Frost and Void, Protectors of the Universe

by Keef1234

Everyone sees their savior as invincible, all-powerful, and someone who can't be hurt. They are right about a few of those beliefs, but very wrong about being invincible. He may not take much physically, but he has been hurt enough to protect himself before it happens again, slowly encasing himself in ice until he frosts over completely. This is a rewrite/revise.

7. Chapter 6

Chapter Six

The Olympians all found themselves in the throne room and observed as Camp Half-Blood seamlessly moved to a safer location without the campers having to move a muscle. While Percy made them feel fear for the first time since Gaia, the gods were confident that he could train their children to be the best versions of themselves. No matter how much has changed in his last three thousand years, the demigod would never jeopardize the lives of the campers he's protected for years.

Then, at the nod of Percy's head, the assassin named Void jumped down and killed the three Roman campers. Apollo, Hermes, and Dionysus all flickered into their Roman forms, angry that their kids were murdered by the assassin. They looked to their father for guidance, and the King of the Gods seemed to age a thousand years at that moment.

Zeus slumped down on his throne, knowing that no one could stop that from happening or get revenge in some form. The simple fact was that these were beings who had possibly been alive longer and seen mortals live and die on many different planets, so the lives of their children were basically nothing. Perseus told them not to mess with him, and those demigods paid the price of testing him. He needed the suddenly silent Athena more than ever, if not for her presence then for her direction.

Line Break

The Creator couldn't help but laugh as the first three boys fell into her throne room, followed by the other two. Everyone saw them "die", but in reality, their sentience was just forcibly removed from their bodies and sent to Lady Chaos. The price of defying Percy's word isn't death for civilians or allies, but it may as well be because their lives can end.

They can sent back in time to their birth where they will relive their lives. At the age of thirteen, they would get their memory back, and hopefully, they learn their lesson and return to their original consciousness, or they would have to restart until it became a nightmare. The other option is to demonstrate maturity by understanding their mistakes in life and the best next steps to lead a better life than their first. They would then continue their lives as if they never "died" at all. Now, on to her first prisoner of war, the Titan of Destruction.

The poor immortal tried time and time again to kill himself and return to Tartarus, but the healing light in his cell kept that from happening. She already extracted all the information she could from his head and sent the data to Percy and Isaiah. His only function is to now either serve the army or go to the realm of the faded.

Lady Chaos was admittedly nervous about Percy and Isaiah's chances at defeating her son Tartarus and it was understandable nerves. The dark primordial only grew in power as time passed in the universe and her top agents had only been alive a fraction of that time even if their lives spanned several millennia. Isaiah has been an assassin for more than forty thousand years and spent all of that time training, learning, and growing his powers. He would be the best candidate to fight Tartarus and Lady Chaos knew that, single-handedly, he would fail in that endeavor.

The loose cannon that would lead to victory is Perseus Jackson. The son of Poseidon had spearheaded two wars as a mortal and countless more after he joined the Chaotic army. Somehow in his short three thousand years, the man had surpassed every one of his peers including Isaiah himself in power and didn't even know it. If you asked Percy right now, he'd assume that his brother in everything but blood was far more powerful than him, and he couldn't be more wrong.

The creator couldn't do much but advise her agents on how to handle this war, and hope that Percy thawed his heart enough to let people in. For those people will be the reason he'll have the power to defeat her most powerful son.

Line Break

The command center was deceptively enormous! The particularly selected specialists walked into a building that from the outside, was four stories and rather narrow. It almost appeared to be an office building covered in Percy's insignia, but when they walked inside, it was far more significant than that. Kevin and Leo agreed that they had just entered the Death Star from Star Wars at the view of the command center's interior.

The men and women at their monitors completely ignored them as they walked around in awe. The specialists found that every being in the room was humanoid to some degree but proved that there were certainly different beings in the universe. Then suddenly Percy's captain Esmeralda appeared in a poof of purple dust.

"Hey, guys! I'm gonna take you to the commander, and he will begin your training! If you didn't hear back there, I'm Esmeralda, and as long as I'm not training you, I'll be the friendliest person you know. Percy on the other hand..." She rambled on as they walked into an elevator that began taking them down.

The captain's cheerful attitude was contagious, and soon, the specialists were no longer nervous and jittery, not considering that this could be a mini trap that she sprung on them. Once they reached their stop, their clothes instantly changed into a form-fitting jumpsuit. It hugged every muscle on their bodies and removed their original clothing.

