Capítulo 902: 10
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Another chess piece into play. Another chance to control the prophecy. Another child of the Big Three.
.
.
.
Jade, wake up.
You think your friends are so clever.
Jade.
Tell me where they are, Jade, and maybe I'll spare them.
"No," I mumbled. Somewhere in my mind, an unpleasant snarl not of my own ripped through my head. Luke's anger was palpable and raging against my thoughts. I could feel a build-up of pressure coming like a headache.
Tell me where they are, I'm not playing games.
Have you considered that you don't really need the fleece?
Jade, I swear to the gods, if you don't tell me where they are-
Connor's voice broke through Luke's mental link, "Jade, wake up."
My eyes flew open before I abruptly doubled over, breathing erratically, which caused Connor to freak out.
I don't have much time and I'm losing my patience, you-
I yanked a silver chain hanging around my neck out of my shirt and chucked it down, the tiny metal chains clacking against the polished wooden floor.
"Woah, Jade, are you okay? What's wrong?"
"Here, drink a bit of this." The other son of Hermes shoved a glass of nectar into my hands. I sipped a little before someone took the cup out of my hands before I could consume too much. Maintaining a conscious control of evening my intake of air, I closed my eyes and focused on Connor's panicked voice that was anchoring me to reality.
"What is this?"
Cracking open an eye, I saw Travis holding up the silver necklace with the scythe charm dangling on it, sparkling in the natural sunlight. I held out a hand as a request to have it returned, which Travis thankfully obliged; normally, he would've pocketed it before listening to what I said. He must have sensed that I was in no mood to joke around right now.
In a gravelly voice, I asked, "Where am I?"
"You're in the infirmary," Connor said softly. "Thanks to you, that dragon caused little injuries."
"Ah, right, the draco aionius." I took a quick look around and indeed, I was sitting upright on one of the infirmary beds, but I wasn't the only one. There was a number of other campers lying down next to me in their own beds and they looked to be knocked out cold. In the corner of my eye, I saw Travis and Connor exchanging worried glances.
I probed a question. "What's up?"
"Um, are you feeling okay?" Travis carefully hedged.
I coughed to clear my throat. "Feeling better, why?"
Connor scratched his head. "You were saying some pretty weird stuff before you knocked out."
Taking my black snapback from Travis' hand, I combed back my hair before putting it on. It was such a dumb idea to put that necklace on last night. I normally stashed the bracelet in one of my socks in my bunk while keeping the necklace in a random pocket when I slept. The necklace usually hung around my neck during the day, but I always took it off before going to sleep. I must have forgotten to do so before I knocked out after the draco aionius incident, but I didn't expect Luke's voice to turn into a personal morning alarm.
"I'm fine, it happens sometimes," I responded as I searched for my shoes. A pair of sneakers were hiding under the bed and I pulled them on. Standing up and stretching, my neck made popping sounds as I rolled it around.
"So, how long have I been sleeping?"
The Stoll brothers exchanged another set of worried glances.
"Uh, two days," Connor said hesitantly.
Oh, it's been awhile since I had slept that long undisturbed.
Travis rubbed the back of his neck, adding, "You, um, also need to wake up some campers, a couple of them didn't listen to Connor's warning in time before you started singing."
Oh.
"I'll, um, wake them now," I said in a low tone, rubbing the back of my neck. "And thanks for waiting on me."
"No problem, Jade, I'll get Will first, so wait until I come back with him," Connor said. I bobbed my head and sat back down on the infirmary bed. A measure of comfortable silence spaced down between us that shifted when Travis made a concerned expression.
"Are you sure you're okay?"
I looked at him questioningly. "About the sleep-talking thing?"
"No, I'm asking about before Connor and I woke you up," Travis clarified. "You seemed like you were having a bad dream."
"Oh, yeah, I was," I sighed. "But it was a run-of-the-mill nightmare, so it wasn't a special one."
Travis made a sound of understanding. Demigods all understood when to back off of a topic when the 'usual nightmares' surfaced in a conversation. We'd all tell each other of our bad dreams at one point or another anyway. Guilt gathered at the bottom of my stomach at my lie. I honestly didn't want to have to lie to them whenever it was about Luke, their half-brother.
"What'd I miss while I was out?"
Travis let out a short laugh. "You missed a lot, actually. The monster attacks were the usual, but what was even more exciting was that Tantalus got fired as Camp Director and Chiron returned to the post."
"Wait, what?" I asked incredulously and motioned for him to explain. "What happened?"
"Long story short, Percy exposed Luke as the one who poisoned Thalia's Tree in front of the entire camp through an Iris Message, and Dionysus, being one of the Twelve, couldn't let the obvious piece of evidence slide. So the gods pulled out Tantalus and put Chiron back in."
I let the pieces of information sink in before talking. "Wow, a lot happened while I was out."
