Chapter 5: Everyone Is Confused

Percy led Annabeth to a couch. She sat heavily beside him, her expression carefully blank. He could see a storm of thoughts whirling behind her eyes, but she wasn't letting any of them so much as flick across her face. Her fingers never loosened around his hand, though. He was grateful. Maybe he wasn't the only one who was desperate for a little comfort.

Chiron stood in front of them with his arms folded across his chest. He was watching them carefully, his eyes dark with centuries of heartbreak. Percy didn't know what went on in the old centaur's mind, but he could guess that it had to do with previous heroes long gone. His teacher had watched thousands of kids confidently leave the safety of his camp, never to be heard from again.

Percy couldn't think about it too much without getting depressed. He had no idea how Chiron could live like he did. Existing for millenia while your loved ones grow old and die. Percy had put some thought into it and decided that, if he were given the chance to live forever, he would turn it down. Besides, who would want to peak at seventeen?

Chiron cleared his throat. "So," he said, not sure how to start. "Percy." His eyes momentarily flicked down to the two hands entwined together on the couch.

Percy's head was spinning, but he looked up.

"It would seem that you are the hero of a new prophecy," Chiron stated. Percy smothered the urge to say something along the lines of, Yeah, I'm not that stupid. Instead, he numbly nodded his head.

"Looks like it."

Annabeth took a deep breath, and Percy looked over at her quickly, but her gaze was still empty. Whatever it was that had so deeply disturbed her, he clearly didn't understand the extent of it.

The son of the sea fights a king long forgotten. The words were running through Percy's head over and over again. He frowned, and since Chiron wasn't saying anything else, he asked, "Does it make any sense to you?"

Chiron shook his head. "They never do until they're completed. Although it seems rather obvious that this one is talking about you, Percy."

"Yeah. Fighting a king long forgotten. Sounds like a whole lot of fun." He leaned back and pushed a hand through his hair. He was drying off slowly from the duel earlier in the day (which was totally not his fault, by the way. Clarisse is, like, the most bloodthirsty human being he has ever met), but his hair was still slicked back from its usual position hanging across his forehead.

"A king long forgotten," Chiron mused. "It's so vague. There are hundreds of thousands of kings it could be talking about in Greek mythology alone. But we have no guarantee that the king it is talking about is Greek at all. It might even be a metaphorical king, just a moniker or a fake title."

Percy's lips edged upwards at the thought of facing off with Elvis. "So we can't just assume it's Midas or someone like that and go kill him again?" he asked, naming the first king that came to his mind.

"I'm afraid not." Chiron's back hooves were shifting and kicking a little, like he couldn't keep his horse half from displaying his nerves. His face, however, was a stone wall, showing nothing but deep thought. "And the rest of the prophecy is no better. It's all so unclear."

Percy detected a note of frustration in his voice, and guessed he was talking about more than just this one prophecy. How many lives could he have saved if he had been able to interpret a vague phrase before it was too late? How many heroes would have survived past their teenage years, had a family, a real life, if Chiron had known what was awaiting them?

He pushed the thought away. "Well, at least we know that the son of the sea is me, right?"

Chiron nodded slowly. "But a daughter of Athena? That could be any of a dozen girls, and we—"

"It's me."

Annabeth's cold certainty sent a chill down Percy's spine. "Annabeth, you can't know that for sure," he said immediately. He didn't know what exactly the line about losing wisdom or whatever meant, but he did know that he didn't want it to happen to her.

She looked at him calmly. Apparently, all she had needed was a couple of minutes to process before she was back to normal. Her gray eyes were hard, however. None of the good-natured teasing and prodding shone through anymore. "Would you rather take some other girl from my cabin with you?"

Of course not, was what he wanted to say. "Well, no, I guess not." Because I don't know any of them. Nothing else.

"Then doesn't that answer it for you?" she replied.

"Annabeth," Chiron said. "Are you sure? Because this quest… it sounds like it might be very dangerous. Especially for you."

She shifted on the couch, crossing her legs and trying to look as composed as possible. Her hand slipped out of Percy's grip. "Chiron, you know how long I've been waiting for this. Of course I'm going to go." Percy ears pricked.

