Chapter Text
P E R C Y
The blond girl he’d met at the Big House was reading a book in front of the last cabin on the left, number eleven. When they reached her, she looked him over critically, like she was still thinking about how much he drooled. He tried to see what she was reading, but He couldn’t make out the title. He thought his dyslexia was acting up. Then he realized the title wasn’t even English. The letters looked Greek to him. Greek. There were pictures of temples and statues and different kinds of columns, like those in an architecture book.
“Annabeth,” Chiron said, “I have a masters' archery class at noon. Would you take Percy from here?”
“Yeah, I got him.”
“Cabin eleven,” Chiron told him, gesturing toward the doorway. “Make yourself at home.”
Out of all the cabins, eleven looked the most like a regular old summer camp cabin, with an emphasis on the old. The threshold was worn down, the brown paint peeling. Over the doorway was one of those doctor’s symbols, a winged pole with two snakes wrapped around it. What did they call it…? A caduceus. Inside, it was packed with people, both boys, and girls, way more than the number of bunk beds. Sleeping bags were spread all over the floor. It looked like a gym where the Red Cross had set up an evacuation center.
Chiron didn’t go in. The door was too low for him. But when the campers saw him they all stood and bowed respectfully.
“Well, then,” Chiron said. “Good luck, Percy. I’ll see you at dinner.” He galloped away toward the archery range.
He stood in the doorway, looking at the kids. They weren’t bowing anymore. They were staring at him, sizing him up. Unfortunately, he knew what would happen next in this routine, having seen enough of it at all his schools.
“Well?” Annabeth prompted. “Go on.”
So naturally, he tripped coming in the door and made a total fool of himself. There were some snickers from the campers, but none of them said anything.
Annabeth announced, “Percy Jackson, meet cabin eleven."
“Regular or undetermined?” somebody asked.
He didn’t know what to say, but Annabeth said, “Undetermined.”
Everybody groaned.
A guy who was a little older than the rest came forward. “Now, now, campers. That’s what we’re here for.” The guy was about nineteen, and he looked pretty cool. He was tall and muscular, with short-cropped sandy hair and a friendly smile. He wore an orange tank top, cutoffs, sandals, and a leather necklace with five different-colored clay beads. The only thing unsettling about his appearance was a thick white scar that ran from just beneath his right eye to his jaw, like an old knife slash.
“Welcome, Percy. You can have that spot on the floor, right over there. Next to Magnus.”
The boy in question looked a bit younger than him, he noticed, as he wiggled his fingers in greeting from his spot. Percy raised an eyebrow, Magnus looked oddly familiar…
Annabeth shook him out of his thoughts.
“This is Luke,” She said, and her voice sounded different somehow.
Percy glanced over and could’ve sworn she was blushing. She saw him looking, and her expression hardened again. “He’s your counselor for now.”
“For now?” He blinked.
“You’re undetermined,” Luke explained patiently. “They don’t know what cabin to put you in, so you’re here. Cabin eleven takes all newcomers, all visitors. Naturally, we would. Hermes, our patron, is the god of travelers.”
He looked at the tiny section of the floor they’d given him. He had nothing to put there to mark it as his own, no luggage, no clothes, no sleeping bag. Just the Minotaur’s horn, which he was currently clutching tightly to his chest like a lifeline. He thought about setting that down, but then he remembered that Hermes was also the god of thieves.
“How…” Percy hesitated, blinking. “How long will I be here?”
“Good question.” Luke shrugged. “Until you’re determined.”
“How long will that take?”
Most of the cabin started laughing at Percy’s confusion. He glanced around and— he thought he was imagining it, but something flashed across Magnus’ face, but it was gone as soon as it came and the boy cracked a grin.
“Come on.” Annabeth grabbed his arm. “I’ll show you the Volleyball court, yeah?”
“But I’ve already—”
She dragged him outside Cabin Eleven, shutting the door on the snickering campers. She huffed and folded her arms when they were a few feet away. “You’ve gotta do better than that.”
“What?” He raised an eyebrow.
She rolled her eyes, walking further away from the Cabin. “I can’t believe I thought you were the one.”
“Hey, Can’t you just tell me what your problem is? All I did was kill some random bull person–”
“Don’t talk like that!” She glared at him. “You know how many kids here wish they had that chance?”
“What, to get killed?”
“To fight something like the Minotaur!” She huffed like it was the most obvious thing in the world. “What do you possibly think we train for—”
“Chill out, Beth. He’s barely been here for a day, give him some space.” A calm voice interrupted her.
By the way, things were going, Percy thought that he was about to witness Annabeth murder someone for interrupting her train of thought, but she just took a deep breath in and relaxed slightly, staring at the person behind him, and he turned.
