Jay Evermist and the Olympians
Book One: The Battle Begins
Chapter 9: The Battle
(The last couples have been really short, so I'm sorry.)
I was awoken to a banging on my door which was loud enough to cause me to fall out of my bed. My head ached as I got up and checked my watch. 2:34, I had slept through lunch and my stomach rumbled. The banging got louder and I walked over the floor to my door. I turned the gold drachma shaped doorknob to see a soaked Annabeth on my patio. I looked around to see it was raining.
"Thanks," she huffed as she pushed her way through me and into the cabin.
"Um, you're welcome?" I didn't put too much sarcasm in it, but she did just barge in. "What I can I do for you?" I pulled on a sweater I kept on bed post and tried to fix my bed head.
Annabeth took in the room; she had obviously never been in here before. She turned to the wall of paint and smiled. "We have a little table in our cabin, where we can build little towns." She turned to me, it was probably the first time she smiled at me. "It's cool to have a place for your gifts." I don't know what she was implying but I was only a mediocre artist.
"Anyway," She shook her head which caused some droplets to land on my face. I wiped them off as she continued. "All the cabin leaders are having a meeting at the big house in ten minutes." She turned and headed to the door.
"Oh, wait" She turned back to face me and my question. "Do you know what we will be discussing?"
"Yeah," Her face seemed to grow pale. "That prophecy Rachel gave. Just hurry up, we probably only have about 6 minutes now." She walked off in a huff towards the next cabin, Nike.
I scrambled to grab my small backpack, which was now stuffed in the corner where I left it, and got my shoes on. My converses were going to be ruined by the mud so instead, I threw on a pair of old running sneakers. As I headed out, I saw one person from each cabin slowly make their way to the big house. Annabeth was at the end of the U, coming out of the Hypnos cabin by the time I started walking. Everybody else slugged along, but I didn't want to get soaked so I started running up. It must have been a trick of the light because I could have sworn I saw a sliver object reflect light into my eyes. When I turned I only saw Connor and Travis, co-head counselors from the Hermes cabin, laughing about something.
I got to the house and went around the house to the back door which leads to the basement, the rec. room. Chiron was at the front of the room with his hands behind his back, which must have been hard considering his backside was a horse. I grabbed a chair around the ping pong table where most meetings take place.
I had only been at one other meeting in the whole 9 years I was here. Butch usually took care of that and if he's not here a kid named Angelica took his place. But since they were both gone, I was the substitute by default.
I grabbed my backpack off my shoulders and got out my bag. I scolded myself for not having a drawing for breakfast or lunch but then realized there was nothing I could do. I turned to the back which was saved for miscellaneous drawings and began to draw the table. Everybody was here so I began to draw them as well. It wasn't until I reached the second person did I realize that it was probably a bad idea since most people listen to the meetings. I looked up to see a worried Chiron pondering over his thoughts. Everyone else was in little groups talking amongst themselves. Everyone was here, Travis and Conner, Annabeth, Percy (who looked surprisingly dry), Nico; Jason Grace from Zeus, Will, a kid who I'm pretty sure was called Leo from Hephaestus, Piper Mclean from Aphrodite (who obviously didn't care her hair was a mess from the rain), and one or two other kids I didn't know.
Chiron finally broke the silence. "I'm glad you all made it today." He smiled but it faltered.
"Well, we didn't have much of a choice," Travis, the older of the twins, joked. "what with Annabeth breaking down our doors." A few laughed while a few just stared at the table.
Chiron ignored his comment. "We have grave news. Rachel Elizabeth Dare, our camp oracle, has given it to us. I guess I'll let her explain." She stepped out of the shadows and walked up to the table as Chiron trotted away.
"Well, hello." She began awkwardly. "Ok tough crowd. I guess I should start with the prophecy." She more or less said to herself. Her eyes strained while she tried to remember it and a smile grew as she must have remembered it.
"The Lord of the Dead has made a fair offer,
We wait as he dies at the hand of another.
Three have been called to lift the curse,
To stop what has come back for much worse."
She stopped and walked quietly back out the door while everyone was still taking it in. Finally Percy spoke up. "Chiron? Do you know who the three are?" Everyone nodded their heads. "I would offer myself but, I think I've had enough of quests for now."
"Well, who says you get to go?" Nico shouted. Everyone else started talking as one.
"Yeah Jackson! We want a quest too. You only saved Olympus." Conner laughed.
A girl from a Demeter rose to face the twins. "You too would just ruin it in a heartbeat."
Travis smirked. "Yeah Katie and I bet you listen to my heartbeats don't you." He raised an eyebrow as she blushed and sat back down. I heard her whisper to herself, 'That doesn't make sense.'
"People!" Chiron shouted. "We have more important things to deal with than to see who will go. I don't know if anyone noticed this, but it's raining. In camp."
Everyone looked around worriedly. "We don't usually get weather unless we want it. But, the fleece is not exactly working the way we wish. The monsters will not get in, not today. But we had to cut back on the top of the boundary." He smiled. "Just thought you would want to know."
