When Percy laid his eyes on the next chapter, he had a very odd moment seeing it in English, watching those letters float and move as if the water were rearranging them for him rather than his brain always doing that to trip him up, and then glitch altogether and melt back into something he could easily read. If he concentrated long enough, he was positive he was no longer reading in English, but trying to see what he was reading was giving him more of a headache than just telling the others, "next one's called Three Old Ladies Knit the Socks of Death."
"Wait, wait!" Magnus shouted with a very perplexed look. He had to fingerspell the word socks as he hadn't learned that yet, Hearth taught him it was rubbing your two index fingers together like trying to slip a babies foot into socks, and Thalia was smiling so much at the display of Magnus's goofy smile while he did this she offered without thinking, "like me to jump in and sign from time to time?"
Hearth was so distracted by wondering if the Norns were going to show up in this greek story and what socks had to do with it he nodded, deciding against mentioning as Percy began it was also a bit of a relief. Her hands flowed as smoothly as Blitzen's, where as Magnus was still a bit slow past his basics, he really missed him right now.
Magnus rubbed his left wrist with just as much gratitude and knew better than to look a gift horse in the mouth, or a good signer in the hands in this case.
"Like your whole life?" Thalia pleasantly teased.
"As far as I can remember," he couldn't help but agree.
"This one, not so much," Alex muttered, still keeping the satchel with the rest of the books close to her.
"Does killing all teachers always give you an upgrade to nice perky blondes?" Nico smirked.
"I wouldn't test that theory on, erm, Brunner," Will chuckled.
"And you didn't start to believe them?" Magnus felt the question burst out far more personal than he meant to.
"I suppose not," Percy agreed, he certainly had no lingering feelings of this school and any impact it would have made on his life outside of furious fury teachers.
Jason gave him a commiserating nod of agreement and said, "always trust your instincts."
Thalia wasn't entirely certain as she'd been a tree at this time, but she had an inkling of what the gods, particularly Zeus and Poseidon, could be so destructively angry about right now. Percy didn't ask her this time though and was reading calmly enough, but she could still tell he was not taking this lightly as he struggled not to remember.
"As long as it made you feel better," Alex told him without a drop of sarcasm. "I called someone a dildo once because the insult fit them perfectly, they were fake and still a dick, who cares if it makes sense."
Magnus resisted the urge to call this kid an idiot. On any other day he'd scoff at some posh kid gloating about getting kicked out of a boarding school and probably steal their wallet before they knew what happened, but Percy wasn't like that, he liked to think he'd have passed up this mark and not stolen his wallet on the street.
Percy's voice changed for just a moment. He wasn't just some kid casually reading about his memories, he wasn't a pretty chill demigod who was going with the flow of this crazy nonsense, and he wasn't joking and teasing with his friends when his voice swelled with anger over first reading that. It didn't last, he kept going with hardly a hitch and moving on, but Hearthstone had felt the very water around them pulse with power as he said that relation and knew it not to be something to look forward to when Percy remembered him.
Percy read that with the same kind of longing now he'd felt then. It must be because the memories were so fresh and new now, to miss such an old friend he'd only known for a bit. This deep ache for that friend felt larger than he would have thought considering how little time he'd known him.
"Maybe because a fury attacked you?" Nico asked.
"Could be, hard to say," Percy agreed with a straight face.
"Whoever said words can't hurt never got a taste of that," Jason smiled.
"Oh but you will soon," Thalia muttered that promise quietly enough Percy didn't hear.
"I don't think you ever met them," Will offered in what he clearly thought was a helpful tone of voice.
"They sound like math terms," Alex grumbled.
"Actually it's ironic you don't know Polydectes," Nico told him. "Considering your namesake killed him."
"Why do you know anything about my namesake? What namesake?" Percy asked.
Nico flushed in embarrassment and forced himself not to snap and storm out of the room, considering there was no where to go. Instead he just quietly said, "good to know your history is all. Has a way of repeating itself."
Percy just looked all the more confused for this and looked at the other two for help, but they decided against answering too.
