Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or Camp Half-Blood or mythology. Rick does. Well, at least the characters and Camp Half-Blood.
Chapter 16
Maybe the three of them weren't their parents, but they were a lot like their parents.
Annabeth and Thalia ganged up on Percy for the most part because that's how it worked up on Olympus. Zeus and Athena were on one side. Poseidon was on the other. The only exceptions he could think of were World War II and the Trojan War.
They were pretty miserable that night.
They camped out in the woods, a hundred yards from the main road, in a marshy clearing that local kids had obviously been using for parties. The ground was littered with flattened soda cans and fast-food wrappers.
With a lot of gratuitous arguing, the three of them managed to take some food and blankets from Aunty Em's, but they didn't dare light a fire to dry their damp clothes. The Furies and Medusa had provided enough excitement for one day. They didn't want to attract anything else.
They decided to sleep in shifts. Well, Annabeth and Thalia decided that. Percy volunteered to take first watch.
The two girls were curled up on the blankets and had fallen asleep almost instantly.
Percy stared at the garbage. Grover would have complained about human pollution if he was there. The thought brought a small smile to his face. But then he realized what Grover would actually say. He looked up between the branches of the trees into the night sky. It wasn't cloudy anymore, but he couldn't even see the stars. At least at camp some stars were visible. There was too much light pollution from the concrete jungle of Manhattan to see stars with the naked eye.
Percy sighed. Climate change was always a talk of environmentalists and scientists and politicians. A lot of people refused to believe that "climate change" was a thing, but something just struck him about how badly people were messing up the environment.
He faintly remembered a voice speaking in his head that day Grover died, but he couldn't remember what the voice said specifically. It was a warming feeling, like a breeze of springtime. That's all he remembered. It couldn't be… but it had to be… Percy wondered if the old myth was true… about the satyr. Something inside of him told him that it was. He had a dreadful feeling about the god of the wild.
He thought back to a couple lessons on history he had at camp. Despite all gods being viewed as deities, demigods were still human and progressed like an average human of that time period, as in back then people weren't so worried about the wild. Percy figured Abe Lincoln wasn't the kind of guy going around planting trees on every block.
Percy'd spent so long at camp he never realized just how dirty the mortal world was. Everything was polluted. What could he do about it? Even if he did something… and a thousand other people did the same, there were billions of people on the earth. It would hardly make a scratch.
After half the night, he decided to wake Thalia up. She grunted angrily as she sat up. She looked ready to argue with him, but for a reason he couldn't comprehend, she stayed silent. He lay down on the blankets and prepared to fall asleep. It was slow, but once his mind drifted off, he instantly fell into slumber—another nightmare-filled slumber.
He was standing in a dark cavern before a gaping pit.
Grey mist creatures churned all around him, whispering rags of smoke that he somehow knew were the spirits of the dead. They tugged at his clothes, trying to pull him back, but he felt compelled to walk forward to the very edge of the chasm.
He was back at the beginning—mirror images of his first dreams of Kronos.
You must bring them here, the Titan's voice rasped. It felt ancient, cold and heavy. It had been a long time since he dreamed of Kronos. The last time he did dream of the Titan lord, he was on a speedboat that had miraculously made it to Delaware Bay. Here is where you shall bring the bolt.
Percy wanted to complain that he didn't have the bolt yet, but his voice didn't work.
Listen to the gorgon, Kronos said. I know your hesitation. Bring me the bolt, and I shall forgive for all your thoughts of betrayal. All your thoughts to join the gods.
Percy didn't say anything. He should have expected it. Deities tended to invade on his private life.
The spirits of the dead whispered around him, No! Wake!
You almost have it, the Titan said, wrapping his unseen and viselike grip around him. You will have done me a great deed. Your name will pass through future generations as a hero—the hero that helped their saviour deity rise.
Wake! the dead hissed.
Why listen to the dead? asked the Titan. They are the servants of Hades, the god that killed your mother.
A shimmering image hovered over the void: Percy's mother, frozen at the moment she was killed. Her face was distorted with pain, and the shadowed figure behind her now had a face. It was Hades, eyes full of malice, with his helm of darkness on his head. He was the murderer. He was the killer.
Mom, Percy thought sadly. Mom!
Don't listen to him, one dead spirit said. He lies!
Leave now, shouted another.