The centaur looked conflicted. "Yes, I do know. That doesn't mean I want you to go throw yourself at every quest that comes along. I am in charge of your safety, you know, and I would rather not have Athena come knocking down my door because I let her daughter die on the wrong quest."

Just the mental image made Percy shiver a little. Athena had always scared him a little, even though he'd never met her. The thought of a powerful goddess with scary gray eyes (like Annabeth's, but meaner and older and way less hot) and infinitely more knowledge to use to destroy him, on top of being a goddess of war, was enough to effectively scare him stiff.

"Well, it's not like we're waiting for some neon sign with my name on it," Annabeth argued. "Please, Chiron, let me go."

He sighed haggardly. His face looked old, his wrinkles deepening with the stress of another camper's life in his hands. He looked at Percy, his mouth pulled downward into a small frown. "Well?"

Percy stared blankly at him, then at Annabeth. "What?"

"You are technically the leader of this quest," Chiron explained. "Since the Oracle was speaking to you."

So she was looking at me! A small part of him felt triumphant in the knowledge that he had been right, but it was immediately smothered by the sobering truth. "Wait, I'm in charge of this?" he asked in disbelief. "That… is a horrible idea."

Annabeth smiled faintly. "At least we agree on something."

He wanted to feel indignant, but he was too glad to hear her say something that felt more like the Annabeth he'd been talking to earlier. "Are we sure we can't just transfer all power to Annabeth?"

"Percy, I'm not even on the quest yet," she reminded him.

"Well, how do we fix that?"

"You're in charge. You have to do it."

"Oh." Apparently there were procedures he was unaware of. Was there some ritual he was supposed to observe? To get her to be an official part of the quest? Chiron was being useless, he noted sourly, just trying to get Annabeth to not go, which was not the current objective.

Or wait. Percy didn't want her to get hurt. Maybe if he said no, she could stay at camp and she'd be fine. But he'd be stuck with some other girl and would be responsible for her possible future death and he'd feel even worse because he would barely know that girl yet would drag her away from safety and friends and decent food into danger and possible death and Annabeth would still be mad at him for not letting her go in the first place and instead getting one of her half-sisters killed. Annabeth would probably end him in the most painful way she could think of, if the quest didn't do it for her.

She watched him think with that faint smile still tugging at her lips. "Well?"

Percy's mind was racing. What should he do? Just ask them what to say? But that would look stupid, and while he wasn't the smartest guy around (there were literally sons of the goddess of wisdom), he wasn't that dumb. He could uncap Riptide and knight her. That way, if he said the wrong thing, he could play it off as just messing around, add in a little Ye Olde English and hope she'd just laugh and give him another shot. That could work, right?

But staring at those fathomless gray eyes, the best he could choke out was, "Welcome to the team, I guess."

She paused, then let her smile widen. "I guess that works."

He was entranced, barely getting out, "Cool."

Chiron looked between the two of them. "Well, now that we have gotten that out of the way. Even if you two go out on a quest, we don't know where to send you. Like I was saying earlier, the prophecy is maddeningly vague. It gives us basically nothing to work with."

"Just situations to dread," Percy finished for him. "Yeah."

"Well, there has to be something we're missing, then," Annabeth insisted. "The Oracle wouldn't give us less than we need if she wants the quest to actually happen."

Percy cocked his head. "Does the Oracle actually want anything though?" he mused randomly. "She's kind of just a spout for whatever random crap Apollo feels like spewing at us, isn't she? And she looks kind of dead."

Annabeth glared at him. "You know what I mean."

"Maybe," Chiron interrupted, "we just need to wait for something. Some clue that will tell you where to begin?"

Percy wrinkled his nose. "You want us to wait for that neon sign Annabeth was talking about earlier?"

"Well, no, obviously not that, but the Oracle could already know if we're going to get some other message at some point."

Annabeth slouched back. "I mean, it makes sense. I guess. I really wish it didn't though." Her knee bounced impatiently.

Because she's been waiting for this for a while, Percy recalled. He made a mental note to ask her about it at some point.

There was silence. He decided to break it.

"So… should we just return to our regularly scheduled activities, then?" he asked.

Chiron shrugged. "There is nothing else we can do, I suppose. Although I don't think archery practice will go smoothly if we try to pick it back up now."