Thalia grasped his shoulder warmly. She'd always known him as a stubborn one. She thought he should know too, "Annabeth would be so proud of you right now."
Percy beamed at her, clutching the camp beads around his necklace unconsciously. "Is she safe now?" His head already ached at just the thought of asking for more, but he had to know at least that. Thalia clearly knew more than she was telling.
"Yes," Thalia promised. "You'll find out where soon, I promise."
Percy nodded and went back to his reading, the growing urge to know what was in store even more powerful now than it had been that day.
"I have this feeling you'll make him proud," Will smiled.
"You guys are just full of helpful feelings," Percy sighed.
Hearthstone signed, 'I wonder what that's like?'
Magnus chuckled and signed back, 'you would have worked it out, considering the lights were on too!'
"I can't imagine the person who would take that dare," Jason nodded.
"A Kindly One?" Percy muttered, unable to imagine how Grover could call something that vicious attacking him kindly.
"That never happened," Will teased, "I still remember the toilets."
Percy scrutinized him for a moment before deciding he didn't want to know.
"Apparently I never got a say in that," Percy huffed.
"I don't know him to be wrong very often," Thalia scoffed. Even without the text, Percy's scowl showed he hadn't liked them trying to dupe him, emphasis on the try.
Percy's agitation was mounting greater by the moment, but even as he realized his friend had been lying to him he couldn't find it in himself to stay angry as he heard how upset Grover was. He longed to ask, to offer help, even if he would still like to throw a ketchup and peanut butter sandwich at him while he did it.
Thalia did greatly wonder how both of them could have missed the scent of such a powerful monster. She tapped her chin in thought and determined Hades must have been manipulating the mist quite powerfully to have fooled them both.
"To run in there and demand a further explanation," Alex stated in no uncertain terms this is what she'd be doing.
Alex sighed with disappointment, looping her garrote around her fingers and making different things. A cat's cradle, the batmobile, a few letters as she impatiently waited for the story to get good again.
"What is he?" Percy hissed.
"A friend," Thalia assured. "You startled him as much as the other way around, I'm not even sure how you snuck up on the pair."
Percy exhaled and tried to look more relieved than he felt.
"You think we can sweat in here?" Alex asked in fascination.
"I'm more worried about using the bathroom," Magnus sighed.
"You guys aren't helping," Jason frowned. They didn't even know who Magnus was a child of, but both Norse kids seemed even stranger than the Greek kids, and they didn't even have ADHD to blame.
"Grover really is a good friend to you, subjecting himself to that," Will scoffed as he remembered the multiple private schools he used to be forced into before he ran away to camp.
"Yeah," Percy agreed forlornly even if he didn't really know what Will meant. There was a tingling at the base of his skull, for one moment he got a vivid image in his mind of somewhere else that had wide hills and smelt of summer, before he blinked and found himself right back here. He hoped he wasn't going crazy, but also still half thought that ship was long sailed.
Percy wished he'd confronted him now, get it all out so he could know what all was going on at some point in his life. After a whole semester of feeling like he'd been going crazy and the feeling amplified even more so down here if he tried to remember five minutes ahead, he bit back the urge to scream in frustration already and they were barely twenty pages in.
"Wow, he's really not very good at this," Nico snorted.
"He gets better when he's not having to pick and choose his words," Will half-heartedly defended, but even then he was gazing at Jason, plus the Norse kids, and had the sneaking suspicion their camp director was always hiding something.
"At least he told you after the exam," Thalia tried to tell him bracingly. "I bet you even made a C on it."
Percy gave her an unimpressed look and fought back the urge to wipe at his eyes. The words had stung like new, somehow even worse than the first time at the idea of disappointing him, even if he'd managed to hide it much better this time. Maybe he'd been wrong, maybe Annabeth wasn't even real and this whole thing was some elaborate Mist meant to trick him into thinking there was anything special about him... but then he looked again at Thalia. His friend. He clung stubbornly to the memory of Annabeth and knew in his heart she was real, that smile as she leaned in to kiss him was something he would see again when this was over.
