#Traitors of Olypmus

[jflashandclash]

Tales From Mount Othrys

Axel: Into the Lion's Maw IV

Axel had a horrifying realization: if they bottlenecked to get into the Labyrinth, they would bottleneck on the way out. He could imagine their meaningless march into a massacre, Kampe shoving each demigod to their death in an orderly fashion.

Upon stepping into the corridor, Axel was pleased to see that Lucille had been right about remaining calm. Kampe was, contrary to the bottleneck visual, an excellent strategist.

There was a massive corridor inside the entrance. Above them stretched a curved lattice of ornamental windows. Their floral and geometric designs were interspersed with white and green mosaics. Leaves and muck obscured parts of the glass, only allowing a few rays into the vast space. Where the light did break through, dust danced lazily in a snowy haze.

This was beautiful. Maybe eerie? But nothing like that horrors he’d come to associate with the Labyrinth. Alabaster said this was a foolish place to enter, that they’d lose a quarter of their army just getting through the maze. Axel rarely questioned Alabaster’s logic in mythological matters, but, seeing this…          

Several giants stood towards the far end of this massive chamber, presumably to lead their eventual charge. Earlier, Luke said the ground around the Zeus’ fist entrance was weak. If they sent the giants in first, they could likely widen that entrance.

Axel lowered his gaze. They didn’t have metros in Belize and, in their short stay in Los Angeles, Santiago always hired private cars. It took him a heartbeat or two to recognize the indents in the floor as tracks for a train. The monsters and demigods crawling in and out of them looked quite comfortable in the abandoned subway station. Axel just hoped no ghost trains came through to make everyone go splat.

Behind him, demigods coming in had a similar gasp of appreciation and relaxation. Someone mumbled, “Wow… so much better than Matthias’ horror game simulation.”

Lucille’s shoulder brushed his as she released his hand. “It’s lovely, isn’t it?”

Axel huffed out a laugh. “Wish you could show Ethel?”

Lucille gave another weak giggle. She lifted her pilum towards her mouth, the same motion she would normally use to cover it. “Not my ideal romantic outing, but maybe, one—”

“Daughter of Aphrodite,” thundered from the far side of the room. Kampe made the title sound like an insult. Axel almost couldn’t see Kampe amongst all the giants. It was strange seeing them in battle gear. Seeing them made him think of the Triple A Chimera Dance and the horrifying death contraption Matthias had rigged to transport them like weasels in a titan-sized backpack.

Lucille nudged Axel’s shoulder. “Stay close. I need someone I can trust in battle.” The levity vanished. She meant it. Cho, Axel internally swore, was dissidents in Luke’s troops so bad that even Lucille was worried? He swallowed.

Others parted until they were at the lead of the demigods, several lines back from Kampe.

Kampe and the giants were already lumbering forward. The tunnel shook, sending more dust particles cascading into the dim light rays. Their march forward was both deafening and devastatingly wordless. Hundreds of feet of various kind—hooved, scaled, and mammalian—droned into an eerie oppressive din. No one spoke.

This tunnel led to a narrow one with less natural illumination. Well, there was a dim, continuous glimmer ahead of them. The floor seemed to almost… glow. Despite this, various demigods fumbled for lights. The monsters were unbothered by the darkness, but Axel could sense the mounting panic in his fellow soldiers.

His own chest had constricted. This reminded him of the cage matches—

“We’re okay…” Lucille cooed. Axel could see she’d turned to walk backwards, so the demigods would hear her without risking mockery from the monsters.

The fear evaporated. Axel couldn’t be sure if it was Lucille’s charmspeak or… his fingers had reached back to brush the cool metal of the lion helm. He hadn’t consciously meant to touch it, but it felt comforting.

The tunnels snaked, curved, elevated, lowered, and altered from metal to concrete to mud. There were scuffles ahead. Potentially foes that Kampe and the giants extinguished without real resistance.

Despite how Axel hated to admit it, he wished Jack were here. He would have feigned a newscaster, giving everyone live updates in rhyming verse, likely with acoustic or kazoo accompaniment. He could imagine Kampe trying to squash him as he asked her what kind of battle ballad she would want after this victory. If Jack was here, they would have known exactly what was happening ahead when Axel had to grab Lucille’s arm to prevent her from bumping into a Scythian Dracaena.

Axel’s ears perked up and strained forward to hear. There was a disagreement. Kampe hissing, “But, the string says to go this way. This is the most direct route.”

Was the air thinner down here? It was colder. Axel could see puffs of air as it evaporated out of the anonymous metal helmets around him. The demigods’ reverence and obedience to Kampe seemed to ebb with each strained breath in the tunnel. Whatever argument was happening made the demigods apprehensive. He could sense some sort of rising tension in the way they glanced at one another.

“Can you hear them?” Lucille murmured.

Axel parted his lips to answer when someone thundered, “You fool! That could bring the tunnels down upon us!”

And a shriek of pain.

The demigods startled. Axel knew the movement: the nervous shuffle of a herd before it sprinted to panic.

Lucille shifted her pilum into the hand with her shield. She squeezed Axel’s shoulder, or he thought she did through the armor. “Keep everyone calm.”

The light pressure left. Like Lucille was flitting backstage, she slipped amidst the monsters, the plumes of her helmet becoming indistinguishable from horns and tails bobbing in the dull lighting. He could almost envision her pirouetting.

Keep everyone calm.

It’s not like Axel’s little knowledge of Maya magic was fear-based. Or like they mostly knew him from murdering people “for sport.” Or like what Alabaster taught him about the Mist was used to blend into and out of shadows.

Oh, he would be as natural at this as Flynn was at childrearing. He hoped Lucille could settle the dispute quickly.

Whispers of worry wormed their way behind him into a growing, writhing mass. “Hold,” he growled.

They died down. The Dracaena ahead of him jumped.

Yeah, a natural. He couldn’t say something without scaring the monsters, let alone the demigods.

He hoped Lucille realized that directing sword lessons and commanding an army were very different activities. Why did she and Alabaster seem to think he’d be such a natural at it when Pax wouldn’t even listen to him?

Are they different? the helm—was it the helm?—hissed.

No one else reacted. Axel wondered when others could hear the lion’s helm or… or had he just imagined it talking? He reached to feel the cool metal. Whether the lion’s helm or his own thoughts—cho, he was beginning to sound like Jack—it was right: maybe directing sword practice was similar to commanding troops.

And neither one involved freezing up like Pax had pantsed him in front of Aphrodite.

Axel pivoted away from the monsters to face the demigods. “Lucille has gone to confer with Kampe. Take this time to check your equipment. No one wants their first battle tactic to involve tripping on untied shoelaces.”

Nervous laughter. A decrease in tension. Murmurs went from worry to routine: all of these soldiers were used to checking each other’s armor. Axel knew there was comfort in repetition.  

Until one voice spoke up, fluttery and quick.

“The tunnels ahead are too narrow for the monsters to pass. Kampe could start a panic. They’ll trample us.”

Axel didn’t recognize the voice. It was high with a fragile quaver, like Pax when he was acting pathetic to get something from someone.[1]

Everyone stopped checking their armor. The tunnels went quiet. They stared, in unison, to Axel’s side.

A hand clutched his shoulder. This wasn’t the comforting grace of Lucille’s hand, but a shaking, icy pain. Axel swallowed. The speaker had bent his armor by touching him.

Her irises were wide, so wide and such complete discs of blackness; Axel could imagine ink overflowing and dripping down her face. The sclera was more red than white. Dark circles encompassed her eyes. In an insomnia competition between her and Axel, she wouldn’t just win, but make Hypnos beg her to take a break.

Her rags reeked of urine and defecation. Of rot and unattended sweat. Scabs of varied age crusted her arms, neck, and shoulders. With her other hand, she absently picked one open, revealing a glimmer of tainted gold.

Ichor.

“Chris said you could help me,” she whispered. She stood a little taller. “He said you were strong.”

Chris. Chris Rodriguez.

“But you can’t.”

Chris Rodriguez, Matthias and Pax’s close friend.

 “Can you?”

Chris Rodriguez who vanished into the labyrinth.

“You can’t help anyone.”

Chris Rodriguez who went mad.

“My name,” her soprano quavered so violently, it blurred to euphoria, “is Mary.”

-----

Footnote:

[1] It only worked on Jack.

Jack, “MY BABY NEEDS ME!”

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Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! And thank you for your patience with me from last weekend! I plan to release next weekend, since I skipped a week, and then resume every-other-week. A job application+school kicked my ass XD Seriously, thank all of you so much for your continued support, likes, and comments. (And artwork, JACE! THE ARTWORK) I appreciate how kind everyone has been as I get my feet back under me and am hoping to respond to asks/tags soon!

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus IV: Fall of the Sun

Forty-Two: Calex

A Boycott on Falling

             All of them acted at once. Euna wrapped a vine around the avatar’s shoulder like something out of Tarzan. She swung down, taking Phobetor off guard and kicking him in the face. Quite an alright sight, if you where to ask Calex.

           Calex jumped off the avatar’s shoulder, holding his breath to see if Thalia followed through on her side of the bargain. It would be right rubbish if he made it through Tartarus and all this madness only to flatten into a Shrove Tuesday pancake.[1]

           Sure enough, as he dove towards the ground, he could see the huntress of Artemis lunging off the other shoulder. She had both her hands outstretched and—

           And her eyes were tightly shut.

           “GRACE!” Calex shouted at her.

           As he said it, a blast of air exploded out of her hands. The gust hit the mashed strawberry field and flooded up toward him. His descent slowed so, by the time he blundered to the mud, he could do a break fall without shattering his body.

           Not exactly graceful, but not dead either.

           Without losing momentum, Calex rolled into a sprint. He fumbled to withdraw his pencil pouch so he could assemble Soul Pain.

           “Did you just do that with your bloody eyes closed?!” Calex couldn’t believe he was using that tone with the Lieutenant of Artemis, but recent events left him a bit more willingness to defend his right to survive long enough to snog Merry.

           “No! Shut up!” Thalia snarled. Her face was paler than he’d seen in their entire trip through two underworlds. “Giant snake. Destruction of camp. Focus!”

           This was almost as angry as he felt when Euna explained her plan to capture Kaos while they were ascending out of Tartarus—the trial their group called The Eternity of Tortuous Stairs: The Nightmare of a Couch Potato. Then, Euna explained that she had intentionally made shorter vines to snap when he and she were falling towards oblivion, to decrease the burden of deceleration towards Kaos’ pit, and conveniently forgot to tell Calex that they were supposed to snap, leading Calex to believe they were in an uncontrolled fumble towards death.

           Now, while Calex dug his trainers into the mud, he grumbled, “Being a demigod: taking life one unnecessary heart attack at a time.”

           Calex didn’t dare look back to see how cat-avatar-Axel and Reyna faired. [2]They had other worries.

           They raced toward the cabins, where the world darkened without the proximity of the Roman field lights. Now that they were beyond the horrified mass of ghosts, he could better see how massive a problem they had there. Despite the darkness, it would be hard to miss the destruction.

           When Calex had seen Python inside of Howe Caverns, he froze up. All he could do was drag his friends to safety when they got knocked out. Then he hadn’t even seen the entirety of Python. However, after saying a quick, “How do you do?” to Kaos, the sight of Python in her whole was much easier to swallow.  

           The drakon’s body was enormous, her diamond shaped head at least twenty feet off the ground. Her serpentine form balanced atop the totaled Apollo cabin, wrapped several times around the central hearth to consume the flames, then crossed the cabins to rest atop of a pile of silver rubble. With the flick of its tail, it smashed through the walls of the Athena and Demeter cabins.

           One of its eyes was swollen shut. The other—

           Calex averted his gaze, remembering something Joey and Pax had discussed right before Joey had stabbed the drakon’s eye like the crazy hero she had been. “Don’t look it in the eye. It’ll—”

           “—paralyze you. Duh,” Thalia said, giving Calex an uncomfortable sense of déjà vu.

           “We can’t let it destroy the rest of Hera’s cabin,” he said. Though he couldn’t see much of the half-wrecked structure, he hoped Joey’s statue was safely standing. If there was any hope of changing her back, he assumed the statue would have to look like a proper Greek statue instead of a post modern one.

           “Hera’s cabin isn’t really high on my to-do list right now,” Thalia snapped.

           “Right,” he said. “Let’s just crush the snake fast.”

           At Python’s tail, he could see several small forms darting around. Miranda Gardener and another one of Euna’s sisters were trying to unsuccessfully restrain the tail with a few vines.

           By the head, they could see a group of Greeks armed with scattered weapons and PJs, all ducked behind a gigantic metal shield where the Hephaestus Cabin once stood.

           The drakon snapped its jaws at the shield, hissing in frustration. Whatever the material was, it was strong enough to hold up against a direct bite, and it was large enough that Python couldn’t get his jaws around it. The drakon either was too thick to think of going around the side of the shield, or the shield was enchanted to confuse it.

           Dead ahead, the sickening greenish glow of the Cloven Terror’s eye sockets bobbed as Alabaster’s figure approached Python, far closer than Calex and Thalia.

           “Mad bloke is going to get himself killed,” Calex muttered after his quick glimpse of the helm. Although he knew how powerful the child of Hecate was after seeing the fight with Phobetor, this fight seemed a bit different in magnitude.

           As Calex finished assembling his bow, Thalia handed him one of her Artemis arrows. They closed in and Calex saw more movement that made his stomach drop.

           It was from the rickety, old cabin at the edge of the original twelve.

           If Calex counted right, there weren’t many of the original cabins left standing on this side. Poseidon’s was still fine, but Ares’ bunker and Apollo’s cabin were in shambles. Next was the shield left in Hephaestus’ place. Last was the Hermes cabin.

           And five figures were sprinting out of it towards the shelter of the Hephaestus shield.

           Calex almost choked.

           Camp Half-Blood’s three youngest campers, Harley, an energetic child of Hephaestus, the daughter of the sea storm goddess, and two tiny Hermes campers were scurrying behind a slightly taller figure. Drew Tanaka ushered them along in proper Auntie Drew fashion.

           “Oh my gods! I know you little thieves and brats can move faster than that!”

           Calex could barely hear her. But, Python definitely had.

           Calex understood the gamble. If Python was making her way down the cabins, the Hermes cabin was next in line for destruction, and they’d put their youngest in there during all the insanity earlier. But could they make the run to the safety of the Hephaestus before—

           Python’s tongue flicked out towards the children and a horrific laugh filled the air. She reared her head back to strike.

           Those children would be helpless.

           “You don’t want to smash us! We’d be icky to get off your scales or pick out of your teeth! We don’t taste good!” Drew shouted. “Harvey farts A LOT.”

           For a disorienting moment, Calex full-heartedly agreed that the running campers were quite nasty and would be difficult to pick out of scales if Calex had scales.

           Python also hesitated.

           Calex shook off the charmspeak enough to aim an arrow and fire.

           Thalia followed half a second later.

           Their arrows clinked against Python’s forehead scales and ricocheted off. Python barely seemed to notice.

           It dove at the four children and daughter of Aphrodite.

           Calex frantically snatched another arrow from Thalia’s quiver, unsure what good it would do. He’d forgotten those scales would be so thick.

           Regardless, he and Thalia took aim.

           The children screamed.

           Something hissed and gleamed through the air, intercepting Python before she could snap her jaws around the campers.

           It thunked into the drakon’s good eye.

           Python shrieked and recoiled.

           The ground rumbled as the drakon withered.

           The children and Drew raced into the shelter of the shield.

           “Nice throw, Kal—” Calex began to reflexively shout, until something glowed green by the drakon’s head and reversed spin towards the Cloven Terror. The monster—the Alabaster kind of monster, not the serpentine one—caught the discus as it went past, spinning with the weapon’s trajectory to decelerate it.

           Horror sank Calex’s stomach to think what could have happened to Kally for Alabaster to have her weapon.

           When Python made another horrific hiss, Calex could see its other eye was now tightly closed.

           “We should get to that shelter. We’re sitting ducks out here if its hide is too thick to pierce with these arrows. Let’s see how we can back them up there,” Thalia said.

           “Right!” Calex agreed.

           They continued to race towards the shelter.

           Calex’s mind raced alongside with ideas.

           When they fought Python last time, Kally had used some kind of solar explosion to ward Python off, and the drakon might have only let them go to fulfill the first part of Eris’ plan. From what he remembered of Annabeth’s monster fighting courses, it took Apollo’s full quiver of arrows to slay Python.

           Currently, the sun was down, Will—one of the most powerful children of Apollo—was probably still dead and nearby Nico’s semi-solid body, Phobetor had killed Kayla, Calex hated to know if there were any Apollo children inside the cabin when it got smashed, and he hadn’t seen Kally since they got here—what? 10-45 seconds ago?

           Had Python been methodically destroying the few campers that could put up a proper resistance?

           For the moment, Python appeared to have forgotten the Hephaestus shield. Its tongue flicked towards the Cloven Terror.  “I smell no demigod here! You have the scent of a monster and not that of the foolish Cyclops welp—”

           A burst of hope spread through Calex’s chest. Cyclops welp? Was Tyson still here somewhere?

           Whatever reason Alabaster had to keep throwing himself into the front of battles, Calex was cheered they could at least use his stupidity as a cover. He and Thalia were close enough to the shield to see several campers frantically motioning them closer.

           “—why do you help defend this camp?” Python demanded of the Cloven Terror.

           Before Calex dove behind the three-feet-thick metal shield, he caught a glimpse of Alabaster doing something he’d never seen Alabaster do: hesitate.

           Somehow, the Cloven Terror looked smaller than usual, though maybe that was due to his proximity to the drakon. Now that Calex had slowed his pace, he saw something else odd. The flare of the green torches along Hecate’s cabin gleamed off something spilling down the Cloven Terror’s back: rosy-gold hair.

           Calex’s stomach knotted to ice.

           That wasn’t Alabaster.

           He skidded behind the metal shield, having too much forward momentum to stop.

           Thalia rolled in half-a-second behind him. Already, the word, “Update,” was out of her mouth.

           Calex might have tripped and fallen over had a giant Hispanic not steadied him. He looked into the dark, scared eyes of Chris Rodriguez, a son of Hermes and friend of Pax’s. Clarisse La Rue lay at his feet, clutching her leg—one bent at an odd angle. For a moment, hope flooded Calex at seeing Austin, a child of Apollo, laying beside Clarisse, but the boy was out cold, the lower half of his body mangled like a building had dropped on it. Calex frowned; it probably had.

           Jake Mason, a child of Hephaestus, was putting aerospace-looking blankets around the shoulders of the four children and Drew. Nyssa and Matthias, two other children of Hephaestus, were stationed at either end of the shield wall. At the center, there was a giant wheel crank—to move the shield wall back and forth, Calex assumed, judging off the massive rollers on the bottom and the circular track on the ground. There was a ladder up the center to a small slit in the shield, where a gigantic stun-gun-thing was positioned.

            Tyson and a child of Ares, whose name Calex couldn’t remember, were positioned by the crank, ready to turn it.

           “Do we change positions now?” Tyson asked.

           “No! He’s talking to the Witchboy. Hold up!” Matthias called.

           Calex didn’t realize the shield itself had been pivoting. That would explain why Python struggled to turn the lot of them into afternoon biscuits—well—nighttime biscuits?  After being underground for what felt like days and exiting into a starless, moonless black sky, Calex could guess the time about as well as he could guess the Queen’s favorite pair of socks.[3]

           “We have to do something! That’s Kally!” Calex said, scrambling for a plan.

           “Were you going to just let him die if it was Alabaster?” Chris asked, looking pale.

           Calex was alarmed by his own, unhesitant response. “Yep.”

           Matthias nervously tapped his fingers together. “Imagine Pax’s whining though.”

           “Matt! Eyes outside!” Nyssa scolded.

           “Yea, shut up,” Thalia said, “Whoever is outside will need our help and we need to know what’s going on.”

           Clarisse growled in agreement. “We’re not sure. I think Clovis is keeping us awake. Phobetor can’t seem to keep all of the campers asleep and puppet people as sleep walkers at the same time.”

           “Clovis is napping now. I heard he’s more powerful when he’s sleeping,” Harvey, the eight-year-old, said quickly, “So he can better take on that nightmare meanie.”

