We get some more of Reyna being in love without understanding it, and some Calypso and Hedge being faintly amused because they see it.
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Undeath9087: Percy and Jason would be in turns cheering them on and groaning- and Percy would be slapping Jasons arm every time there's a cute moment. And Bryce will be showing up and he is an asshole who gets what he deserves.
Guest: I guess it's just a Bellona thing, I don't really know, and I suppose it depends on stuff like the time of day and things. As for Calypso, she's still a mortal but she can summon up winds and do basic healing magics- she's slowly getting stronger but that takes time.

Reyna blinked- she'd heard of lemures of course, and it made sense, but she couldn't help but feel startled, and worried at the same time. Before she could say anything though Hedge was speaking up, "Lemurs? You mean those cute fuzzy little critters?"

"No." Bianca looked faintly amused at that, "Lemures. They're very unfriendly ghosts. All Roman cities have them but in Pompeii..."

"The whole city was wiped out." Reyna remembered, "In 79 C.E. Vesuvius erupted and covered the town in ash."

"Yeah." Bianca nodded, "A tragedy like that creates a lot of angry spirits."

Hedge eyed the distant volcano. "It's steaming. Is that a bad sign?"

"I'm not sure." Reyna focused her gaze on Bianca as she spoke. "See the problem is that Mountain gods can sense children of Hades- and they uh- sometimes they don't like us. That might be what pulled us off course. The spirit of Vesuvius might have been intentionally trying to kill us. But I doubt the mountain can hurt us this far away. Working up to a full eruption would take too long. The immediate threat is all around us."

"I didn't think eruptions always took long." that came from Calypso, who was frowning, "I know that what happened in Mount St Helens was different but Leo said it happened very quickly."

"That was a very different situation." Bianca shook her head, and she looked as if the memories weren't pleasant. "Percy and Leo are both crazily powerful-"

"Wait-" Reyna paused, "Mount St Helens- are you saying-"

"That was Percy and Leo." Calypso nodded, "I met Leo in the aftermath. He landed on my island wounded. I nursed him back to health. Fell in love with him."

"And Percy got captured by Alabaster." Bianca added, "Good riddance to him."

And Reyna stared at them incredulously.

They were so calm about all of it. As if they weren't discussing a huge disaster, as if the fact that Percy and Leo caused it was nothing to be at all shocked by.

But-now wasn't the time to focus on that. The back of Reyna's neck was almost tingling. She'd grown used to Lares, the friendly spirits at Camp Jupiter, but even they made her uneasy. They didn't have a good understanding of personal space. Sometimes they'd walk right through her, leaving her with vertigo. Being in Pompeii gave Reyna the same feeling, as if the whole city was one big ghost that had swallowed her whole.

She couldn't tell her friends how much she feared ghosts, or why she feared them. The whole reason she and her sister had run away from San Juan all those years ago … that secret had to stay buried.

"Can you keep them at bay?" she asked.

"I-" Bianca looked hesitant, "I mean I've tried to send out a message to them warning them off but when I'm asleep it won't do much good."

Hedge patted his tennis-racket-knife contraption. 'Don't worry, kid. I'm going to line the perimeter with alarms and snares. Plus, I'll be watching over you the whole time with my baseball bat."

"Comforting." Bianca was already closing her eyes and Reyna could see how quickly the other girl fell asleep.

Her chest felt strangely tight and she moved without even thinking, removing her cape from her shoulders and carefully draping it over the sleeping girls shoulders.

And she really did look peaceful like that, the tension melting away in her sleep.

When they'd first met Reyna had known there was something different about her- some big secret she was hiding. But she'd trusted her instincts, she'd let it lie for a time. She didn't regret that. It would have chased Bianca off if she'd tried to demand answers.

There had always been a sadness. A grief, a weight on her shoulders. And it had only gotten worse recently.

Then when Percy had arrived Reyna had noticed a slight change- a weak sense of hope.

But Bianca had been captured by the enemy, had been through Tartarus on her own. She'd fought and fought and she was still fighting even now.