Annabeth shook her head in agreement. The archery class felt like it had happened ages ago, not a mere fifteen minutes. Percy's world had been rocked in a few moments and everything felt different now. He was the leader of a quest. There were big expectations set for him now, and no one had even mentioned the whole Doors of Death thing.

Plus, now he had finally talked to Annabeth.

"Chiron!" Dionysus swaggered into the room, his small, beady eyes taking in the situation quickly. They raked over Percy, unimpressed. "What in the name of sweet aged merlot is going on?"

Chiron quickly informed him of the situation, and Dionysus—or Mr. D, as the campers knew him—rolled his eyes. "Well, looks like you'll all just have to wait, huh? Who knows, maybe the prophecy is going to come to pass in two hundred years and it's going to be one of Peter Johnson's despicable offspring who has to fight the forgotten queen or whatever. I hope so, because I severely doubt that he would be able to do it himself."

"Good to see you too, Mr. D," Percy said flatly, trying not to let the grumpy god get under his skin. His eyes wouldn't stop drifting to the juice stain around Mr. D's lips.

"Anyway, on to more important problems," Mr. D said with a wave of his hand. "Chiron, I cannot find anyone and it is of the utmost importance that I do, for all of your sakes."

"Who are you looking for? Maybe I've seen them," Chiron asked.

"Hm, I doubt it," Mr. D said dismissively. "Actually, I'm not sure why I even ask you."

"Try me," the centaur said drily.

Mr. D sighed. His shirt of impeccable taste was the color of mac n cheese, with a repeating design of palm trees in various loud colors dotting the cloth. "Fine. I've been trying to get a hold of Nike for at least a week, but no one knows where she is. I've even tried Iris messaging her earlier today, but Iris isn't talking to me either. It's like they've disappeared off the face of the planet."

Percy stifled a grin at the god's dramatics. Chiron reassured Mr. D briefly with a face of longsuffering, then bid both the demigods farewell with a few words of encouragement. Then he left after Mr. D, who was still ranting about the unreliability of the minor gods. Percy's thoughts quickly turned back to the matter at hand.

"Do you think the empty throne room has to do with this forgotten king you're supposed to fight?" Annabeth asked, not particularly aimed at Percy, since his answer would almost definitely be a shrug.

It was. "Maybe," he said. "It could be empty because it's old and dilapidated and stuff."

Annabeth arched an eyebrow. "Nice word."

He beamed at her. "I try." Another mental note: use more SAT words, because his life goals were shifting to include teasing more half-smirks out of Annabeth Chase.

"But it's not just any throne room," she said. "It's the throne room. Like, it's important enough that we should already know it." Percy's eyes darted over to her. He already knew what she was about to guess.

"Maybe Olympus?"

Percy shook his head. "That doesn't make sense, though. Olympus is never empty. There are hundreds and hundreds of gods and goddesses and nymphs and stuff who live up there."

"Only thirteen in the throne room," Annabeth pointed out softly.

He met her eyes. "Look, Chiron was right," Percy finally said. "If we keep reading into every line like this, we'll drive ourselves insane. There's no way to know that the throne room we're talking about is Olympus, and even if it is, what in Hades does the rest of the line mean?"

Annabeth began to chew her bottom lip in thought. Percy put a hand on her shoulder. "That was rhetorical, Annabeth," he told her gently. "My point is, we can't know until we have more information. So until then, try not to think too hard about it? For me?"

He immediately regretted impulsively adding that final phrase. He could feel Annabeth tense, but she nodded. "I guess," she said hesitantly.

She didn't look totally convinced, so Percy tried again. "I know this is hard for you," he said, trying to sound comforting. "You want to know the answer for everything, right? Learn as much as you can, logic your way to the right answer? And you will, I promise, and I will help you as much as I can. But until we are able to do that, just… try to relax a little. We'll probably need all the rest we can get before this whole thing kicks off."

Percy had been swinging in the dark, kind of working off a stereotypical Athena kid complex, but it seemed to work. Annabeth's shoulders sagged a little. "Yeah, okay. Just relax." She looked up and smiled. "How hard could that be?"

And in the moment, her question made sense. Just the two of them, sitting in a room together, trying to force their heartbeats to calm down and surreptitiously wiping their palms on their shorts.

Then Percy opened the Big House door.