I don't have a job now, thanks to Covid, so if anyone of you are secret billionaires, now is this time to send me a massive lump sum, please and thank you! ^_^
To 8Ball3- No, it doesn't. Candyfloss is better. And thank you, I do try ^_^ I literally have nothing else to do, so XD I can't believe this prat is like, Oh, I got covid, it was super easy. Like, SURE, we all have private planes to take us to private hospitals where a 24 hour team of private doctors and nurses are waiting to treat us with medicines literally not available to anyone else and then we're let out without the worry of a medical bill as it's all been paid by the lovely taxpayers! And he now reckons he's immune to it? He's still got it! Oooh, if I was his doctor, I'd accidentally overdose him -_-
Somewhere along the trail back to camp, Apollo's mind must have just detached from his body. He wasn't sure how Hazel and Meg carried him and Louisa between them or how they evaded the monsters drawn by her screaming. He didn't remember passing out. He didn't remember reaching the valley. But at some point, his consciousness drifted away like an escaped helium balloon and he just accepted it.
He dreamed of homes. Had he ever really had one? His birthplace had been Delos, but only because his pregnant mother, Leto, took refuge there to escape Hera's wrath. The island served as an emergency sanctuary for his sister and him too, but it never felt like home any more than the back seat of a taxi would feel like home to a child born on the way to a hospital.
Mount Olympus? He had a palace there. He visited for the holidays. But it always felt more like the place his dad lived with his stepmom.
The Palace of the Sun? That was Helios's old crib. Apollo had only redecorated.
Even Delphi, home of his greatest Oracle, had originally been the lair of Python.
It was sad to say, but in his four-thousand-and-something years, the only time he had really felt at home anywhere had been in his mortal existence. At Camp Half-Blood, sharing a cabin with his demigod children. At the Waystation with Emmie, Jo, Georgina, Leo and Calypso, all of them sitting around the kitchen table chopping vegetables from the garden for dinner. At the Cistern in Palm Springs with Meg, Grover, Mellie, Coach Hedge and a prickly assortment of cactus dryads. And now, at Camp Jupiter, where the anxious, grief-stricken Romans, despite their many problems, despite the fact that he brought misery and disaster wherever he went, had welcomed him with respect, a room above their coffee shop and some lovely bed linen to wear.
These places were homes. Whether he deserved to be a part of them or not- that was a different question.
He wanted to linger in those good memories. He suspected he might be dying- perhaps in a coma on the forest floor with ghoul poison in his veins or perhaps Louisa had lost all sense and blasted him as she had the ghouls during the battle. Whichever one it was, he wanted his last thoughts to be happy ones.
His brain had different ideas.
He found himself in the cavern of Delphi.
Nearby, dragging himself through the darkness, wreathed in orange and yellow smoke, was the all-too-familiar shape of Python. His smell was oppressively sour- a physical pressure that constricted his lungs and made his sinuses scream. His eyes cut through the sulphuric vapour like headlamps.
"You think it matters." Python's voice boomed, rattling Apollo's teeth. "These little victories? You think they lead to something?" Apollo couldn't speak. His mouth still tasted of bubblegum and paper. He was grateful for the sickly sweetness at least, a reminder that a world existed outside this cave of horrors.
Python lumbered closer. "It was for nothing." He said. "The deaths you caused, the deaths you will cause, they don't matter. If you win every battle, you will still lose the war. As usual, you don't understand the true stakes. Face me, and you will die." He opened his vast maw, slavering reptilian lips pulled over glistening teeth.
"GAH!" Apollo's eyes flew open. His limbs flailed.
"Oh good," said a voice, "you're awake."
He was lying on the floor inside some sort of wooden structure, like… ah, a stable. The smells of hay and horse manure filled his nostrils. A hessian blanket prickled against his back. Peering down at him were two unfamiliar faces. One belonged to a handsome young man with silky black hair cresting over his wide sepia forehead. The other belonged to a unicorn. Its startled blue eyes, wide and unblinking, were fixed on him as if he might be a tasty bag of oats. Stuck on the tip of its horn was a rotary cheese grater.
"Um…" Apollo said brilliantly.
"Calm down, dummy." Meg said, somewhere to his left. "You're with friends." He couldn't see her. His peripheral vision was still blurry and as pink as the bubblegum tasted. He managed to point weakly at the unicorn.