           “Pipsqueak might be right,” Clarisse said, “Last we heard, the Stoll brothers, Will, Nico, Chiron, Sherman, and Pollux were in the Big House’s infirmary by Clovis. We’re not sure where everyone else is. No one was prepared for the sun to go down early.” Her voice quivered with fury. “Stupid, overgrown snake—”

           “The sun only went down a few minutes before you showed up on… um—” Chris hesitated.

           “A glowing, giant Axel,” Thalia said.

           Chris looked even paler. “That’s terrifying.”

           After helping to shove Harvey tighter into his blanket, Drew stumbled over to Calex. He prepared—unwittingly—for her to hit on him despite the circumstances, so was surprised when she clutched his shoulder. Tears rimmed her eyes. “It ate Mitchell.”

           Calex’s mouth went dry. Mitchell was one of his cabin mates, a surprisingly shy son of Aphrodite with a good heart.

           No words surfaced to comfort his crying aunt. His mind threatened to wander to the bodies lined up under tarps in Kakata. He squeezed Drew’s hand, swallowed, then walked alongside Matthias again to peak out and see if Kally was already eaten or if they could grant her any tactical advantage.

           The Cloven Terror was still at a standoff maybe ten meters from Python. The snake’s size seemed impossible next to Kally. Somehow, Python seemed even larger since Calex knew it was her and not Alabaster out there. In the distance by the Roman barracks, a glowing avatar slashed through the ranks of ghosts. Calex didn’t see Phobetor or Euna and only noticed a blur when he tried to focus on the two giants battling outside the boarder.

           “Have you no words?” Python demanded.

           Kally took a step back, one Calex recognized as a first step to winding up her discus. “I am a child of light,” her voice rang two-toned with a deeper one. It started uncertain, but continued with a scary determination. “Here to reap the scythe of the lion’s labors. And I welcome YOU with this embrace!”

           “What trickery is this?!” the drakon demanded. “A child of Apollo—”

           Calex balked as Kally wound up and lobbed her discus at the drakon. That girl had more bollux than an unneutered bulldog.

           “Holy spirit of Ares,” Matthias muttered. “That’s not Ajax’s meep-squeak, not-girlfriend, right?”

           Kally’s discus slammed into Python’s busted eyelid. It hissed in fury, though didn’t look further injured.

           They needed to act now.

           Calex put two fingers to his mouth to make a piercing whistle. The chances were low but he should have been around—

           The drakon snapped downward towards his mate.

           A rainbow blur blasted between the drakon’s open jaws as they crushed into the ground.

           Calex whooped in excitement.  

           “What is that?” Nyssa asked from the other side of the shield.

           “The best damn unicorn you’ll ever set eyes on!” Calex cheered.

           A crimson and black blur galloped to a sudden stop about five meters from their hiding spot. Atop a magnificent stallion with a gold and silver horn sputtering rainbow sparks, Kally sat upright, her helm focused on the incoming green glow that hissed behind Python’s head.

           Her discus spun back towards them and Kally snapped her hand out to catch it.

           Calex thought he heard something crack, but couldn’t be certain when Vinyl took off back towards Python. The drakon had dislodged its jaws from the dirt and flicked its tongue towards Kally.

           Python lunged again.

           The unicorn and rider darted under the giant snake. From its blur, a golden discus spun out again.

           Once again, the hit seemed to only annoy the drakon as it withered in anger.

           “We need to help her find an opening,” Calex said. His eyes flashed around their shield and what they had. “Clarisse, you defeated a drakon before, right?”

           “I electrocuted it from the inside of its eye socket,” she growled. “If you didn’t notice, I don’t have an electric spear.”

           Calex pointed at the giant stun-gun thing mounted at the top of the shield. “It’s broken, innit?”

           Jake frowned. “Python knocked out our backup power and our backup, backup power. We’re working on getting it back online, but we would need a lot of electricity to…”

           Thalia grabbed his shoulder, giving him a grin. “How much electricity is a lot?”

           Jake’s mouth hung open then crooked into a grin.

           “You still need to find a way to pierce the hide,” Clarisse reminded, scowling.

           The hope in Jake’s eyes crushed. “The first time we tried, when Python knocked over Ares’ cabin, the prongs just bounced off.”

           Calex thought it over. After the stunt he pulled with Kaos and climbing all those stairs, his body felt weak and shaky. An image flashed in his mind: the black, metal arrow he’d almost shot Axel and Thalia with. He’d been scared to shoot them. The two dumb blokes were so naturally compatible, the strength it took to force disinterest or dislike had been horrible. But, to enhance some of Python’s utter disgust with Apollo children? An arrow like that would be easy, right? He thought about Thanatos and Kaos and his confidence grew.

            “I can make arrows,” Calex said, “that can piece into anyone’s heart. Even a primordial god’s.”

           Thalia’s face went red with rage, but she nodded to affirm this. Her hand reflexively clutched at her chest, where his golden arrow had struck her.

           Their shield wall rocked when Python smashed into it.

           Vinyl shrieked in pain.

           “That’s cool and all,” Matthias said. He’d abandoned his post by the outside of the shield, hands already fumbling with some wires on the ground. No one needed to direct his siblings. Harvey had already thrown off his shock blanket to help him and Jake and Nyssa scrambled over half a second later. “But, can we attach cables to said arrows?” Matthias asked.

           Calex already had a hand on the ladder to the turret. He gave Thalia a grin as the sparks erupted at her fingertips. “Let’s find out.”

 Hey guys! I’m getting this out before midnight this time XD Still haven’t had a chance to do proper edits on these (I’ll hope to get back to more edits later!) but, I hope you enjoyed regardless!

I’m enjoying Vinyl as a battle unicorn. What do you guys think?

Stay tuned next week for Kally’s chapter: I Get to be Python’s Piñata, where I feel like the writing gets a bit smoother for the ending XD

 Footnotes:

[1] A celebration preceding Ash Wednesday where you consume pancakes.

[2] Mel betanote: “Is she going to ride him into battle? That sounds so wrong but I meant it entirely in the form of battle!!!!”

Jack, “( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)”

[3] Apparently I didn’t think Calex was British enough in this chapter.

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus: Blood of a Mayan

Twenty-Four: Kalypso

Leo Valdez and I Compare Notes from Book One

 The coordinates for Leo Valdez’s location appeared around 6:19 in the morning. Kally knew this because that was when Pax decided to do a very poor imitation of a rooster caw. She wished he had a blow horn instead. That would have been less annoying. Or—even better—that they had a gag.

This was worse than the wakey, wakey work campers! song they played at her Catholic “volunteer” camp in the mornings. Mostly because Pax felt the need to race back and forth across their sleeping bags to emphasize the caw.

Everyone dragged themselves out of bed.

Kally was used to the circadian rhythm’s version of suicide sprints from drama club, where she maybe slept three hours before the last rehearsal, then kept going for each performance their school put on and squished a soccer game before the matinee. Merry was used to it too, but that didn’t stop her from tripping Pax with a grape vine when he raced past her bed.

The Romans had left shortly after the Pax Show the night before, after Reyna went to talk to the Pax brothers under Calex’s recommendation. Kally meant to ask how that went.

Axel went around distributing beef jerky and what Kally could only hope was cleaned river water. Those boys had to have water-cleansing tablets with them, right? Merry huffed at him and waved off the jerky. “Do you have anything else a little less bovine?” she asked.

Pax pulled some grass from the ground and piled it into her lap. “You called for bovine?”

Merry gave him a playful glare that Kally recognized from the times Merry had publicly humiliated and shamed popular kids at their old school. “You’re already on my list for insulting the sounds of nature this morning.”

“Everyone up!” Axel’s call interrupted their conversation. He was half-way through rolling up Calex’s bedroll. The son of Eros had stumbled from his bed and stood there staring at it. Kally hoped he was okay. Calex looked like he might cry. Then she remembered how he described his nightmares.

True, she’d ”fought” Python in her dreams during her few hours of rest, but at least she was the only one in danger. She couldn’t imagine what it would be like to dream about your mother and brother dying every night when you’d actually experienced it.

Axel stood with the bedroll and touched Calex’s shoulder. Almost to distract from the comfort, he called over Calex’s shoulder to the younger Song. “Joey, wake up your sister.”

Joey was grumbling about how she didn’t have any of her facial creams with her and that it was a crime against humanity to degrade someone by keeping them from some good Proactive. “You wake her up,” she snapped louder. “I’m not dying today.”

Kally thought everyone was up, but had overlooked the partially mossy pile that was Euna’s sleeping roll. She snored softly, arms and legs peeking out like she’d had an epic blanket battle in her sleep.

Axel released Calex’s shoulder, sighed, and walked over. He knelt down and touched her shoulder. “Euna--”

Euna punched him in the face.

While everyone was still stunned, she rolled over. A weave of grass followed her movement to tuck her in, acting as the world’s best sentient blanket.

“Yea, we throw stuff at her to wake her up in Cabin Four,” Joey explained. She barely hid a smirk as Axel rubbed his chin. “You should see how many alarm clocks she goes through at home.”

At home. Kally suddenly thought about her parents and siblings. Her parents were probably worried about her the same way one would worry over milk they forgot to buy at the store, but John… Her older brother was a jerk, but she’d been gone for over 24 hours. She hoped he didn’t say or do anything stupid.

A small scuffle erupted between Euna and Axel that ended with Calex carrying Euna—sleeping bag and all—to the Pax mobile.  

Merry did a quick morning prayer to the gods— Athena in particular, for whom she composed a quick riddle—Axel scolded her, and they were off.

As the Pax brothers took the front seats and Calex gently set Euna down in the back, he seemed to come out of a state of numbness. He adjusted his beanie and his scarf before leaning over the driver’s seat to Axel. “Uh, if we’re dropping by Leo, is there any chance we could avoid the… mythological travel?”

His face seemed to take on a green shade just looking through the front window at the golden donkey.

“It’s a ten minute drive, mortal car speed,” Axel assured.

“But I’m sure Leo won’t judge you if you throw up on meeting him,” Pax assured.

Calex didn’t seem awake enough to give Pax a proper distasteful scowl, but he tried his best.

Once everyone settled down, the car ride went quickly. They traveled on back roads, coasting smoothly with the new suspensions Hephaestus installed. From the few informational signs Kally noticed out of Pax’s window, they must have been in some kind of state park.

Pax teased Axel about Reyna the whole ride, providing ample entertainment. As they drove, Kally could hear Merry’s empty stomach moaning beside her. She almost felt guilty tearing off a piece of beef jerky and defending it from Baller… but she hadn’t had a proper meal since the night before, so wasn’t going to stop enjoy her meat.

When they stopped, Kally had expected a palace or a mansion or at least some torches lined up to spell Leo Valdez is Here, similar to a Hollywood sign.

Instead, they came upon a small shack in a clearing, built with various pieces of shimmering metal and wood. The scraps of gold, bronze, oak, and steel were mesmerizing as the morning sun reflected off the structure through the gold and orange trees. An embroidered tapestry hung above the shack with fancy, bold script that read: Leo and Calypso’s Garage. Below was smaller writing: Auto Repair and Mechanical Monsters; Fresh Fruits and Vegetables; Cider and Stew; Tofu Burgers.

There were two picnic tables in front of the shack. Three centaurs stood at one, munching on bowls of stew and pushing each other around. A girl came out to check on their orders. Despite the smudges of dirt on her face, arms, and rolled up sleeves, Kally could tell she was beautiful. She had long caramel hair and radiant skin. The girl was… intimidating. Kally had never met another person named Calypso before, though that’s how people always misspelled her name, if they had a guess at all. Most people expected Kally to look like an exotic model with her name but uh… this girl actually did look like an exotic model.

There was a Hispanic boy with elfish features standing in front of the shack. He seemed far too calm that one hand was smoking and on fire. Not only was he calm, he flipped a patty on that hand like, oh, Berkeley Hills, California regulation states that you need to finish cooking all burgers before you call the fire department.   

And the bronze dragon. Yea, she probably should have first mentioned the dragon hanging out in the clearing behind the shack. The scales outshined the shack, reflecting gold and bronze light everywhere. Two startling red eyes glowed from the dragon’s head as it watched the centaurs—a little too hungrily, Kally thought. Were those rubies? The automaton was so big, the dragon could have easily rolled and crushed the shack, the picnic table, and made some centaur patties. Fortunately, it seemed in a no-rolling mood, and much more intent on sunbathing.

Upon seeing the dragon, Kally’s first instinct was to panic—the first night she met the Pax brothers, the well-dubbed Silver Festus attacked the Pax Mobile. It took a Roman ballista and a well aimed shot from her discus to knock it out of the sky. They’d only gotten lucky that the control disk had popped out. This dragon was much bigger. They could shoot it with a few canons and still end up as a demigod roast.

Kally grabbed her Argonaut statue, wondering if she should climb to the van’s weird sunroof to prepare a futile shot at the dragon’s face, but Axel issued no commands and drove up like this was normal. She really needed to accept that stuff like this was normal… But she’d only known she was a demigod for a month. Maybe another six and she’d find dragons drab and boring.

From the rearview mirror reflection, Kally could see childish excitement in Axel’s brown eyes. It was cute to see him properly emote like a teenager.

Pax’s excitement wasn’t as quiet. He leaned partially out the window and said, “That’s Leo Valdez? He kinda looks like me!”

In the fact that they were both Hispanic, short, and had impish smiles, this was true, though Pax was slightly darker with chubbier cheeks. And the girl kinda looked like Kally, except looking at her was like trying on the same dress as Aphrodite to see who looked better. For an uncomfortable moment, it also made Kally wonder what she and Pax would sell from a stand. Poisoned bake goods? Weasel shirts? Probably weasel shirts.

“Tofu burgers,” Merry sighed wistfully and leaned into Kally’s shoulder. “I think I’m in love.”

“Right,” Calex chuckled. “I’d say a happy ‘two’ on the infatuation meter at best.”

“Tofu burgers are involved. I think that warrants at least a three,” Merry argued.

There was a small clearing about two dozen feet away from the shack that Axel took as a parking lot. He stopped the car, pulled the emergency lever, and exhaled slowly.

Joey grunted and leaned over Pax’s seat to see the flaming boy better. Neither he nor the girl had paid their van any mind. “He looks like a little runt,” she said.

Pax withdrew his apple and tossed it from hand to hand. “I’ve heard a lot about him from Matt. I may never have this opportunity again.” Pax grinned dangerously. “I’ve gotta mess with him.”

Before Axel could say anything, Pax jammed a dart into Axel’s seat belt buckle. He opened the door, pressed the lock button, and slammed it shut.

Axel jerked forward so quickly that his seat belt locked, trapping him. He fumbled to open it, but whatever Pax had done kept the buckle fastened even when the dart was removed. “Ajax!” Axel hissed but his brother was already walking towards Leo, taking a bite into his apple.

Merry shoved Kally forward. She stumbled past Joey and almost over Pax’s seat.

“Stop him!” Axel commanded and withdrew a knife to cut the seatbelt off.

Kally climbed over the passenger seat, pulled the lock up, and almost fell when she opened the door. As she scrambled after Pax, she could hear Calex yelp from the back, “Axel—the child lock is still engaged! I can’t open the back!”

So, for the next few seconds, that would leave it up to her to stop Pax. Well, it wasn’t Pax anymore. It was a six foot, blond police officer rapidly closing the distance between he and the teen.

Leo stopped flipping the tofu burger. The flames encircling his hand vanished, leaving a half-fried patty laying awkwardly in his hands. He had curly black hair, not quite as unruly as Pax’s, but close. His eyes were also dark, and couldn’t focus on one location for long. He wore a dirty army jacket and beat up work jeans.

When Pax leveled with him, Leo grinned. “Hello officer,” Leo said with such casual cheer that Kally assumed upsetting the police was as casual for him as walking in late to math class. “You missed the memo! Yesterday was our store’s official Po-Po appreciate day, but—”

“You’re in violation of California Code SB-1221,” Pax interrupted him while flashing a badge. As Kally approached them, she had to marvel at Pax’s acting. His posture had gone rigid, the same way it did when he mimicked Axel or pretended to be Jason Grace. He kept his chin held high, like an authority figure would. He pointed at the dragon “I’d like to see your permit for that dragon.”

Leo’s eyes widened. “You can see Festus?” He glanced back at the dragon, who glanced back at them with those unnerving and beautiful eyes. It creaked and whirred and Kally realized it was talking. Maybe telling Leo which one of them it would make into brunch first. Did metal dragons eat people?

When the son of Hephaestus returned his gaze, he looked more confused than alarmed. Leo tilted his head to one side, examining Pax like he could open his face and find a control board. “Do you have special Mist-piercing contacts or something? Because that would be sweet and I’d like to talk to your optometrist.”

Once Kally got close enough to interrupt them, she remembered how much she hated improvising. Merry would have come up with some story to drag Pax off before he changed back, so they could pretend they didn’t know the crazy guy dressed as a cop that mysteriously vanished.

“Officer—” Kally couldn’t continue when she saw Pax’s name tag. She burst into giggles.

Leo looked a second later and stifled some chuckles.

“Don’t get started with me Ms. Kassand! You’re still in trouble for Gorgon hunting on private property without permission!” Pax snapped. His authoritarian demeanor was so convincing, she almost went silent, but Leo’s laughter destroyed the illusion.

“Officer Doofus?” Leo gasped through his laughs.

Kally could tell that Pax was losing character. His mouth twitched. “You got a problem with that? You demigods think you’re so special and above the law, just because your parents are gods—”

As the air around Pax seemed to ripple, Axel lurched out of the van. The back doors flew open seconds later with Calex and Joey following after. Merry stepped out leisurely after them. Was Euna still sleeping in the car?

Pax’s hair darkened back to his wild black, his skin tanned, and his uniform lengthened into his duster jacket, T-shirt, and worn skinny jeans. He’d given up the façade to laugh along with them.

Again, Leo didn’t seem that surprised by Pax’s shape shifting. He did pick up on the joke. “Man, you had me for a second there, especially with the code. Is that a violation for illegally parking chariots or something?”

Pax shook his head, still laughing. Axel, Calex, and Joey all slowed down to normal walking pace when they saw Leo hadn’t set them on fire.

Pax straightened up enough to use his salesman-voice, “California Code SB-1221: you can’t use a dog to pursue bears or bobcats. One of the most important laws you need to know to live in the sun state.”

Leo saw the others coming and pulled himself together. “Gotta always worry about your spare bobcats,” Leo said. His eyes drifted over to Kally. One of his hands ignited again and he flipped the tofu patty. “Nice assist on the prank. I’m Leo Valdez—Handyman supreme. That’s Calypso—”

He gestured to the girl. She gave a small wave from where she was still trying to calm the centaurs enough to talk to them. “This is our shop. You can’t really find it unless you’re sent by a god, recommended by a friend or, have a life-or-death situation that can only be fixed with the world’s best cider. So… cider?” he offered.

As Leo went to set them up for brunch at an open picnic table, Pax listed off their names while pointing at everyone. She, Pax, and Merry took one side; Joey, Calex, and Axel, the other. Merry called dibs on the tofu burger he was flipping.

From the tempo and sound of Pax’s voice, Kally could tell Pax really wanted to be this guy’s friend. Pax did say that Matthias spoke about Leo a lot. Maybe Leo was also really into weasels and Reese’s Sticks.

“I’m Ajax Pax, your evil duplicate.[1] Here to tell you what you’re doing right in your life and how to ruin it. But call me Pax because there are too many A’s, too many X’s and too much awesome with—”

“Wait. Ajax Packs?” Leo grinned. “Like Ajax packs the heat? Or Ajax packs a punch? Tell me you do some kind of sport or—”

Pax wound up his arm and Kally could see Pax going in to punch Leo. Fortunately, Axel saw it too and darted his hand across the table to stop him.

Pax pouted. “He asked if I could pack a punch—”

“That’s not what he meant and you know—”

Pax shook Axel off and resumed his introductions. “This is Kally my sort-of-not-girlfriend, Axel, my brother—also the god of awesome—Merry is pretty cool, Joey, and some prick—”

Calex came out of his starry-eyed stare at Leo to scowl at Pax. “Ey!”

“—named Calex. Oh! And Euna is probably in the van and hasn’t gone on some crazy killing spree in pursuit of breakfast.”

Kally wasn’t sure how she felt about being introduced as Pax’s sort-of-not-girlfriend, though—like most things Pax said—it wasn’t fully inaccurate.