"Whether we will find them tonight or not, we all must prepare for the quest. Tonight at the camp fire Rachel thinks she will have another prophecy, they are usually spaced out but closely related. We only have about 15 kids at camp since most left when you went missing." Chiron and everybody else turned to me and I blushed.
"We need all the help we can get if it's true. A battle is brewing in Olympus."
That was the same thing Hannah told to me. We were all let go but Chiron stopped me. "Jay, I hope you don't mind we may have to postpone your lessons until further notice." I nodded my head and ran back to my cabin.
I slumped back on my bed and pulled out my notebook and tried to remember what Rachel had said. I scribbled it down and slide it away in my drenched backpack. I just wanted to relax and enjoy my day; unfortunately that was not the way it was going to be.
The bell shook me from my trance and I slugged to the door. I opened to so see the campers, which was about 14 minus me; make their way to the camp forge. I saw some of the nymphs and air spirits flying overhead trying to stop the rain but it wasn't working.
I readjusted my sweater as I fixed my hair again and started walking as well. I got there to see that everyone was walking about getting ready with their weapons and blueprints. I heard whispers and realized there was a chariot race happening in about an hour. The remaining Hephaestus kid rushed around his chariot finishing it within ten minutes. I saw a couple kids grouped around one corner and recognized them as Conner, Travis, Katie, Jason, and Piper. Apparently they were fighting again.
"How are we supposed to see with all the rain around?" Jason asked while he scribbled out another idea.
"Don't ask us!" Travis put his hands up.
Conner backed him up. "Yeah, ask your dad, 'Mr. Son-of-sky-god'."
"Iris controls rain not Zeus!" Jason practically screamed. I could have sworn I heard a crackle of electricity. Then again I have seen Thalia when she was angry so I wouldn't be surprised.
I slinked back against the wall while Piper dragged Jason towards the Leo kid. The three remaining teens went back to their own chariot. Percy stepped up on a platform in the middle of the pavilion and cleared his throat.
"Excuse me everyone!" A clang was heard from across the room as Leo dropped a shield rack causing them all to fall. Percy put his head in his hand. "How many times Valdez, do we have to tell you? Anyway, although the weather outside may be frightful."
"Oh please don't say 'the fire is so delightful'!" Katie laughed as she reluctantly high fived Travis.
"Please! Everyone just listen." Percy was getting pretty annoyed. I noticed Jacob was across the room with Nico and Miki was over with Will and Diana. "Teams, the Apollo cabin will be white team, Hermes and Demeter are orange, and Zeus, Aphrodite, and Hephaestus will be Red. Hades and Iris are Black and myself and Athena are Green. Any question?" Everyone went back to talking and working. "Of course not." Percy mumbled.
I unwillingly walked over to where I saw Nico standing by a stack of iron slabs. "Anything I can do to help?" I asked.
"What?" He looked up and I saw there were bags under his eyes. "Oh yeah Jacob's over there adding crossbones to the chariot." He shoo-ed me away and I found Jacob on one of those rolling pads under the chariot. I waited there until he finally rolled out with grease smeared on his face.
"Hey," I said.
He looked at me while he got up but then looked down. "Hey, so um, how's it going."
"Good actually." I faked a smile. "Yeah, I get back from being away and no one says hi and then, this is a good part. My sister and pretty much only friend is leaving me forever." I didn't care if I sounded rude, I was upset.
"Yeah sorry about that," Jacob shifted uneasily. "So I was wondering if you would help us with the paint. Our team is black so we wanted a black chariot."
I stepped out in front of the vehicle and shook my head. "No, there has to be some color or if will be too boring." I smiled. "And we can't win with a boring chariot now can we?"
"No I guess not."
"So," Nico came over with a finished scribble of blueprints. "Jay while you're doing that I was thing Jacob could help me with the secret compartment." He winked at Jacob and they headed over to the burning furnaces. I looked at them weirdly but then just shook it off, boys and their toys.
When I was done with the paint job it looked magnificent. With a black background I painted little white and yellow specks and constellations for the sky. I drew a blue planet which really technically wasn't a planet anymore. But since it was named after the Roman counterpart of Jacob and Nico's dad I figured it was an exception.
"Wow," My teammates were behind me with random stuff in their hands. Their jaws were hanging open in awe. "You're good."
"Thanks." You know that feeling were someone says something nice and you want to hear more but without asking? No, well that's how I felt.
Nico barged through and up into the chariot. He plopped his stuff down and turned to me. "So yeah, awesome job, you can run along now just met back here in about 20 minutes." I rolled my eyes and made my way outside where it looked like the raining finally stopped.
I spotted Miki with Diana playing tetherball and stopped myself when I realized we really didn't know each other that well. We were back and we were really only gone for a couple hours. Everything was back to normal. Plain boring normal. I wiped a tear from my eye as I saw some of the Naiads swimming in the lake. It reminded me of yesterday when I was about to go to lunch. It seemed weird that it was only yesterday but it was. And now my only shoulder to cry on wasn't even here. I walked over to the big house, maybe I could talk Chiron into letting me go to school. I haven't been to a real school since I was eleven, but that's a different story.