"Cheese grater."
"Yes." The lovely young man said. "It's the easiest way to get a dose of horn shavings directly into the wound. Buster doesn't mind, do you, Buster?" Buster the unicorn continued to stare at Apollo. "My name's Pranjal." The young man continued. "I'm head healer for the legion. I worked on you when you first got here, but we didn't really meet then, since, well… you know, you were unconscious. I'm a son of Asclepius." A cheeky smile tipped up one corner of his mouth. "I guess that makes you my grandpa."
"Oooh," Apollo moaned, "don't call me 'Grandpa'. I feel terrible enough already." He looked in Meg's direction. "Are… are the others alright? Lavinia? Hazel? Lou?" Meg hovered into view. Her glasses were clean, her hair was washed and her clothes were changed, so he must have been out for a while.
"Lavinia got back right after we did. Hazel's with the praetors. You… you almost died." She sounded annoyed, as if his death would have inconvenienced her somehow. "You should've told me how bad that cut really was."
"I thought… I assumed it would heal." Apollo shrugged a shoulder. Pranjal frowned, a knit in his eyebrows.
"Yes, well, it should have. You got excellent care, even if I do say so myself. We know about ghoul infections. They're usually curable, if we catch them within twenty-four hours."
"But you," Meg scowled, "aren't responding to treatment!"
"That's not my fault!" Apollo protested.
"It could be your godly side." Pranjal suggested. "I've never had a patient who was a former immortal. That might make you resistant to demigod healing, or more susceptible to undead scratches. I just don't know." He rubbed at his jaw. "I mean, the most effective thing so far has been Lou, but…" He trailed off, grimacing.
Apollo levered himself up onto his elbows, stifling a groan. He was bare-chested, his wound had been re-bandaged, so he couldn't tell how bad it was underneath. One good thing was that the pain had subsided to a dull ache. Purple lines of infection peeked out from the edges of his bandages, but their colour had faded to a faint lavender. "Lou's work on you really helped. She… didn't clear it completely, but gave me enough to work with. I tried a special concoction, a kind of magical equivalent to broad-spectrum antibiotics. It required a special strain of stellaria media- magical chickweed- that doesn't grow in Northern California."
"It grows here now." Meg announced.
"Yes." Pranjal agreed with a smile. "I may have to keep Meg around. She's pretty handy for growing medicinal plants." Meg blushed.
Buster still hadn't moved or blinked. Apollo hoped Pranjal occasionally put a spoon under the unicorn's nostrils to check he was still breathing. "At any rate," Pranjal continued, "the salve I used wasn't a cure. It will only slow down your condition."
"And if I do want a cure?" Apollo queried. "Which, by the way, I do."
"That's going to take more powerful healing than I'm capable of. God-level healing." Apollo bit back tears. He decided Pranjal needed to work on his bedside manner, perhaps have a better collection of miraculous over-the-counter cures that did not require divine intervention.
"We could try more horn shavings." Meg suggested. "That's fun. I mean, that might work."
Between Meg's anxiousness to use the cheese grater and Buster's hungry stare, Apollo was starting to feel like a plate of pasta.
"I don't suppose you have any leads on available healing gods?"
"Actually," Pranjal said, "if you're feeling up to it, you should get dressed and have Meg walk you to the principia. Reyna and Frank really want to talk to you."
Before their meeting with the praetors, Meg took him back to Bombilo's, so he could wash and change his clothes. Afterwards, they stopped by the legion mess hall for food. Judging from the angle of the sun and the near-empty dining room, he guessed it was late afternoon, between lunch and dinner. That meant he had been unconscious for almost a full day. That made the day after tomorrow April 8th. The blood moon, Lester's birthday, the day two evil emperors and an undead king attacked Camp Jupiter. On the bright side, the mess hall was serving fish fingers.
They talked while he ate.
"What happened to Lou?" He asked. Meg's expression darkened and she dipped a fry into his ketchup a little too harshly. Apollo recognised that expression- guilt.
"She kept you alive long enough for us to get you back to camp. I've not seen her since we got back."
"She was screaming. And…" He motioned as if he was vomiting. "Blood." He finished carefully.
"Yep." Meg nodded. "Reyna and someone from the Fifth took her away. She was still screaming."
"Any idea where she is now?"