Joey sighed and stood back up. “I’ll go get her up. If there’s breakfast involved, she’ll be worse if we don’t wake her.”

As Joey walked away to wake the beast, Leo set out plates for everyone and handed Merry a bun. Merry hummed happily. “Mmm—a curdilicious burger. This might push the infatuation scale to a three—“

“Two and a half at best,” Calex offered with a chuckle.

Leo grinned. “Oh, for me? Sorry ladies, but the Leo machine is taken.” He glanced up to follow Joey’s movement. “I like your party mobile—wow! Are you using a…” Leo paused then snapped his fingers. “A Hygieia Hydraulic prototype?”

Axel sighed. “When I get back to Camp Half-Blood, I’m killing Matthias.”

“You’re from Camp Half-Blood?” Leo asked. His fingers traced a belt around his waist and his other hand fiddled with a fork he’d put on the table.

“Yea mate. They’re curious what is keeping you away,” Calex said. He tried to sound casual and lighthearted, but didn’t quite manage. His voice as a little too high-pitched.

“I kinda died and came back. It can really mess with a guy’s head. I tried to send them a message to let them know I was okay…” Leo trailed off.

Kally didn’t know the details of Leo’s story the way Merry or Calex would, but she overheard Piper lose it at one of her campers for suggesting Leo might be dead. From what Kally heard, he’d sacrificed himself so they could win one of the great wars but the camp counselors seemed to refuse his death. Piper and Leo had been close friends, hadn’t they? Kally could imagine Calex sitting up with Piper, comforting her about Leo.

Leo’s mouth moved like he wanted to say more and he glanced quickly over one shoulder.

That beautiful girl was walking over from the centaur table. She looked annoyed. When she noticed Kally, her eyes narrowed. Then they shifted to Merry, giving her a quick look over. The movement was so quick and subtle; Kally thought she must have imagined it when the girl smiled.

Leo whirled to face her like he’d completely forgotten the rest of them. “Hello there Sunshine,” he cheered. “You still don’t want any help with our party-harty patrons?”

She upturned her chin and huffed. “I see centaur manners haven’t changed in the last 3,000 years.”

Kally saw Pax reach for a dart on his belt. She put a hand over his to keep him from an unnecessary dartfest. Did anything not startle this boy? Kally understood why he’d been nervous around Romans, but this girl didn’t look dangerous. Kally was waiting for the day Pax came running to her because he saw a butterfly that reminded him of a monster.

“You’re the Calypso,” Pax hissed.

Calypso examined Pax. Her eyes had widened in alarm, then relaxed into confusion. “Yes,” she said. Almost to herself, she added, “I don’t know you.”

Although Kally didn’t know why, the disinterest on Calypso’s face calmed her. However, Pax’s outburst sent a ripple through the table. Axel’s eyes narrowed and he folded his hands casually in front of him, resting his chin on his thumbs. This obscured the lower half of his face so she couldn’t quite read his expression. Calex flinched and glanced between Leo and Calypso, looking worried.

Finally, there was Merry who munched with her eyes closed. “Whatever comes out of your mouth better not make this delicious feast any less enjoyable,” she said without opening her eyes.

Pax ignored her. His hand tensed under Kally’s. “No, Ms. Stockholm Syndrome. Most people don’t need to know me for me to know them. But you’re different. I know you from Jack’s poetry.”

Calypso’s jaw went slack, then it slammed shut, and she scowled. Tears rimmed her eyes. “You know Jack?”

“Seeing as I just got to tango with his murderers, I knew him,” Pax corrected. His voice had regained some of his normal buoyancy, but it sounded darker than usual.

Leo’s smile faded. He glanced from Pax to Calypso. “Who’s Jack?” he asked. “Uh, I kinda thought you said it was just Percy, that pioneer dude, and that Sissy guy.”

“Odysseus,” Calypso corrected reflexively. She rubbed her sleeve against her face and choked out, “I’m going to get the stew.”

“Wait—” Leo said, but Calypso was already disappearing back to their shack. She even ignored how two of the centaurs butted heads to vie for her attention. He glared at Pax. “Not cool man.”

Leo raced after her.

Before Calex, Merry, or Kally could ask, the Pax brothers began to hiss back and forth in… Mayan?  Because of their accents and her lack of knowledge in any of their languages and dialects, she struggled to tell if they were speaking Spanish, Mayan, or Kriol.

As the two chattered, Kally could see the Song sisters making their way over from the van. Merry set her tofu burger down and dabbed her lips with a napkin. Kally could imagine the verbal assault and battery that she was about to unleash.

“Hold up. What’s this about Calypso making things more complicated?” Calex interjected.

Everyone stared at him. His grey eyes at full attention, like one of the Pax brothers had addressed him directly.

The Pax brothers paused, glanced at each other, then glanced at Calex.

Axel asked him a question, keeping his hands folded over his mouth. His accent altered slightly with the language.

Pax muttered something under his breath.

“Shut it you dumb bloke,” Calex snapped at Pax. He turned back to Axel. “’Course I can understand you. Now what are you on about?”

Merry gave a hearty laugh.

Some floodgate of emotion broke in Kally and she sighed in relief. “Thank God someone can understand them!” she said. When the boys used language as a way to pretend she wasn’t there… it kind of hurt. Especially considering Pax had told her so much, and that she couldn’t tell his secrets anyway... it almost wasn’t fair.

Merry nudged Kally’s shoulder. “Love and desire speaks all languages. I guess that means Calex does too.”

Calex stared thoughtfully off to the side, then nodded his head. “I can understand most languages after hearing them a few times. I suppose that would be a godly power.”

“So, speak English,” Merry said to Pax and Axel. “Else we’ll get it with a British accent and Pax, you know Calex will make you sound stupid.”

“You’re right. I’d make him sound as he normally does,” Calex said.

“I sound like a scholar and a gentleman,” Pax protested.

By now, Joey and Euna had made their way to the picnic table. Although all of them looked exhausted, Kally was pretty sure she could start a sleep walking club with Euna. Probably a little dangerous in the Greek world. The girl’s eyes were barely open and her hair was plastered to the side of her face. After she plopped down in Joey’s former seat, she scanned the table for food other than Merry’s half eaten burger and found none. Slowly, she glared at her sister in a way that would make sloths proud.

Joey shoved Pax further down the bench into Kally so she could squeeze beside them.  “Don’t look at me. Pax probably scared the food off.”

“Don’t worry Flower Girl. Leo will be back with sweets.” Merry reached across to pat Euna’s head, but Kally grabbed Merry’s wrist and pulled her back. She knew the type of look on Euna’s face and didn’t want Merry to be down one hand.

Merry shook her off with an amused grin. She turned her attention back to Axel. “Let’s start this game of question and answer from the beginning. Why are we here? We know you’re a big fan of being the gods’ errand boy and—as much as I know you wanted to see Mr. Hunkihunk’s childlike wonder at seeing Leo Valdez—” She winked at Calex. “—I’m smelling an ulterior motive. And I doubt you’re here to rescue the Human Torch, who apparently doesn’t need rescuing.”

Axel examined Merry. No one was willing to interrupt the staring contest that rapidly degraded into an uncomfortable stalemate, not even Pax. His eyes flicked down to where Kally had rested her hand back on his—she’d only done it in case Calypso came back out and he went for his darts. He enlaced their fingers, lifted their hands into the air, then opened and closed them at random spots like PAC-MAN trying to eat some ghosts.

Euna put her head down on the table to nap.

Axel sighed, closed his eyes, and spoke softly. “Our father is trying to become a god. I need Leo Valdez to craft a weapon that not… not even Ares’s curse could break.” When Axel opened his eyes, they gleamed in the sunshine. For a moment, they glistened from brown to gold and Kally thought about the vision she saw in the van. “Then, I will be properly equipped to stop him.”

Kally had gathered most of this from Pax, but it was weird to hear Axel say them aloud. It felt anticlimactic at their little picnic table.

“A god?” Joey repeated in disbelief.

Calex’s eyes were wide. “Can the average bloke become a god?”

“He’s going to try,” Axel said.

“And what kind of person is your pops like that he wants to become a god?” Merry asked quietly. Her jaw slanted out of alignment and she rubbed it.

Axel nodded his head. “Not a very good one.”

A silent message passed between the two of them. Merry seemed to notice she was rubbing her face and forced her hand to the tabletop. Kally remembered the bruises Merry had when she left her father’s house and how Merry was seeking emancipation . They really needed an ice cream catch up day.

Pax set their hands down on the table. He squirmed back and forth, keeping his eyes on the ground. Kally thought he’d add something. Instead, he used his spare hand to fumble a necklace out from under his shirt.

“And how does…” Merry leaned forward so her mahogany locks dusted the edge of the table. She glanced past Kally at Pax. He paused and gave her a devilish grin. “Ms. Stockholm Syndrome make things more complicated?”

“Isn’t Calypso from the original myths? What’s she doing here?” Joey piped up. She sat up straighter and leaned forward to be more part of the conversation.

Merry nodded. “She was locked up tight on an island as punishment for supporting the Titans in the First Titan War. The gods would send her heroes to spice up her life, but they would always want to leave. She wasn’t known for being a good sport about it and, when Odysseus decided he was ready to stop the hanky-panky and go home to his waifu, she went a little Misery on Odysseus, for maybe seven years or so.”

Pax scowled. He released his necklace and his hand tightened an uncomfortable amount on Kally’s. “She shows her affections in unconventional ways.”

Axel frowned through his fingers. “Jack was a mess afterwards.”

“She captured your friend?” Joey asked, clearly skeptical of Jack’s abilities to defend himself from a tiny woman. “Is this the guy you kept calling the Scourge of Rome?”

Axel hesitated. “Propaganda. Not all killers are brave and not all monsters are ugly.” He glared over at the shack. “We needed Jack for the war and Atlas suspected he knew where Jack had disappeared.”

“So, you went to get him?” Calex asked.

Axel shook his head. “Mortals can’t find Ogygia except as teasers to Calypso, but Titans can. Prometheus and Atlas went to bargain for his release.”

“She had him gagged and muzzled like a dog,” Pax grumbled. “You know, like you do with people you love that want to leave.”

Kally felt her stomach drop. She wanted to assume Pax was joking, but she had a terrifying image of Pax as an ex-boyfriend, dressing up as a killer rabbit to scare away potential future boyfriends. Assuming future boyfriends were a thing that would ever happen.

Joey rolled her eyes. “Leo is here and ungagged. And I heard some rumors about Percy and this girl. He’s also ungagged. Maybe she changed her ways.”

Axel grunted. “Yea, and maybe Zeus said that humans and gods are born equal or Chiron will stop sending heroes out to die.” He shook his head. “Atlas made her swear on the River Styx that she wouldn’t hold heroes against their will anymore. We couldn’t have her taking anyone else from our cause. How ironic that the next one to show up was probably Percy Jackson.”

Calex said, “I do get some odd feelings off them. Though they do fancy each other just fine.”

“Calypso is probably worried we’re going to drag him back to Camp Half-Blood,” Axel mumbled to himself.

“Well, duh. Leo belongs in Camp Half-Blood,” Joey said. “Why should she care?”

Kally thought about how it would feel living on an island for 3,000 years in solitude. At first, she thought it might be awesome: all that time for writing, reading, and video games. The best part: there’d be no school, no annoying chemistry assignments to fail, and no cute boys to make her freeze up and feel like the world’s most realistic ice sculpture. But she was already lonely without Merry and it had been about a month since she moved to New York. And if the only people to visit would inevitably want to leave you…

“She’s probably scared of having to interact with others,” Kally blurted. When Merry, Axel, and Calex turned towards her, she thought about crawling under the table, but pushed forward. “If everyone she loved left her when she was on an island, I could see her being afraid of them having… more distractions off the island. And she might be nervous about talking to people in general. I wonder if Leo hasn’t gone back because she’s still adjusting.”

Could there be adjustment periods for 3,000 years of near solitude and separation anxiety? She could imagine trying to talk to a school counselor about that. “Uh, I’m a little afraid my boyfriend might leave me. The last 26 did.”

Kally had never been stranded on an island and she was terrified of social interaction. It would be unrealistic to think that wouldn’t leave a person bitter, anxious, and vindictive about the isolation. Especially when you looked like Calypso and could offer immortal paradise and boys still chose to leave.

Pax let go of Kally’s hand. Although she still felt uncomfortable with the exchange, her skin felt cold without his. He pouted at the ground and grumbled, “Nice to know you’ll sympathize with me when I do terrible things in the future because I have a traumatic back story.”

“You’re probably right,” Merry said. She must not have heard Pax, or was ignoring him. Merry gave Kally a little shoulder nudge of approval. She asked Axel, “So, you’re worried she won’t do us any favors for fear we’ll whisk away her knight in greasy armor. I think I can change her mind on that or at least distract her, with a little permission from all of you.”

Merry pressed something on her jacket and smooth jazz filled their ears. The music sounded more like high-quality-surround-sound rather than a dinky jacket radio.

The nearby centaurs perked up like social justice warriors detecting a racist comment.

Axel grinned, tapping his fingers across his goatee. “I like your idea, daughter of Dionysus.”

 Kally wasn’t sure how often she’d get to say it, but having a couple of centaurs handy helped a lot. As soon as Merry had their permission and gave a summary of her plan, she switched her powers on. Maybe it was because they hadn’t had enough sleep or that they’d finally had a chance to relax after almost 24 hours of questing, but Kally calmed when Merry turned the music up. She thought about how easy it was to hide in a corner when other people were dancing and was blissful at the idea.

The centaurs did the opposite.

“Party time!” one cried.

The other two bumped their heads together.

“Alright everyone, if you want to make this far easier on me, give a quick shout out to something that makes you happy! It can be sad-happy or excited-happy. Preferably something giddy-happy though,” Merry shouted. She stood up and gave everyone a charming smile.

Kally wondered how long it would take Leo and Calypso to come back out with the throb of music and the soon-to-be shouting. Merry’s jacket must have had telepathic subwoofers to make the picnic tables buzz the way they did.

Merry pointed at Joey.

Joey smirked and stood up with her. “Easy: dancing.” She put her hands on her hips and Kally could see Joey was already swaying to the beat. Something about Joey’s smile felt contagious.

Although the look on his was a sad grin, Calex stood up as well. “Waking up Tom in the morning,” he said. Although the motion seemed to pain him, he poked Euna in the side.

Euna sat up—Kally expected her to break Calex’s finger—and grumbled, unironically, “A full night’s sleep.”

Merry glanced at Kally. Panic swelled in her. She knew it didn’t matter what her shout out was, but she didn’t want to—

“Starting a new journal,” Kally said and jumped to her feet before Merry could poke her.

“Woo-hoo! Literacy!” One of the centaurs called and smashed a bowl on the table.  

That was less nerve wracking than she thought it would be, even with the Thor-centaur. Merry gave her a thumbs up.

Pax stood up. “A happy family,” he said.

Axel sighed and joined them standing. “When Reyna is trying not to smile.”

Pax nudged Euna with his arm. “Euna, you need to stand up so we can finish our transformation and turn into Sailor Scouts.”[2]

Euna grumbled and stumbled to her feet.

As soon as she did, the centaur, who had originally shouted Party Time, joined in their declarations with, “Red velvet cheesecake!”

“Fuzzy rabbits!”

“The Anti-Corruption Act!” the last one shouted.

The other two stared at him for a moment, shrugged, and echoed, “The Anti-Corruption Act!”[3]

Kally didn’t know what that was, but Axel nodded in approval.

During all their exclamations, someone else crept over. The bronze dragon made a creaking sound from a spot almost directly above Kally. She felt like she should have been more afraid, but the addition of a cheerfully creaking dragon seemed appropriate in the sunny weather.

Kally hadn’t realized she was starting to shift from foot to foot to the beat. Although Merry had warned that her demigod powers magnified with excitement and joy, she hadn’t realized exactly how nice the community feeling and electrojazz would be.  

One of the centaurs, Mr. Anti-corruption jumped onto the picnic table, collapsing it. He took off his Party Ponies shirt and swung it over his head while shouting, “Washington Chapter loves remixes of Louis Armstrong!”[4]

“Yea!” the other two cheered.

Then rushed at their group.

“Not again,” Calex grumbled.

Kally wasn’t sure what to expect, but burst into laughter when one centaur took Calex’s arm to dance with him and another took Joey’s. The height-to-horse ratio was a little ridiculous, but none of them seemed to mind.

Leo and Calypso rushed out of their shack.

Leo frowned at the picnic table, though he perked up at the music. “Aw man, it took me like, 30 seconds to make this table!” Although Leo attempted to look stern, he laughed when he saw Festus swing his head to the music.

A rustling came from the woods. Normally, Kally’s demigod instincts might have shouted danger but, with the music and the pleasant warmth of the sunshine on her face, she knew it couldn’t be evil.

A dozen nymphs and satyrs skipped out of the woods, wearing colorful crowns made of fallen leaves. They needed no invitation or conversation to prance among the centaurs and half-bloods. Kally giggled as the nymphs poked the satyrs horns with sticks then darted away, in a cat-and-mouse dance.

Someone poked her in the ear.

Kally jumped. Pax stood beside her with his devilish grin. He winked his hazel eye. “Try and catch me Cyclops,” he invited.

Kally wanted to do something more than blush. On a whim, Kally lunged forward as though she was going to pursue him then stopped short.

Pax jumped back, though almost stumbled when she didn’t follow. They laughed.

Kally could see Axel offer a hand to Euna. She stared at him.

“I promise you’ll get food afterwards,” he said.

“I can’t dance,” she stated. She didn’t sound embarrassed about it, but factual.

“But you can fight,” Pax pointed out. His eyes remained on Kally and he hopped from foot to foot, the way he often did before doing something stupid. Although he kept focused on her, he said to Axel and Euna. “You ever see Avatar the Last Air Bender? Just take her through some fighting stances.”

Euna shrugged. Within seconds, the satyrs, nymphs and the rest of their group learned to give them a wide birth while they ran through practice drills to the beat. Both laughed when Euna accidentally whapped Axel in the face.

“How have you seen so much TV?” Kally asked Pax as he pranced closer to her.

“It’s how Luke shut up Matt and me when we were causing too much trouble,” Pax said proudly.

When Kally glanced over, she saw Merry had danced up between Calypso and Leo. Calypso looked uncomfortable, the way Kally usually felt at school dances. Part of Kally felt sympathy for her. Dances were super awkward, and they hadn’t even formed a circle group yet. Something about Merry’s music calmed Kally though. Maybe she should pull Calypso in for a dance so she knew she was welcome.

“Man, we gotta start charging party fees,” Leo laughed. His hands fumbled around his apron, withdrawing pieces to construct a quick party hat out of a paper plate. That boy’s fingers could move fast.

“Oh no, honey. Other way around. I’m great for business as you’ll have plenty of greedy tummies to feed in a bit,” Merry hummed with a broad smile. “This one is on the house though because your tofu burger was so yumlicious. However, this party will only be complete with the Leomeister and Calydoll.”

“I might head inside,” Calypso said. She touched her head. “My head kinda hurts. I think I’m going to go lay down.”

Kally had looked away for too long. Pax dove at her. She yelped and stumbled back, but Pax stopped short when he registered what Calypso said. He glanced over at the same time as Axel, who also paused in his fight-dancing with Euna.

Axel nodded to Pax. Then got struck in the face. Again.

Pax scrambled over to Calypso’s side. “Hey! Yea, syndrome-calling is bad and stuff, and I shouldn’t have called you those things.”

If it was anyone other than Pax, Kally might have believed him. But Kally recognized the tone and it said, I should have said worse things.

“That’s not much of an apology—” Leo started to say but Pax cut him off.

“But I have something that will stop you from feeling your headache,” Pax offered. He withdrew a vial from inside his jacket that Kally had never seen before. Unlike his knockout serum and poison, it was full and glittered like the stars. “Our dad owns a pharmaceutical company and this stuff works better than a dream.”

Calypso glared at Pax, probably still unhappy about what he’d said earlier, but her want for a headache remedy won out.

Kally might have been disappointed when Pax took Calypso to the side, but the ensuing game of musical, dancing chairs distracted her. Calex and Joey managed to escape the centaurs and rejoin their group.

Axel left Euna to Calex with strict instructions that she not accidentally kill Calex. Before Leo could go after Calypso and Pax, Axel snagged Leo’s arm and took him to the side. Axel said something about needing to do business before they could party. Merry, Calex, and Leo all looked disappointed as Axel led Leo to the van.