This change startled them so much, they didn't realize that the elevator had disappeared around them and they now stood in front of two large doors. In front of one was Percy and in front of the other was Esmeralda. Percy was wearing a white polo with black jeans and black and white sneakers while Esmeralda was wearing full military attire. Combat boots, cargo pants, and a sports bra that somehow didn't leave much to the imagination. The contrast confused the specialists, but they knew not to judge a book by its cover.

Percy didn't address them as a whole, he simply waved his hand creating a screen with all of the specialists' names in a specific order, and Hazel's name was first and highlighted. The commander gave her a meaningful look, then walked into the door on the right. Everyone silently wished the daughter of Pluto luck before she walked into the room.

"That means that the rest of you are with me. If you are not receiving your specific training from Commander Frost, you will be training with me as you wait. Remember that I said that I'm cool as long as I'm not training you? Well, now you're gonna learn to hate me!" Esmeralda said before proceeding into the room to the left.

The prior nervous tension arose again as the remaining specialists walked into the room. No one would expect this from a woman that looked like Esmeralda. She appeared to be around the age of twenty, was 5'5, had a lean muscle build, a six-pack but not overly defined, and large breasts that were contained but almost seemed to flash in the boy's eyes. It was hard to judge her waist down because she was wearing cargo pants, but she looked like a small, quiet, and friendly college girl.

To see her stand before them with a stern face created a paradox for the person they met coming in.

"Please, excuse the accent. There are no 'races' on my planet, but if we related to your planet, we would be most closely related to Cubans. That segways into the knowledge that there are beings on other planets. That realization may scream 'Alien' in your head, but they are likely just like you. When Lady Chaos creates life on a planet, she bases it off of her most significant and worst creation, Earth." Esmeralda began the mini-educational aspect of their training, mostly to address her origin.

"So every planet has variations of what we call humans, the main difference being where they went with their evolution as a whole?" Annabeth asked.

"Yes. Some planets are far more advanced and took technology to the level that we have on Chaotica, our home planet. Some planets are still in cave people days, and it works for them. It is not our job to uplift or form a society. It is our job to protect it from others and from itself if necessary. With different planets come different monsters that are killed in different ways by different people. With different planets come different deities who are worshipped by different people in different ways."

"I'm assuming like your godly parent is one of them?" Derrick interjects.

"Yes. The most similar idea on this planet to my mom is a genie. She grants wishes based on what a person deserves according to the moral system of beliefs on my planet. She is not a hostile goddess but can grant a wish for a person to become strong enough to protect her and those she loves. My planet, Elcrat, is in Sector V and only births female offspring. What was passed down to me is her natural godly abilities like teleportation, levitation, super strength, and immortality. From her domains, I got the ability to grant any wish every 1390 hours based on my planet's rotation around its sun. At this moment, I can give 423,867 wishes. The only issue is, I can narrowly grant wishes to people who deserve them based on my planet's moral standards, so I have many buyers, but few candidates."

"That makes sense, but is it magic? Is there a limit?" Amy wondered if this power related to her mother in any way. Then again, if children of Hecate could grant wishes, the Second Titan War would've ended differently.

"Yes..."

The specialists naturally had a lot of questions about the universe and covered a lot of information such as how every Chaotic Warrior has a translator built into them, forcing everyone they speak to understand them and for the Warrior to hear them in their language. They also covered how the Chaotic army works and that as specialists, they would be equivalent to lieutenants in the military. They would've continued, but they heard a large thump in the adjacent room followed by a feminine angry scream/grunt.

Esmeralda took that as a sign that they had been talking for too long and that while the room does distort time, they only get 12 more hours in a day than Earth time, so they still needed to work. Percy was clearly making good time with his first personal training with a specialist so the captain needed to finally get started.

"We can start training off like this every day, but now, it's time to work and become real specialists. The first exercise is to run around this room three hundred times. Not kidding. Each time you give up, you will regain full stamina, but you have to start over. I will remain in the middle of the room keeping track of your progress. Once four of you are done, those four will move on to the next while the other three have to add one hundred to the laps. Good luck." And with that, Esmeralda stood perfectly still in the middle of the room. This seemed a daunting task but only told the captain how committed everyone was to this training.

