HOWDY Y'ALL! Heh, just kidding. Well, chapter four! HERE IT IS! Woo-hoo! I'm gonna give myself a pat on the back(:
So, did anyone read The Lost Hero? Yes? No? Maybe so? If you did, tell me! This way we can have long and detailed discussions about it! Sounds exciting, eh?
Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or plot of PJO.
P.S. There isn't really a breakout of influenza in Greece. At least, I don't think there is…
That's when things took a turn for the worse.
After getting out of there as quick as I possibly could, Chiron explained to me how everything happened.
The Gorgons had once faded, but since Medusa was so well-known in this era that they slowly began to reform. But still, after being dead for thousands of years, they were too weak to turn any unsuspecting victims into lovely stone decorations; but apparently the one that attacked us had enough power to petrify quite a few demigods.
Jill had been the first to see the creature, so therefore she was the first attacked.
"Well, I didn't hear any buzzing in my ears, so at least they're not dead." I suggested.
Chiron took this thoughtfully. "Yes, but we can't simply leave them in this state, and I'm afraid we do not know how to return them to normal."
"What about Apollo? Can't he come down and, well, fix them?" I asked. Couldn't he cure anything? I mean, he was the god of healing – he should be able to heal them.
"That's not an option. We can't rely on the gods to fix everything that goes wrong. Some things we need to do by ourselves. Apparently, this is one of them." Well, that's lame.
"The Apollo campers have tried to cure them, but nothing seems to work. They can't swallow the ambrosia or nectar, and none of their healing magic has any effect on them." He explained.
I couldn't possibly imagine who here could cure them if the Apollo kids couldn't. Possibly Hypnos? The God of Sleep? I was just about to recommend it to Chiron, but he seemed to read my mind.
"We've already tried Hypnos' children. Sleep is one thing; paralyzation is another." Darn.
I slumped down next to a tree, defeated. What if we never found a cure? What if Ji- er, all the kids were stuck like that forever? I pictured their still bodies lying in the same position for years, slowly aging as generation after generation of campers tried to solve the impossible mystery.
Chiron walked over to me and picked an apple off of the lowest hanging branch. He tossed it from hand to hand as he spoke to me.
"Look, Nico. I know that you ha-" he was cut off by a group of girls loudly making their way over.
A couple of giggling daughters of Hecate – with brightly colored hair and strange features – skipped past us, giggling and waving a thin twig through the air as if it were a fairy's wand. They gave us a quick wave, and then bounced up the stairs and into the infirmary. With a slam, the door shut behind them; but their laughs were still audible through the walls.
"What can they do to help?" I asked Chiron. A few daughters of Hecate would do nothing but make the situation worse, and before you know it we would have twelve petrified donkeys instead of campers and there would be an angry swarm of wasps buzzing around camp.
"They can control magic. As, uh," he struggled for the right word, "silly as they may be, they are quite powerful, and their healing spells may be just what we need." Even though Chiron said it so confidently, I still found it hard to believe.
Soon the giggles died down and there was quiet talking. At first, I thought they were getting sidetracked and having a conversation, but then I realized their laughing had been replaced by the sisters performing a spell. Whispered chanting rang in my ears as loud as if it were being said through a bullhorn, and soon enough there was a flash of bright light and blue smoke began to sneak out from the cracks in the walls.
Chiron hurried foward and swung open the door, calling for the girls. They wobbled out, one by one, coughing and covering their noses. The tallest one, who had some ridiculous name like Lime (it matched her bright green hair), came over to us. "I don't think it worked…"
Well, obviously.
Smoke poured out of the doorway now, and you could barely see the beds inside. I glared at the girls, even though they didn't seem to care. One of them was still laughing from the explosion.
"Well, that's alright. We can try something else. Thank you and your sisters for helping us, it was very kind of you girls." said Chiron with defeat in his voice. If the Apollo kids couldn't heal them, and Hecate's magic couldn't heal them, what could?
Lime had kept a straight face while talking to us, but once she walked away her and her sisters began to crack up. It boiled my blood that there were a dozen paralyzed campers lying helplessly in there, and they had the nerve to actually laugh.
"And you're sure you couldn't get Apollo to come?" I asked for the last time. Chiron nodded solemnly.
"I'm afraid so. He's very busy in the summertime. Plus, influenza just broke out in Greece, and he's horribly occupied making sure his homeland doesn't turn into a repeat of the Black Plague." Explained the centaur.