"Yeah," Travis simply said. "It was kind of hectic in between, but things have settled for the most part."
"It was dumb of them to even fire Chiron in the first place, or to choose Tantalus, for that matter," I muttered. The air outside buzzed and the hairs on my arm stiffened. Travis punched my shoulder.
"You don't say things like that, Jade," he hissed fearfully at me. "You know how dangerous it is to talk about the gods like that."
Rubbing the sore spot where he punched me, I turned my head away. "Doesn't mean it's not true."
The air thickened and it suddenly got dangerous to breathe. All that was needed was an energy surge from an immortal being and I was sure I was going to get vaporized if I let out another word. I was sure Travis was holding his breath, too. The tense moment prolonged until our salvation was delivered in the form of Will Solace, a healer from the Apollo cabin.
He barged into the infirmary, crying out, "Your medic has arrived and I'm here to save lives! What's up?"
And instantly, the pressure lifted and Travis and I released a huge breath of air.
Connor trailed behind Will. "You know, you're pretty loud for a medic in an infirmary."
"Shut it." Will flicked Connor's nose before turning to me, asking, "How are you feeling?"
"Peachy," I replied, as if the hairs on my arms and back of my neck weren't standing up.
"Wonderful." Dealing with smart-ass demigods on a regular basis, the healer wasn't even fazed at my flippant response. He did a very basic scan of my body and checked my vitals.
"Even though you slept for two days straight, why am I not surprised that you're perfectly fine," Will mused. "If you're going to wake up the other campers, we should let Chiron know that you're awake."
"I'll go get him," Travis volunteered. I think he wanted to get away from me due to my capacity to irritate gods. Waiting for Travis' return, Will sat on a spare bed opposite of me while Connor leaned against my bedframe.
"So Travis told me that Chiron's back, the entire camp knows about Luke's betrayal, and Tantalus was fired. What else is new?" I asked them.
Connor said, "Clarisse, Percy and Annabeth's been busy the last seventy-two hours, they're supposed to be coming to camp soon, maybe today."
"They got the fleece?"
Will lifted a shoulder. "It was implied? We're also assuming that Percy and Annabeth got out of the mess with Luke."
They filled in other details for me, confirming that Percy, Annabeth, and Clarisse had completed their quest. Based on what they told me, it seemed like nothing had diverged severely from the original plot, which was a major relief. It was so strange and surreal to realize that the universe was beginning to lay out according the book series. In reality, it would feel as though nothing could possibly go according to the books, but that was almost exactly how everything was going so far in terms of major events. Regardless of this bizarre phenomenon, I took it as a good sign. This was the way how things were supposed to go until I were to make a decisive change.
Tweaking the spy part with Silena was risky though, I thought as Connor and Will continued chatting in front of me. I took a moment to scan the faces of the campers I had inadvertently forced to fall asleep. There were kids from different cabins; one girl from Ares, two boys from Hephaestus, and Judy. Except for Judy, I wasn't very familiar with any of the demigods.
Huh. I thought new campers would stay away from monster attacks.
When I voiced this concern to the other two, Connor answered, "The new campers were herded away, but Judy ventured a little closer."
"But she shouldn't have been close enough to fall asleep," I pointed out.
"Jade, um, your voice did carry really far and the effect was really powerful this time," Will cut in. "It was like your voice pounded the draco aionius into snoozeland a minute into singing, and if it only took that much to bring a raging fire-breathing dragon into a slumber, then imagine what it was for a demigod within hearing distance."
I sighed with a bit of frustration. There were no any negative effects of falling victim to my godly powers, but it wasn't going to be pleasant for them to wake up from a two day sleep. On cue, Travis arrived with Chiron and the centaur gave me a look over before staring hard into my eyes.
"Jade, are you alright?" He asked in a serious voice.
"She's peachy," Will answered for me. "Her vitals are normal, as expected, and there's nothing of the abnormal."
"Yeah, I'm fine," I confirmed the medic's diagnosis. "Can I start waking the other kids up?"
There might have been minute lowering of the centaur's shoulders before nodding towards the sleeping campers next to us.
"Be careful," was Chiron's gentle reminder.
I went over to one of the Hephaestus kids and laid a hand on his forehead. The sleeping camper didn't even stir at the skin-contact. Like previous experiences of waking campers up, I sensed an intangible blanket covering his conscious mind, weighing down his mental state so that he would remain in the sluggish currents of deep sleep. Without the steady rise and fall of the camper's chest, someone would have mistaken that he was in peaceful death due to his relaxed expression. I only had to gently lift the blanket, metaphorically speaking, in order to wake him up. Although this was technically a straightforward process, the fact that these unconscious campers have been sleeping for two days made the job slightly more delicate. If I wasn't careful enough, it would be like painfully ripping off duct tape from skin rather than gently peeling it off.
