Chapter Text
The dream was unusual, right off the bat.
I was standing in a landscape that I’d never seen before. Not in real life, anyways. The grass was a green color that I’d never seen before, I could tell even as it was tinged a different hue by the light of the morning sun. There were mountains in the distance, great, big, mountains capped with snow.
Somehow, without it needing to be said, I knew.
I was in Iceland.
To be fair, the house in front of me was a big indicator of that. It was one of those Icelandic turf houses, homes that were built with turf on the walls and the roof. Part of me was a little surprised by this, because I thought by the time that I was in, the turf houses had already started to fall out of favor. I wasn’t sure; it wasn’t like I knew the intricacies of Icelandic history or anything. I barely knew anything about my maternal grandmother’s native country at all.
...Wait.
What time was I in?
Just as soon as the thought had come to me, it was gone. Not too far away from me, I could hear a sound. It was a very miserable sound, not like one that I’d heard before. The hairs on the back of my neck were sent on end.
I didn’t dare to turn around. I was too scared about what I would see if I did.
From one of the windows of the turf house, I saw the ruffling of perhaps a curtain. Then, seconds later, what I assumed was its front door was thrown open by a woman as she adjusted the shawl or blanket around her shoulders. She wasn’t even holding a lamp in one of her hands.
“Guð minn Góður!” she exclaimed.
She rushed forwards. As she walked past me, I took in her features: she had long, blonde hair, a kind of shade that I’d never really seen before. Her cheekbones were high, with a splattering of freckles across her cheeks and nose. But what startled me the most about her were her eyes.
They were ocean blue, just like my mom’s.
“Allt er í lagi!” she shouted. The more that she spoke, the more that the language began to click in my brain. Although I wouldn’t be able to understand Icelandic at all when I woke up, I knew this to be true, during this dream, I did. “Allt er í lagi! Everything’s – !”
There was another horrible, wretched groan.
Against my will, I pivoted on my foot. It was clear that I was here for a reason; obviously, whatever deity had sent me here – and by that, I meant Ananke – I could tell that she had gone so for a reason.
What I saw was like something out of a horror movie. There, on the ground, was a somewhat corporeal form of Kronos. He was half-formed, and it showed. His flesh was growing from his bones, knitting itself into existence in real time. His right hand, with bone and muscle showing and only the barest hints of skin, was clawing forwards, but it wasn’t getting him very far. Blonde hair was beginning to grow from his head, although it was darker than the woman’s or Luke’s sandy color, more like that of honey. When he looked up at the woman, while his eyes were still forming, I could tell that they were gold – and not just because that was the color of his blood and flesh as an immortal. It was also of his irises.
I felt like I was going to be sick.
Closing my eyes, I silently pleaded, Please, don’t make me have to see this! Please, show me something –
~~~
– Else.
A fire was sizzling. Pots and pans were clanging against each other as somebody bustled about.
I opened my eyes.
We were in the turf house now – me, Kronos, and my great-great-grandmother or whatever, Drífa Seimsdóttir. It looked like she was making herself breakfast. There was a pan on the coal stove, where the fire was kindling. Two eggs were cooking in the pan. Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a bun. She’d been doing something with the other pans – maybe washing one of them out? – but as she came back in front of the stove to flip the eggs, she stared at them determinedly. Only a single glance was spared towards the only bed in the house, where Kronos was, conked out.
I tried not to focus on him, and it wasn’t hard. The interior of the house wasn’t like what I was expecting; the wood inside was smooth and refined, and there were plenty of shelves for dishes and crockery. The windows on either side of the small house let in plenty of light, making the abode bright and welcoming.
Once her eggs were finished, Drífa scooped them out with a spatula and put them onto the plate that she had ready. It wasn’t a moment too soon.
From the bed, Kronos let out the third groan I’d heard from him. Judging by the stiffening of Drífa’s shoulders, however, she’d heard far more.
Kronos did look better this time. He looked human, yet one with gold-flushed cheeks and gold eyes. “Ποῦ...” he mumbled. “Ποῦ εἰμί?”
So, it seemed he hadn’t learnt English or any other language besides ancient Greek yet, or if he had, this part of his essence didn’t remember it. Interesting.
Drífa tilted her head, saying nothing.
Kronos’ eyes fell on her. Haphazardly, he tried to get into a sitting-up position, but he didn’t have the strength for it. “Γύναι!” he growled, his face becoming ferocious in a split second. “Τίς εἶ? Τί ἐποίησᾰς – ?”
“I don’t know the language that you speak,” Drífa interjected before he could get any further. She picked her plate and a fork up off of the counter, cutting herself off a piece of egg and shoving it into her mouth.