“Hey, Magnus,” Annabeth said from behind him.
Magnus stood at the foot of the steps of the Hermes Cabin, smiling slightly and staring at the two with brilliant leafy green eyes. He stepped down further and made his way next to Annabeth, giving the girl a side hug.
“Hey, Percy.” His smile widened as he looked Percy up and down.
…
Oh .
That’s why Magnus looked so familiar. He and Annabeth had the same blonde hair, the same complexion. Both of them even had the same number of beads on the necklaces everyone around here seemed to have: five, all colored with their unique designs. The only differences were that Annabeth had stormy gray eyes, and Magnus’ hair only reached his shoulder rather than his back like Annabeth’s.
The necklaces each had something unique on them too. Annabeth’s had a ring, and Magnus’ had a charm with a strange kind of letter F:
ᚠ
Without much thinking, Percy blurted out: “Are you guys twins?”
They blinked, looking at each other, before they both began laughing, Magnus more so than Annabeth.
“Related? Yes.” Magnus said once his snickers died down. “Twins? No. You are looking at the Chase cousins . I’m a year younger than her.”
“Which means I’m officially allowed to boss around this butt.”
“Haha- no, ” Magnus rolled his eyes. “Being only a year older does not give you that right. But, sibling-cousin-twin talk aside, Annabeth is right about the whole Minotaur thing.”
Percy thought about it for a moment and then shook his head. “Look, if the thing I fought was the Minotaur, the same one in the stories…”
“Yes?” Magnus raised an eyebrow.
“Then there’s only one.”
“Yes.”
“And he died, like, a gazillion years ago, right? Theseus killed him in the labyrinth. So…”
“Monsters don’t die, Percy.” He sighed. “They can be killed. But they don’t die.”
“Oh, thanks. That clears it up.”
“They don’t have souls, like us. You can kill them for a while, maybe even for a whole lifetime if you’re lucky. But they are primal forces. Chiron calls them archetypes. Eventually, they re-form.”
Percy thought about Mrs. Dodds. “You mean if I killed one, accidentally, with a sword-“
“The Fur … I mean, your math teacher. That’s right. She’s still out there. You just made her very, very mad.” Annabeth bit her lip.
“How did you know about Mrs. Dodds?”
“You talk in your sleep.”
“You almost called her something. A Fury? They’re Hades’ torturers, right?”
Annabeth and Magnus glanced nervously at the ground before looking at each other, as if they expected it to open up and swallow them. “You shouldn’t call them by name, even here,” Magnus said quietly. “We call them the Kindly Ones if we have to talk about them even a little bit. Names have power.”
“Look, is there anything we can say without it thundering?” Percy sounded whiny, even to himself, but right then he didn’t care. “Why do I have to stay in cabin eleven, anyway? Why is everybody so crowded together? There are plenty of empty bunks right over there.”
He pointed to the first few cabins, and Annabeth turned pale. “You don’t just choose a cabin, Percy. It depends on who your parents are. Or…your parent.” She stared at him, waiting for him to get it.
“My mom is Sally Jackson,” He said. “She works at the candy store in Grand Central Station. At least, she used to.”
“I’m sorry about your mom, Percy. But that’s not what I mean. I’m talking about your other parent. Your dad.”
“He’s dead. I never knew him.”
Annabeth sighed. She’d had this conversation before with other kids. “Your father’s not dead, Percy.”
“How can you say that? You know him?”
“No, of course not.”
“Then how can you say-“
“Because I know you. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t one of us.”
“You don’t know anything about me.”
“No?” Annabeth raised an eyebrow. “I bet you moved around from school to school. I bet you were kicked out of a lot of them.”
“How-”
“Diagnosed with dyslexia. Probably ADHD, too.” Magnus added.
He tried to swallow his embarrassment, but it was not working. “What does that have to do with anything?”
“Taken together, it’s almost a sure sign. The letters float off the page when you read, right? That’s because your mind is hardwired for ancient Greek. And the ADHD-you’re impulsive, can’t sit still in the classroom. That’s your battlefield reflexes. In a real fight, they’d keep you alive. As for the attention problems, you see too much, Percy, not too little. Your senses are better than a regular mortal’s. Of course, the teachers want you medicated. Most of them are monsters. They don’t want you seeing them for what they are.” Magnus smiled comfortingly, feeling a sense of peace wash over him. Looking at Magnus’ expression though, he didn’t think the boy had done it knowingly.
“You sound like…you went through the same thing?”
Annabeth nodded. “Most of the kids here did. If you weren’t like us, you couldn’t have survived the Minotaur, much less the ambrosia and nectar.”