A screen appeared on one of the walls, displaying a scoreboard for each of the eight. They looked around at each other, thinking how the fuck they were gonna be able to do this.

Line Break

Rewinding to after Hazel walked into the room with Percy, the young woman was unaware of how soon her training would start. As soon as she walked in, she couldn't breathe. She struggled for air as if it weren't there and Percy merely looked at her unconcerned. She pointed to her throat to signal that something was wrong but he looked just as apathetic as before. He took a deep breath in and exhaled, and she jumped to where he exhaled, to find that she could breathe that just fine.

The daughter of Pluto frantically gestured for him to keep breathing out and she could breathe the air that came from his lungs. With that, Percy smiled and snapped his fingers, and suddenly Hazel could breathe. She took several deep breaths and was ready to curse him out for doing that before the gravity in the room increased tenfold.

This reminded the demigoddess of how she died with her mom, the cavern crushing them the same way that gravity was breaking her. She fell to the floor, flat, and felt her actual body flattening too. Hazel then realized that this must be some sort of test, for Percy to see how ready she was to do this. She moved her eyes to where Percy was to see if the gravity was affecting him but it wasn't. It must not be the room then, it has to just be where she is standing. She used her power over the mist to create the image of her still struggling on the floor before taking all of her willpower and strength to roll away from the gravity field.

As she thought, the gravity was excellent there, so she got up and gathered her bearings. Hazel was proud to be a champion of Hecate and often used the magic and power that came with the opportunity. She expected Percy to still be staring at the mist form she created and he was. He had a confused look on his face again that made him look kind of young and adorable. But it wasn't the face he was making that made it seem more youthful. It's cause he had his old sea-green eyes!

But Percy doesn't look like that anymore so...

Hazel snapped her head to her right to see the current Percy standing next to her smirking. She realized that he must've done the same thing she did and wanted to see how quickly she could locate him. The demigoddess braced herself for the next challenge but was pleasantly surprised to see a bench rise from the floor.

Percy sat down and waved her over to him so she could sit too. Once she sat, her body felt strange. She thought it was another test... but there is no reason Percy would be testing her by making her feel horny. Right?!

It was too late for any other thoughts now, Hazel's body got hot and took over her mind. She looked at Percy and her mind went blank. The young hormonal woman felt the sudden need to jump at him and rip his clothes off. He became one of the most powerful beings in the universe and is probably good at everything he does. If that's the case, then his cock must be more than pleasurable. Satisfying. Better than what Frank could give her while they were together. Maybe even be able to take her virginity. The perfect choice to do it in fact. She was unquestionably wet enough to alleviate the pain of penetration.

If she could cut a hole in his jumpsuit and align herself above his...

Then the feeling suddenly went away. Hazel was no longer horny, and she found herself on her knees in front of Percy, clawing at his pants. He sat above her with a disappointed look on his face as he took notes on the panel that appeared on his arm. A screen popped up on one of the walls, and it showed that the demigoddess got a B- as a grade.

Hazel Levesque: Daughter of Pluto, Origin of Earth(A-1):

-10 for lack of control of hormones

-5 for the time taken to realize Frost's movement

-3 for sitting on the bench without being wary of any danger

Overall Grade: B- 82

Hazel hadn't been to formal school in almost a century, but even she knew that a B- is an excellent way to say you're barely proficient. She hated herself for failing the last part but did understand that she was young and not in control of her hormones. She just hoped that Percy wouldn't look at her in a different light from her actions. Sure she always found him attractive, but she never felt a need to pursue him romantically. The demigoddess had her focus on Frank Zhang, her fellow praetor, but that obviously hadn't gone far. Percy may have slipped into her sexual fantasies, but that was only to get off during her more erotic nights.

"Are you done? Since you walked in this room, you've been projecting your thoughts, and I can literally hear all of them," Percy deadpanned. Hazel's face felt extremely hot as she tried to find something to say to that. She didn't want him to know that she masturbated to thoughts of him. Now he definitely saw her in a different light, which was the opposite of her intentions while walking into the room.

"Actually, I'm more concerned about your prior thoughts. You shouldn't hate yourself for failing at something you have little experience with. Each current lieutenant I have that was given a variation of this test got a C or lower. The average is 62, and that's an increase from 47 in the past two hundred thousand years. I'm actually proud of you!" Percy looked at her not with the disgust that she expected, but with pride that she already surpassed members of his army.