Then a familiar ghost appeared in front of him. She waved her hand backward, and the shimmering image over the void disappeared. She glowed with a ghostly light, barely lighting up the darkness of the cavern. But just her smile radiated brilliantly enough Percy thought he was in the white clouds of Olympus. His mother's spirit.
Wake, my hero, she whispered. Wake!
Someone was shaking him.
His eyes opened, and it was daylight.
"Well," Annabeth said, "the zombie lives."
Percy stared at the ground in front of him. His heart was rattling in his chest, as if he'd physically been in the dream. His mother… all he could think of was his mother. Why had she directed him away from Kronos?
Why listen to the dead? They are the servants of Hades, the god that killed your mother.
If his mother didn't want him close to Kronos…
"Hey, Seaweed Brain," said Annabeth. "Are you alright?"
"His brain's probably like a small fish in an ocean inside his head—lost and scared," Thalia joked.
Percy wasn't in the mood for jokes. "Shut up, Thalia."
The daughter of Zeus smirked. "Cute. The little fishy heard me."
"I said shut up!"
"What's your problem?" scowled Thalia.
Percy gritted his teeth. "I'm not in the mood for jokes right now. Let's just… get on our way to Los Angeles. Somehow."
"Actually, I got that covered," Annabeth piped up. "There're Amtrak tracks down that way." She pointed behind him. "We get a train and get to Los Angeles. Obviously, we only use two hundred dollars because we need money for food. For now, I cooked up a great breakfast. Eat up." She threw a bag of nacho-flavoured corn chips from Aunty Em's snack bar into his lap.
Percy leaned against a tree and sighed. "I don't think two hundred dollars is enough for a train ride to Los Angeles. Everything is overpriced."
"We'll find a way," Annabeth shrugged.
"How do you even know there are Amtrak tracks anyway?" he asked.
"Thalia was grouchy that you woke her up, so she woke me up and we talked for a little while before we wandered off," she replied. "We found the Amtrak track after about half a mile of walking."
"Whoa whoa whoa!" He crossed his arms in an X. "Time out. You left me here alone to go on a walk?"
"Don't worry we covered you in the blankets so it would look like you weren't there," Thalia added. "Besides, you fit in with all the garbage lying around."
"It wasn't long," Annabeth promised. "I was just interested to know where we were. I know you can handle yourself, Percy. I mean, it might end up with half the woods flooded, but at least you're safe. On second thought, that might not have been a smart idea."
"'S fine, Anna," Thalia said. "It was my idea to walk off."
Percy looked at her in confusion. One moment, she looked like she was ready to rip his head off. The next, she was taking the blame for leaving him alone. He would never understand the crazy mind of the daughter of Zeus. Well, he would never understand the crazy minds of any female humans. It sucked because he was surrounded by two of 'em.
"Are you gonna eat?" she asked.
Percy looked at the bag of chips in his lap. "I'll eat on the way to the Amtrak station. We should be going. Don't want a war between Olympus and the Underworld, do we now?"
They spent two days on the Amtrak train, heading west through hills, over rivers, past amber waves of grain.
They weren't attacked once, but Percy didn't spend a single moment relaxed.
He did his usual thing and melted into the background because his picture was splattered over the front pages of several East Coast newspapers. The Trenton Register-News showed a photo taken by a tourist as Percy got off the Greyhound bus. He had a wild look in his eyes. His sword was a metallic blur in his hands. It might've been a baseball bat or a lacrosse stick.
The picture's caption read:
This twelve-year-old boy, believed by New York authorities to be the lost son of Sally Jackson, Percy Jackson, is wanted for questioning for the assault of three elderly female passengers. The bus exploded on an east New Jersey roadside shortly after Jackson fled the scene. Based on eyewitness accounts, police believe the boy may be traveling with two teenage accomplices.
"Don't worry," Annabeth told him. "Just lay low and you should be fine. Mortals could never find us." But she didn't sound so sure.
The rest of the day he spent alternately pacing the length of the train (because he had a really hard time sitting still, though he'd gotten better at it) or looking out the windows.
Once, he spotted a family of centaurs galloping across a wheat field, bows at the ready, as they hunted lunch. The little boy centaur, who was the size of a second-grader on a pony, caught his eye and waved. Percy waved back discreetly. Looking around the passenger car, he noticed nobody else saw the centaurs. The adult riders all had their faces buried in laptop computers or magazines.
Another time, toward evening, he saw something huge moving through the woods. He thought it looked like a lion, but he knew lions didn't live wild in America, and the thing was as big as a Hummer.