That was the plan though, right? Now Axel could ask Leo to build that unbreakable weapon. But she had to wonder—Axel had mentioned Hephaestus had fixed all the weapons in the back of the van. What tool or talent could Leo have access to that Hephaestus wouldn’t also have?

Merry placed a hand on Kally’s shoulder. “We don’t need pretty boys to have fun,” she said, laughing and shoving Kally to sway her hips.

Joey came over to join them and give Kally a few pointers on dancing. Kally never thought of herself as a good dancer, but Joey proved to be surprisingly encouraging despite all of her criticism. Joey was phenomenal. Kally had almost forgotten the dance battle she had against Apollo when they first got to camp.

“We have a school dance coming up,” Joey shouted over the playful bounce of music. Since the music never seemed to change level when Kally stepped closer or further from Merry, she wondered if part of its magic was to keep it the same volume for anyone partying. “You should all come. I can invite Pax as my date. Euna can invite Axel.” Joey flipped her hair. “I’ve got plenty of friends who would love to take Calex or one of you two if I tell them to.”

“Mmm, I do love parties,” Merry cheered.

Kally envisioned Joey as a mob boss, controlling a roving group of pre-teen girls in pop-star hoodies and perfect makeup. Kally would rather fight Aphrodite’s Devils again than have to keep up conversation with them. Instead of rejecting Joey’s offer, Kally asked, “Joey, don’t you have a boyfriend you’d want to invite instead?”

Kally often forgot Joey was two years younger than her. Despite her age, Kally couldn’t imagine Joey not having a boyfriend.

Joey glanced over to make sure Euna was distracted by Calex. As though she wasn’t shouting, she leaned toward Merry and Kally. “I’m dating Apollo, but he’s really busy.”

That took a moment to process. “My dad?” Kally balked. Regardless of how gods could change their appearance, something about her fourteen-year-old… friend? Could she really call Joey a friend? But her fourteen-year-old friend dating her 3,000 year old father seemed like something she should report to the school counselor and maybe some kind of super powered police force since she doubted their counselor could do much. Did Chiron have a policy for camper-god relationships?

Merry shook her head to the music. “You think you might be a bit too much of a young kitten for—”

           “Nope,” Joey stated without a hint of offense or uncertainty. “When I’m older, I’ll marry him and become a goddess.”

           “Joey, Goddess of Vanity.”

           Kally jumped when Pax appeared beside her. He grinned, winked his hazel eye at her, and slipped his hand into hers.

           Joey huffed, but didn’t break her smile.

           “Where’s Calypso?” Kally asked. It felt weird to say her own name like that.

           “Telling Morpheus I said, ‘sup,’” Pax said.

           “Is she alive, Mr. Vague?” Merry hummed, tapping his cheek.

           “When I saw her last. I went to make some Kool-Aid after—”

           “Are you the girl who considered herself worthy enough to marry a god?”

           Despite the merry atmosphere, everyone jumped when an older woman spoke beside Joey. None of them saw the woman walk up. Or maybe it was a dryad with a shawl? Kally couldn’t be sure, but she’d never seen a dryad hunched over like this one was. Kally couldn’t even see the speaker’s face, but the woman’s voice sounded aged with contempt and haughtiness.

           Merry went from shaking her head to the beat to rapidly shaking her head at Joey. She made consecutive slicing motions at her neck like to say, cut it out. Pax stepped behind Kally, in a way that cued Kally that this was not a mortal.

           Joey ignored her. “Augh, not right now. I haven’t done nearly enough quests yet. I doubt anyone knows me on Olympus. But, Hercules became an immortal. And Psyche married a god. If I work hard at it, anything can happen,” Joey said it with such casual confidence, Kally might have believed her… except she was talking about becoming immortal and marrying Kally’s father. For the record: gross.

           Kally decided she didn’t want to be there for that conversation anymore. Although she assumed Merry’s powers were blocking her from fully understanding her discomfort, it was definitely a killjoy.

           Joey laughed, her eyes sparkling. “Can you imagine it? Eternal beauty? Parties every night?”

           The old woman scowled at Joey, saying, “What did Hermes call it? The illusion of capitalism? Saying you can do anything if you put your mind to it. What a lie they tell children these days.[5] You don’t think it bold for a mortal to want godhood?”

Kally tugged on Pax’s hand.

           “Can we—can you and I—go for a walk in the woods?” Kally whispered. She didn’t want Pax to misunderstand and invite Joey to come along. She hoped he’d come up with an excuse as to why it should be a walk without her—

           Pax nodded, eager to get away from the older woman. He walked them towards the line of orange and yellow trees. To the others, he said, “Guys, Kally and I will be right back. We are going to go make out in the woods.”

           “Pax!” Kally hissed and struggled to withdraw her hand. That’s not what she meant—

           He tapped her nose with his other hand. “What? I’m a forward thinker.” He grinned. “And you didn’t seem like you wanted to be followed, Cyclops.”

           They walked past Festus, where he whirred his gears and bobbed his head. Kally wondered if the vibrations from the music felt like a massage to his wires. Two centaurs were doing a dance around him. Either that, or they were creeping up to attack, but Kally figured Festus could defend himself in the event of a pony riot.

           “That make out comment—it’ll encourage Merry to follow us,” Kally complained once the music quieted to sound more like an iPad and less like the best speakers ever.

           As she said it, a brilliant explosion of light erupted behind her. At first, she wondered if Leo Valdez had heard about her super nova and wanted to show her up. Then she heard a terrifying voice bellow, “Impetuous mortal!”

           When Kally turned, she saw all the centaurs and nymphs had dropped to grovel on their knees. Calex and Euna froze in mid-dance. There was no longer an old woman beside Joey, but a beautiful goddess, garbed in a glowing white gown and a cloak of peacock feathers. Her black hair was wrapped with golden ribbon in plaits down one shoulder. Those eyes burned with ferocity and radiated power.

           The music quieted. Merry joined the groveling with a quick, “Holy Hera!” Kally wasn’t sure if she was swearing or genuflecting. Merry tugged at Joey’s arm, but the daughter of Demeter stood there, gawking at the goddess.

           There were so many feathers. Kally had to wonder what Joey said to make the old woman combust into a boa with limbs.

           “You think you can handle the same trials and tribulations of the pious Psyche and the great Hercules?” the goddess demanded.

           Joey swallowed and clenched her fist. Kally was impressed. She would have apologized, cried, and probably managed to trip and knock herself out, but Joey stood her ground. “I can,” she said, though Kally could hear her voice quiver.

           Hera’s eyes narrowed. “Very well,” she snapped. Hera raised one hand and Kally was pretty sure they were about to witness a half-blood being smacked into a constellation. Instead, something appeared in Hera’s hand.

           A polished rosewood box with golden filigree.

           Kally was too far to see those details on the box, but she knew that’s what it looked like. She’d seen it before, but she couldn’t remember where.

           “This box allows you to carry the essence of a god or abstract thought. Travel into the Underworld and bring me the essence of Hades and Persephone’s happy marriage. Let’s see if you’re worthy to be a hero, let alone a consort of Apollo.”

           Kally recalled something Rachel said to her in her dream—that there would be a domino effect into a disaster with causalities on both sides.

           “Both sides?” she’d asked. “Monster and half-blood?”

           “No,” Rachel had frowned. “Traitor and hero.”

           And seeing that polished rosewood box, Kally knew that was one of the first dominos.

           Pax frantically tugged Kally’s arm. “We need to go tell Axel,” he whispered.

             Pax dragged Kally into the forest before they could see if Joey accepted the box. From the sudden pop they heard, Kally guessed Joey had accepted the box and Hera had disappeared. Either that or Hera popped Joey into confetti.

           Kally tried to balance not-panicking while scanning her memory for that box. She guessed it must have been from a vision, but she couldn’t pinpoint which.

           Although Pax rushed when they first set out, he slowed them down drastically when they heard Leo from somewhere ahead. “Uh… you want me to what?” the son of Hephaestus sounded like Axel had asked him to jump rope with a Fury’s flame whip. Though, if Leo really was fire proof, he probably could do jump rope with a Fury’s whip. Maybe she shouldn’t mention that to Pax since he might demand a performance.

           With the rays of brilliant sunlight sparkling through the woods, everything glowed yellow and orange. Axel and Leo stood out starkly. Kally hadn’t seen where they went at the start of the dance party, but Axel must have grabbed something from the van. He leaned against a tree, holding some kind of insulated sack in his hand.  

           Kally had to wonder how they didn’t hear Hera’s temper tantrum in the background, but she supposed the centaurs had kicked over a table at the start of their party.

           Pax stopped behind a large oak. He tugged Kally close and motioned for silence. Kally stumbled into Pax’s duster jacket and wanted to remind him that she wasn’t keen on his original public excuse for their departure.

But Pax leaned along the tree to watch the two talk. Kally wanted to point out that it was more important to make sure Joey wasn’t tiny pieces of paper than any prank Pax planned on playing on Axel, but Kally understood why Pax had paused. Axel looked… weird. Too business-like.  

“—with the temperature you’ll need to remove the metal, I’m not sure it would be safe for Calypso to help you.” With such routine smoothness to his speech, Axel must have been continuing a long list of instructions.

Leo waved his hand, pacing back and forth. He had a flip notebook in one hand and a pencil in this other. “Na man, her temper is hotter than any fire I can spill. She’s resistant. Plus I made her a fireproof Iron Lady suit so she can help me on more complicated projects.” Axel perked up at this information. Leo didn’t notice. He was sketching some kind of design. “So, melt the metal out of some coals and build a Buster Sword. Jeez amigo, you made this sound way cooler than it is. And why are you being so secretive with the payment? Do you have counterfeit ambrosia or something?”

Axel reached into the bag and withdrew the Silver Festus’s control disk. A month ago, when Kally first met the Pax brothers, they’d been attacked by a silver automaton dragon. With the help of the Romans, they’d managed to dislodge its control disk and shut it down. After seeing the real Festus, Kally understood the nickname.

Leo’s eyes went wide. “Holy Toledo! That’s Felix’s control disk!” He dropped his pen into his work belt and rushed within inches of Axel. “You have no idea how long it took me to find that much silver without Hazel around! Where did you find her?!”

“Your dragon attacked us,” Axel said.

“Automatons these days, am I right? They grow up so fast.” Although Kally could hear the jest in Leo’s voice, he eagerly darted around the disk, taking note of any of its imperfections. “I wonder why she—oh! Oooooooh!” Leo snapped his fingers and pointed at Axel. “You have a girl named Calypso in your group, right? Uh, Kelly or whatever?”

Kally flinched. She hated being called Kelly.

Pax glanced away to give her an evil grin. She had a feeling she’d hate it even more in the next few days.

“Kally,” Axel corrected.

“I was in the middle of programming Felix’s search engine—the search-and-rescue kind not the Google kind—when she disappeared. Felix was supposed to find Calypso if we ever got separated, but I never got to the ‘rescue’ part of the programming. Looks like Felix is good at finding Calypsos. Well, thanks for returning my disk.”

Axel didn’t look amused. Leo reached to take the control disk, and Axel tilted it up and away from his hand. “Before I give you this, I need you to swear that you’ll finish building the sword. This metal is cursed.”

Axel shook the bag in his hands. Although she already heard him mention coals, she expected some kind of metallic jingle instead of a swoosh of smoke from the bag. Were the coals on fire? “Weird stuff will start to happen when work starts on it and probably won’t stop until it’s done.”

Leo frowned. “What? Did you rob a mummy or something? I’m pretty sure that’s illegal in the book of Rawr.”

“Ra,” Axel corrected again.

When he continued his cold stare, Leo sighed. “Okay, okay. I guess it cursed away your sense of humor too.”

“A handshake will bring it back,” Axel gave him a crooked smile. He looped the satchel’s straps around one arm so he could extend a hand. “On the River Styx, you swear to finish this sword as soon as possible and give it to me and I promise to give you Felix’s disk and do everything I can reasonably do to get you her body. Once I’m done with my mission, respectively.”

“On the River Styx? For a sword?” Leo put his hands on his hips. “Are you sure you’re not a con man? Because you’re starting to sound like Sisyphus.”

Axel frowned. He put the silver disk into the bag.

“Wait—okay, okay.” Leo put his hands up. He fiddled with his tool belt and glanced at the ground, thinking. “It’ll take me a day, day and a half tops. Probably a day and a half if you’re expecting parties and tofu burgers.”

“Deal,” Axel said and put his hand back out.

Pax tensed. As Leo took Axel’s hand to shake, Pax bolted towards them, almost knocking Kally over. “HEY!” he shouted.

But Leo was already shaking.

Kally had learned her lesson about swearing on the River Styx to a Pax boy. It’s why she couldn’t tell any of Pax’s secrets. It was frustrating when Merry teased her about conversations that Merry assumed were romantic and weren’t, but it didn’t hurt beyond that. Plus, this was with Axel, not Pax. Axel always seemed more candid than his brother. But she wondered why he had all these extra precautions. Wasn’t Leo just making Axel a sword?

Leo and Axel glanced over. With the attention in their direction, it would probably look worse if Kally continued to stay half-hidden behind a tree. She stepped out, wishing she had anything to do with her hands and a way to explain away the eavesdropping.

Pax stopped a foot short of them. “Hera gave Joey a fancy box to get marriage advice from Persephone.”

Leo blinked. “Wait, Hera was here? As in goddess Hera? Shouldn’t there be more chaos and general annoyance? And—hey!” Leo suddenly seemed to remember what Pax had said to Calypso. “You were a jerk to Calypso.”

Pax shrugged. “I told Calypso I shouldn’t have said those things. Leo, let’s restart. I want us to be friends. I’m Officer Doofus of the Doof Diversion Team—”

“Ajax,” Axel interrupted. “Aren’t you supposed to be making Kool-Aid to calm everyone’s nerves?”  

Pax pouted and fiddled with something in his duster jacket, eerily similar to how Leo fiddled with his tool belt. “Fine,” Pax grumbled. “You go make more devious sounding plans. Come on Kally.”

 When they came out of the forest, the party had resumed. Hera was nowhere to be seen. The nymphs, satyrs, and centaurs were dancing. Merry must have turned the music back up.

Pax ran off to make some Kool-Aid in the shack. He seemed… more upset than she’d expect from an eavesdropping session, but she continued forward when he waved her on.

              Their friends were back at the picnic table. Kally expected Euna to be shouting at her sister for her recklessness, but Euna had passed back out on the table. That girl must have really loved to sleep. A glass of green liquid rested in front of her, probably the Kool-Aid Pax made.

              “Is Axel’s master sword under construction?” Merry asked. She looked tired, her honey skin glistening with sweat, though Kally wasn’t sure if it was from dancing or from pushing Euna and Joey back into non-killing moods after Hera’s interruption. She sat beside Joey, who wasn’t confetti, with Calex across from her.

              The rosewood box was on top of the table, partially covered by Joey’s hands. When compared to her fingers, the box seemed small, not something to hold the essence of a god. Now that Hera wasn’t around, Joey looked pale and sick. Kally could imagine her epiphany of, “Oh, Hera meant that Underworld. Can I fill this with Gushers instead?” Kally wondered what Euna said to her before falling asleep that made Joey realize a trip to the Underworld probably wasn’t a good thing.

           From the silence prior to her arrival, no one wanted to talk about Joey’s new quest.

              “He and Leo are taking a long time to get things sorted,” Calex said. He frowned at the rosewood box thoughtfully. The gloom in his grey eyes made his gaze feel hundreds of miles away. Probably back in Kakata, Kally thought.

              “Leo said it would take a day or so to make,” Kally said. Something about that conversation didn’t feel right. She didn’t want to bother them or say something to make the boys sound suspicious, especially not after the Missing flier from Hiro and Lapis. But she remembered Calex saying something…

           “Hey Calex,” she prompted quietly.

           When he glanced at her, Kally tried not to look away. She was finally getting comfortable looking all of them in the eye, and it was just in time to remind her that Calex looked like you’d expect a son of Eros to look. “Um, you said something about coals being stolen, er, some kind of rumor at camp…?” Her voice went softer with each word. Merry’s party euphoria must have been wearing off, since her instinct to hide under the nearest piece of cardboard to avoid socializing—it was coming back.

           In the distance, she saw Pax stroll out of the shack, balancing several dozen plastic cups and four pitchers of clear, glittery liquid on a tray. When he ran into a centaur or nymph, he would bow grandly and fill them a cup. As it poured out, the liquid would alter into various neon shades of Kool-Aid. As cool as that was, it made Kally wonder if Pax should ever be allowed to brew them Kool-Aid.

           “Coals…” Calex repeated. “Oh. Hestia’s coals. Someone nicked a few during the chaos of the Second Giant War. Why?” He stooped a little lower to the table, and Kally had to wonder if Calex did it to hide his height. It didn’t work.

           Merry cocked her jaw to one side. Her brown eyes darted to the forest. She hummed in short, declining notes to signal her disapproval. “Oh you silly chillies. We need to round up those Pax boys and give them a talking to. Then we should regroup at Camp Half-Blood before we tackle the last trial of Psyche or Axel’s father.”

           Joey managed to draw her eyes from the rosewood box to look at Merry. “Psyche already did this? Oh duh, someone has always already done it.” She rolled her eyes. “How’d she do it?” The last part sounded more eager than Joey would probably want to admit.

           “She failed sweetie,” Merry said, eyes lingering on the forest.

           Joey huffed and flipped the pink highlights out of her eyes. “Then I just need to be better than Psyche.”

           “Welllll,” Merry said, stretching her arms above her head in a way that made Calex glance away. She grinned at Joey, finally breaking eye contact with the trees. Kally didn’t know how to tell Merry, but she figured the nymphs would be way better at staring contests. “Hubris is clearly your fatal flaw, a very popular choice amongst heroes. Mine is taking things too lightly. Anyone else want to go?”

           “Mine is cowardice.”

           Pax swept in with the tray. He had one pitcher left, probably just enough for their group. In a flash, he’d tossed cups in front of all of them. As he poured it out, the colors altered: Merry’s, purple; Kally’s, red; Joey’s, pink; Calex’s, blue. Pax set another cup down for himself. When he poured, it shimmered to a black. Kally didn’t know they made black Kool-Aid.

           “Can we do that party thing again? It was the perfect distraction to slip bugs into Calex’s sleeping bag,” Pax cheered.

           Calex scowled at him.  

           “Not until you and your brother answer some long awaited questions,” Merry said. She picked up her plastic cup and swirled the contents.

           Pax flipped one hand to the side. “Do you think questions feel rather esteemed and self-important when they’re long awaited?” He set the tray down on the table and sat beside Kally. When no one answered him, Pax pouted. “Can we at least cheers first? I told everyone to wait until I gave the signal so I could poison all of you at once.” He tapped his hands together like an evil mastermind.

           All the centaurs and nymphs were staring at the table, drinks in hand. The centaurs had started to fist pump in the air. “Beers! Beers! Beers!

           Another shouted, “Dude, he said cheers.”

           “Oh…Cheers! Cheers! Cheers!”

           Merry waved Pax on with a smile.

           Pax hopped onto the table and raised his glass. “To trusting and trusted friends, to enabling family, and—most importantly—to super, awesome weasels!”

           The nymphs and centaurs glanced at each other. The ones who were chanting “beer” earlier glanced at one another. “Eh,” one said. “Not as good as the Anti-Corruption Act, but it’s still a reason to party. To weasels!”

           “To weasels!”

           They stomped their hooves and clanked their heads together.

           As the centaurs competed to chug their Kool-Aid fastest, Pax sat down beside Kally. He wrapped an arm around her waist, making Kally’s hip tingle. She raised her cup along with Merry, Joey, Calex, and Pax. They clacked them together and each took a sip. Well, Joey chugged hers down. Kally could imagine the adrenaline rush she would get in the next few minutes.

           As expected from the color, Kally’s was cherry. She set the cup down, glancing over at Pax. He hadn’t touched his drink, but kept swirling it in his hand. From this close, Pax’s annoying chocolate smell mixed wonderfully with the smell of her Kool-Aid. He puffed out those round cheeks and popped them, then wrinkled his button nose.

           “Pax, you’re really cute.” The words came out of her mouth instead of being repressed in her brain, where they belonged and should die. Kally felt her cheeks burn and her head felt light.