Hazel felt happy that she did better than she thought but was a little too focused on how to stop him from hearing her thoughts. She was having trouble keeping images from her fantasies from popping into her head since the person they were about was right in front of her. The demigoddess may have had a better chance if the man hadn't admitted to hearing her thoughts, which only increased her nerves.

Abruptly, Percy shot something into her arm and her body froze up. Hazel couldn't move to see what he shot her with or why he did it. Then her body started to burn from the inside. Her old friend wouldn't kill her, right? While they weren't as close as he was with Thalia and others, the daughter of Pluto felt as if they built a significant amount of friendship in the short time they knew each other in his original life. This must be something to help Hazel or test her so she decided to endure the burning feeling all over her body. A liquid fire spread from the point in her arm where she was injected, her veins became visible under her skin, and the pain spread until the veins could be seen all around her body.

The pain was getting worse and had spread down to her fingertips, and up to her shoulder. Hazel wondered if she would die when it hit her heart, or if she would have to suffer till it reached her brain. The pain slowed as it started traveling up her neck, but when it arrived at her heart, a new type of pain exploded in her body, causing her to cry out incoherently.

And as sudden as it began, it was over. The demigoddess was kneeling, nearing a fetal position, as she held herself trying to calm down and recover mentally from the pain. She wished her body didn't hurt as much... and it stopped. Just as she finished that thought, she somehow felt okay.

Hazel looked up at Percy to see if he would explain why he injected her with an unknown solution. He had a gun in his hand, a normal one that any mortal would have in a safe in their house. He aimed it at his own arm and shot three times. She winced at each shot but saw that the bullets bounced off of his arm with no damage to the limb. He then handed the gun to her.

After the tests and all the pain she felt in the first ten minutes of this training, she was done with all the second-guessing. The daughter of Pluto grabbed the gun and shot her arm three times too. The impact of each bullet did hurt a little, but it was as if her skin became armor-plating after the injection. However, Hazel could still pull and pinch the skin as if it were normal, so it wasn't precisely armor.

"Imagine having the Curse of Achilles, but without the mortal point of weakness and without having high stamina for a finite period of time. That's what I just gave you. You are now officially a Chaotic Warrior!" Percy told her as his insignia appeared on the front of her jumpsuit, between her breasts.

As a daughter of death, Hazel could sense when someone's death is soon or how far away it is for herself, and the people who she is close to. Just as he finished his words, she felt her death disappear, as if she were a full immortal. But as powerful as Percy has become in the past two years, there's no way he made her immortal so easily. Why can't she sense her final day?

The demigoddess felt a door between her thoughts and everything else and knew that this was the way to stop the projection of her thoughts. She closed that door, and Percy smiled at her, a genuine smile at her fast growth. While Hazel felt there was so much more that came with this new status, Percy gave her a look that meant business.

Hazel stood up straight and squared herself as Percy began pacing leisurely. "As a daughter of Pluto/Hades, you have a wide set of powers. There is a misconception that children of gods only have some powers from their godly parent, and their siblings may have different abilities. In reality, any powers that a child of that god can possibly have, they do have that ability. Nico can raise and speak with the dead freely, as well as shadow traveling. You can control the riches of the earth and a lot of power over the mist. You shadow-traveled a few times yourself, that's proof of what I said. Bianca thought she could only control hellfire and sense tunnels, but after training, she was able to do almost everything that you and Nico could do. She never truly mastered all of her father's powers though, because that was meant for you."

"Me?" Hazel never got over the fact that her brother had brought her back to life while the Doors of Death were loose. The demigoddess felt as if it were luck that brought her back and nothing else. Her success along with the rest of the seven granted her the opportunity to remain alive after the war and the daughter of Pluto never thought anything else of it.

"Bianca was trained to be great, but you were already meant to be great since you're destiny was determined before she and Nico were even born. For the next weeks, we will explore all of those powers, and you will master each of them. When the war reaches its peak, you'll be able to take out thousands of monsters yourself before getting hit, or even breaking a sweat, not that either would truly affect you."

"Before we start, can you tell me if I'm fully immortal or something more, because I can't sense my own death..."