"The Black Plague?" I asked, "What's that?" I figured it was one of those many things I didn't learn about, considering I could count the number of years I went to school on one hand.
"Eh, long story. But in the end everyone died, and Apollo is trying to prevent that from happening again."
Unsure of what to say, I muttered "Oh…"
Chiron, who seemed to be upset, told me to go back to my cabin, and that there was nothing else for me to do.
He managed to smile at me. "Don't worry about it." He had said, but I found that almost impossible to do.
(an annoying line)
That night at the bonfire, Chiron explained to the campers what had happened. He read off the names of the petrified campers; and with each name he read, he received a few cries from the camper's siblings and friends.
When he read out Jill's name, a younger sister of hers stood up and shouted, "No fair! She said she would teach me fractional equations after lunch tomorrow!" Some siblings let out a small laugh, while others chocked back a sob. The little girl sat down, with her arms crossed stubbornly; but even across the bonfire I could see the tears building up in her eyes, and I'm sure it wasn't because she was disappointed about not discovering the wonders of fractional equations.
I counted a dozen names called in total. Some from major cabins like Ares and Athena, but there were two or three from cabins like Hebe and Nyx.
The fire burned low that night, and after a while it eventually died. People got up, wiped their eyes, and walked back to their cabins. A few tried to sneak towards the infirmary, but Chiron and Mr. D had stopped them and sent them off to bed.
"I don't understand why you're in such a hurry to see them." said Dionysus, "They'll still be there tomorrow. In fact, they won't be going anywhere for a while!" he laughed at his own joke, but the kid he was talking to burst out into tears and ran back to some cabin.
"Crybaby…" muttered Mr. D, and walked back leisurely to the Big House, sipping his diet coke the whole time.
The camp was eerily quiet. Everybody had gone straight to bed, exhausted by how long the day seemed to be and all the bad news it brought with it. I was no exception. Once my head hit the pillow, I had passed out – leaving the harshness of reality behind just for a little while.
(yet another annoying line)
Thump Thump Thump
I was woken up too soon, by yet another annoying person pounding on my door. I mean, I know I'm popular and all, but can't they just leave me alone?
"Nico! Nico! Open the door! It's serious!" shouted a voice.
I made no effort to get up. Maybe if I ignored them, they would go away.
"I know you're awake in there! I'm no fool!" they shouted.
I sighed, and dragged myself out of bed and over to the door, swinging it open.
"What?" I grumbled at the person through my teeth.
The person was actually Nate, someone you rarely saw around camp. Mostly because he spent more time sleeping than he did anything else, considering he was a child of Hypnos. That's really all those kids did do. On occasion, you would see one wandering around camp in their pajamas, but it was most likely because they were sleepwalking (which some of them tend to do). Nate, on the other hand, was almost never seen walking around camp – asleep or not.
"What could you possibly want at," I glanced at the clock in my room, "2:45 in the morning?" The tone of my voice was menacing, but he didn't seem to notice. In fact, he was almost jumping up and down. For a child of the god of sleep, he seemed awfully awake.
"Well, I was sleeping-" he started, but I cut him off.
"Wow, what a surprise." He ignored my comment, and continued talking.
"As I was saying, when I was sleeping I had this strange dream that there were three campers on a quest, searching for the cure to turn everyone back to normal." I didn't seem what was so strange about it; demigods had dreams like that all the time. "They were in the mountains, or was it the dessert? Maybe it was near the coast…?" he wondered aloud.
His eyes darted across the ground as he tried to remember. "The beach, the plains, was it the Grand Canyon? Or was it Mexico? Australia, maybe?"
I sighed. "Nate!"
"Wha-? Oh! Yeah! So anyways, they were in the forest! And one of them had blood on their face, and another had a limp!" he yelled, like it was the most delightful thing he could possibly imagine.
"Alright, we all knew this was gonna come down to a quest. And lots of people get injured during their quest. It's no big deal."
"No! But it was! It was really important!" he argued.
"Go tell Chiron. Now, if you'll excuse me I-"
"But you were one of the people!" he shouted before I had a chance to slam the door.
Me? Ha! I found that surprisingly hard to believe.
"What do you mean?" I demanded, but he just smiled.
"And guess what else!" he exclaimed. I waited for him to tell me, because I sure as Hades wasn't gonna guess.
"Jill was there too!"