           “Paxes—er—Paxi?—Paxes? are all adorable, but, for you, that’s just the Morpheus Dust talking,” he laughed half-heartedly.

           Joey collapsed onto the picnic table, plastic cup clattering to the ground. Behind them, the party ponies staggered to the autumn leaves. Nymphs yawned. The music slowed like Merry’s jacket had run out of batteries. Calex tried to stand but crumbled backwards.

           Pax wouldn’t look down at her, but watched everyone falling into heaps.

           “You shouldn’t joke like that. It makes it hard to tell when you’re lying,” Kally said, trying to raise a finger at Pax. She couldn’t get her hand to work. Those and her feet had gone numb. Some part of her screamed that this should be scary, that she should send out an Iris Message for help, but… maybe Merry’s powers were still keeping her calm.

           She struggled to keep her eyes open. Had Pax not had an arm around her back, she might have fallen off the bench. He pulled her close, so she’d slide against his duster jacket. The leather felt soft.

           “I don’t lie very often Kally,” he whispered into her hair. “Direct lying is Axel’s job. Since you’re not going to remember this conversation later, I think it’s safe for me to admit that I’m falling in love with you. I hope tricking and drugging all of you doesn’t ruin our chances of dating.”

           Tricking? Drugging? Kally tried to wrap her brain around it, but before she could, she felt the cold coils of Python tightening around her chest.

Thanks for reading guys! The next chapter is the one I’m most excited for (as I love ruining characters) so I hope you end up enjoying it too! :D

[1] Author is not oblivious to what you’re probably all thinking XD

[2] And now I need to figure out who would be which Sailor Scout. I’m pretty sure Axel is Sailor Mars…

[3] Shameless and boring political plug! http://anticorruptionact.org/

[4] While this song is more thematic for other characters, the artist inspired this scene: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ssoRXlOhqI

[5] Jack’s not bitter at all -.-

[jflashandclash]

Attrition of Peace

Thirty-Three: Joey

What a Nice Day to Kill for Love

              Joey was having a lovely dream about punching Apollo in the face when she heard his voice singing in her ear. Most of her dreams involved elaborate dance numbers, but the musical twist was new. She didn’t even know the dead did dream.

           When she willed herself to get up, her legs and arms felt heavy, like someone had dumped a Mrs. O’Leary on each limb.[1] In the distance, behind the lovely voice, she could hear a continuous chatter that made her shiver. If this was a musical, Joey would need to recommend a better chorus than wind-up teeth.

           She tried to think of why Apollo would be here. She remembered tricking her way through the EZ line for deaths and skirted around a three-headed dog. Unless her death had been a nightmare… which was unlikely, since her brain would have thought of a way less lame death.

           Someone’s hand—Apollo’s she presumed—graced her calf. The gesture felt distant. Regardless of the distance, what Charon had said about godly-demigod or mortal relationships still made her want to smack him over the head with a harp, and maybe a piano.

           Joey went to kick him.

           Nothing happened.

           Her throat constricted with fear when her legs wouldn’t respond.

           She tried to sit up.

           Relief flooded her system when she could twist enough to hit Apollo with a good right hook.

           She was never going to tease Euna for struggling to wake up again. That struggle was real.

           The boy kneeling beside her clutched his face where she’d made contact. Something about it seemed… wrong.

           From what she could see, that wasn’t Apollo. And, either this person was made out of marshmallows, or she’d gained ghostly super strength. Over the tips of his fingers, it looked like she’d struck him with a truck, not her fist.

           What mostly stumped Joey was how she was able to touch him.

           Joey fumbled in her pocket for the rosewood box, the only other thing she’d been able to touch and interact with since her death.

           That blond hair, the tan, the Camp Half-Blood T-shirt, the medical fanny pack: only one person she knew could make such a grievous misstep in fashion with such casual confidence.

           This was Will Solace. She remembered him from camp, a heartthrob that all the nymphs pouted over losing a few months ago to a certain grumpy Goth kid.

           Although Will’s face was mutilated, she could see his dismay at getting walloped. A real expression. Not another ghost, creepily floating around, lost and empty, like they’d been the next ones in line for the cafeteria when the entire school kitchen got shut down for health code violations.  

           Joey lunged forward to hug him.

           Will made a muffled sound of confusion when she shoved him away immediately after the hug.

           Tears threatened her eyes. She tried to ignore how alone she’d felt and how scared she’d been and how relieved she was to see another living—er—another sentient ghost. Even if the interaction did start with ghost on ghost violence.

           Instead of expressing any of that, she did the courteous thing: she folded her arms, huffed, and demanded, “Why are you touching my legs, you perve?”

           By now, Will looked baffled. What was left of his pummeled brow furrowed in annoyance. “I’m dating Nico,” he stated and pointed at her feet.

           When Joey glanced down, she had to refrain from reigniting her panic. The edges of her shoes were grey and crusty, completely coated in some kind of stone. When Joey tried to wiggle her toes, she realized they weren’t coated in stone. They were stone.

           Will’s fingers tapped against her rolled up pant leg, where ghostly dust fluttered away. It hadn’t just been her toes before.

“I thought it would only happen to living demigods, but I guess it can happen to ghosts too. You’re not supposed to sleep down here,” he said. There was a slight frown on his lips, as he gazed past her, to the two-story bronze gates around Hades’ black obsidian palace.

Joey wanted to shout at him. If she didn’t nap, she was scared she’d collapse in front of Hades and Persephone in their courtroom. She’d been so tired, and she’d only meant to nap for a few minutes. Getting past the Fields of Asphodel… just remembering who she was and that she had a purpose… it was exhausting. Every step threatened to shake her of what made her… well… her.

“There isn’t exactly a how-to guide on traveling through the Underworld,” Joey snapped. “But—uh, thanks for fixing my legs, I guess.”

Will sighed and fumbled in his fanny pack. He withdrew a trifolded sheet of paper and handed it to her.

Last time someone handed her one of these, it was Thalia Grace suggesting all boys’ coodies were worth giving up for an eternity of hunting. Clearly, Thalia hadn’t been investigating the right boy’s coodies.

“What is this?” Joey asked, suspicious it was another sales pitch at why she should relinquish makeup and hair products forever.

“A how-to guide on traveling through the Underworld and the quickest routes to the McDonald’s pit stops,” Will explained, “Nico does a seminar on it.”

Although she didn’t want extra reading, Joey stuffed it into her pocket, beside her rosewood box. That could come in handy later, for the next time she tried to do an everyday activity that turned deadly. She’d be terrified to see what flushing a toilet would do in this place.

“So, does he give that seminar like, right after your First Aid class? I feel like that could make campers nervous about your faith in their survival chances,” she said.

“We try to have them on separate days,” he said, humming a healing song right after.

Joey could feel her toes start to wiggle. The sensation was surreal and almost painful after the numbness. Weird to think a ghost could feel pain, but she guessed they had to for the whole eternal punishment thing to work.

Everything was so bleak: the trampled black grass leading up to the fortress of a black palace, the black poplar trees, the massive swarms of souls. Pax and she needed to lead the Hermes cabin down here with an arsenal of paintball guns with neon ammo and shoot up the place. Maybe not Hades’ ideal way to redecorate, but it would be quick, effective, and fun. Hades’ direct antithesis.

Something had changed since Joey put her head down on the cold stone. A single shaft of sunlight glistened down from a crack in the stalactites, landing behind the gates of the palace. Joey thought she must have been hallucinating after the dreariness of everything else.

She refocused on Will and the way his skull caved inward around his hairline. Joey almost choked up while asking, “How did you die? Lose a fight to a bowling ball?”

Will paused. He mindlessly tugged up the side of his shirt, revealing a grotesque red rash and claw marks. With his other hand, Will touched the indent in his forehead. His eyes watered, and he shook his head.

“Cerebral edema and hemorrhaging, if I had to guess.”

Joey wanted to feel bad for him, but all she could say was, “Cereal edma?”

“I think… I think one of my half-brothers beat me to death with an electric bass,” he said, like that had anything to do with the previous sentence.

Will swallowed and caught Joey up on what had been happening upstairs while she was down here. On several occasions, Joey had to clarify, and assure him, that her sister and friends were not the bad guys. Though, she was proud to hear that her sister went on a murderous rampage on behalf of Joey’s death. She’d have been furious at her sister if Euna had frozen up and gotten herself killed.

By the time he was done explaining, Will had cracked away all of the stone but her pinky toe and Joey had full mobility of her feet—something necessary for any undead dance competitions she might enter. Those had to exist in Elysium for it to be paradise.

“I can’t get this last part,” he said apologetically as he stumbled to his feet.

Joey took his hand to stand up. They walked towards the two-story bronze gates with ghastly etchings of death scenes. Two undead soldiers flanked either side. One wore a bloodied, old school military jacket, with golden tassels, medals, and a white ascot. The other wore some Middle Eastern headdress and—

Joey made a face. His hand was burned away to the bone.

“So,” Joey summarized Will’s story, unsure if the guards would try to stop them, “One guy in pink pajamas took out all three of you?”

“Four of us,” Will said, taking no heed of her tease. “Pax tried to stop him, I think. I just hope Annabeth and Piper are okay, though I could have easily missed them. They could already be in Elysium by now.”

From what Joey had heard, Annabeth was one of the best. Joey would have loved to have trained under her. The idea of someone being able to take out those three made Joey tense. She hoped Pax and the others were okay, too.

“So, how did you get to the front gates so fast?” Joey asked. Although she hadn’t followed Will’s timeline well, he must have died weeks after her. She wasn’t sure how time passed for the dead.

“Everyone knows who—” Will started to say until the blue uniformed man hailed him.

“Guillaume, it is good to see you,” he greeted with a thick accent that Joey assumed was from some weird region of France. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

“We have been waiting for you,” his companion corrected, sighing and twirling a stiletto in his non-burned hand. He also had a thick accent, but one Joey couldn’t place.

“Hello Kléber. Al-Halabi,” Will nodded politely to each of them. “I thought you two weren’t supposed to be working door duty together anymore?”

The Frenchman turned up his nose and inhaled sharply.

The Middle Eastern man scowled off to the side.

“All the bureaucratic red tape,” Kléber said, waving his hand back and forth in front of his nose like he could beat the smell away. “This is why government directories are worthless. If you had a better system set up, Nico could have overturned Midas’s orders by now, and I wouldn’t be with this murderer—je dis ça, je dis rien.”[2]

Al-Halabi scoffed. “Eid wahda matsa’afsh,” he said.[3] Although Joey didn’t understand his words, she could recognize the sarcasm. “I’m not even in the right afterlife because of your conquest and your influences, damoteel.”

While old feuds were great and all, this was wasting time. Joey cleared her throat.

Kléber glanced at her, and bowed. “I apologize, Mademoiselle. Your sister is waiting for you. If it pleases you, Crevette, escort the young lady this way.”

Joey felt weird taking Will’s arm, but the look he shot her said it would save them a lot of time if she complied. It felt nice having Kléber recognized her presence. Since the Fields of Asphodel, she’d been scared of fading away.

As Kléber and Al-Halabi escorted them through the gates, Al-Halabi asked, “Have you heard anything topside about the angry spirits?”

“Angry spirits?” Joey asked.

Al-Halabi nodded and twirled his stiletto again. “Someone opened a bridge between the Underworld and topside. Hades permits a few ghosts to haunt the Upperworld every night, but nothing like this. Khawaaja Kléber thinks someone is amassing an army and it’s connected to—”  

The ground trembled. Joey clutched Will’s arm and he grabbed her arm back.

“What was that?!” Will demanded.

Kléber glanced back and made a grim face. “Rumor has it: Nyx. Something has upset her. My instinct tells me that’s no coincidence with the ghost army.”

Al-Halabi sighed. “As much as Kléber is a corruptor and tyrant, he is also an exquisite general. He had similar inklings about events leading up to the Second Titan War—wait here.”

Al-Halabi and Kléber motioned for them to stop, then continued forward into a blinding light.

Once her eyes adjusted, Joey could see a lovely garden. Each flower bed was surrounded by dazzling gems: sapphires, rubies, emeralds, and diamonds. The flowers themselves gleamed silver. Trees loomed above the gardens, with orange and red fruit and flowers glittering in their branches.

The sole ray of sunshine from the ceiling beamed into the garden like a glaring spotlight. Combined with the sparkling gems, Joey felt like someone had shoved a kaleidoscope in front of a lighthouse beam and told her to stare at it.

Al-Halabi and Kléber had disappeared.

           Will let go of Joey’s arm. “About how I got here so fast. Everyone knows me here. I’m Nico’s boyfriend. Or was.” He sighed and glanced upwards towards the light’s source longingly. Joey had to wonder how much hell a cavern like this was for a child of Apollo. “He’s not going to handle this well. After his mother, and Bianca… I’m so worried about him. No one else is going to know where to buy him Mythomagic Band-Aids or Walnetto’s candy, or force him to have a balanced diet…”[4]

           Joey thought about Euna, and how hopeless her older sister would be on her own. None of the others would be harsh enough on her for training or grades. They’d let her laze to mediocrity.

           “I’ve been down here for a few family dinners,” Will said, aimlessly. His blue gaze looked through the gardens. “They were… you can’t eat or drink anything down here. Do you know how hard it is not to offend someone’s parents when you can’t—”

           Joey grabbed Will’s arm and dragged him towards the garden. “Wha—” he started.

           Hearing him talk about family dinners made Joey remember her father’s homemade soondubu-jjigae that she’d never have again.

           “We’re here to talk to Hades and Persephone, not to talk about your and Nico’s creepy bring-your-son-and-his-boyfriend-to-work-day,” she said, biting back tears, “I’m not waiting for those jerks to escort us. I mean, you only live once, right?”

           “That’s really tasteless to say down here—” Will said, but was cut off when they almost ran into a massive black form.

           Joey skirted to a halt. She almost screamed. There was a dark shade of robes standing behind one of the poplars, just ahead of them. She’d mistaken him for a shadow. Where his hand touched, the tree’s bark screamed in pain. His robes warped and gnarled with faces howling in agony. He was tall and wiry, reminding Joey of a rotting twisted oak. The aura around him vibrated with power and his stature reflected it.

           The way the pale man peered around the tree trunk confused Joey. She’d be horrified to see what this man was hiding from.

           Following his line of sight made her jaw drop.

           There was a young woman toiling in a garden bed. The sunlight glimmered off her billowing blonde hair and warmed her pale skin. Her apron had a flickering floral design—no—it was made out of various flowers that Joey quickly identified as blooming during the wrong time of year: daffodils, tulips, azaleas, magnolias, and hyacinths. All colorful springtime flowers.

           She had the satisfied grin of someone knowing their labor would pay off—a smile Joey’s father also got while doing yard work.  

           “She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” the man asked, his oily, powerful voice an ill match for the adoring tone.

           “How are you doing that?” Will asked in awe, staring up at the sunlight.

           “Poseidon wanted to say his last farewell to a lovely surfer that died young. So, in exchange, I asked him for some sunlight. He caused a massive earthquake…” The man raised one hand out of the shadows, into the sun rays.

           Will frowned. “You… you’re probably killing hundreds of people to give her that sunlight.”

           The man quarter turned towards them, a smirk coming to his lips. His eyes blazed black with the fury of a wildfire. “137 in counting,” he answered.

           Will swallowed. Joey dug her nails into his arm, hoping he’d realize getting righteous around this guy was probably as useful as reminding Hitler that Jews were people too.

“Wouldn’t you do the same for Nico? Or did I misjudge you as worthy of my son?” Hades asked, that dark gaze boring directly into them.

Will’s arm shook violently under Joey’s grip—or was that her hand shaking?

“I think it’s romantic,” Joey squeaked. She cleared her throat and said more firmly, “We both do.”

“Thank you,” Hades said, his continence warping back into a grin. Joey relaxed. She did not want to end up in this guy’s robes—either metaphorically or literally.  He continued, “Normally, I would ask a living demigod to do this, but we’re short staffed right now. I hate dealing with the Romans, and most of the Greeks are already among the sleep.”

Joey blinked, glancing over to Will to see if this meant anything. In an uncomfortable moment, she realized she hadn’t asked Will why he wanted an audience with Hades. Requesting resurrection didn’t seem like it would be the Sun Boy’s motive.

Will’s expression remained neutral, though he disentangled their arms to stand taller.

“Among the sleep?” she asked.

Hades ignored her and continued, “Will, you can bring Nico back from the shadows and stop Melinoe. Being a son of Apollo, you’re most likely to succeed with the job, and in exchange, we can talk about giving you back your li—”

“Hades, are you being rude to my sister?”

The woman had come over from the garden. In the sunlight, her face was soft and kind. Her grin was playful. She touched Joey’s arm and Joey could feel the warmth of an April breeze.

Joey found herself smiling back and doing a quick curtsy—something she’d never done before and felt super stupid about afterwards.

“I’m working,” Hades said, his shoulders slumping.

When Persephone glanced past them at the obsidian palace, her face fell and her gaze hardened. “It looks more like you’re showing deference to your bastard child’s boyfriend. What did you put Orpheus through when he tried to lead someone back from shadow?”

“Pers…” Hades said in a voice that sounded too close to begging for a god.

Persephone held her hand up. She gave Joey another smile, though this one was chilled. “Joey, I’m sorry I can’t give you a proper welcoming right now. Let me finish with this, and we can have a pleasant talk.”

Persephone turned back to Will, her eyes fiercer than any warrior’s. Hades frowned and Will took a step back.

“When you try to save Nico, you need to have faith that your love will be enough to bring him back and defeat his despair. You can’t talk to him. You can’t acknowledge him. If you fail at ignoring him, you’ve damned both of you,” she said icily. Her eyes shot to Hades. “That is close to the deal you gave that charming poet.”

Will glanced at Hades.

Hades shrugs helplessly.

“That’s cold,” Joey said.

The ghost of a smile returned to Persephone’s face. She took Joey’s arm and led her towards the garden. “Now, we can talk about your entry to Elysium—”

Joey resisted the movement, wondering if Persephone would still the world into an eternal winter when she was upset.

“That’s not why I’m here—” Joey said, withdrawing the rosewood box from her pocket. She’d almost forgotten. Had that been why she was here? She remembered Will’s comment about Nico, and about how worried she’d been for her sister. Could she just ignore them? The others? Wouldn’t they eventually die anyway? Just thinking it scared her.

Persephone frowned at the box. “Sister, if you stay, I can grant automatic entry to Elysium.”

Hades groaned behind them, like he and Persephone had argued over this before.

“You’ve already died a heroic death,” Persephone said sternly and Joey could tell that comment wasn’t directed at her. “But that box is a mark of struggle. Are you sure you want to keep holding it?”

This box was the only thing reminding Joey of her past life. She dug her nails into its golden filament. If there was anything else she could do for her sister and friends, she was going to do it. Returning this box was one of Psyche’s quests, after all, wasn’t it?

“Yes,” Joey said, lifting her chin. “Hera gave me this box. She wanted me to ask you for the essence of a happy marriage.”

For a moment, Persephone looked stunned. Then she burst into laughter, Hades’ booming laughter echoing after.

The latter sound was horrifying and something Joey assumed was a special punishment for the particularly wicked.

Persephone wiped a tear from her eye, calming herself down. She snapped her fingers. A lovely undead handmaiden rushed over to bring Persephone a rose pen and flowery paper.

After writing a quick note, she took the box from Joey and opened it.

Everything slowed.

The flowers trembled.

Hades’ robe fluttered in Joey’s peripheral vision, towards the open box.

A motionless vacuum sucked the noise from around them, leaving the Underworld—despite its sunlight—even drearier.

Then Persephone placed the folded note into the box and shut the lid. Everything went back to normal.

Joey could hear Will give a sigh of relief behind her.

Persephone returned the box to Joey. Nothing felt different about it, though she supposed nothing would with a single piece of paper.

“Don’t let her open that around you,” Persephone said. “Tell her this is the key to her happiness. Give it to her without saying what is inside.”

“What’s in it?” Joey asked, glancing down at the flowers. Something about them felt ominous.

“A divorce lawyer’s number,” Persephone explained, “Staying with a hopeless cheater like that is anachronism at its worst. She needs to get with the times.”