Its fur glinted gold in the evening light.
Then it leaped through the trees and was gone.
The two hundred dollars had been enough money to convince the Amtrak ticketholder to get them tickets as far as Denver. Normally, it cost more, but he felt sympathetic because he was a homeless kid growing up. Obviously, they couldn't get berths in the sleeper car, so they slept in their seats. His neck got stiff. At one point in the night, he woke up and realized he'd been drooling all over Annabeth's shoulder, who was sitting right next to him.
He grimaced. At least it was his jacket.
When he tried to clean it, he woke her up, and when she noticed the drool, she rolled her eyes and muttered, "Seaweed Brain" under her breath. She took off the jacket and insisted she didn't need it at the moment. After she went back to sleep, he decided to use the jacket as a blanket. For her. He covered her up and stood up to take a walk.
He made a trip to the washroom.
Percy looked at himself in the mirror. He looked tired and worn out. His eyes were darker than ever. He quickly rinsed his hands under the water before opening the door and nearly walking into Thalia. She looked about as weary as he did.
"Hey," he muttered.
"Hey," she murmured back.
He awkwardly turned to walk back to his seat, but Thalia called out, "Wait!"
He turned slowly.
"Percy." She looked like she was trying to swallow a giant jawbreaker. "Listen, I'm—I'm sorry about, you know, making fun of your brain or whatever. I just… well, I got caught up in the moment. Annabeth always makes fun of you, but you don't seem to mind, so I decide to jump in and make fun and you get pissed. Which kinda makes me mad, but I guess what I'm saying is pretty annoying."
He pressed his lips together in thought. "Yeah, uh, apology accepted."
She opened her mouth to say something, but ended up yawning. She waved her hand and disappeared into the washroom.
Toward the end of their second day on the train, they passed through some golden hills and over the Mississippi River into St. Louis. Annabeth craned her neck to see the Gateway Arch, which looked like a huge shopping bag handle stuck on the city.
"I want to do that," she sighed.
"What?" he asked.
"Build something like that."
"You want to build a huge shopping bag handle?"
She shook her head. "No, Percy. You ever see the Parthenon?"
"Only in pictures."
"Someday, I'm going to see it in person. I'm going to build the greatest monument to the gods, ever. Something that'll last a thousand years."
Percy laughed. "You? An architect?"
He couldn't imagine Annabeth trying to sit quietly and draw all day.
Her cheeks flushed. "Yes, an architect. Athena expects her children to create things, not just tear them down, like a certain god of earthquakes I could mention."
Percy watched the churning brown water of the Mississippi below.
"Sorry," Annabeth said. "That was mean."
"No no," Percy sighed. "You're right. I'm only good at fighting. I don't think I'll ever create anything. And, well, I was laughing at the idea of you sitting quietly and drawing all day. Not the fact that you wanted to be an architect. But who cares. Watch me blow up the Arch as the son of the god of earthquakes."
She laughed. "With your luck, you probably will."
They pulled into the Amtrak station downtown. The intercom said there would be a three-hour layover before departing for Denver.
Thalia stretched. She didn't say anything as she woke up, which was odd. Usually she acted tired or grumpy or something that would annoy him, which would cause a chain reaction that would spark a heated argument and they would find themselves on the verge of killing each other. Again.
But when he met her eyes, he could tell she was thinking about what she'd said to him. He knew she was the person he could relate to most. It was almost like they were siblings. The only difference was that they had different parents and they looked nothing alike. Otherwise they were like most young siblings: they argued and fought, they felt similar about lots of things, and they knew what it was like to be powerful and vulnerable at the same time.
They were cousins by definition, so that definitely had something to do with it. But then Annabeth would technically be his niece. That just made everything awkward. Nevertheless, Thalia was his cousin by definition, and he kind of liked it that way.
She understands the same things in a different way, he thought. I understand the Titans. She understands pressure of being a daughter of Zeus. But we both understand what it's like to be a child of the Big Three.
"Come on, Thalia," Annabeth said. "Sightseeing."
"Sightseeing?"
"The Gateway Arch," the daughter of Athena said. "This may be my only chance to ride to the top. Are you coming or not?"
Percy wanted to say no, but he figured that if Annabeth was going, she couldn't go alone.
Thalia looked out the window. "We're going up there?"
"Yeah!" exclaimed Annabeth.