"Nope. I overheard them talking, saying they moved her, but I don't know where." She shoved a handful of fries in her mouth, ending their conversation.
After their meal, Meg escorted him down the Via Praetoria to legion headquarters. Most of the Romans seemed to be off doing whatever Romans did in the late afternoon- marching, digging trenches, playing Fortiusnitius. The few legionnaires they did pass stared at Apollo as they walked by, their conversations stuttering to a stop. He guessed word had spread about their adventure in Tarquin's tomb. Maybe they had heard that he had a slight turning-into-a-zombie problem and they were waiting for him to scream for brains.
The thought made him shudder. His gut wound felt so much better at the moment, he could walk without cringing. The sun was shining. He had eaten a good meal. How could he still be poisoned?
Denial was a powerful thing.
Unfortunately, he suspected Pranjal was right. Between him and Louisa, the infection had only been slowed. Apollo's condition was beyond anything that camp healers, Greek or Roman, could solve. He needed godly help- something Zeus had strictly forbidden the other gods to give him.
The guards at the praetorium let them through immediately. Reyna and Frank sat behind a long table laden with maps, books, daggers and a large jar of jellybeans. Dark circles ringed their eyes, Reyna stifled a yawn or two, Frank had to keep pinching his cheeks to stay awake. Against the back wall, in front of a purple curtain, stood the legion's golden eagle, humming with energy.
Frank appeared ready for battle in his full armour. Reyna looked like she was the one who had only just woken up. She wore her purple cloak hastily pulled over a too-large PUERTO RICO FUERTE T-shirt. Apollo wondered if she slept in it and then quickly corrected himself- that was none of his business. The left side of her hair was an adorable fuzzy black mess of cowlicks that made him wonder if she slept on that side- again, none of his business.
Curled on the carpet at her feet were two automatons he hadn't seen before. A pair of greyhounds, one gold and one silver. They both raised their heads when they saw him, sniffing the air and growling as if to say, Hey, Mom, this guy smells like zombie. Can we kill him?
Reyna hushed them. She dug some jellybeans out of the jar and tossed them to the dogs. How metallic greyhounds ate the candy, Apollo wasn't sure, but they snapped up the morsels and then settled back down on the carpet, tails thumping, appeased.
"Er, nice dogs." Apollo said. "Why haven't I seen them before?"
"Aurum and Argentum have been out searching." Reyna said, in a tone that discouraged any follow-up questions. "How is your wound?"
"My wound is thriving. Me, not so much."
"He's better than before." Meg insisted. "I grated some unicorn-horn shavings on his cut. It was fun."
"Pranjal helped too." Apollo provided. "And, uh, Louisa." He noticed a sudden, ever so subtle tensing of Reyna's shoulders at the name. "Where is she? Is she OK?" Reyna didn't answer, glaring determinedly at the nearest map and shoving a handful of jellybeans in her mouth.
"You guys make yourselves comfortable." Frank gestured at the two visitors' seats. Comfortable was a relative term. The three-legged foldable stools did not look as comfy as the praetors' chairs. They reminded Apollo of the stool his Oracle at Camp Half-Blood, Rachel Elizabeth Dare, had. Thinking about her reminded him of the Delphic cave, which reminded him of Python, which reminded him of his nightmare and how scared he was of dying. How he hated streams of consciousness.
Once they were seated, Reyna spread a parchment scroll across the table.
"So, we've been working with Ella and Tyson since yesterday, trying to decipher some more lines of the prophecy."
"We've made progress." Frank added. "We think we've found the recipe you were talking about at the senate meeting- the ritual that could summon divine aid to save the camp."
"That's great, right?" Meg reached for the jar of jellybeans, but retracted her hand when the two dogs started growling.
"Maybe." Reyna exchanged a worried look with Frank. "The thing is, if we're reading this correctly… the ritual requires a death sacrifice." The fish fingers began sword-fighting with the French fries in his stomach.
"That can't be right." Apollo protested. "We gods would never ask you mortals to sacrifice one of your own. We gave that up centuries ago! Or millennia ago, I can't remember. But I'm sure we gave it up!" Frank gripped his armrests, grimacing.
"Yeah, that's the thing. It's not a mortal who's supposed to die."
"No." Reyna locked eyes with Apollo. "It seems this ritual requires the death of a god."