Her eyes flicked past Joey and that warmth returned. She must have been looking at Hades. Feeling grossed out, Joey could tell Persephone actually liked Hades. Yuck.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” Persephone asked again.

Joey nodded her head. She’d never been more certain. She turned back towards Will and Hades, who gazed at her evenly.

Hades narrowed his gaze. “Are you working with the one who called my helmet stupid?”

That absolutely sounded like something Pax would do. Barely containing a laugh, Joey asked, “How could someone say your helmet looks stupid? Doesn’t it turn you like, invisible or something?” She was pretty sure she’d heard Merry talk about that once.

“Exactly!” Hades cried triumphantly.

Joey trembled and was pretty sure the rest of the Underworld did too, though she couldn’t tell if it was because of Poseidon above, Nyx below, or from how terrifying Hades’ victorious attitude was.

Hades snapped his fingers and Al-Halabi and Kléber materialized on either side of Will and Joey. “It is time for you to leave,” Hades said, “Remember that, outside, ghosts aren’t as powerful during the day, so, it will be easier to work at night. I don’t normally let spirits escape, but… these two have been spreading rumors about holes where souls can slip away…”

He made a shooing motion with his hand, quarter turning towards Persephone’s little patch of sunshine.

Persephone waved her hand warmly at Joey before shooting an icy look at Will.

Will was already going to take Joey’s arm, the same way he’d escorted her in, when she paused. “Wait—Lord Hades.”

“Yes?” the intensity of his voice revealed his impatience. Those eyes flashed again.

Joey shouldn’t ask. Not just because of Hades’ impatience but because she wasn’t sure she wanted to know. “In… in the Fields of Asphodel, people forget who they are and mindlessly wander. Everything those spirits have done is so unimportant to them, they forget their own accomplishments. At least the people in the Fields of Punishment know who they are and that their deeds left a mark on the world. Which one do you think is really worse?”

A queer smile curled onto Hades’ lips. “Joey Song, you’re never coming back to my domain again. So I would not worry over such nuances as to whether it is worse to be forgotten and forget or worse to be in pain.”

           Joey paused. Never coming back. She thought that sounded like a sweet deal—the Underworld sucked and Kléber was right about everything taking forever, like waiting in those stupid lines for an EZ pass. Why even make an EZ pass lane when the traffic in it could still get so congested.

           A deeper instinct in her shivered at the thought, wondering what that could mean.

“Now go. You try my patience. Will is running out of time to save my son, and you need to deliver Hera some peace of mind,” Hades said.

           Joey nodded. They gave their farewells to the King and Queen of the Underworld and Will escorted Joey towards the exit with Al-Halabi and Kléber on either side of them.

           As they approached the two-story gates, Joey asked, “Do any of you know what he was talking about? Never coming back?”

           Kléber gave an airy chuckle. “It could mean becoming immortal. That is one way to never need return.”

           Al-Halabi frowned and shook his head. He stared down at his stiletto, and Joey got the impression he knew there were other ways.

           “I’m not getting any Apollo-style prophetic moments about it. Sorry, Joey,” Will said, giving her arm a brief, comforting squeeze.

           Joey should have been ecstatic. They were going topside. Will might be able to save his boyfriend. She’d get to properly complete a quest and maybe see her sister again. But instead of rejoicing, she found herself asking, “Spirits can’t like… die permanently, right?”

           Al-Halabi muttered a curse in Arabic, his glare switching to his burned hand. He changed the subject by saying, “We don’t know the location of all the routes out of here, but let’s pretend the rumors are true about multiple ones. Where would be the best spot that you know of to contact Hera?”

           As they talked about the best reentry points, Joey became more afraid of leaving the Underworld than entering it.

Thanks for reading! Here’s a little break from the chaos in the Upperworld XD

Also, as a call out to you wonderful people--I’ve been getting a lot of really kind support recently from my constant readers. I really appreciate it! You guys are awesome and make this book series happen! :D <3

Footnotes:

[1] Apparently, this is going to be the accepted weight measurement system in my version of the world. Pax weighs a fortieth of an O’Leary.

[2] More or less, “just saying…”

[3] يد واحدة ماتسقفش. Equivalent of saying, “you need cooperation from all parties for something to work.” I’m not sure if this is a common idiom for Syrian Arabic or the timeframe, but eh—we can say he picked up stuff while he has been undead.

[4] Super popular candy from the early 1900’s.

[jflashandclash]

Hey so the taglist that the other anon was talking about is actually a list of people that you tag at the end of a post so that way they will get a notification everytime you posted a new chapter. So like at the end of every chapter that you post here there would be a tag list. and the people interested in being in that list will message you.

Hi,anon! Thank you for your patience in explaining! (As you could probably guess from my social-media-challenged first response, I had no idea ^.^’‘‘‘‘‘ I am the laziest social media user I know.)

That’s super sweet and nice that anyone would want to be included in a taglist  ◕ヮ◕)

Answer: Absolutely! If you want to be part of a taglist, just message me and let me know what you’d like to be tagged in! (i.e.: Tales from Mount Othrys updates, Traitors of Olypmus updates [one day I have a bunch of short stories to write for it] fan/commissioned art for either, any new projects I might be working on or my own art [one day I’ll be doing a comedy with a bunch of serial killers... one day....])

Again, thank you!!! I hope you’re having an awesome day! :D

[jflashandclash]

Blood of a Mayan

Seventeen: Ajax

Are Coincidences Born When the Fates Roll a D20 and Just Wait?

 If Pax were a superhero in his own comic book series, he’d consider reimbursing the artists for their time; after all, he would have been better off face-planting into the page’s panel than recounting his attempt to save his brother.

Although Pax had attempted a graceful landing, Hephaestus threw him so hard that—after several rolls—he wondered how anyone ever thought the world was flat when it spun so much. Had that tree not been nice and smacked him in the face, he’d have probably kept going and eventually rounded back to hit the other side of the van.

Pax stumbled to his feet and sprinted to the van’s back doors. They didn’t budge. Matthias was right--you always needed to sleep with dynamite for special occasions like this. As Pax had none—really, all he had was his boxers—he skidded to the other side of the van, going for the driver door.

Flames erupted around the front. Pax could hear the glass in the windows crack. If Axel survived this, Pax was sure his brother would be billing the god of fire and forge for breaking his van and—knowing Hephaestus—he’d find that reasonable. From what Pax could see, the flames weren’t spreading to the car itself, but dancing about the doors and the front window.

Pax knew he wouldn't make it through. The children of Santiago didn’t do great with fire, even despite his healing factor.

Rustling erupted from the woods. Pax cried out in happiness to see Hunnie and Baller. The two weasels scampered up his legs—their tiny claws gripping into his skin—and clung onto his boxers, seeming confused at his lack of jacket.

“Hunnie!” Pax grabbed her and lifted her in one hand. Hunnie squirmed towards the van, knowing their home was threatened. “Protect Axel!” he commanded and threw the weasel towards the blurred paint of Extraction Team on the side.

In mid-air, Hunnie expanded to her true Mist form. The small patch of spots on her back--her jaguar spots as Pax and Axel liked to tease—spread as Hunnie grew to the full length of the van. She twisted in a small war dance before—claws and fangs first—she disappeared through the metal.

The entire van lurched to the side under the weight of Hunnie’s charge.

Inside the van, there was a jump, a hiss, and then silence.

Pax felt his eyes water. “Hunnie? Axel!”

Baller went to jump at the van, but Pax grabbed him. They needed reinforcements. Pax was exhausted from the quest and Capture the Flag and was only equipped with his boxers and a weasel. Who do I know that’s stronger than Axel? Or, in other words for Pax, who is more awesome than the Alpha awesome?

“We’ll get Hunnie,” Pax promised Baller. Then he took off, struggling weasel in arms, towards the camp. Jason was unconscious and badly hurt--not that he’d ever want to ask Jason for help. But Pax needed to keep Chiron and Dionysus as far away from their van as possible. Even if they saved Axel, they might kill him right afterwards if they saw the contents inside. Neither Percy nor Annabeth were around. Would Piper be able to talk Hephaestus down?

Pax’s breath increased to a pant. He didn’t know where he was going, but his feet dashed through the sand of the volleyball court. Nico, he realized, Sexy Goth Prince can probably help. But stop a god? Pax wasn’t sure.

He could see the horseshoe of cabins before he heard a small voice whisper inside his head:

He’ll probably survive. I mean, Hermes, Ares, and Poseidon are all still—haha—alive and banging. And they offended Hephaestus in the same way. A bit uncreative if you ask me, but a sensible fallback for some family fun.

Pax stumbled and would have run over the small creature talking to him had he not tripped and rolled to a stop. Baller dove off his shoulder and scampered into the grass. That voice. Pax recognized that voice.

When he surveyed the grass around him, he found an odd congregation of animal parts, kinda like the pieces in an exotic butcher’s shop grew sentient, had a party, and wanted to look weird enough to make the shoppers go, you know what? Vegetarianism sounds fantastic. The body was serpentine with the head of a goat. A single stag antler and a unicorn horn sprouted from either side of the forehead, overtop two red eyes. Each of the legs belonged to a different animal: one avian, one reptilian, one equestrian, and one feline. It had a batwing budding out one side of its back and a bird’s wing on the other. It was about the size of a chicken with brown fur. A cute little reptilian tail flicked above the creature’s two horns like an angler fish’s light. It was adorable in an abomination-against-nature kind of way: Pax’s favorite way.

Pax’s heart jumped with a mix of dread and delight. “M-Mom!” he cried, not sure he could explain how he knew or ever wanted to explain how he knew that this creature was his mother.

She scuttled forward and hopped into his lap, the reptilian tail tipping down to poke his knee in greeting.

After seeing her as a jar on a date with his dad, Pax had to mutter, “You know, this isn’t even that weird. But—” He tried to force his ADHD off. “—wait—but—what you said—Hermes, Ares and Poseidon—those are all gods. Hephaestus can actually kill Axel.”

Sometimes his mom forgot stuff like that. But what could you expect? Gods and Titans often forgot petty details like mortality.

The creature arched its shoulder blades to a point that looked dislocating. Some mortals live through it too. Tristan McLean is still alive and without Hephaestus’s wrath for now. Though he did get tortured by that Giant. That’s probably unrelated.

Pax had no idea who that was or how that person related to his brother. McLean? As in Piper’s dad and Aphrodite’s—oh.

The creature shuffled from foot to foot with a giggle. Did I ever tell you that I convinced Tristan that Aphrodite left him for a richer man? Why do you think he strove so hard to become such an exceptional actor? He thought he’d win her back--and he’s still waiting! Waiting for ACT two: the heartache.

Pax puffed up his cheeks. He wasn’t sure if his mom was going to help him and--if she wasn’t--he was wasting valuable dramatic-rescue-time. Before he could pop his cheeks, his mother jumped and bumped into one cheek so he had to exhale. “Mom. Axel,” he reminded.

The creature curled onto its back, feet in the air, so it could bat at its tail. I wouldn’t have led Hephaestus to Axel if I didn’t think he had at least a 35% chance of survival.

“You led him here!” Pax cried.

You just need a little bit of help from Hephaestus and you’ll be ready to go on your quest to kill and usurp your father. Or fulfill the destiny your father has set out for you. I can’t keep track of these things. She batted a paw like she was brushing aside a comment.

Pax shook his head. “N-No. We’re trying to jail Dad—”

Oh! That’s what Axel is calling it. Huh, it’s odd your brother wants an unbreakable weapon to ‘jail’ your father--Oh! Can you imagine if your father succeeded and became my immortal concubine? The creature hugged its four paw--hoof--claws together in childlike wonder. We could have such a happy family! Eternally tormenting humanity--er--until Zeus gets bored and drowns all of them.

The creature pressed a paw against either side of its face and rocked back and forth. For a disturbing moment, Pax could visualize his mother as a little school girl, giddy about being asked to her first date or, in his mother’s case, first armed robbery.

When Pax was little, he always assumed his mother meant ‘prank’ and ‘tease’ when using the word torment. Was it possible, when he was little, he was also a little... naive?

Pax tried to get up. He needed to grab Nico, throw a white sheet over the Ghost King and have him scare Hephaestus off. But the tiny creature on him suddenly felt several hundred pounds heavier.

She clacked two talons together and a postcard popped into Pax’s lap. Look at the little gift that ended up on Hephaestus's desk. I think it might tip off the current Sevens’ final quest.

The unmistakable beauty of Aphrodite and the gruff girth of Ares were pictured on the front. Even when photographed, Aphrodite’s features seemed to blur. They were on the shores of a beach. Pax dodged around his mother to pick up the card and flip it over. On the other side, something was written in huge, violent scrawl, like this pen had given its all to make the postcard into confetti.

His mother’s weight reduced back to that of a feather. She clawed up Pax’s side to perch on his shoulder and read to him, “You’re losing your touch, Ugly. It’s not even fun to say anymore, but ‘Na-na-na-na-na! You can’t catch us!’ All my hatred, Ares.”

“Is Ares even literate?” Pax asked. Normally, that might have felt a little hypocritical. But this was Ares and Pax loved feeling hypocritical.   

We wrote something in blood once after the battle of--well, it doesn’t matter in relation to this letter. It’s not like Ares wrote it. But Hephaestus found it on top of his work desk with some junk mail about vermin traps. She clacked her nails together evilly. And what better way to anger someone than junk mail. Diabolical, eh?

Pax figured he’d be more upset if someone he liked cheating on him with a relative, like Aphrodite was doing to Hephaestus. He thought about Axel and Kally and felt sick. Then again, he’d never had to sort through junk mail. That had been Kouta’s job and Kouta did say that his first trial on the road through Xibalba would be sorting mail. Maybe sorting mail was worse.

“If you gave Hephaestus mail from Ares and Aphrodite, why is Hephaestus attacking Axel?” Pax asked, confused.

Maybe he’s not here to attack him. I told you Axel has a high survival chance.

Pax pouted. “You said 35%... okay, that’s high with you.” Pax tried to think of some way to keep having this conversation with his mother—she had a tendency to kill people when she was interrupted—and get back to camp.

If I was the type to make plans, then this would be part of one.

“Your plans involve a lot of almost dying. I mean, Python tried to kill us when we went to save Rachel.” Normally, Pax wouldn’t want to complain, but it wasn’t like his mother had just mixed up his and Axel’s lunch boxes or whatever normal moms did. Though that might have been even less acceptable as he would miss his daily ration of Reese’s Sticks.  

Python does tend to get like that around children of the sun god, she agreed absently. His mom started to groom pieces of dirt out of his hair from his earlier roll.

Now wasn’t the time to talk about this stuff, but Pax didn’t know if he’d have another chance and it looked like his mother wasn’t going to let him rush off to be a valiant hero.

Uncertainly, he said, “And you told Dad about the Golden Net and the coals… and something about Axel going crazy…” Pax’s voice quieted with each comment. He hated contradicting her. Not that he did often, but he knew what happened when he contradicted his father. For disciplining Pax, Santiago learned early on that it was more effective to beat Axel in front of Pax than Pax himself.

Would I have shown you that if I didn’t want a Pax boy to succeed? she asked.

Technically, Santiago was also a Pax boy, so that could go either way. Pax puffed up his cheeks and his mother--yet again--beat him to popping them. Interacting with his mom required a lot of concentration. Pax wondered if this is how people felt talking to him. Alabaster had once described their discussions as intellectually stimulating, the way catching rats with a fishing pole might feel.

She seemed to sense his hesitation, her goat ears twitching. Ajax, your father and I love you very much. We’ll be sure to lead you to victory and stuff. We can get into the semantics of whose victory later. Now, I heard you had a major assist in taking out Python. She sounded like she wanted to cheer him up.

Pax frowned, thinking about how he’d used his godly powers to manipulate Kally and make her feel terrible. Had he not done so and forced her into a solar blast, Python might have killed them, but he still felt like the biggest tool since Jason Grace first graced the Earth. “I don’t think Kally appreciated it very much.”

Oh my little terror muffin, you’re like me--a misunderstood artist, born into the wrong time. She patted his head with a hoof, then she shakily glided back into his lap. Don’t worry. Soon, I’m going to make sure we’re the ones who seem normal, she said while folding her bat and bird wings behind her goat head. Those red eyes narrowed to gaze up at the night’s sky. Soon we’ll be the ones inviting everyone else to our party. Your momma and her friends will make sure of it. She snapped her attention back to Pax. Now--are you still ticklish here?

She was faster than Hunnie and Baller ever could be. The creature dashed at Pax’s exposed stomach and prodded him.

Pax fell backwards, forcing a laugh. He wasn’t ticklish anywhere, but he loved being touched and poked. When he turned twelve, his mother showed up and they started this game. It was right when she promised to get Pax away from Santiago, because she understood no child of hers would ever want to be bottled up.

Oh, my little godling, she teased, prancing up to sit on his face.

“Mom,” he complained. “I’m not a godling.” Some people had to argue with their parents about becoming a doctor. He had to argue about becoming a godling. Talk about permanent career choices.

But you’ll be a great godling one day. You’re more god than human--and don’t forget how hard your father worked to assure that. Her tone took on a mocking quality. It was something both she and Pax thought ridiculous about Santiago.

Pax’s smile became more genuine. “I don’t want to be a godling, but I do want to be whatever you are. You look awesome!”

Do you like it? She fluttered to the ground beside him so she could ruffle out her feathers and flick about her lizard tail. It’s one of the most modern incarnations of my essence from some of my unbeknownst worshipers—[1]

Someone else, with a much shriller voice, interrupted her. “Pax—aren’t you supposed to be—ew! What weird thing is that? And why aren’t you wearing a shirt?!”

The call came from the direction of the cabins. Pax couldn’t believe he’d been so distracted that he didn’t see or hear the figures creep up. There were two of them, clad in black from head to toe, and standing in defensive positions two feet away from him. The dim green torchlight from Hecate’s nearby cabin wasn’t enough to see them fully, but that voice was definitely Joey’s.

Pax hoped it was too dark for Joey to see the creature beside him clearly. He sat up. His mom tilted her head and innocently said, Meow? In the least convincing imitation of a cat that he’d seen since Mrs. O’Leary perched on top of Cabin Three to “sneak up” on Percy. That roof had needed some serious repairs.

Then his mom poofed out of existence.

Pax blinked. “What weird thing?” he asked. His mom really wasn’t that weird to him, so Joey could have meant anything. “And what are you doing out after curfew dressed as ninjas?”

“That’s racist—we do not look like ninjas,” Joey snapped.

The taller figure beside Joey was probably scolding from the way it turned to her. “The entire cabin is dressed in black and creeping around.” Presumably Euna turned back to Pax. “Joey was a brat to Katie, so she sent us to scout out the weird noises over here to make sure—”

“Shut up,” Joey hissed. “He’s the enemy.”

“He’s in his boxers talking to some kind of mythological flying goat,” Euna said. “I don’t think he’s spying for the Stolls.”

Joey snorted.

Pax looked past the Song sisters to see the rest of the cabins. Cabin Eleven was gone. Well, not gone, it just looked like what would happen if Santa Clause let Poison Ivy wrap all his presents for Christmas. Hopefully with less poison. There were vines encasing the entire structure. Although Pax wasn’t quite sure with the lack of lighting, he thought he saw other figures in black darting around the perimeter, making flowers sprout out of the vines like evil flower terrorists. He was about to ask if everyone inside could still breath, but felt like that might be a dumb question.

“No I’m—” Pax bolted to his feet. “Axel! We need to save Axel—and Hunnie—and probably Baller now!”

Both stared at him in confusion.

“Was he attacked by pigeons?” Euna asked, dead serious.

“No—why pigeons—” Pax shook his head, trying to focus. “—no—Hephaes—come on!” He grabbed their wrists and tugged.

But both stayed put, like they were—haha—rooted to the ground. Joey and Euna exchanged a glance. Euna looked back over to the other fruit ninjas now growing peach trees in front of where Pax assumed the windows and doors would be.

Joey rolled her eyes. “Either this will be a prank and take two seconds or it’ll be another quest and that’ll make me like 3 and 0 with Katie Goode. That counsellorship will be as good as mine.”

Pax wished he had his pallet of Punniest Fun stickers to award Joey’s attempt, but they were probably in the van with his hopefully not-so-corpsy brother.

When Joey clasped Pax’s wrist back and stepped towards the volleyball courts, Pax considered some of the flaw in his logic. He was bringing two grass types to a brawl with a fire god. If Pokemon had taught him anything, he would need more variety.

