped, not budging an inch. "Alright Jackson! Spill!" What were you doing!?" Thalia commanded.

Percy bucked and struggled, trying to push her off but she had the leverage. There was no way to move her without the strength of Herakles to do the impossible. After a moment he seemed to stop the struggle, deciding to speak.

"M-Mess up." His voice was strained as Thalia's arm was pressed against his throat.

"What's messed up?!" Thalia demanded as she pressed a bit more. Lou tried to pull her away once more but failed.

Percy struggled and for a brief moment Thalia felt herself be pushed back. "You. Messed. It. Up." He choked out each word like he was trying to force her to listen.

Thalia opened her mouth to demand the context of the answer but was cut off as the hum in the air reached a peak. The world folded in on itself, twisting on ways that it wasn't supposed to and making her brain hurt before being consumed in a bright flash of colors.

The next thing she knew was darkness.

A/N Another chapter made. I know I'm not really consistent with updates but I thought that I should warn you that I will be moving houses in the near future so I won't be writing for a period. Anyways we have this adventure and then we head into the third book.

Reviews:

Zephyr27: Technically no such giant exists but then again history can be wrong.

YMCM: No for the HoO books. In my story Gaia isn't evil though some of the characters may make an appearance.

FenrisInside: Perlia ships have always seemed to work with the concept of Percy and Thalia knocking sense into each other with Thalia having a hard shell and Percy having the weight of the world on his shoulders.

Silent Master of Winds: Thanks

Lord Reyne: Weapons can have many names.

FanficAddict: I know it seems like that but my thought process is that Percy slowly separates from being under Adamos' wing. I try to make Percy less and less reliant as the story goes on.

Mewingdog: It will happen.

REDdemon28: You are correct. Gods hold grudges and the Romans are no exception. Percy might not inherently like the Roman's either due to their strict regiments but he won't agree with Adamos on how to approach them.

JoJo 'Perlia' Jesus: Thanks

Ice 88: I'm hopping to spread out some of the point of views. Thalia makes a good point.

Jason wu: I'll work on the Omake. Though Adamos doesn't really celebrate Christmas. He and Santa haven't gotten along since the 1800's