Brief explaination for this chapter:
This takes place after Chapter 19, when Mr D and Chiron are discussing Harry after meeting him for the first time, but possibly before/at the same time as Chapter 20)
Chiron had never seen Dionysus so tired, and had never felt his millenia-old age more than now.
" Magicians." snarled Dionysus as he threw himself on his chair waving his hand, an entire bottle, and two glasses of Mavroudi appeared.
"Damn Magicians. " As Dionysus sat, not touching his wine but glaring at it, Chiron waited. It was simply a matter of time before the gods, after being startled into their older forms, slowly remembered themselves. They were not in Ancient Greece, or the Kingdom of the Franks, or the United Kingdom, but the 21st century United States of America. Minutes of silence stretched, but slowly Dionysus buried himself and Mr D returned to the fore.
The silence stretched on, neither immortal speaking, staring at the Mavroudi. Chiron couldn't say how long they stood (or sat in Mr D's case) but eventually Mr D let out a sigh and thumped the table.
The Mavroudi turned into a family sized Diet Coke bottle once the table stopped rattling, and the goblets into small cans, one of which Mr D. clicked open and downed like an alcoholic would drink wine. Three seconds, the next can was popped open, and just as swiftly drunk and slammed down on the small table.
"What I would give for even a table wine !" Vines sprung up, winding around the table and chair legs. Thunder boomed in the distance.
"Mr D." Chiron warned, like a teacher would remind a first-grader to stop fooling around.
If he were a mortal, a halfblood, or even one of his rowdier cousins, Chiron knew he would be a dolphin, or possibly a new species of grape. But he was the Trainer of Heroes, not only immortal but invulnerable within Camp Half Blood as long as his ancient oath was upheld then he simply existed.
"Fine." It would have been more intimidating if Mr D didn't immediately sound like a five-year old, slouching and petulantly scowling, but the vines vanished, and the feeling of giddiness vanished.
"Of course a magician would turn up now. Damn Egyptians." Mr D. fumed, pulling another Diet Coke from somewhere, nursing it and glaring at the table like it offended him.
"I don't think he was Egyptian, or she wasn't at the very least. She sounded very…"
"Rural." Mr D inserted. "Now don't shake your head like that, you know what I mean, I can tell country-yokels from city-slickers." Mr D snapped his fingers, and a small platter appeared with fine crystal goblets, but no wine thankfully. One carved with fields and grassland, cattle and hills, the other replete with images of buildings and walls and throngs of people and steles and temples.
"Yes, that was not the accent that a civilized Egyptian of any remove would use. Perhaps if the magicians can no longer keep themselves to the Egyptian Pantheon that speaks of something deeper."
"Theresa mentioned something about Welsh Pantheon, I wonder if it is the woman. Ginny, she said her name was.. Ginny, Ginnie, Ginevera."
"Gwenhwyfar." Chiron interrupted, uncharacteristically impatient for Mr D to reach the point.
"Yes." Grumbled the irritated God. "Welsh, albeit anglicized. But it appearst what Tracey said was true to an extent."
Sometimes Mr D. was a blessing, but often it was incredibly annoying; yes the god of revelry, madness and wine was supremely unsuitable for an American summer camp so Mr D was better than Dionysus, but Mr D was difficult for many teenagers to work with (he remembered when Mr D. first appeared, it took a week of endlessly grumbling about why they were in America of all places, that Germany would be much better, or France was his constant hope, ' where they do things properly' ).
"Yes, but didn't she say that Harry was Welsh?"
"Wales was always rural, and Harry sounds very like the courtiers used to." Chiron could remember the courtiers in the Medieval Era, sounding so very similar, completely unlike modern America.
"Maybe he declared himself Welsh because of his wife?" Mr D mused. He always was more sympathetic to the wives of 'those damn heroes'
Chiron was silent, recalling the events and stories from their time in Great Britain.
"Whenever a Welsh princess was attacked it never ended well." He mused.
"That is a leap old boy." Mr D looked up almost condescendingly, but Chiron didn't spend decades in his company and not learn to read deeper, Mr D was worried. The Welsh were notoriously proud, a Welsh woman would only deign to wed an Englishman, especially an English courtier if he were exceptional in some way.
"Not a princess." Chiron conceded, "but the principle is the same."
"In New York, the heart of our power. They are Welsh, I need to remind you." Mr D seemed to dismiss it. One of the newer Olympians were never so dismissive, unlike his father Chiron knew, unfortunately Mr D was a deep mask that rarely slipped. For his own calm, Chiron hoped it slipped briefly, it was sometimes infuriating dealing with Mr D rather than Dionysus.
"Usually I would agree with you, no other single Pantheon can rival us, but the Diadochi were not a single rival." Chiron knew, as did Mr D even if he pretended not to, that the Welsh were part of and bound to the Celtic pantheon on the whole, the Irish, Scots and Ancient French would come to their aid if needed. The Irish gods and heroes were quite unrestrained , the less said about the Scots the better.
"Hmm. Well I would like to see Taliesin again, pay him back for that black eye in Avalon. I suppose if the entire Celtic Pantheon were to become involved, the chance of seeing Creirddylad again would be almost worth it." Mr D appeared much happier with that idea. "The Celts never had demigods, not like we do at least, and most of their Pantheon are tied to the land, so that makes it all a moot point anyway."
While that may have been true, Chiron couldn't help but worry. They had all thought they would remain in Greece forever, but the Roman attacks and mingling allowed the spread of the Flame of the West and allowed them to travel, what if the conflict between the Celtic and Greek Pantheons gave them the same possibility of moving.