Euna hesitated, like she sensed the flaw of his Pokelogic. “Another quest…” She unwrapped the mask around her face—actually a dinner napkin—and frowned at Joey. Pax felt Joey’s fingers tighten around his wrist and wanted to remind her that his wrist was not—in fact—a conduit for hurting others around him, though her attempt was an admiral furthering of science.

Euna exhaled. She stepped forward with them.  “That’ll make us 3 and 0 to Katie Goode.”

Joey stared, smiled, then quickly scowled. “You’re too lazy to want to be counselor—

“This is cute and everything, but my brother could be the base model for Hephaestus’s next automoton already. I’ll explain when we get there.” Pax wasn’t going to explain when they got to the van, but he never specified where “there” was so it was okay in his book. He just needed to get them moving faster. Despite what his mother said… especially with what his mother said, he wanted to make sure Axel wasn’t going to be scrap metal for Lucius’s next meal. Pax tugged them into a run. Joey didn’t let go of his arm and he found himself happy for the comfort.

As their feet dashed across the sand of the volleyball court, Pax heard someone speak. At first, he wondered if his mother was going to descend upon them as Sharktopus with a Boombox of Death, but the voice was too solid and a half-shark, half-octopus monster didn’t seem nearly awesome enough for his mother.

These two were dimly silhouetted by the distant light of the Big House; they must have recently left. They were so bad at sneaking around, they were standing up straight and had a flashlight. And they were playing music, presumably from a smuggled phone in one of their pockets. Hermes might spit upon them for such a sneakless transgression, but Pax had definitely seen the Stoll brothers accidentally trigger some bottle rockets in their pockets while creeping. Pax got to see some Hermes familial embarrassment and a panicky Stoll dance show.

The music was subtle, a man’s voice cheerfully singing, “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.” At first, Pax was confused by the composer’s choice of weeping in the background. But Pax could appreciate a creator’s irony, like how someone as smart as Athena came from Zeus’s head.

Pax considered leading Euna and Joey around these two until he realized the sound wasn’t part of the music and the girl mumble-weeping was someone he knew. Still a little ironic based off her normally sanguine personality, but not in a kicks-and-giggle way.

“A-A—and he’s-s just being a n-narcissistic, manipulative, a-abusi—”

Merry hiccuped into silence and stopped walking. Her companion—who could only be Calex by his height—stood beside her. From the way his flashlight’s spotlight trembled on the ground, his fists must have been shaking. Although Pax could tell this was something serious, Pax hoped—if Calex squeezed it hard enough—a miniature starship would warp hole through the light and make an emergency landing in the dirt, cheering everyone up and giving them free futuristic candy.

“I don’t know how to keep him a-away from Nikhil,” Merry mumbled.  “I don’t want Dad to kill him, but mom’s going to lose this court case and the only other option would be foster care. I’m-I’m not ready to take care of Nik—and-nd—I’m s-s-scared of s-standing up to him in c-court—”

Calex hesitated, then reached a hand out towards her.

Merry flinched. Calex recoiled and earned Pax’s award for worst executed counseling of the year.

“S-s--sorr—” she said and released a nervous laugh-sob. “I’m a right mess if I’m getting the jitterbugs around a sweet teddy like you.”   

“Hey, it’s alright,” Calex assured. “And it’s gonna be alright. You have photos of your and Nikhil’s injuries. You’ll be able to stand up to your dad. You’re stronger than you think and Kally and I will be there for you the whole way. He’s… he’s never going to touch you again.” Pax could hear how Calex struggled to keep his voice even.

Merry nodded, unable to verbally respond. She leaned her forehead into Calex’s shoulder. “You can do that thing with those beefy biceps now,” she mumbled after a moment.

When Calex hugged her, the music from her jacket muffled, so Pax could barely hear the “—Never gonna make you cry, never gonna say goodbye—” playing.

This was definitely getting recorded in the Top List of Awkward Ways to Feel like a Jerk When You’ve Technically Done Nothing Wrong.

Step One: Walk into an intimate conversation that you have absolutely no right to hear.   

Step Two: Freeze because you realize you’re intruding

Step Three: Repeat Step Two with the new knowledge that it’s too late to walk forward like you haven’t heard anything but you can’t retreat because you’d probably make noise.

Joey had paused at the same time as Pax. Euna must not have noticed, because Joey’s hand was thrust in her sister’s path.

They should handle this delicately.

Pax threw an arm around either of the girl’s shoulders, miffed to realize Euna was taller than him. He walked them forward and hailed, “How pleasant to run into you on this midnight… naked… ninja… stroll.” Upon looking at their current garb, he figured he had a lot to work with for excuses.

Calex flashed the light in their direction. Pax hissed and ducked behind Joey. “Hey!” she cried.

Calex sighed. He unwrapped one arm from around Merry to turn towards them. “I don’t even care what you’re doing Pax,” he said. “But how did he convince you two to do something? That dodgy prick isn’t blackmailing you, is he?”  

“No, we’re supposedly saving Axel. Wanna come?” Euna offered like they’d run into them at the mall.

“Whose bones are probably being ground to make a sword right now, but we can take our time and be generous to Hephaestus.  A few more stops might give him enough time to polish Axel off,” Pax reasoned. He couldn’t believe how sidetracked he’d let himself get. Some part of him really did believe his mother about Axel being okay. The part with more brain cells urged him to check on Axel, even if to size him for a coffin suit.

“Sounds groovy,” Merry cheered. She sniffled and frantically rubbed her face against her jacket sleeve. The music fluctuated with each motion and Pax registered that her jacket wasn’t the shade of her normal one she usually wore.

Merry detached from Calex and walked towards Thalia’s tree. “Sounds all juicy to get my mind off a… late night call. Dad didn’t want me walking home on my lonesome so he hired me a bodyguard—” she tapped Calex’s chest, “and look! He also gave me some new armor!” She pressed something on her sleeve and the song switched from to “Never gonna tell a lie” to “Do you believe in magic? In a young girl’s heart!”

The music was coming from her jacket.

“It knows all the best party music from the last few thousand years, though obviously it’ll play a bit more jazz and a bit less waltz,” she cheered, the tremor in her voice almost gone.

Pax let out a tiny yelp of excitement. Had he not just promised himself no more distractions, he’d demand a dance number on the spot. But, he thought in his best Axel impression, no more distractions.

“Come on guys! First person to the van I’ll leave alone for a week!” Pax encouraged, jogging a few paces forward.

“You’re serious?” Calex asked, head perking up.

“This girl ain’t running,” Merry said. “You all athletic types can give your legs a nice shake if you want.”

It seemed to physically pain Calex, but he shook his head. “I got enough of that during Capture the Flag.”

Pax thought about insulting the Arsenal football team until Calex chased after him. Antagonizing would work on Calex or Joey and get at least one of them to the van faster. Why was no one taking this seriously though? He knew he was great comic relief and cuter than a yawning hedgehog, but normally—when he cried wolf—there was at least a 70% chance of someone listening… though maybe 60% of that was Axel.

A chill interrupted the thought.

Wasn’t this a convenient stream of conveniences? Had Pax’s mother planned this? If she hadn’t distracted him, he would have missed Euna and Joey in his run to Nico’s cabin. Had he run into them at all, the time frame in which they could awkward past Calex and Merry would have been minimal. And what luck that Cabin Four probably had all the patrol harpies in the center of camp?

As they walked, Pax couldn’t shake a sense of heebie jeebies.

With all the other conveniences, he was about as surprised to see Kally in Calex’s flashlight beam as he would be to find Ronald McDonald in a closet at night: not at all.

From the quick flash of light, Pax could tell it was her.  She was fully dressed, sweatshirt included, and messenger bag slung over her shoulder like she was waiting for them to skip along the yellow brick road.

Joey noticed her next and muttered a wary, “This is weird.”

They were almost to the van, but Pax felt himself break his promise. If something screamed it’s a trap, it was seeing the person you like that’s terrified of the dark ambling in the dark without purpose. Kally’s gait was uncertain and she had her hair down.

Once they got closer, Pax could hear her mumbling:

“The forge ambushed in the lion’s maw.

Not to flame or plea will force withdraw.”

Kally shook her head lazily and muttered, “But you said that’s just the first domino. Maybe we can stop the next…”

“She’s sleeping,” Merry observed. When they caught up and Calex flashed the light near Kally, Pax could see her eyes were closed. She stumbled forward without any regard to their presence or the music.   

“Welp, that’s creepy.” Pax stepped into Kally’s path. “As a person who has been stalking her for about a month, I can say she doesn’t normally sleep walk.”

“As her best friend for years and someone who does sleepovers with her all the time, I can say that a restraining order might be in order,” Merry stated with a smile.

Pax huffed as he evened with Kally. “I’m joking. Axel would never knowingly let me stalk a friend.” Pax raised his hands to be level with Kally’s right ear.

Euna took a step forward to stop Pax, but he already made a loud clap beside Kally’s head.

Kally jumped, stumbled, and put a hand to her mouth. “What—why—”

Euna’s shoulder slumped. “It sounded like she was dreaming about something important.”

Merry moved past Calex and Pax to put a hand on Kally’s shoulder. “Hey sweetie. You were sleepwalking.”

Kally shook her head. “No-o—I was talking to Rachel Dare—” She glanced from Euna and Joey’s all-black costumes to Pax’s semi-nakedness. She blushed. “Am I dreaming?”

Pax grinned. “Do you often dream about me—”

Calex socked his shoulder hard enough to make Pax stumble. The sound that came from Pax’s mouth might have been confused with a dying chipmunk. Someone’s scarf was going to end up as firewood at their next sing-along.

Joey rolled her eyes. “Euna’s right. That sounded like a prophecy. And if you were talking to Rachel, you might have been doing some weird Apollo-connection thing. What were you two talking about?”

The question sounded accusatory. Kally looked confused, scared, and might have been overwhelmed from seeing Pax without his shirt twice within twenty-four hours. Pax boys could do that. “I—uh—the Traitor’s Prophecy,” Kally said. Her eyes glanced around, trying to comprehend where she was. “Rachel thinks we’re moving on to the next part of it.”

While clutching his bruised arm, Pax took a step towards the van. They were ridiculously close now—close enough that they should have seen the fires. Pax just hoped his mom’s comforting assessment was right—if 35% could be considered comforting. As though still in her trance, Kally walked forward with him. Normally, he might have tapped his fingers together and cooed a, “Muahahaha! Yes my puppet!” but something felt wrong here.

“That right?” Calex asked. “We still have two trials left. Merry and I were just talking about it.”

Euna shifted. For someone that Pax had noted as being oblivious enough to run into a Hecate pig ball, she was shockingly attentive to the conversation. “You said something about a domino effect?”

Kally frowned. “Just a feeling. Something…. That we won’t be able to prevent something bad from happening.”

By now, they’d reached the precipice of the hill. To their left, Pax could see the glinting scales of Peleus the dragon and the dim glow of the magic fleece. That was all that glowed. As they broke through the Mist barrier, the temperature dropped. He hadn’t even noticed when he ran for help. Now he shivered.

They could see the van. There was nothing left of the fires but black scorch marks against the frayed white paint. Lucius brayed once, but there wasn’t any other sound. No angry, shouting Hephaestus. Nothing but a winged, goat-thing sitting atop the roof. Pax’s mother gave him a little wave and vanished.

Won’t be able to prevent something bad from happening.

“We need to get down there,” Pax said and ran down the hill, hoping he found a brother and not a puddle of motor oil.

 Thanks for reading! I hope you enjoyed meeting Pax’s mother in… person? And hopefully I’ll be back on track with posting now. ^^’’

Footnote: [1] For those of you who get the reference. Don’t judge me. I had to. What did you expect after Vinyl Scratch?

[jflashandclash]

Traitors of Olympus: Blood of a Mayan

Two: Ajax

Real Gentlemen Use the Window Entrance

As with many decisions Pax made, he figured this could only end in one of two ways: with a cinema-worthy make out sequence or by getting pushed out a second story window.

He’d made sure to do everything right. Or at least, he did everything the internet told him to do. Well, everything the internet told Axel to do, since Pax had complained loudly that Axel was supposed to advise him on this but Axel had absolutely no experience on the matter so he wasn’t fulfilling his brotherly duty. After some arguing and a Nerf gun battle, Axel took the responsibility that was rightfully his.

Axel’s feedback went as thus…

One: be so clean Hygieia would let you borrow her toothbrush to scrub between your toes.[1] So, Pax had snuck into a Champ High School, broke into a few different gym lockers to borrow fancier products than he’d ever used—ones that would make Aphrodite Cabin gasp at how he smelled better than a double bacon cheeseburger. Then he took a shower and dry-cleaned his favorite outfit. He slipped some earrings and gauges into his ears, something he hadn’t done since he and Axel ran away from their dad. He let Axel trim his fohawk—a hairstyle courtesy of Connor and Travis Stoll who shaved a quarter of his hair a few weeks prior while he was sleeping in Cabin Eleven. He even refused to let Hunnie and Baller store dead things inside his duster jacket. Really, he tried to keep the Mist-form weasels out of his jacket in general. Battling rodents didn’t really scream “date me.”

Two: be yourself, and make sure you’ve improved yourself to the point where you’re confident in that person. Pax couldn’t not be Pax—not after what happened last time he wasn’t himself. His mother, a goddess, gave him golden apples that let him turn into whoever he wanted. He cringed to think how he’d made an enemy of Will Solace a month ago, when he’d pretended to be Nico Di Angelo, forgot he was pretending to be Nico Di Angelo, and kissed Will’s sister. Make enemies with the best healer and guy who will probably save your life one day? Pax should have saved time, walked up to Hades and told him that his Helm of Darkness looked stupid.

Third and lastly: be kind, polite, complimentary, and comforting.

Number two contradicted with number three. It was like having a marriage counselor tell Aphrodite she should be honest, but also give her husband a loving compliment. Just stab a honey badger. It’ll end better.

Pax swallowed, checked his hair—which was already rebelling against the jell Axel put in it—and knocked on Kally’s window.

For a moment, he wondered if he should go knock on the front door like a proper gentleman would at 10:00 o’clock on a Friday night… Na. There was both a tree to one side of Kally’s second story window, and a shed almost directly under it. It was like her parents were giving him their blessing. Ah, you want to sneak into our daughter’s room? You have two options. There’s a ladder in the shed if you’re feeling really lazy—oh! And a grappling hook if you want to look more adventurous and piraty.

It was now official: if Kally left her window open when the warmer weather of spring came, Pax was going to come dressed in a Jack Sparrow outfit and scale her window with a grappling hook.

Music hummed inside. It got louder, probably to cover his entrance. He grinned when he heard her switch away from a song on a playlist that he had made for her. He was determined to get this girl more into metal, Orpheus Metal to be precise.

The curtains fluttered, then Kally opened the window.

Her hair was still damp from a shower. Instead of looking the color of sunrise, it hung in dark tendrils against her pale skin. Pax caught his breath. He didn’t often get to see Kally with her hair down. She wore a dark purple T-shirt that really made her green eyes stand out. Her best friend, Merry, must have given it to her since it read: Techies, We Do It In the Dark.

“You said you’d Iris Message before coming over,” she said, glancing over her shoulder. The door was locked. Her parents were already asleep on the first floor—Pax had checked. Pax knew she was worried about her brother though. Pax didn’t know why. His brother supported what they were doing.

Pax fished around in his pocket, withdrawing a drachma. “Oh holy Iris—“

“Get in here before John gets home,” she grumbled.

He returned the coin to his pocket and hopped inside. Although he’d meant to alert Kally beforehand, Pax had a hard time focusing on more than one thing at once, especially when Hunnie and Baller had decided to wage war against him for the whole stay-out-of-his-jacket thing. Weasels… he thought, good at weaseling their way into everything.

He just wished the phrase, “weaseling into things” wasn’t so amply named.

In order to get out of the window sill and into her room, Pax had to crawl over her nightstand. Kally considered her room “small” since she didn’t have space for a desk or chair and had to keep her dresser in her closet. All her soccer trophies and Dice and Drakin figurines, a game Kally explained to him in detail the first time he snuck in, were stored on a handmade shelf above her bed. Posters of David de Gea, a goalkeeper for Manchester United and Spain’s national team, and fantasy maps colored her walls.

Pax loved the space. It just meant, when he sat on the edge of her bed, the only spot she could sit was beside him. It was up there on the list of things that made Pax happy, almost as up there as the time Hermes stole all the toilet paper in Olympus… right before Zeus went to use the bathroom.

Pax sat on the bed.

When Kally adjusted her glasses, pressing them further up her face, Pax could see how deep her blush was. “Hi,” she said, torn between reflexive hospitality and justified irritation at his unannounced arrival. He hoped some part of Kally was doing an internal happy dance too. After a moment’s hesitation, she sat beside him.

He’d have to make her angry enough to forget to be shy. He glanced around the room.

On her nightstand, he was pleased to see the letters he’d been sending her. An apology letter about the whole sorry I pretended to be your half-brother’s Sexy Goth boyfriend and kissed you and a few others about how excited he and Axel were to find a decent abandoned house to squat in.[2] Really, Axel wrote the letters. Pax’s dyslexia was so bad, he couldn’t even spell Kally’s name. He’d tried at the first letter for a good hour, in Ancient Greek and English, before crying to Axel for help. Unfortunately, this meant Axel edited out quite a bit of Pax’s charm during the scribing process. Apparently relaying the story of how he and a child from the Hephaestus cabin streaked through a homophobia rally was “inappropriate for a letter to a lady.”

“Calex sent me,” Pax said, leaning a little closer.

“He sent Axel,” she automatically corrected. “Is he okay?”

Pax wanted to roll his eyes. Calex thinking Pax was an unreliable messenger? Ba! Next time Pax found himself in the Underworld, he’d be sure to deliver a message from Calex to one of the Furies, informing her that Calex found her quite attractive and he’d fancy a date. For now, he took in a deep breath. “It’s… pretty serious.”

Kally’s eyes widened.

“He said he understands that everyone makes mistakes…” Pax touched her shoulder gingerly. “And that it isn’t too late to support a better football team.”[3]

The words took a moment to sink in. Then Kally smacked away Pax’s hand and scowled. There! Pax thought, Now she won’t act all shy—all done like a perfect gentleman.

“Did you even talk to him?” she asked, glaring at the floor.

“Some nonsense about dreams and prophecies—it sounded really boring.” Pax shrugged. He reached up, and took the golden statue of an Argonaut off a shelf. “You know, if you’re getting more comfortable with the fact that you stole this, the Stoll brothers and I could get you into some intense work. Stuff involving glue, some hairbrushes from the Aphrodite cabin, and several glorious seconds of internet fame.”

“I didn’t steal--Mr. Paine said I could keep it. He’s been training me,” she added the last part quietly and Pax got the feeling she didn’t want further questioning on it. Mr. Paine was Kally’s chemistry teacher and a retired Roman centurion. Kally said he was nicer than he let on, but Pax didn’t want to test this theory, since--the first time he met the man--Pax and Axel had darted him unconscious and dragged him into a boy’s bathroom stall.  

Kally pulled her legs onto the bed to cross them pretzel style. Her knee pressed into his, proving—to Pax—she was either oblivious or a foul temptress. “I take it Axel is waiting in the van?” she asked.

 Oblivious.

“Probably valiantly defending your house from some monster or another, but yea, waiting,” he said.

“Are you two still arguing?”

This brought Pax’s attention away from pressing his leg slightly more into Kally’s. He frowned. “I apologized… but he still…” still wants to get rid of me. Pax knew he’d start to cry again if he said it. Axel had been trying to convince him to stay at Camp Half-Blood for weeks, because “it’s too dangerous for you to go after Dad.” Since the lava wall, sword practice with sharpened blades, and capture the flag with loosy-goosy rules on the whole “minimal maiming” thing was much better. It was. It was a lot safer, but Pax didn’t care. He was Axel’s cheerleader. Axel wouldn’t eat nearly enough candy without him there.

“Did you ever find out if the whole your-mom-and-Apollo thing was an assault or an affair?” Pax asked.

Kally hugged herself and shook her head. She’d been trying to get the courage to ask her mother about it for the last month.

Pax puffed up his cheeks full of air and popped them. He sure knew how to put a girl at ease. Hey, you know how your mom either cheated on your dad or was attacked by a god? Yea, that‘s cool—do you want to go to the movies after this?  

