VII

Jason

Jason woke up, coughing up water. He looked around. "What…" His mouth dropped opened in shock. He was in a giant underwater dome. It was literally a dome of air, with the water suspended in the air, almost as if there was a piece of glass between the water and drowning. But it was definitely magic, because there were little water droplets dripping onto him.

He walked over to his left, where the others were. Piper, Annabeth, Percy, Leo, Hazel and Frank were having a barbecue around a giant, fiery pit. Smoke drifted up towards the water, then dissolved.

He walked over to them.

"Hey, Jason!" Percy yelled over to him. "Care for a s'more?" Jason sat down, and pretty soon they were all roasting marshmallows over the campfire.

"Whoa!" Leo yelled. Suddenly, his marshmallow caught on fire. He patted it out. Jason was whisked back to a time, almost six months ago, when Leo had accidentally set his marshmallow on fire at the campfire, and it had almost burned his shirt off.

"So… why are we here?" Jason asked.

Percy shuffled in his seat made out of coral. "Well…" he started.

"Me." A deep voice sounded behind Jason. Jason whipped his head around, and he wasn't exactly glad about it afterwards.

The man was about forty years old, and he looked sort of like a man who'd lived his entire life in the sea. He had seaweed for hair, and his skin was wrinkly. He had a tan, and his eyes looked bored, like he was tired of saving people from potentially fatal boat accidents.

"So… you saved us?" Jason asked.

"Well, this young man, Pablo Jacobelli…"

"Percy Jackson." Percy interrupted, wincing like it was reminiscent of something.

"Yes! Pedro Janovsky." He said. "Anyways, he was trying to pull you out of the water, like, all of you. He couldn't do it, so I created a giant dome and let him sink you guys down here to heal."

"Oh." Jason said. "Um, who exactly are you?"

"I am Palaemon." He said, sounding awfully bored, like he was tired of saying it. "Savior of sailors, protector of ships, blah, blah, blah."

"Of course." Jason said. "And, um, how long has it been since I was knocked out?"

"About as long as the rest of us." Hazel replied. "We basically slept through the night. You were only behind me by about five minutes."

"Cool." Jason said. "By the way, how's the Argo II?"

Leo adverted his eyes. Everyone looked down.

"Oh." Jason said.

"Smashed to pieces. Fractured." Palaemon confirmed. "The hull is over there." He pointed to a gigantic, deformed piece of wood in the middle of a coral forest.

"Oh." Jason said in a very small voice.

"We won't be going anywhere for a while." Leo said. "I could fix it down here, but we don't know if the ocean is still rough, or if it's calmed down already. Besides," he added, "Palaemon isn't letting us leave. I tried asking, but he just shrugged it off."

"You would do well to pay more respect to gods, Leo Valdez." Palaemon said, eyes smoldering. "I am getting bored of doing the same thing to sailors over and over again. Trap them in a giant bubble, feed them, wipe their memories of the incident, and let them go. You won't believe how many naval accidents there are- oh, sorry. Another ship just crashed over the Atlantic. Excuse me."

He turned into a bunch of tiny water droplets, and floated away.

"So…" Jason turned back to the others. "How are we going to leave this place? We have thirteen days until Gaia rises. We need to MOVE!"

"Yeah… but we can't leave. The magic stops us from getting out, and even if we did get out, he would just make the seas choppier, and we would be screwed." Annabeth said.

"Why-"

"Bored, I guess. Millennia of saving sailors really can mess with your mind. It can get boring, I guess." Percy replied. "He sounds like Mr. D."

"Mr. D- Oh, Dionysus."

Jason had never met Dionysus. He'd been away at the time he was in Camp Half-Blood, on forced temporary retirement from his job, by Zeus.

"Hello." The god Palaemon was back. "And I suppose you want to leave."

"Yes!" Percy and Leo yelped at the same time.

"Well, sorry. I get bored. I think it's time to change." Palaemon said, sighing. "You can't leave here."

"What?" Percy yelled. "But we need to continue on our quest! The fate of the world rests in our hands!"

"Fine, then." Palaemon said, sighing, like he was tired of arguing with people. "Go on. But hear this. You must go to Athens if you are to defeat the giants. There, you will find a powerful weapon."

He waved his hand, and the landscape around them changed. They were suddenly sitting on a beach, the sand digging into their toes. Frank saw all the sand, yelped, and ran off the beach.

"He hates sand." Hazel said apologetically. "He says it gets into his pants, his shoes and it feels horrible."

"We'll make do." Percy said. "So, do any of you know where the hull is? I'd assume Palaemon brought it with us, but where is it?"

"Maybe that?" Leo pointed over to a big lump on the beach.

The Argo II was pretty intact, especially for a ship that had been to the bottom of the ocean and back. Aside from the fact that it had all its oars broken off, along with the mast and all the floorboards, it was fine. The gigantic maze of pipes, chambers and dangerous liquids that made up the engine was still intact (luckily it hadn't blown up), but the ship was going to need a lot of fixing before they would be sailing once more.

"When we set sail again, we're most definitely heading to Athens." Jason said. Everybody else nodded. The idea of a secret weapon was really tempting, especially when it could kick some "serious booty", as Leo would probably say.

"Well," Leo said. "I doubt we have enough time to walk to Athens. Fixing the ship should take about a week, and walking there would take about two."

The oars that had been blown off the ship, that mast, and pretty much everything that had broken off, was in a giant, nice, neat pile right next to the hull, with everything color coded, and sorted according to size.

"Well," Leo said. "We have a lot of work to do!"