She looked so innocent, almost angelic in her sleep. It was hard to believe that anyone who looked like that could be so strong.

She was drawn out of her thoughts by an innocent little cough, and Reyna almost jumped, turning her head quickly.
Calypso was very much not looking in her direction, and Hedge was avoiding looking towards them too- Reyna felt her face burning suddenly. Which was ridiculous, there was nothing for her to get embarrassed about.

"You should rest too." Calypso said, trying to hide a smile, "Gleeson and I can take first watch."

"Yeah, I'll cook some grub. Those ghosts shouldn't be too dangerous now that the sun's coming up."

And Reyna tilted her head back slightly, looking at the sky- it was getting light. Pink and turquoise clouds striped the eastern horizon. The little bronze faun cast a shadow across the dry fountain.

"I've read about this place," Reyna realized. "It's one of the best-preserved villas in Pompeii. They call it the House of the Faun."

Gleeson glanced at the statue with distaste. "Yeah, well, today it's the House of the Satyr."

Reyna managed a smile. She was starting to appreciate the differences between satyrs and fauns. If she ever fell asleep with a faun on duty, she'd wake up with her supplies stolen, a moustache drawn on her face and the faun long gone. Coach Hedge was different – mostly good different, though he did have an unhealthy obsession with martial arts and baseball bats.

"All right,' she agreed. 'You two take first watch. I'll put Aurum and Argentum on guard duty with you."

"Thank you." Calypso looked like she wanted to laugh even more than she had before- and Hedge looked nervous- he tended to get that way when the dogs were around.

In any case she whistled sharply and the metallic greyhounds materialized from the ruins, racing towards her from different directions. Even after so many years, Reyna had no idea where they came from or where they went when she dismissed them, but seeing them lifted her spirits.

Hedge cleared his throat. "You sure those aren't Dalmatians? They look like Dalmatians."

"They're greyhounds, Coach." Reyna had no idea why Hedge feared Dalmatians, but she was too tired to ask right now. "Aurum, Argentum, guard us while I sleep. Obey Gleeson Hedge and Calypso." The dogs circled the courtyard, keeping their distance from the Athena Parthenos, which radiated hostility towards everything Roman.

Reyna herself was only now getting used to it, and she was pretty sure the statue did not appreciate being relocated in the middle of an ancient Roman city.

She lay down and pulled her purple cloak over herself. Her fingers curled around the pouch at her belt, where she kept the silver coin Annabeth had given her before they parted company in Epirus.

It's a sign that things can change, Annabeth had told her. The Mark of Athena is yours now. Maybe the coin will bring you luck.

Whether that luck would be good or bad, Reyna wasn't sure.

She took one last look at the bronze faun cowering before the sunrise and the Athena Parthenos. Then she closed her eyes and slipped into dreams.

And most of the time Reyna could control her nightmares.

She had trained her mind to start all her dreams in her favourite place – the Garden of Bacchus on the tallest hill in New Rome. She felt safe and tranquil there. When visions invaded her sleep – as they always did with demigods – she could contain them by imagining they were reflections in the garden's fountain. This allowed her to sleep peacefully and avoid waking up the next morning in a cold sweat.

Tonight, however, she wasn't so lucky.

The dream began well enough. She stood in the garden on a warm afternoon, the arbour heavy with blooming honey-suckle. In the central fountain, the little statue of Bacchus spouted water into the basin.

The golden domes and red-tiled roofs of New Rome spread out below her. Half a mile west rose the fortifications of Camp
Jupiter. Beyond that, the Little Tiber curved gently around the valley, tracing the edge of the Berkeley Hills, hazy and golden in the summer light.

Reyna held a cup of hot chocolate, her favourite drink.

She exhaled contentedly. This place was worth defending – for herself, for her friends, for all demigods. Her four years at Camp Jupiter hadn't been easy, but they'd been the best time of Reyna's life.