"Well, we can enjoy the view from here," sputtered Thalia. "I mean, you know, look at it from below."
Annabeth rolled her eyes. "If you find it boring, you can stay at the bottom."
"Uh, sure," muttered the daughter of Zeus.
Percy stared at Thalia. There was something Thalia was hiding, and Annabeth seemed to not specifically know what it was.
The Arch was about a mile from the train station. Late in the day the lines to get in weren't that long. They threaded their way through the underground museum, looking at covered wagons and other junk from the 1800s. It wasn't all that thrilling, but Annabeth kept telling him interesting facts about how the Arch was built, and Thalia kept passing him jelly beans, so he was okay.
Throughout the entire tour of the place, he had a bad feeling creeping up his spine. Thalia looked a little skittish as well, but Annabeth seemed to be having a blast. Her head was wrapped up in everything so tightly that she wasn't the least bit nervous about being here.
When Percy saw the tiny little elevator car they were going to ride to the top of the Arch, he knew he was in trouble. He hated confined places. They made him go nuts.
"Get over your claustrophobia," Thalia muttered.
"I hate being cramped up in small spaces," he grumbled.
They got shoehorned into the car with this big fat lady and her dog, a Chihuahua with a rhinestone collar. He wondered what the Chihuahua was, because none of the guards said a word about it.
They started going up, inside the Arch. He'd never been in an elevator that went in a curve, and his stomach wasn't too happy about it.
"No parents?" the fat lady asked us.
She had beady eyes; pointy, coffee-stained teeth; a floppy denim hat, and a denim dress that bulged so much, she looked like a blue-jean blimp.
"They're below," Annabeth told her. "Scared of heights."
"Oh, the poor darlings."
The Chihuahua growled. The woman said, "Now, now, Sonny. Behave." The dog had beady eyes like its owner, intelligent and vicious.
Percy said, "Sonny. Is that his name?"
"No," the lady told him.
She smiled, as if that cleared everything up.
He didn't even realize Thalia's fingernails were digging into his arm until he went to reach for his ballpoint pen. He gave her a bewildered look. She was a lot paler than usual, sort of like a ghost.
"Why are you digging your fingernails into my arm?" he asked calmly.
She gritted her teeth. "I'm feeling nauseous, and I'd rather hurt you than Annabeth."
He could tell she wasn't lying.
At the top of the Arch, the observation deck reminded him of a tin can with carpeting. Rows of tiny windows looked out over the city on one side and the river on the other. The view was okay, but the Mississippi was gross looking. And he also hated the fact that he was in a confined space six hundred feet in the air. At this rate, Zeus would torch the Arch and he'd be to blame.
Annabeth kept talking about structural supports, and how she would've made the windows bigger, and designed a see-through floor.
"No thanks," Thalia muttered.
She probably could've stayed up there for hours, but luckily for both him and Thalia, the park ranger announced that the observation deck would be closing in a few minutes.
Percy steered Thalia and Annabeth toward the exit, loaded them into the elevator, and was about to get in himself when he realized there were already two other tourists inside. No room for him.
The park ranger said, "Next car, sir."
"We'll get out," Annabeth said. "We'll wait with you."
Percy glanced back at the fat lady, who was still there. A ghost's icy breath tickled the back of his neck, and he made a stupid decision. "Naw, it's okay. I'll see you guys at the bottom."
Thalia and Annabeth both looked nervous, but they let the elevator door slide shut. Their car disappeared down the ramp.
Now the only people left on the observation deck were him, a little boy with his parents, the park ranger, and, of course, the fat lady with her Chihuahua.
He smiled uneasily at the fat lady. She smiled back, her forked tongue flickering between her teeth.
Wait a minute. Forked tongue?
Her Chihuahua suddenly jumped down and started yapping at him.
He reached for his ballpoint pen.
"Now, now, Sonny," the lady said. "Does this look like a good time? We have all these nice people here."
"Doggie!" said the little boy. "Look, a doggie!"
His parents pulled him back.
The Chihuahua bared his teeth at Percy, foam dripping from his black lips.
"Well, son," the fat lady sighed. "If you insist."
Percy froze, the ballpoint pen out in his hand. "Urn, did you just call that Chihuahua your son?"
"Chimera, dear," the fat lady corrected. "Not a Chihuahua. It's an easy mistake to make."
The son of Poseidon backed up in fear.