Wake.
Within seconds, the child of Hephaestus shifted in the infirmary bed and his eyes fluttered open. I stepped away from the bed and let Will take over to check his body as I went on to the next camper. Continuing this process for the next three demigods, I stayed at a small distance with the Stoll brothers when I finished, watching Chiron and Will on full medic-mode. They made sure the demigods were stable physically and mentally, asking them to recount what they remembered before falling asleep and how they were feeling now. Besides the initial bout of grogginess, headaches, and disorientation, it seemed that the four were in good conditions.
After the check up, the girl from Ares asked, "But how did we just black out from just hearing someone sing?"
"Sorry, it was me singing," I spoke up. Judy looked up, recognition on her face when she registered the other campers in the infirmary.
"Taking responsibility doesn't explain much," one Hephaestus boy said in a grouchy voice while holding an ice bag against the side of his head to ease a headache.
"Although Jade is unclaimed and we may be unsure of her godly parentage, she has abilities that she's been exercising control over," Chiron explained. "Inducing sleep is one of those skills, which came handy when the draco aionius attacked, however it can also affect everything else who hears within range. Fortunately, she can also wake up those affected by sleep."
"Again, I'm sorry about that," I repeated with a more apologetic tone. "I haven't figured out how to target only victims."
The older Hephaestus camper snorted and then squinted at me for a moment. "Wait, wasn't it you who got half the campers to fall asleep during a bonfire two years ago when singing one of the camp lullaby songs?"
I grinned a little. "Yeah, that was me, too."
He let out a short laugh. "I've been wondering who that was all this time."
"Yes, Jade prefers preventing something like that happening again, so hopefully, this will occur less," Chiron said wryly.
I made a 'tsk' sound, and for the third time, apologized again. "Sorry."
All these apologies were making me feel like a parrot.
The older Hephaestus demigod shook his head, amused. "I'm fine, now I feel like I've gotten all the sleep I needed for the next week. My name is Jake, by the way."
The Ares girl interjected, "Might as well know all your victims' names, since it's the least you could do after waking us up, I'm Cam, short for Camilla."
I hoped Cam didn't hear the Stoll brothers snickering at her full name.
"Andre," the other Hephaestus kid contributed grumpily. He must have woken up on the wrong side of the bed, not that it was my fault.
Jude spoke very softly, "Judy."
"I'm Jade," I said lastly.
"We know now," they all chorused. I raised my hands in defense at their response.
"Just thought I'd check," I said with a light-hearted tone.
Chiron ended the conversation, saying, "With that done, let us return to camp activities, we will be expecting our travelers' return from their quest soon."
Percy gawked at me. "Jade stopped a dragon?"
Clutching the right side of my chest with a hand, I feigned emotional hurt and dryly said, "Oh, ye of little faith, thou'st loweth esteem of thou friend dost wound thee hart."
"The heart is on the left side, Jade," Annabeth pointed out. I switched hands at her words.
"Oh, ye of little faith, thou'st loweth esteem of thou friend dost wound thee hart," I repeated, my left hand now gripping right of my shirt.
Annabeth curiously asked, "Did you really stop a draco aionius? That's what all the campers are saying."
I waved a hand to lower the grandness of the story. "No, I only made it fall asleep, nothing else."
The three of us were walking to the mess hall after the watching a happy Clarisse drape the Golden Fleece onto one of the branches of Thalia's Tree. I was a little shaken by the immediate effect the relic had on its surroundings. The Mist had solidified in the presence of the fleece, patching up the camp's protection borders, and the tree even brightened in several warmer shades. Even its tree needles turned from a sickly yellow-brown to a earthy light green color within half an hour. In a way, the fleece's power scared me since it was a stark reminder of how powerful magic could be. Also, I was more wary of what's supposed to soon come out of the tree; currently, the fleece was a curse in disguise of a blessing.
As a celebration of another hugely successful quest, camp rules regarding cabin tables have been temporarily lifted for dinner that day. I ended up sitting with Annabeth, Grover, Tyson, and Percy at Athena's table, listening to their stories of the quest. At one point, Percy and I ended up arguing about whether nearing Scylla or Charybdis was the better option to crossing the strait into the Sea of Monsters. Currently, Percy was posing a convincing argument that Scylla was the better option since the chance of escaping Charybdis, a whirling pool into an endless ocean bottom, was slim to none.
"Even I escaped Scylla when it snatched me up and Clarisse's engine boat sank because of Charybdis, so Scylla is the better option," Percy pointed out.
"Whatever, your half-sister is Charybdis, so you lose this argument either way," I shot back and Percy immediately reeled at the piece of information, his face scrunching in disgust.
"You're kidding," he said disbelievingly.
"You need to brush up on your Greek history," I told him and swiped a piece of garlic bread from his dinner plate as a token of my victory.