"Hmm, yes, a happy happenstance," Thalia grinned.
Percy nodded, unsurprised at this point he was missing something here.
"He says that like all math teachers aren't secretly demons," Nico said with such a serious look on his face, Percy got another ants in his shirt feeling before his dark face split into a grin.
Jason looked on curiously what a keeper could be. Like a recruiter for other half-bloods? His mind bizarrely flashed to the idea of a wolf for a second before he felt a spike of pain and shook it off.
"Who made them business cards?" Nico asked in fascination.
"The Aphrodite Cabin," Will shrugged. "Just be thankful it was them, the Hermes kids offered..." he stopped with a shiver. Who knew such a small card could make that big of an explosion, and it had taken weeks for even the wind spirits to get the smell out of camp.
"I don't consider sleeping in the forest and eating tin cans rich persay," Thalia told him bracingly. He still had a really miserable look on his face even if he was determinedly trying to finish.
"He's rich on life," Will said sincerely. He'd never met a satyr who didn't go crazy with excitement about the simple joys of being able to eat any kind of mushroom without side effects anyways.
Magnus however gave Percy a look that didn't need translation. He well knew how it felt to be on the outside looking in, and Percy gave him a grin before he continued.
"Moral support is a kind of defense?" Jason offered. He found the idea of Grover particularly strange. He could read these Greek kids and well knew this wasn't some demigod friend of Percy's...but something else.
'I'm guessing whatever caused that,' Hearth signed helpfully.
'Let's hope he's Clark Kent under that whispy beard then,' Magnus signed doubtfully.
Thalia made a disgruntled face. Artemis was the goddess of wild animals after all, and she often found a great way to train new hunters was to shoot passing cars deciding to toss out their litter back into their cars. Mist sure could come in handy as a magical gust of wind with perfect timing.
"Three is always a very prominent number in many mythologies and cultures," Jason said happily. "If you don't count the chapter title, this'll be the third time three was used in this very chapter, it clearly has significance."
"Who keeps track of something like that?" Percy asked him as if fearing for his mental health now.
"Are they poisonous socks?" Alex asked in concern.
"Said socks of death, so maybe they're, um, what's the Greek god of death? Maybe they're knitting for them." Magnus tried to offer.
"Thanatos, and he doesn't wear socks," Nico shrugged.
They gave him a concerned frown next, mostly for why he knew that.
"Well he is hard to look at," Alex teased, but Thalia didn't smile and laugh along this time, all three of the Greek kids who weren't Percy suddenly looked very uneasy. Like the Fury that had attacked him before, this was not something they were just going to cheerfully laugh off.
Percy saw how grim they suddenly seemed too, and realized these three old ladies could very well be knitting the socks of his death, and they had no more clue how he'd gotten out of this one any more than the last one.
'Don't leave out bigfoot,' Hearth signed. Magnus laughed into the quiet room before he realized he wasn't sure if his friend was joking, but Percy hadn't paused to acknowledge them.
"You've got good instincts," Jason approved. He had no more clue what was going on and he still wished to give his coin a flip.
Percy gave a sideways look to Will, whom he'd seen do the exact same thing. He'd already known these guys weren't sharing all they knew, but to have it confirmed was only making him all the more agitated. Who had done this to him, left him in this snare trap where every question he got answered only added ten more? If he dared to ask for answers to soon, it only cost him crippling pain. Maybe he didn't even want to know more about these Gods if they'd been the ones to do this to him.
They were at the bottom of the ocean, and still somehow Thalia's heart managed to sink lower. "Oh Grover," she sighed, wishing she could give her old guide a hug.
"Like throwing salt over your shoulder. Would that work down here?" Alex smiled, but even her 'nothing phases me' attitude knew that something akin to the Norns had visited Percy and gave him a rather chilling prophecy.
"If it makes you feel any better, he'd eat whichever ones he picked, so they'd never make it there," Will grinned.
Percy didn't feel like laughing back at the odd joke. He told the others that chapter was done and they all sat around for a moment, as if waiting for one of them to spontaneously drop dead.