The fat lady rolled up her denim sleeves, revealing that the skin of her arms was scaly and green. When she smiled, he saw that her teeth were fangs. The pupils of her eyes were sideways slits, like a reptile's.
The Chihuahua barked louder, and with each bark, it grew. First to the size of a Doberman, then to a lion. The bark became a roar.
The little boy screamed. His parents pulled him back toward the exit, straight into the park ranger, who stood, paralyzed, gaping at the monster.
The Chimera was now so tall it's back rubbed against the roof. It had the head of a lion with a blood-caked mane, the body and hooves of a giant goat, and a serpent for a tail, a ten-foot-long diamondback growing right out of its shaggy behind. The rhinestone dog collar still hung around its neck, and the plate-sized dog tag was now easy to read: CHIMERA—RABID, FIRE-BREATHING, POISONOUS—IF FOUND, PLEASE CALL TARTARUS—EXT. 954.
Percy didn't move. He knew if he did, the Chimera's blood maw would fly at him and kill him instantly.
The snake lady made a hissing noise that might've been laughter. "Be honoured, Percy Jackson. My lord rarely allows me to test a hero with one of my brood. For I am the Mother of Monsters, the terrible Echidna!"
"I don't think you're that terrible," Percy said. "You're just ugly. That's all."
She howled in anger, and through some sort of unspoken command, she ordered her son to attack him. The Chimera charged, its lion teeth gnashing. Percy managed to leap aside and dodge the bite.
He ended up next to the family and the park ranger, who were all screaming now, trying to pry open the emergency exit doors.
He couldn't let them get hurt. He told the park ranger, "Stay down, stay low and don't impede. Once the elevator gets here, leave!"
Percy rolled again as the Chimera tried to bite him once again. His fangs nearly decapitated the little boy's father, but they just missed. Percy ran to the other side of the deck and yelled, "Hey, Chihuahua!" The Chimera turned as quickly as a viper, and before he could do anything, it opened its mouth, emitting a stench like the world's largest barbecue pit, and shot of column of flame straight at him.
He dove through the explosion. The carpet burst into flames; the heat was so intense, it nearly seared off his eyebrows.
Where he'd been standing a moment before was a ragged hole in the side of the Arch, with melted metal steaming around the edges.
Oh, come on, he thought. I didn't actually think I'd blow up a national monument!
He raised Riptide to defend himself. The Chimera sat back a little, as if waiting for him to attack. He feinted, and the Chimera took the bait. Its serpent tail whipped around, and Percy managed to slice it right in half. The cut off part of the tail dissolved as it fell to the ground, but the rest of the monster was still alive. And it was very angry.
It swatted at him with its goat hooves and hit him hard. He fell to the deck floor and his sword when spinning out of the hole in the Arch and down toward the Mississippi. Before he could even react, he felt the searing hot flames before it even touched his clothing. His immediate reaction was delayed, but he eventually found himself screaming in horror and pain.
The Chimera advanced, growling, smoke curling from its lips. The Mother of Monsters, Echidna, cackled. "They don't make heroes like they used to, eh, son? No more proud, powerful heroes. Mortals foolishly believe morality and mercy will bring them success. Ha! Heroes are like pacifiers. A baby could suck on them. Weak."
The monster growled.
Through the burning fire, Percy saw the park ranger and the family. The little boy was hiding behind his father's legs. They watched in terror as the flames began to burn through his clothes.
"Unfortunately," said Echidna, "as the son of Poseidon, you have a bit of a resistance to fire. You burn less quickly, and that includes your clothes. But don't worry. My son here will ease the pain. You need not serve the faithless gods."
Immediately, Percy thought of Annabeth and Thalia. He didn't come this far to die now. For the first time, he realized how big of a part they both had in his life.
Far, far below, the river glittered.
"Son," Echidna said evilly. "Dinner is served."
Somewhere inside of him, Percy found the strength to resist the flames for just a moment. He felt Riptide in his pocket. He pulled it out, uncapped it and threw it into the Chimera's maw. As soon as the sword left his hands, he jumped.
His clothes on fire, his body burning, he plummeted toward the river.
You may be wondering: do the monsters know Percy's allegiance to Kronos? The answer: Yes. Yes, they do.
The next few chapters will be fairly generic and canon-like, if I haven't said so already. The differences, of course, would be that of Percy on the Titans' side. Be prepared.
If you have any questions, ask me.
Thanks,
Sharky