"We were also tied to the land once." Chiron felt the need to remind him.
"Yes, but thank the Romans for their lack of creativity!" Mr. D mock cheered. "The modern world doesn't have that problem." The god looked at the centaur, the ability to read the other went both ways after all. "So the Celts cannot come here anyway. Shame, it would've been nice to see some of them again."
Chiron sighed, Mr D apparently forgot that for every minor god that got along with them, there were two more that very much did not .
"The gods may not be able to travel, but the magicians most certainly can."
"The magicians cannot affect us my dear centaur, they are not Greek after all."
"Pure Egyptian magicians that is true, but Harry was a magician and most certainly not a pure Egyptian, and we come back to the initial point, if there are magicians from other Pantheons, then they could affect us, especially the Celts.
"One magician, Egyptian or not, can not stand against even a minor god, I doubt he could even wound Ganymede." Chiron knew that Mr D held Ganymede as the absolute lowest bar that even the most inept demigod in Camp could stand above him.
"One magician who could call on others, many already here, and who are not bound as we are."
"Oh yes, how terrible that we have laws and reasons to not interfere." Mr D unhappily sipped his Coke.
"Even if we were not bound, fighting a war on two fronts is unwise, regardless of the quality of the opposition."
Mr D simply sipped at his Coke, looking like he was completely ignoring the centaur. Chiron sighed again, Mr D was very good at appearing disinterested, even when it would suit everyone's purpose for him to not look it.
"I suppose, my dear centaur, that it doesn't really matter." At Chiron's raised eyebrow, he continued grudgingly, "We can't risk anyone, Welsh or Egyptian, to get involved, especially with that spy in the camp. Who knows, maybe Grandfather will be able to tempt them to fight for him, and the half bloods are stretched enough as it is."
Ah yes, Chiron thought, the half-bloods are stretched, not the gods. One thing never changed in all the millennia of training demigods, their parents wouldn't take responsibility for any failings, insisting it was all the demigods fault. How could they be at fault, they were Gods !
"You do have a point my friend. I suppose arguing about if Harry is Welsh or Egyptian or Norse is of limited use, either way we should try our best to keep him out of our … recent affairs ." Chiron wanted to ask Harry for help, but knew that he couldn't risk Harry, or any magician, fighting for Kronos. The Greeks, after all, had a long history with Egyptians, not all of it good. He didn't want to think how terrifying Kronos could be if he had Egyptian gods and magic on his side.
"I suppose we can tell Theresa and Grover that under no circumstances must anything about the magicians be mentioned at all in camp. Best ignore it and wait until they pass on, no doubt to something more interesting ." The god sneered. He still hadn't forgiven the Ptolemys nor their adopted land for turning their backs on 'good old fashioned wine and theater' for their libraries and 'dusty tomes of magic'.
Chiron just looked at him. Yes Mr D had more than enough reasons to dislike the Welsh and want to avoid the Egyptians, but the time-honored godly strategy of ignoring the problem, as immortals very few things could bother the gods, may not work in this case.
But the risks of Harry, Egyptian or Welsh, fighting for Kronos, against the gods, was too great. The heroes would be on their own, as they always were.
Reaching out for another Coke that Mr D had summoned, Chiron drank, hoping that for once, things didn't become needlessly complicated, working with dozens of teenaged Americans was hard enough.
A/N: bit of an info dump here
So Mr D (and a lot of the 'modern' American personas the gods have/use) is a front, kind of distinct from the OG Greek Dionosys (my headcanon is that the god's adopt different personalities as they travel, so that the PJO Mr D can still have done the crazy things and still 'be' the Dionosys in the myths, but after 2000 years they've mellowed out
And yes, the god of wine and craziness and many inappropriate things is not the right kind of guy to watch over a Summer Camp! But if Mr D is a separate personality (sort of) from Dionosys, then I can see how he could be an okay choice (so disinterested in anything, he isn't at risk of turning a camper into anything, despite how much he threatens to do so, I guess that any other god would half the number of campers because of some slight or something)
Mr D is a bit of a snob, but I like to think that many Egyptian 'demigods' (such as they are) would be 'well spoken', the Egyptian Gods probably wouldn't possess anoyone that wans't as 'civilised' as they were (yes IRL the Egyptians were very snobbish, at least their rulers and scribes were, and they did have such a long lasting civilization with relatively little infighting, they kind of had a point that compared to their Greek/Roman/Hittite/Phoenican neighbours they were more civilized)
Also they both discount 'wizards' for a very good reason (I'll explain that in a later chapter), and naturally hop to other Pantheons as an explaination - like Chiron said in TLT, mortals aren't important enough to be hurt by Greek demigod weapons, so of course he'd also think that anyone remotely important would be more likely connected to a Pantheon
(forewarning, magic and wizards isn't going to be a 'Hectae's secret children' thing that a lot of fics go for - The Greeks were not the oldest civilisation in the world, they don't get a claim on magic (the Egyptians were writing about magic and spells IRL before the Greeks were even writing their own names))
And despite me making Chiron/Mr D look uncaring, to them (millennia old beings) the only things that they know survive are Pantheons, so it isn't them being deliberately 'bad' it is just they've seen what mortals do to each other, you can't really blame them for dismissing them out of hand and immediately thinking other gods are the answer to the 'magicians'
And yes, I do like showing off, so there will be some Welsh/Egyptian/Norse mythology sprinkled in throughout this fic (you didn't think the Greeks were alone did you?) Any comments/criticisms are welcome as always