Kronos blinked in surprise, his brain computing.
Then:
“You are of the Norsem*n?”
Oh. So it seemed that he did know another language besides ancient Greek. Guess I was just an idiot.
His accent was lilting, not quite like it should’ve been in comparison to Drífa’s. It sounded...older.
“I am Icelandic, not Norse,” she corrected him. “The Norse people lived long ago, although we have a claim to them more than most, so I’ve been told. Are you a god?”
Kronos blinked again. “You are a mortal?”
“Yes,” Drífa said. She cut off another bit of egg and put it into her mouth. After she’d swallowed, “My father always used to say that I could see more than most people. He said it was a sign that I had perhaps been touched one of the old gods – Odin, Thor, Freyja. I never did believe him, not until today.
“You are a god,” she stated. “I don’t know which one you are, but I know you must be. The color of your flesh and blood – I’ve never seen anything like it before. And when I tried to give you food and water, you threw both back up. But it doesn’t seem like you need any other form of sustenance to live.”
“That’s because I don’t,” Kronos groused, his eyes sharp and a sneer on his face. “And I am not a god, I am a titan!”
Drífa frowned. “I’m not familiar with that terminology. What’s the difference, if I may ask?”
“The gods are my children and their descendants,” Kronos spat. “They overthrew me, chopped my body up into little pieces – ”
“That doesn’t sound pleasant.”
“ – And threw me into Tartarus!” he continued, ignoring her.
My great-great-grandmother’s frown deepened. “I’m not familiar with that place. Where is it?”
“‘Where is it?’” he quoted back, baffled. “Where are we that you do not know the stories? I thought even the Norsem*n were familiar with the legends of the Greek gods!”
“And as I told you, I am not Norse,” Drífa reminded him. She was hiding a smile now. “Do your eyes always droop?”
“What?” Kronos demanded. His eyes were indeed beginning to flutter shut.
“I think you’re going to pass out now,” she said.
“How dare you – ” the essence of the titan started to say. He reached out with a hand –
– Only to collapse, out like a light.
Drífa chortled to herself as she continued to eat her eggs.
~~~
“Percy?”
“Gah!” I cried out as I sat up straight, knocking away the hand that was on my shoulder and the owner of it nearly a foot back. Once I realized where I was – that I wasn’t in that strange dream with my ancestors, including the titan that now wanted to kill me or have me kill my dad, his son – and I saw Callie staring back at me, her bluish-green eyes wide. Instantly, I felt bad. “Callie – sh*t, you scared me!”
“Sorry,” Callie said, biting her lip. “I was just coming to wake you up for sword practicing.”
My guilt increased. “Thanks,” I said, running a hand through my hair. “I’m coming. Just...give me a few minutes.”
“Alright,” Callie agreed reluctantly. She left our cabin without another word.
It’d been a few weeks since I’d come back to camp, and a few days for her. She was supposed to have been one of the upperclassmen students at the orientation for the ones coming in next year, but that hadn’t worked out so well. Apparently, despite her wearing her ἒνδεσμα, two empousae, named Kelli and Tammi, had found her at Goode High School. They’d tried to kill her. The only reason why they hadn’t been successful was because one of the incoming freshmen was a clear-sighted mortal and had helped save her, a redheaded girl named Rachel Elizabeth Dare.
Yes, you read that right, Rachel, aka the girl who I’d met at the Hoover Dam while on my quest to save Silena and Artemis. Funny how that worked.
Anyways, ever since I’d come back to camp, there had been some changes, and not just because I had now been put on a ban from most camp-related activities that had made everyone else wonder if I was sick or had a medical condition (they weren’t wrong with that one) or something, because I was still wearing the ἒνδεσμα to hide my belly.
There was something going on in the basem*nt of the Big House. Nobody knew what it was, except that it had to do with the quest that Clarisse had recently come back from, and she wasn’t forthcoming about the details. In fact, she’d been more standoffish than usual as of late, more prone to anger. Most people thought it was because of what had happened on the quest, but something told me that it wasn’t just about that, but whatever was going on in the basem*nt. She almost seemed...sad...
The other thing was that camp had gained a new employee. His name was Quintus, and he was the new swordsman trainer. I’d met him the same day that I’d come back, after Lee had cleared me. Even though I’d known that I was disbarred from sword training, I’d wanted to go down to the amphitheater to clear my head.
Except, when I’d gone there, my heart had almost stopped. In the middle of the arena floor, with its back to me, had been the biggest hellhound that I’d ever seen.