Suddenly the horizon darkened. Reyna thought it might be a storm. Then she realized a tidal wave of dark loam was rolling across the hills, turning the skin of the earth inside out, leaving nothing behind.

Reyna watched in horror as the earthen tide reached the edge of the valley. The god Terminus sustained a magical barrier around the camp, but it slowed the destruction for only a moment. Purple light sprayed upward like shattered glass, and the tide poured through, shredding trees, destroying roads, wiping the Little Tiber off the map.

It's a vision, Reyna thought. I can control this.

She tried to change the dream. She imagined that the destruction was only a reflection in the fountain, a harmless video image, but the nightmare continued in full vivid scope.

The earth swallowed the Field of Mars, obliterating every trace of forts and trenches from the war games. The city's aqueduct collapsed like a line of children's blocks. Camp Jupiter itself fell – watchtowers crashing down, walls and barracks disintegrating. The screams of demigods were silenced, and the earth moved on.

A sob built in Reyna's throat. The gleaming shrines and monuments on Temple Hill crumbled. The coliseum and the hippodrome were swept away. The tide of loam reached the Pomerian line and roared straight into the city. Families ran through the forum. Children cried in terror.

The Senate House imploded. Villas and gardens disappeared like crops under a tiller. The tide churned uphill towards the Garden of Bacchus – the last remnant of Reyna's world.
"You left them helpless, Reyna Ramírez-Arellano." A woman's voice issued from the black terrain. "Your camp will be destroyed. Your quest is a fool's errand. My hunter comes for you."
Reyna tore herself from the garden railing. She ran to the fountain of Bacchus and gripped the rim of the basin, staring desperately into the water. She willed the nightmare to become a harmless reflection.
THUNK.
The basin broke in half, split by an arrow the size of a rake. Reyna stared in shock at the raven-feather fletching, the shaft painted red, yellow and black like a coral snake, the Stygian iron point embedded in her gut.

She looked up through a haze of pain. At the edge of the garden, a dark figure approached – the silhouette of a man whose eyes shone like miniature headlamps, blinding Reyna. She heard the scrape of iron against leather as he drew another arrow from his quiver.

Then her dream changed.

The garden and the hunter vanished, along with the arrow in Reyna's stomach.

She found herself in an abandoned vineyard. Stretched out before her, acres of dead grapevines hung in rows on wooden lattices, like gnarled miniature skeletons. At the far end of the fields stood a cedar-shingled farmhouse with a wraparound porch. Beyond that, the land dropped off into the sea.

Reyna recognized this place: the Goldsmith Winery on the north shore of Long Island. Her scouting parties had secured it as a forward base for the legion's assault on Camp Half-Blood.

She had ordered the bulk of the legion to remain in Manhattan until she told them otherwise, but obviously Octavian had disobeyed her.

The entire Twelfth Legion was camped in the northern-most field. They'd dug in with their usual military precision – ten-foot-deep trenches and spiked earthen walls around the perimeter, a watchtower on each corner armed with ballistae.

Inside, tents were arranged in neat rows of white and red. The standards of all five cohorts curled in the wind.

The sight of the legion should have lifted Reyna's spirits. It was a small force, barely two hundred demigods, but they were well trained and well organized. If Julius Caesar came back from the dead, he would've had no trouble recognizing Reyna's troops as worthy soldiers of Rome.

But they had no business being so close to Camp Half-Blood. Octavian's insubordination made Reyna clench her fists. He was intentionally provoking the Greeks, hoping for battle.

Her dream vision zoomed to the porch of the farmhouse, where Octavian sat in a gilded chair that looked suspiciously like a throne. Along with his senatorial purple-lined toga, his centurion badge and his augur's knife, he had adopted a new honour: a white cloth mantle over his head, which marked him as Pontifex Maximus, high priest to the gods.

Reyna wanted to strangle him. No demigod in living memory had taken the title Pontifex Maximus. By doing so, Octavian was elevating himself almost to the level of emperor.

Reyna had half expected him to disobey her orders but this- this was beyond what she'd imagined.