"Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain," Rachel teased one of the new campers.
"There's no place like home," Gee replied.
Will sighed. The girl was the daughter of Kalliope and only spoke in quotes from literature. At least, until she gets anxious and starts ruining the plot.
She was also a Roman transplant and would need help adjusting to a less structured environment.
"Will," Nico said. "I found something." Everyone froze and turned to look at him.
"Where did he," Rachel started to say.
"No you haven't," Will told him.
"In a moment I was clutched by several hands, and there was no mistaking that they were trying to haul me back. I struck another light, and waved it in their dazzled faces," Gee said.
Rachel resisted the urge to cover the girl's mouth.
"You can scarce imagine how nauseatingly inhuman they looked—those pale, chinless faces and great, lidless, pinkish-grey eyes!—as they stared in their blindness and bewilderment."
"The Time Machine. She's quoting the Time Machine," another camper explained.
"Breaking News: Brooklyn is over run by Morlocks," Rachel groaned under her breath.
"What," Nico said, looking at her.
"Her flat in Brooklyn needs better door locks," Will said quickly.
"Troglodytes. They live in tunnels under the city," Nico told her.
"No they don't."
"Yes they do. I found them."
"What city?"
Nico's expression turned deadly serious when he told the younger camper, "All of them."
"My mom lives in Soho. You don't think they live under her apartment?"
"Probably they do."
"The Childlike Empress is really an agent of the Nothing!"
"Hey, no. Everyone is getting upset so let's just calm down," Will said, glaring at Nico. He turned to Gee and told her, "That's just a mistranslation from the original German. She doesn't work for the Nothing."
"Han Solo never recovered from the fact that Leia kissed her brother. None of them did. And that was what ruined their marriage and caused Luke to turn bitter against Ben Solo, who he felt should have been his son."
"Oh my gods. Troglodytes aren't real. Stop scaring everyone," Will said to Nico.
"I'm not making it up!"
"I believe you," Rachel announced.
Will dropped his clipboard. "But why?"
"He's not Elsa. He can't just 'Let It Go'."
"See the turtle of enormous girth, on his shell he holds the earth. If you want to run and play, come along the beam today."
"She's quoting Stephen King now. I think things just got real."
The younger campers shared nervous glances. "So is this our first quest?"
"No," Will said.
"Yes," Nico and Rachel said.
Rachel added, "The quest for the missing troglodytes."
"That's not how this works," Will tried to say.
"I'm the Oracle of Delphi. I issue quests to bored demigods who need something better to do with themselves. It's. My. Job," Rachel said, glaring back at him.
"Fine. I'll bring the first aid kits."
Nico leaned closer to Rachel and lowered his voice. "The subterranean expansion says they are cannibals but the cthonic says they're vegetarian. Which one is it?"
"I'm not sure. This is more your area than mine. We'll keep the younger ones between the rest of us but if things take a turn, we might need someone to outrun."
Nico stared at the kids for an uncomfortable amount of time before telling her, "That's a good plan."
"Everybody is a book of blood; wherever we're opened, we're red," Gee said. "I'm scared. I don't want to go into the tunnels under New York," she told Rachel.
Rachel smiled at her. "'I dreamed I spoke in another's language,
I dreamed I lived in another's skin,
I dreamed I was my own beloved,
I dreamed I was a tiger's kin."
"I dreamed that Eden lived inside me,
And when I breathed a garden came,
I dreamed I knew all of Creation,
I dreamed I knew the Creator's name.
I dreamed-and this dream was the finest-", Gee said, following along.
"That all I dreamed was real and true,
And we would live in joy forever,
You in me, and me in you.' Also, written by Clive Barker," Rachel said.
"She broke the curse herself and she didn't even notice," Nico whispered to Rachel when they were leaving camp. He gestured vaguely towards Gee and the others.
Rachel waved it off. "They look up to you now, if you haven't noticed," she said.
Nico made a disparaging noise. "Oh please."
She grabbed his arm and made him stop packing supplies. "No, they do. Whatever you think you've done, they don't know anything about. And the ones who do know, they're going to see that you've survived the battle."
He looked at where her hand rested on his forearm. "You shouldn't-"
"Let me worry about that. Be nicer to Will maybe? He's doing his best."
Nico frowned and nodded. He zipped up his backpack and headed towards where everyone else was waiting.
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters from Rick Riordan's works, nor do I have any claim to Stephen King's Dark Tower series or Clive Barker's Book of Blood or Abarat novels, referenced above. And even though the Wizard of Oz, and the Time Machine and the Neverending Story are public domain now, they still don't being to me. Nor do I own any Fleetwood Mac or Cranberry lyrics from previous chapters. Or Frozen.