5 I Become a Greek Architect
As Mr. D had given the start of the tournament I had expected the ground to split open and swallow us as the darkest and most dangerous monsters of Hades would wait at the bottom to devour us all. But it didn't. I also half expected the Ares cabin to assemble and attack me from behind or drown me in another public restroom. But they didn't. The beginning of the tournament actually went pretty smooth. As nothing happened, lightning struck down several times in the woods. I guess that was our cue, so all walked forward into the woods until we came to that clearing. There, in the sand was a big message. And when I say big message I mean ginormous gigantic like-it-was-written-by-Godzilla-himself message that even the most dyslectic person on the planet, which is probably me, could read. It said:
Those who are brave enough will start challenge one
Once started it is impossible to be left undone
Make my temple arise from the ground
Those unholy will be struck back down
So if I got this right, challenge one was building a temple for a god. Okay to be honest I had expected something more challenging. Or dangerous. Or terrifying. Not that I was complaining or anything. At the base of the gigantic riddle 15 big axes lay on the ground. As I picked up the axe that actually had my name on it, which was pretty cool, Clarisse looked at me. 'Good luck knucklehead. You're going to need it'. With those words Clarisse started attacking the nearest tree like she was Atilla the Hun or something. Not a very pretty sight. As all the other Ares kids also started abusing trees, I chose a small pine tree on my right. As I went in for my first chuck, I realized how heavy my axe actually was. With all my power I lifted it above my head and threw it against the tree, but whatever I tried, it was pretty useless. I was pretty useless. Unlike the Ares kids, who I imagined lived in Alaska shacks eating raw fish for breakfast and having professional wrestlers as mothers, growing up in New York didn't really help if you wanted to be a temple making woody wood chucker. As the others chucked through their trees like they were made of butter, I had hardly made a dent in mine. I stopped for a second to catch my breath when on my left, I saw one of Clarisse's brothers, Peter finish his temple. Yes it was ugly, just like him, and yes it barely stood u right, but it was a temple. He walked around it once to make sure it didn't fall over and then he started to wave his arms. 'I'm done! I'm done! Hellooo I'm dooone!' Next to the fact that the guy looked even more stupid than usual, which I thought to be impossible, something terrible happened.
Out of nowhere dark clouds gathered and in a flash of light and thunder, Clarisse's brother was struck down by lightning. Everyone stopped chucking and looked. Peter wasn't moving. And neither were we. No one moved. No one said a word. I guess we all realized what the last line of the riddle had meant. If your temple wasn't 'holy' enough, like Peter's had been, you got struck down. Literally. By Zeus's lightning bolt. The most powerful weapon in the world. And to make it even worse, the second line of the riddle meant that we couldn't quit building the temple either. It was building a great temple and move on to challenge two, or get struck down by Zeus. As Clarisse took a step towards Peter's lifeless body, the sky rumbled. Clarisse looked up, and carefully took a step back again. Trying to ignore Peter's lifeless body, we all continued like madmen to assault the trees.
As the others had already started to assemble their pieces of wood, my stack was still only as high as a medium-sized dwarf. If I kept chucking the wood at this rate, I would be here for another week. I threw away my axe and sat down against the tree trunk I has just mangled. I closed my eyes. There must be another way. 'Look guys, our little crybaby has already given up!' I tried to ignore Clarisse and think, which was not my strongest asset. Never choose easy. The sentence repeated itself in my head over and over. Suddenly I got it. I threw Clarisse my axe. 'Here you can have it, I don't need it anymore.' With a confused look on her face Clarisse watched as I spread out my arms. I felt a familiar tug in my gut and after half a minute or so a big, vast, cloud of water came hovering my way. 'You can't make a temple out of water, knucklehead' Clarisse yelled. 'Zeus wants a temple, not a puddle of mud.' 'For the first time you're actually right Clarisse' I replied. 'You can't make a temple out of water. But you can make a temple out of ice'. I had gathered the water in a squared shape and bowed my hands down. I still don't know how I managed to do it, but the water froze and in front of me stood a big transparent block of solid ice. The look on Clarisse's face was priceless. Ignoring all the other contenders, who were gawking at me like I was a snowman in July, I started to work. Last year my mom had had this obsession with sculptures and she used to watch hours and hours of some old boring guy hacking away making weird stuff out of rock. So I tried to do the same, in my own demigod way of course.
I aimed my hands and started moving them along the edges of the block. Part of the ice moved and I was actually able to shape the ice the way I wanted. I started to run circles around the ices, until I had shaped four big Greek-style pillars. I must say I have never been so happy to have Annabeth be so obsessed about architecture. She was always bothering me with pictures of important buildings and stuff. Normally this annoyed me but now it really helped. I knew exactly what to look for in shaping this temple. After a while a real column started to form and suddenly I got this brilliant idea. I started forming the ice up and down and up and down until I got this tree like shape. At the top of the temple I wrote the name Thalia in Greek and stepped back. My temple actually looked really cool. And I just knew Zeus would appreciate me honoring his daughter. Somehow I had always felt a weird connection to her. She was the only other alive big three kid. Okay, she was a tree so we didn't exactly talk or anything, but I still appreciated her keeping the camp safe. Unlike Peter I didn't frantically start yapping that I was done like some crazy person but I just looked up at the sky and said. 'I think I'm done now'. Nothing happened, and then again, out of nowhere, lightning struck.