“Ambrosia and nectar.”
“The food and drink we were giving you to make you better. That stuff would’ve killed a normal kid. It would’ve turned your blood to fire and your bones to sand and you’d be dead. Face it. You’re a half-blood.”
A half-blood.
He scratched his head, putting his face into my hands for a count of three. This was… happening.
Annabeth frowned. “Don’t you get it, Percy? You are home. This is the only safe place on earth for kids like us.”
“You mean, mentally disturbed kids?”
“I mean not human. Not human, anyway. Half-human.”
“Half-human and half-what?”
“I think you know.”
He didn’t want to admit it, but he was afraid he did. He felt a tingling sensation in his limbs, a sensation he sometimes felt when his mom talked about his father.
“God,” He paled, stomach pooling with dread as he said it. “Half-god.”
Magnus nodded, putting a gentle hand on his shoulder. “Your father isn’t dead, Percy. He never was. He’s one of the Olympian gods.”
“That’s…crazy.”
“Is it? What’s the most common thing gods did in the old stories? They ran around falling in love with humans and having kids with them. Do you think they’ve changed their habits in the last few millennia?”
“But those are just-” He almost said myths again. Then he remembered Chiron’s warning that in two thousand years, he might be considered a myth. “But if all the kids here are half-gods-”
“Demigods,” Annabeth said. “That’s the official term. Or half-bloods.”
“Then who are your parents?”
Both the cousins' expressions darkened, and Percy rubbed his neck awkwardly. He had stumbled onto a touchy subject.
“Cabin six,” Annabeth said.
“Excuse me?”
She straightened. “Athena. Goddess of wisdom and battle.”
“So…you’re dad’s the mortal?”
She fiddled with the necklace, especially with the ring hanging in the center. “My dad is a professor at West Point,” she said. “I haven’t seen him since I was very small. He teaches American history.”
“Oh.” He nodded, turning to Magnus. “What about—”
“Same as you. I'm undetermined.” Magnus gave Percy a rueful smile, and he thought Magnus’ green eyes didn’t look so bright anymore. “And my mom…well, she died when I was young. I lived with Annabeth and her family for a bit. I’m still holding out hope on Dad, though.”
“No one knows who my dad is?”
Both cousins shook their heads, and Percy glanced down at his palms. “Maybe– maybe my mom knew. She would have known.”
Annabeth bit her lip. “Maybe not, Percy. Gods don’t always reveal their identities.”
“My dad would have. He loved her.”
She gave him a cautious look. She didn’t want to burst his bubble. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe he’ll send a sign. That’s the only way to know for sure: your father has to send you a sign claiming you as his son. Sometimes it happens.”
“You mean sometimes it doesn’t? But that’s…oh.” He glanced at Magnus, who suddenly found the grass to be very interesting.
“The gods are busy. They have a lot of kids and they don’t always…” He took a deep breath like it was hard for him to say. “Well, sometimes they don’t care about us, Percy. They ignore us.”
“...Oh.”
He thought about some of the kids he’d seen in the Hermes cabin, teenagers who looked sullen and depressed as if they were waiting for a call that would never come. He’d known kids like that at Yancy Academy, shuffled off to boarding school by rich parents who didn’t have the time to deal with them. But gods should behave better.
Instead of giving sympathy, he blinked. “I see.”
It's all he said, watching the younger boy’s expression carefully. Magnus just gave him a slight look of gratitude and cleared his throat. "You got any more questions?"
"Well–" He started, figuring out how to say he was reeling with so many questions he didn’t know where to start.
Then a husky voice yelled, “Well! A newbie!”
He looked over. The big girl from the ugly red cabin was sauntering toward us. She had three other girls behind her, all big and ugly and mean-looking like her, all wearing camo jackets.
“Clarisse,” Magnus sighed. “Why don’t you go polish your spear or something?”
“Sure, Mr. Night Light.” the big girl said. “So I can run you through it Friday night.”
Night Light?
Percy gave Magnus a questioning look. The look he returned screamed 'Drop it.'
“Erre es korakas!” Annabeth snapped, which he somehow understood was Greek for ‘Go to the crows!’ though he had a feeling it was a worse curse than it sounded. “You don’t stand a chance.”
“We’ll pulverize you,” Clarisse said, but her eyes twitched. Perhaps she wasn’t sure she could follow through on the threat.
She turned towards him, looking him up and down like she was thinking of all the fun little ways she was going to beat him to a pulp.
“Who’s this little runt?” She huffed out a laugh.
“Percy Jackson,” Magnus rubbed his forehead like something was about to go wrong, “meet Clarisse La Rue, daughter of Ares, god of war.”