Percy walked up to her and summoned an utterly black blade, and she knew that this metal could cut her despite the upgrade that her skin got. He gave her a small cut on her arm, and Hazel was amazed as silver blood came from her arm. She couldn't tell what that meant, but she felt invincible from this upgrade. She didn't have mortal red blood. She didn't even have immortal golden ichor. She had silver blood and didn't even know if it was blood. It was super thick and flowed out as if it were lava from a volcano.

"This marks you as a Chaotic Warrior. Think about it like a mortal video game. We get five lives before we fade from the universe. If you were to die somehow, you would reform like an immortal does and would come back with your silver blood not as thick or silver. Each time you die, it becomes lighter and brighter until it is white water, signaling that you are on your final life. We can delve into more about the changes made to you but first," Percy snaps his fingers.

Hazel's geokinesis told her that the floor under her was turned into dirt, and then it was removed, leaving a gaping hole under them. She looked up at Percy confused as he snapped his fingers again. She now sensed something new under them using her ferrokinesis, and it felt like several precious metals were put into one. Controlling that would be very difficult, but judging from the expecting look on Percy's face, that's exactly what he wants her to do.

"We need to control the powers that you already have and make it so that they are as simple as muscle control. First, we focus on geokinesis and ferrokinesis, and then we can move on to things a little more difficult before training you in the new powers you need to do. Now bring the metal up and throw it at me with all your might."

The commander stood back and gestured for her to get to work. Hazel had no problem finding it and feeling it, but when concentrating on it, she couldn't tell the metals apart. It was like listening to several different people and trying to focus on each at the same time. Overwhelming and nearly impossible.

It'd been a few minutes now, and Percy had not sensed the rock move at all and was getting slightly impatient. The new warrior finally understood what to do with the rock, instead of separating it by metal, she needed to just determine it as a new mineral and move it through its surface. Just as Percy was about to prematurely end the training, the ground started rumbling.

It was hard to break through the metal floor, and Hazel realized that her new commander hadn't set any specific parameters, so she summoned her sword from seemingly nowhere and cut a small incision in the level above the metal. At this, Percy's right eyebrow raised. She resumed bringing the metal concoction up, and it broke through the floor rather quickly.

The next part was to push it forward, at a high enough velocity to hit Percy, but there was a big difference between bringing the rock directly up at a controlled speed and driving the rock forward at high speed. No matter what she did, she couldn't even create a trajectory towards the man.

Percy was ready to call it quits for this session early, he only wanted Hazel to get a taste of what training would be like, but she kept concentrating to the point where he didn't want to interrupt her. Rather than make it harder or terminate the training, the friendship they shared before he died made him not want to see her fail. Even after a few millennia, Percy still saw her as an amazing friend he was lucky to have on the quest to free Thanatos and subsequently defeat Gaia.

With that thought, Percy made himself look like the mud face of Gaia that Hazel knew all too well and primed himself in a position that was more directly in front of her. When the demigoddess saw that Gaia was in front of her instead of Percy, the child within faltered and wanted to cry. Hazel could almost feel how powerless she was as her mother was brainwashed into forcing the young girl to create the monstrosity to oppose her father. Then suddenly, the memory of her and her mother suffocating in Ressurection Bay appeared in Hazel's mind, and the young woman suddenly felt white-hot anger flash through her body as she let out an angry scream and threw the rock as hard and as fast as she could at what she saw as Gaia.

Percy barely dodged it but allowed the image of Gaia getting hit by the rock to perpetuate, just to satisfy Hazel. The specialist turned to him and realized what happened just now. She didn't know whether or not to feel happy that she did it, glad that she could use Gaia as a target and punching bag, or disappointed that it took anger to channel her true power. Hazel felt a lot of emotions at once, but eventually, and unfortunately, they settled into a negative vibe.

"Congrats! You weren't supposed to pass that; actually, the power test is supposed to show you what will be able to do when you leave-... Are you okay?" Percy faltered as his old friend rushed to him with tears in her eyes and hugged him. With this, the ice surrounding his frozen heart melted a little, and he hugged her back as she cried into his chest. Percy didn't realize how much of an effect seeing and defeating Gaia could have on Hazel, nor how it feels to be helped across the finish line.

They stood in the middle of the room and just held each other, resuming a long and inseparable friendship between the two.