Their openness about everything had been nice in a sad way. A month ago, Kally swore an oath on the River Styx to keep his secrets—well, he tricked her into it, but that wasn’t the point. He’d been able to talk to her about stuff he couldn’t say to anyone else. From what he gathered of Kally’s situation, without Merry around, she didn’t have anyone to talk to either. He’d come to think of her as a best friend of sorts, a really hot, incredibly kind best friend.

Pax wanted to make her feel better, but his skill level at making people comfortable and happy was the same as a demonic clown’s.

On impulse, he said, “You have a smudge on your glasses.”

That gave her a distraction. Confusion scrunched her face up as she withdrew her hands from around her waist. Kally took off her glasses and started to polish them with the ends of her shirt. There was nothing on them, but—as he suspected—she didn’t realize that.

Pax tried not to look at her exposed belly button. He swallowed, edging a hand over to touch the frame of the glasses before she could put them on. “How blind are you?” he asked. “Are we talking Tiresias levels of blind?”

She shrugged. “I can see up close, but everything far away is a blur.”

Pax gave her a devilish grin. “Daughter of Apollo!” he said in his best furniture commercial bravado, “God of Archery! … Nearsighted.”

She shoved him with her shoulder and Pax felt his heart make an escape attempt through his throat. “Shut up,” Kally whispered with a small smile. “I get enough of that from Will and Kayla.”

That was one of his favorite things to see: Kally’s smile when she was comfortable. “How close do you have to be to see me clearly?” Pax wondered. Even to him, his voice sounded too serious. The smell of mint and eucalyptus—likely her shampoo—made him feel drowsy.

Kally turned to face him. With their shoulders touching, Pax was close enough to feel her breath gently tickle his cheek. Her face reddened, making a nice contrast with her eyes. She likely had the same realization he had about their proximity. “This is close enough,” she murmured.

Pax decided later he’d lost some of his ability for proper decision making, though he was about as skilled at good decision making as he was at comforting people and at underwater basket weaving. He promised himself he wouldn’t screw this up though, even if the opportunity was stellar. Eros, lead me not into temptation, I can find the way myself, he thought. That was the last thought.

Then he leaned down, brushing his mouth against the skin behind her ear. The smell of her shampoo and the soft moisture of her flesh were intoxicating. Pax felt his fingers twitch to hold her hand, dodging the frames of her glasses. “Is this…” he repeated her question as a quiet exhale into her ear. “…close enough?”

One of Kally’s hands escaped his grip to touch her lips: her nervous reflex. But she didn’t flinch away. Pax traced his lips along her jaw, finding her fingertips hesitantly blocking the path to her mouth. He glanced up at her eyes, kissing the tip of her index finger, like it would remove the barrier. “I really screwed up our first kiss… please let me fix it,” he begged. He wasn’t supposed to. He’d promised himself not to get too touchy.

Slow enough to make him whine, Kally’s hand dropped from her face to hold his hand. He couldn’t read her expression, but he gasped when she timidly pressed her mouth to his.

Pax exhaled deeply, leaning further against her. She was new to this and he had to remind himself not to overwhelm her. Keep your hands to yourself, keep your hands to yourself, he kept repeating, trying to focus on clutching her fingers instead of how the wetness of her hair felt cool against his arm, how minty she tasted, and how badly he wanted to see her waistline again.

He needed to stop. As he withdrew, Pax nipped her upper lip, leaving Kally’s face a more brilliant shade than Santa’s favorite set of PJs.

Pax slipped an arm around her waist, hoping that her dad wouldn’t come in with a machete to cut his arm off, as he imagined any sensible father would do. He’d practiced this in his head. Granted, in his head, he looked a little closer to Thor in the Avengers and had anime-style roses that appeared whenever he spoke but, eh, at least he was clean.

Kally looked confused but didn’t pull away. Pax swallowed. “I don’t want to be just some guy who sneaks into your room at night when your parents are sleeping and tries to commandeer kisses,” he said. “I want to be your boyfriend who sneaks into your room at night when your parents are sleeping and tries to commandeer kisses.”

She looked at the ground and pulled one hand from him to put her glasses on. “I shouldn’t have done that. I can’t trust you.”

He was furious that his immediate response was an affirming, Ah, you’re wising up Cyclops.

In his head, her reaction had been much more dramatic and involved a lot more hugging, illegal fireworks, and his brother poking through the window to give him a high-five. He tried not to show any disappointment.

Pax shrugged, trying to force one of his devil grins. Normally that expression drove her nuts, though he hoped the kiss had already done that.  “We’re demigods,” he reminded. “Our lives are supposed to be complicated, not make sense, and involve a lot of near-death experiences and villainous monologues.”

That uplifting reassurance didn’t seem to convince her. She pulled away from him and stood up. Pax stayed on her bed, mentally enumerating the ways this could have gone differently--like having a giant cow crash through the ceiling.

“We shouldn’t leave Axel waiting outside,” Kally said shakily, gathering her Argonaut statue, a canteen of nectar, and some dried beef strips she kept as treats for Hunnie and Baller. She shoved everything into a messenger bag and went to the night stand to slip in her contacts.

Pax popped his cheeks one more time before he stood. He shouldn’t push it—

“I’m not going to get a direct answer, am I?” he asked.

Her shoulders shook with a laugh. “I didn’t think you liked direct answers.”

Although she was still facing the night stand, Pax could hear the mischievous half-smile she occasionally wore around him. “That’s evil,” he said with admiration. “I’ve taught you well young Cyclops. Now go forth and spread this chaos.”

When she turned around, she was in mid-eye roll. Kally shoved a packet of Reese’s Sticks into his torso, likely as a peace offering, before heading for the window. “Come on. I want to see what’s going on with Calex.”

Scaling down from the window was easy. They reached the bottom and Pax was contemplating whether or not he wanted to try slipping an arm around Kally’s shoulder as they walked.

Axel had parked in Kally’s yard, partially obscured from the house by a cluster of pines. Although Kally’s family had enough land to keep the Great God Pan happy, someone would definitely notice if they parked on her driveway, and likely call the creep watch. The Pax boys’ mobile home was a ragged, white pharmaceutical van, with the words Pax Extraction Team written in bright colors on the side, though most of the paint had been singed off in a dragon attack. The vehicle was about as inconspicuous as a homeless man holding a “free candy” sign outside a kindergarten.

They were almost there. Pax was trying not to replay the last ten minutes in his head, but that was like asking Tumblr not to post spoilers. Pax jumped when someone by the house snapped, “So, you’re the guy she’s been sneaking out to see.”

They froze. Pax glanced at Kally to see if this was some harmless prank a senile neighbor liked to play on high schoolers that were creeping out to make out, but she looked as startled as he. They turned to see four figures approaching that Pax definitely hadn’t noticed before.

“Monsters?” Pax asked, fingering the darts on his utility belt.

“My brother and his friends,” Kally responded like that was way worse.

So…. Monsters, Pax decided. Just the squishy, first level difficulty kind.

The four guys formed a horseshoe around them, making Pax giddy to be in--what at least looked like--the start of a bad high school anime. Hopefully Pax would be one of those where the dashing, bad-boy comedy relief protagonist has a happily ever after in the end. Not one where he dies.

These guys were closer to Axel’s age though maybe more in their twenties.  They were athletic, laughing, and—from a stumble in one of their steps—might have been hitting the adult grape juice. Each had a hockey stick slung over one shoulder, which Pax had to commend. At least they weren’t stereotypically wielding baseballs and crow bars.

“What do you want John?” Kally snapped. Her voice shook.

One took an extra step towards Pax. In the dim moonlight and what little porch light filtered this far, Pax could see this guy was the smallest, only a little taller than Pax. He had dark hair and a tattoo of a crucifix peeking out along his neck.  Pax was pretty sure this was the one related to Kally, judging by the skin tone, the one Pax liked to call couleur de transparent.

“Go back inside Kally,” John told her.

Kally stared. Once she comprehended what he said, she stuttered, “Wha—you—you used to sneak out all the time—“

Two of the other guys laughed and pushed at each other, like they were reminiscing over past bromances, worthy of epic, swaggy ballads.

“Remember that time at the Battlefield—“ the tallest chattered excitedly.

“And the other time, behind the old Walmar-“

“Shut up.” John scowled. He apparently did not have an acquired taste for swaggy ballad appreciation. Once the others had quieted, John turned back to Kally. “Yea, I did sneak out a lot,” he agreed. He jabbed his hockey stick at Pax.  “I know exactly why you’re sneaking out. I was a sixteen-year-old-boy once too.”

Pax gave him an innocent grin and nudged Kally. “Aw, he knows it was recently my birthday.”

She shot him her don’t make this worse glance that he’d become so accustomed to ignoring. She started to say, “No—this is stupid—I’m just—“

John’s eyes drifted past her to the Paxmobile. He swore enough that Pax’s grandmother would have jammed a bar of soap down John’s gullet so he’d hiccup bubbles for the next week. “Look at that van! It has abduction written all over it!” he cried.

“Actually, it says ‘extraction.’ Minute difference,” Pax corrected. “Kids would be way less willing to come with us if it said abduction.”

John’s hockey stick jammed forward. Pax stepped backwards, so the strike missed him by inches. The motion would have probably left him gasping on the ground if he hadn’t moved.

“John!” Kally shouted. “Stop it!”

His friends had stopped laughing. They lifted their hockey sticks up and tensed, ready to advance. John took another step towards Pax. “Listen, you little, Mexican creep, I don’t want to see you on my family’s land ever again and nowhere near my sist—“

Pax tried to restrain his anger. Already, he had a hard time controlling his demigod powers, but he didn’t want to kill one of Kally’s brothers. That would look bad whenever he got to meet her parents.  Oh hi, my name is Ajax Pax. You may have read about me in your son’s obituary.

“Hey,” Pax objected. “For starters, I’m from Southern Belize, not Mexico, a common misconception for idiots—“

This time, John slammed his hockey stick at the side of Pax’s head.

He didn’t need to block; Kally caught it, shoved the stick in the ground and brought her foot down hard enough to snap off the end.

John and his friends gawked at her like that was horrifying.

Pax thought it was super hot. Then Pax realized how much she was trembling and how upset she was. This might have been the first time she stood up to her brother or any member of her family.

“Kally…” John hissed. “Get out of the way.”

Until those words, Kally’s yard had been rustling with fallen leaves, the branches of the pines, and likely adorable, nocturnal creatures out for their breakfast murder. Pax hadn’t noticed the noise until the forest went silent. At John’s command, the leaves, animals, and wind seemed to take a collective gasp behind Pax and Kally.

Pax knew better than to think John had anything to do with it.

A blast of chilled November air released behind them, flipping Kally’s hair over her shoulder, making the boys cover their eyes to avoid a flurry of decaying leaves. The pressure around them dropped and Pax felt his ears pop. A nauseating smell, sickeningly sweet and metallic, made Pax shudder. He knew it was chocolate and blood. Oh Johnny and band, Pax thought, you done messed up.

John and his friends exchanged nervous glances.

“Pax..?” Kally asked cautiously.

Pax didn’t bother answering; he knew what was coming and--as any good performer--he knew a surprise introduction could make half the show.

A car door slammed behind them. Neither was willing to take a look away from John and his friends, but Pax could hear the soft crunch of Axel’s boots on the leaves.

At the movement, John managed to shake off the ominous weather warnings like the best hero in a horror film. “There are two of you?” John exclaimed. He hefted his broken hockey stick. “You are way too old to be hanging out with my sister! Kally, what have you gotten yourself in—“

“First…“ Axel interrupted, though the voice was deeper than Axel’s. Gravely and reverberant. Kally risked breaking eye contact with her brother to see if it really was Axel.

Pax inhaled sharply. It’s not that monster… he reminded himself. John was too small game for Axel to don that. He glanced back, expecting something even scarier than Ronald McDonald himself.

But Axel looked normal--mostly. Axel typically twisted his Mist mask to have short-cropped dark hair, dark, intense eyes, and bronze skin that left people guessing his country of origin. Whenever asked, Pax would tell them Axel was born of the primordial awesome and remained dormant until the world was ready for him.

Now, Axel looked taller. His hands were at his side, but Pax knew exactly how quickly he could access the swords, daggers, and knives dangling all over his surplus army jacket and dark jeans. His eyes glistened a reflective, predatorial gold.          

Pax snagged Kally’s hand so she’d look away from Axel’s face. “Keep your eyes on John,” he instructed.

Stunned, she glanced at Pax, giving the unspoken, excuse me kind sir, but what the Hades?!

Pax didn’t care. As long as she wasn’t looking at Axel.

His footsteps stopped just behind Pax, opposite the side Kally was on. Then he spoke, “First… Ajax, you’re going to apologize to John for making him scared for his sister’s safety.”

The tone was so similar to their father’s, Pax forgot to retaliate… for two seconds. Verbal back-stabbing backstabber! he thought before snapping, “Like Tartarus I—“

Axel’s low growl silenced him. Pax didn’t want to tremble like he was five, but he was shaking as violently as the time he and Matt agreed to watch The Conjuring in a dark closet after chugging three Red Bulls.

That was Axel’s big, tough military voice, the voice he used as Luke’s right hand man, the one he spoke when he wanted to say, you’re no longer my brother, but a soldier. It sounded just like their father. Some people thought about rainbows and kittens when they reflected on their family. Pax had nostalgia like that… but the traumatic kind. Evil nostalgia?   Or was it still just nostalgia? Regardless, Pax didn’t dare look at his brother now. He tried to visualize Axel doing this whole exchange with a chicken propped on his head. It made Pax feel better and feel a little hungry for some McNuggets.    

“And John—pleased to meet you—” There was a brief pause were Pax could guarantee his brother bowed his head slightly.

John and band just looked bewildered. The tall chatty one whispered, “What’s wrong with his eyes?”

Axel acted like no one had spoken. “You’re going to apologize to my brother, myself, and Kally for insinuating the friends she chose are bad people,” the voice not like Axel’s ordered.

John and his friends stared at him. Two in the back exchanged a glance, seeming to realize numbers might mean nothing in this fight.

Then John managed a tense, forced laugh that sounded more like the cry of a cornered piglet. He clung to his broken stick like it would do anything to Axel, other than give him a back scratcher or a toothpick, depending on the type of shindig this turned into.

“You’re just some guy…” he muttered, clearly unconvinced. Louder, he repeated, “You’re just some guy.”

His friends joined in on the laughter. It was hollow. None of them looked confident anymore and they weren’t pushing each other around in the playful stupor of, hee hee, let’s beat up this tiny, devilish demigod.

Maybe it was Axel’s weapons.

To John’s credit, he stood his ground. The fear on his face started to dissipate as he snarled, “You and your brother can get off my land and never come back. Who do you think you--”

“I am Axel Pax,” he stated. The air dropped in temperature. Pax’s ears popped again. He tightened his grip on Kally’s hand. He could hear the flick of a lighter and something blue glowed behind them.

Axel continued, “And I do not rest until I have eaten the gods of my enemies. Do you wish to become an enemy of mine Jonathan Cassand?”

Slowly, the comment sank in. Pax felt Kally’s hand tremble.

The bravado died. Two of John’s friends took uncertain steps back. John paled. “Wha—“

“I like your sister and would never hurt her,” the gravelly rasp assured.  “However, you are a stranger, and I have no qualms devouring strangers when they insult my family without proper cause.”

Pax gave them about three seconds before John and his friends booked it.

They lasted two.

An inhuman, throaty snarl thundered from Axel and made Pax very happy he’d used the bathroom before entering Kally’s house. Apparently one of John’s friends hadn’t.

The friends ran, the tallest one screaming, “Oh God! It’s a real monster!”

John backed up and stumbled to the ground. His jaw hung open in horror and awe, the broken stick lying useless beside him. Pax kinda wanted to see how bad a brain freeze he’d get if you jammed some ice cream into that gaping mouth.

When Axel finally stepped forward and into view, the lighter was gone and his hands were slipping over his ears, like he was adjusting his hair. Pax knew better, especially since Axel muttered in Maya as he walked.

He looked normal again, with dark eyes. Today’s shirt read: I Ordered a Senate Meeting at Camp Half-Blood. I Got One.      

When Axel continued past Kally and Pax, towards her brother, Kally made a sound of protest and tried to intercept him. Pax dragged her back. Axel wouldn’t actually hurt him. Well… probably wouldn’t hurt him. Like 50/50.

Axel knelt beside John. “You understand that your sister is old enough to make her own decisions and you need to respect her choices, right?” he asked in a much less gravelly, killer voice.

John glanced at Kally, who might have been reconsidering just that question. John nodded.

“And that it would be unwise to mention this to anyone?”Axel asked softly.

John swallowed and nodded more vigorously. His head might pop off if Axel asked him a third question.

“Run along,” Axel commanded.

John skidded a few times when he sprinted back to the house. Cussing mingled with a door slam when he reached the entrance.

Axel stood up and put his hands in his pockets. He looked an uncomfortable amount like a normal eighteen-year-old.

Pax had one thing to say to him and it wasn’t to gloat that he never had to apologize to John. He puffed up his chest and crossed his arms. “I can handle my own fights. I am small—but mighty!”

Axel walked over to where Kally stood, dumbfounded, and Pax stood, pouting. He smiled faintly, and Pax realized his brother would have loved John to come back outside for Round Two: Cower!

Axel sighed. “I know you can, but you don’t know when you don’t need to fight.” He turned to Kally. “Hey Kall.” He gave her a quick hug that brought back the red in her face and broke whatever fear she’d mustered. “It is good to see you. Sorry about your brother.”

“What—uh—what was that? Your voice…” she trailed off, lifting a hand up to touch her lower lip in concern

“A trick of the Mist,” Axel explained. “I altered what he was seeing to scare him…” He tilted his head. “Your hair looks nice.”

If one of Kally’s godly powers was to turn into a lobster or Coca Cola can, she was trying her hardest and was getting pretty close to the right color. Pax would have to congratulate her on the progress once he got over his gloom. Neither Kally nor Axel had shown any direct interest in each other, but something Aphrodite said to Pax a month ago nagged the back of his mind, “The person you love is going to fall in love with your best friend.” He had hoped Aphrodite would reconsider, but she’d said that before Axel tried to decapitate the goddess. Now, if she reconsidered, she might do something worse, like make him fall in love with a rock or a cactus or Jason Grace.[4]

As they walked towards the van, Kally frowned. “Is John going to think you guys are demons because of… whatever you just showed him? He’ll get the head of our parish to talk to me if that’s what you made him see.”

Pax sighed dramatically and put his hands behind his head. “I hope not. Exorcists don’t work on us, but they do make quite a fuss.”

Kally stopped mid-way through pulling up her hair to stare at him.

He winked his yellow eye at her. He loved when she couldn’t tell if he was teasing or reminiscing. Out of the corner of his gaze, he could see Axel’s lip twitch back a smile.

“We should hurry,” Axel said, corralling Kally back into a walk. “And not just because of Calex.”

“Oh, most mysterious one?” Pax asked. He wondered if something had happened to make Axel do that to the boys. After all, Pax could have just darted all of them, though that wouldn’t have been nearly as good a story for later.

Axel pulled a Smartphone out of his pocket and grinned. “Matt put up a new tweet. He said the Hephaestus campers finished crafting our ride. We’re ready to start our quest.”

Thanks for reading! I’m sorry it took me so long to post it here! (As a super side comment--don't worry. Neither Kally nor I have forgotten that Pax is a jerk :P) I hope you enjoyed! Please reblog or like if you did :D

[1] Goddess of Hygiene. She’d probably use a porcupine to floss before doing letting Pax scrub his feet with her toothbrush… I don’t think Pax ever takes his combat boots off. Does he even have feet? What if he has… little Pax paws….

[2] During Whispers of a Snake, Pax pretended to be Nico Di Angelo to get information out of Kally. He may have… forgotten who he was when they were talking… and… you know it goes when you have godly powers, right? You just kinda forget what you’re doing sometimes. Right Zeus?

[3] Calex is a huge Arsenal football hooligan. Kally passively supports Manchester United. Calex doesn’t understand how such a nice girl could make such a grievous mistake.

[4] Disclaimer: the author of this series has no hate for Jason Grace. But Pax does. A lot of hate. With sharp pointy daggers and weasel fangs.