I mean, I’ve seen some pretty big hellhounds. One the size of a rhino had tried to kill me when I was twelve. But this hellhound was bigger than a tank. I’d had no idea how it had gotten past the camp’s magic boundaries. It had looked right at home, laying on its belly, growling contentedly as it had chewed the head off of a combat dummy. It hadn’t noticed me, but if I had made a sound, I’d known that it would sense me.
There had been no time to go for help to have somebody deal with it for me, so that I wouldn’t have placed myself in further danger. I’d pulled out Riptide and uncapped it.
“Yaaaaah!” I’d charged. I’d brought down the blade on the monster’s enormous backside when, out of nowhere, another sword had blocked my stride.
CLANG!
The hellhound had pricked up its ears. “WOOF!”
I’d jumped back and instinctively struck at the swordsman – a grey-haired man in Greek armor. He’d parried my attack with no problem.
“Whoa there!” he’d said. “Truce!”
“Thats a hellhound!” I’d shouted.
“She’s harmless,” the man had said. “That’s Mrs. O’Leary.”
I’d blinked. “Mrs. O’Leary?”
At the sound of her name, the hellhound had barked again. I’d realized she hadn’t been angry: she’d been excited. She’d nudged the soggy, badly chewed target dummy towards the swordsman.
“Good girl,” the man had said. With his free hand he’d grabbed the armored manikin by the neck and heaved it towards the bleachers. “Get the Greek! Get the Greek!”
Mrs. O’Leary had bounded after her prey and pounced on the dummy, flattening its armor. She’d begun chewing on its helmet.
The swordsman had smiled dryly. He was in his fifties, I guess, with short grey hair and a clipped grey beard. He was in good shape for an older guy. He’d been wearing black mountain-climbing pants and a bronze breastplate strapped over an orange camp t-shirt. At the base of his neck was a strange mark, a purplish blotch like a birthmark or a tattoo, but before I had been able to make out what it was, he’d shifted his armor straps and the mark had disappeared under his collar.
“Mrs. O’Leary is my pet,” he’d explained. “I couldn’t let you stick a sword in her rump, now, could I? That might have scared you.”
He’d then introduced himself as Quintus, saying that it was a long story how he’d gotten a hellhound as a pet when I’d asked. I was sure that it was. He’d also explained why he had been hired: Mr. D had had to visit some friends or something, make sure that they were on “the right side.” I wasn’t going to complain about him being gone.
The most interesting thing about Quintus was that he was a half-blood, although he hadn’t said who his godly parent was. It’d surprised me: I’d never met a demigod so old before. While I knew it was possible for me and Luke and all of our peers to live into an old age because of the myths, and I was determined to make that happen, it was still comforting to know that it was happening in real time, too.
Quintus and I had talked a bit about what I could and could not do in the amphitheater and during capture the flag and the like, given my...condition. He didn’t know what I had, just knew from Chiron and Lee that it meant I couldn’t do a whole lot.
We’d come to the mutual decision that all I would be allowed to do was watch the sword-practicing of the other campers and give advice. The latter part had increased my surprise. “You want me to give...advice?”
With his decades’ of experience, I hadn’t thought he would’ve been down for that.
“Chiron has been singing your praises,” Quintus had said with a grin. “He said that you were one of the best swordsmen in the past three hundred years.”
“Yeah,” I’d said. “I guess.”
I hadn’t been able to stop myself from thinking about that other best swordsman, and how he didn’t yet know the truth about our children. How one of them was a legacy of Kronos. I could only imagine how he was going to react when I told him and/or he found out...
As I walked to the amphitheater, to bring you back to the present, I also couldn’t help but wonder about what that dream with Kronos and Drífa was all about. Why was it important that I knew the history of my great-great-grandmother and that asshole? Did it have to relate to one of my kid’s powers? Was it solely to know that they’d had a relationship, that apparently the sex hadn’t been nonconsensual? Geez, that made me feel so much better about Kronos.
Not.
I couldn’t come up with a good answer by the time I got to the amphitheater. So I pushed aside the thought for now and took my place on one of the benches, which earned me a few glares from some of the Cabin Eleven kids who didn’t know me too well. I guess they thought that, since I didn’t appear to be sick, I couldn’t actually be that sick, and thus there was no real good reason for me to be sitting out on activities like I had been.
Oh, if only they knew.
...Well, they would eventually. So on second thought, it was probably better not to think about that.
While I watched Quintus pair up the Cabin Eleven campers and Callie, putting her with Connor Stoll, I noticed something rather important: one of the sons of Hermes was missing. It wasn’t hard to figure out which one it was – if not because there were only three sons of Hermes left at camp, then because it was so obvious that the other Stoll brother was absent when Connor was around. They rarely ever did anything without each other.