Line Break

The specialists were either resting in the middle, preparing for the next workout or still completing their run. Not surprisingly, Kevin, Derrick, and Annabeth were done and waiting. Kevin was a son of Hermes and the fastest in camp, he finished long before anyone else reached half the required laps. Derrick's training as a child of Ares focused on brute strength and weapon training but did not negate stamina which was an important part of fighting, especially when facing many enemies. Annabeth was smart enough to calculate her running speed and know the amount of oxygen she needed to finish the course without overexerting herself and giving up. The others were almost done but were on the brink of dropping.

Esmeralda was insanely impressed by the specialists' actually being able to complete the task presented before them. Normal recruits couldn't do even a hundred laps, the most recent specialists she trained couldn't break two hundred laps. Earth's recruits were far more promising than anyone she'd trained and it made the genie wonder if Percy, Luke, and Charles had downplayed their home planet during descriptions.

On the wall between the two training rooms, a door formed and opened. It revealed a smiling and slightly giddy Hazel and a stoic, but somewhat mirthful Percy. The commander's appearance helped the remaining runners keep going because they didn't want to disappoint Percy in his presence.

Percy put his index finger on Amy's forehead as she ran by to take the past hours of what they did and placed the same finger on Hazel's forehead to give that information to her as if she were there the whole time. The daughter of Pluto looked at him, and after some unspoken communication, she nodded and began to run along next to Leo who comically looked like he was going to die. She pulled up a ruby with a new ease and put it hovering in front of him, and suddenly the Latino perked up and tried to get the precious jewel.

Esmeralda mentally facepalmed and looked to Percy to confirm that he would be taking the next specialist. She snapped her fingers, and everyone froze in place, so as to not disturb the running that the remaining specialists had to complete. If the genie remembered the board outside the rooms correctly, Annabeth was next. Luckily, the daughter of Athena was the third to finish the run so she was rested and ready.

Percy looked at each of them until he made eye contact with Annabeth. She memorized the list in less than a few seconds, so she knew it was her, then Kevin. The anxious demigoddess couldn't read his almost frozen eyes to see if he didn't like this or was ready to tolerate her. She internally sighed and prepared to walk over to the door next to him.

He broke eye contact with her and said," Kevin! You're up!" This confused Esmeralda and Kevin and genuinely hurt and frustrated the daughter of Athena. There's no way Percy really going to delay Annabeth's training because of the history between the two. Kevin walked forward carefully, looking at Annabeth for confirmation. He understandably respected her because she was a camp leader and didn't want to disrespect her by rushing to take her place.

Esmeralda snapped her fingers harder than prior, and the specialists froze in time as well. "Really Percy? Are you gonna let your feelings get in the way of her training? Do I need to send her to Isaiah to become an assassin instead?"

"It has nothing to do with her as a person! It's her face really. I could never forget those stormy gray eyes..." Percy trails off as he thinks of what happened between him and Annabeth all those years ago, and what caused him to so willingly jump into the worst hell he'd ever experienced. Millennia later and he still had rare nightmares about his time in the pit.

"Regardless, Annabeth needs to be trained! Very few individuals in the universe fit our requirements and you will not squander one due to personal feelings. Honestly, I believe reuniting with your old friends will be far more healthy than anything I've seen you do in the past centuries. You know how much I care about your well-being," Esmeralda approached her commander for a hug.

Percy laughed and pushed her off of him. "As your commander, you should be professional in my presence!" He mocked the previous commander of the Chaotic Army who demanded that no soldier show the slightest bit of emotion in his presence.

"I'm terribly sorry about that Commander Frost. Please don't make me do a year of training in the box," Esmeralda faked cried out. They both laughed, allowing the tension that arose to defuse. "Train Kevin and Annabeth today, then cycle tomorrow, okay?" Esmeralda kissed him on the cheek and went back to the position she was in before she stopped time without waiting for Percy to agree to her terms.

Time resumed with the snap of her fingers and Percy walked into the other training room with Kevin trailing him. Annabeth watched him with tears threatening to water her eyes, but she cried enough tears while he was gone. He has to train her eventually so she will wait until then to confront him. The daughter of Athena straightened up to make it seem like it didn't affect her.

Esmeralda discreetly gave her a sympathetic look before resuming everything. The specialists that were running stumbled a bit but caught themselves and kept running. Once Kevin crossed into the other room, Percy followed, and the door disappeared.