"Greek history is depressing," Percy muttered. "Almost all the stories are about heroes suffering and dying from their quests."
"True," I said with a mouthful of bread. "But the point of those legends is to remind us to always go on quests to follow the prophecies. In the end, it's always better to go along with prophecies rather than running away."
Suddenly, a serious mood took over Percy's voice as he leaned across over the table. "Annabeth told me that you know about the Great Prophecy."
I sipped from my cup and checked our surroundings. We weren't at a safe place to delve deeply into the subject, too many potential eavesdroppers.
Disregarding what he said just a second before, I asked casually, "Do you know Oedipus Rex?"
Percy seemed slightly peeved at how I ignored his earlier comment. "Who?"
I sighed dramatically, "This is why you need to study more, Percy, Oedipus Rex was a king of Thebes. He didn't end up well when he tried to literally run away from his prophecy."
This time, Percy's interest was more piqued. "How bad was his prophecy that it made him want to escape it?"
"He was told that he was going to kill his father and marry his mother."
The son of Poseidon made a disgusted face. "Oh gross, I would too, but what happened?"
I hesitated answering. "He ended up killing his father and marrying his mother, but plus he got blinded and exiled. His mother committed suicide. In conclusion, he's a reminder for demigods that prophecies will always come true, no matter what. Fighting against fate is all in vain."
I said that last sentence meaningfully, staring at Percy's green eyes. For one rare instance, my godly abilities didn't hinder the eye contact we held for a brief moment before Percy turned his face away with a stormy expression.
"All in vain," he echoed with a faraway look in his eyes. I rapped the table surface sharply to regain Percy's attention.
"And don't talk about the Great Prophecy in this type of setting," I warned him. "Chiron ordered for it to be kept quiet."
Percy turned a light shade of pink, apologizing. "Right, sorry."
I leaned my head against a hand, elbow propped on the table. "Don't worry too much about it now. Overthinking prophecies can be just as bad as running away, you know."
Percy breathed deeply. "You're right, thanks, Jade."
The camp was in high spirits after the arrival of the Golden Fleece, but I slept through most of the events in celebration of the fleece and was oblivious to nearly everything that occurred outside of cabin eleven. So when I actually managed to roll out of my bunk the morning following the second chariot race, of which I heard Annabeth and Percy had won with the help of Tyson, I sensed that something was off once I stepped outside. Walking towards the dining pavilion, no one had a smile on their face, everyone was talking in low voices, and everything seemed to be holding its breath. It all felt wrong. Camp was never quiet during the day; we had ADHD/ADD demigod children climbing erupting volcanic pillars and clanging metal in the billowing forge on a daily basis. We even had monster growls during the night. Pulling my cap further down my face, a frown grew as I walked to the mess hall. Most of Cabin Eleven campers were already sitting at our picnic table, chewing their breakfast, albeit very quietly with their heads down. This behavior was very unlike cabin eleven that it unnerved me. Taking a plate, eating utensils, and a glass cup, I slid next to Travis on a bench and nudged his shoulder.
"Hey, why's the entire camp so dreary?" I asked. Travis swallowed down a bite of his omelette before warily flicking his eyes to a table at the other side of the hall.
"We...got a new camper," Travis managed to say. I followed his line of sight and my jaw went slack when I saw someone sitting at Zeus' table. A table that had been empty for decades. Wearing a black leather jacket, the girl looked to be of my age with short jet black hair, freckles and piercing blue eyes that even I could see from this distance. Interestingly, I nearly saw the Mist crackling and short-circuiting around her like electricity, an indication of the girl's godly parentage. She was facing our way with plates of food scattered on her table, but it was obvious to anyone that she wasn't interested in eating. After a couple more seconds of picking at the food in front of her, she stood up and walked out of the hall and all eyes trailed after her until the footsteps faded. When she was out of sight, it was like the entire hall let out a breath, as if the bomb they had expected to explode had deactivated instead. Annabeth bolted from Athena's picnic table and followed her old friend out. I saw Percy sitting by himself and holding his fork with such a forceful grip that made me think he was going to bend the metal.
Thalia Grace.
I blinked a number of times before shoveling French toast and fruits onto my plate from the center platter and I tried to distract myself with the food. I had known Thalia was going to come back with the golden fleece's healing properties, but as always, it's one thing to know the plot and another to actually see it happen. I forced my fingers to stop twitching as I poured syrup onto my plate.
Forking a piece of toast down my throat, I muttered, "The golden fleece did too much of a good job?"
"Yeah," Travis confirmed. He didn't sound exactly ecstatic. "It happened last night when Annabeth was on shift to guard the fleece, but you slept through the entire thing."
"Bummer." I didn't sound the least bit regretful.
Travis turned his attention back to his breakfast. "I envy your ability to sleep through anything."
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