...Huh. I wondered where he was, too. The Stolls were co-counselors of their cabin; perhaps Travis had lost a bet or something and he was getting their cabin ready, since I was the one in charge of cabin inspections for the start of the summer and I would have to be doing it after this.
Probably, it was because of that. Having so many campers in one cabin meant a lot of mess, and the worst cabin would have to do kitchen patrol after dinner. The best cabin, in comparison, would get the first shower hour for the summer, which meant that hot water was guaranteed.
Silena was also on camp inspection duty this summer, in case you were thinking “Percy, that sounds like you’ll almost assuredly make you and Callie get first place!”
But our cabin did look good, if I do say so myself. Call it nesting or call it having nothing better to do, but I’d cleaned our cabin basically into tip-top shape.
“Percy, watch me!” Nico exclaimed at one point, waving his hand that didn’t have the sword in it to attract my attention. He was sparring with Lou Ellen.
I gave him a smile. He was thirteen now, and I was pretty sure that he’d developed a crush on me or something in the past year because it was obvious with how his cheeks were flushed from more than just the sword-fighting, but I didn’t want to think about that. It wasn’t like he was ever going to have a chance, as mean as that might’ve sounded.
And once he found out that I was pregnant along with everybody else, he’d probably end up being thankful for that.
I gave some instructions to people here and there as I was allowed, shouting them out. When the hour was over, as everyone else headed to the showers, Callie included, I went to the Big House to collect the papyrus scroll with the checklist on it and make my rounds around the cabins of the camp. I started on the evens side.
Most of the cabins were as I’d expected: Cabin Twelve, Dionysus’ cabin, was in pretty good shape, because Pollux and Castor were relatively good about cleanliness. Cabin Ten was absolutely spotless, in typical fashion. Silena was an absolute neat freak, and I knew many campers considered her to be the worst inspector. They were probably hoping that I would balance things out.
I didn’t do Cabin Eight, since it was Artemis’ and I didn’t want to anger her. Plus, the Hunters weren’t here right now. Cabin Six wasn’t too bad, but in typical children of Athena fashion they’d left a few chemicals out – and nope, that was a few points off, per the checklist.
Annabeth made a face at that, but she didn’t comment on it.
Silena was just starting her checklist by the time I got to Cabin Four, Demeter’s cabin. She waved at me from Cabin Eleven. I waved back.
Have I ever described Demeter’s cabin before? I don’t think I have. It has a turf roof, like Drífa’s from my dreams, but that doesn’t make it a turf house, per se. Katie liked to grow tomatoes on the roof during the summer. There were wildflowers and roses growing on the porch. The cabin’s color is a light brown. Inside, the floor was made of grass (which wasn’t exactly to my tastes, but whatever. It wasn’t my cabin) and an oak tree in the middle that held up the ceiling.
I knocked at the door, expecting an immediate response. Katie always liked to be in her cabin when inspections were going on even with it being required of her as a camp counselor, and I couldn’t blame her. She was the only person in her cabin, after all.
But there was no response. Not even a call of “Just a sec!”
I frowned and knocked again.
From inside, there was a yelp and a thunk! I knew that that probably didn’t mean anything, maybe Katie had just been napping or something –
Dread filled me. Everyone was expecting Luke and his army to invade camp at some point, probably this summer. Just the other day, an Aethiopian drakon had been spotted at the borders of camp. I’d been so exhausted, I’d slept right through it, and this had been before Callie had come back, so she hadn’t been there to wake me up. The magical boundaries had kept the monster out, but it had prowled the hills, looking for weak spots in our defenses, and it hadn’t gone away until Lee had led a couple of his siblings in pursuit. After a few dozen arrows had lodged in the chinks of the drakon’s armor, it had gotten the message and withdrawn.
People weren’t excited about our chances against whatever army was going to come. Our attendance was down: only around eighty campers. Two years ago, when I’d started, there had been more than a hundred.
Some had died. Some had joined Luke, like Alabaster before he’d come back. Some had just disappeared.
All of this was to say, even while I knew Luke would do everything he could to make the damage on camp as minimal as possible when he did invade, I couldn’t stop my dread from the noises going on inside Katie’s cabin. And my pregnancy hormones weren’t helping it, either. They were only making it worse.
Without thinking about it, I turned the knob and opened the door –
– Only to get a front-seat view of Travis Stoll laying on the floor, groaning and clutching at his head, as Katie was sitting up in her bed, shirtless.
