Chapter 51: My new friend has a point

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"The Oracle…" Zoë muttered, "It walked."

"No shit sherlock." Nyx said, though I could see she was worried too.

"We need a war meeting." Chiron mumbled.

"So what did I miss?" Someone behind us asked.

We all turned around and we saw Thera, she was yawning and rubbing the sleep from her eyes, which resulted into lava drops splashing on the ground.

She was wearing the campers t-shirt that had on the back written: Camp Protector.

However she looked so tired I wondered if she could protect the camp in this state.

She pointed at the hunters, "who are they?"

Then she pointed at the Oracle who was now pretending to be a useless corpse, "What is she doing here?"

Then she pointed at me, "What did you mess up this time?"

"This was not my fault." I cried out, why do people always assume things were my fault.

"Who is that?" Zoë asked, she pointed her bow at Thera, not that Thera looked impressed or scared.

"Our camp protector," Chiron quickly said, then he turned towards thera, "You are awake I see?"

"Does it look like I'm awake?" she asked while rubbing the sleep from her eyes and yawning, which made me unsure whether she was sarcastic or not.

"We need to have Council of cabin leaders immediately." Chiron said.

...

We had the council meeting in the rec room of the big house around the ping pong table, Mr D who sat at one end of the table with Chiron waved his hands and a bottle of wine appeared, Chiron coughed Dionysus looked at the wine bottle.

"Oh, I forgot." he said and waved his hands again. Now the bottle was replaced by a bottle of Coca Cola.

Nyx immediately snatched it from the table and began drinking from the bottle, not wanting to share it with anyone.

At the other end of the table sat Zoë and Bianca, on the sides, were all the cabin leaders sitting in chairs we grabbed from wherever we found them. Silena and Beckendorf sat on the chairs that were meant on for the porch for example.

Katie represented the Demeter cabin while the Stoll brothers shared a seat, The Ares cabin had no representative because Sherman was hit with a fart arrow the same for the Apollo cabin.

Thalia sat next to me while Grover sat on the opposite side with Thera.

Ethan represented the minor gods since we had a lot of minor gods and giving them all a seat would be time consuming and pointless since some Gods only had one child and not all children wanted to spend their time in a council meeting.

Nico, who was not only one day at camp, had gotten his own chair. He was the head of the Hades cabin, so he was invited as well.

He had oof much fun for my sake.

I had no idea what Nyx was doing here, but somehow she managed to talk her way into the rec room and now she sat on my other side.

Drinking Cola out the bottle.

"This is pointless!" Zoë kicked of the council meeting on a positive note.

Nyx burped loudly.

"We should leave immediately, our goddess needs our help. We are wasting valuable time." Zoë added.

"Where would you go?" Thera asked.

"West." Bianca said.

"A great plan, because west is really specific." Ethan said.

"Doesn't matter, the prophecy said Five go west to the Goddess in chains, We take our five best hunters and leave.` Bianca added.

"Artemis is trapped and needs our help." Zoë said.

"You forgot the second line," Beckendorf said, "Choose Campers and Hunters combined. This is supposed to be a team up between hunters and campers."

"Like the Avengers." Nico said.

"No, the hunters don't need help." Zoë said angrily.

"The Prophecy says you need help." Chiron said, trying to reason with Zoë.

"Or they could try without help and die." Dionysus said from behind his wine magazine.

He then looked up and saw us staring at him, "Hey, I'm just suggesting something." he mumbled and went back to reading.

"We are supposed to work together." I said, "I know a lot about Prophecies, and I know if you try to fight them, it won't work out well."

Zoë scowled at me, "I'm not working together with a boy."

"You have to," I reasoned, "Two hunters, three campers."

"Why three campers?" Silena asked.

"Because the hunters stay at camp, this is a quest from camp Half-blood." I said.

"Who do you have in mind?" Katie asked.

"NO!" Zoë interrupted. "I'm not going to travel with a boy."

"You have to, I think Thalia, Nyx and I should go on this quest to represent camp Half-blood.

"Nonsense!" Zoë said, "Why are you so sure we need a boy?!"

"Because," I said, trying to stay calm, "This quest sounds dangerous, we three are the best options for this quest."

"He's right." Thalia said, "Two children of the Big Three. Don't you get it? Zoë this is supposed to happen."

Zoë crossed her arms, "No! I won't travel with a boy nor that Psychotic girl."

Everyone turned their eyes to Nyx. All the campers knew that Nyx was dangerous.

The hunters did not.

Nyx got up from her seat and put the Cola bottle on the table and glared at Zoë before saying, "Listen Zoë. Your Goddess is trapped. Not mine, if you are not a complete idiot you can decipher and guess who we have to fight. Percy and I are both the most skilled and best options."

Zoë opened her mouth to say something but Nyx went on with her rant, "You think you are so much better than male heroes? Well, let me tell you this. Your arrogance is your fatal flaw. If you really want to deny help from Percy and me because of your stupid prejuicides it will be your fault that Artemis is trapped. And you can explain later to Zeus that his daughter is trapped because you don't want to travel with a boy and a psychotic girl."

Everyone held their breath, waiting for Zoë's response. When it came it was kind of anti-climatic.

Zoë protested. "No, I refuse to take Percy and you on this quest. Artemis would totally understand it."

I wanted to protest but someone was quicker.

Before I could react an arrow appeared out of nowhere and pinned itself into the Ping pong table in front of Zoë and Bianca with a snapping sound.

The arrow was entirely made out of gold and it had a note attached to the end.

Zoë carefully untied the note and read it.

"What does it say?" Thera asked curiously.

Zoë was looking a bit pale, but she managed to say, "It's a note from Apollo. He demands Percy goes on this quest."

Nyx nodded satisfied, "Yeah! Percy and I are on the road!"

"It's not wise to ignore a god Zoë." Chiron warned.

"Fine." Zoë muttered, "I hope Percy knows a tracker spell."

I did not know a tracker spell.

"Percy does know a tracker spell." Katie suddenly said and glared at Zoë before glancing at me and she gave me the I-tell-you-later look.

Zoe groaned but went on with it, "I wish to go with Bianca."

Bianca's eyes widened, "Me? Are you sure."

"Yes you." Zoë insisted, "You are also a child of the Big Three. You can prove yourself along the way and gain some experience."

As she said that Nico's expression darkened and I saw he clenched his fist.

"So we have the five, what's next?" Thera asked.

"We need to decipher the Prophecy." Chiron stated.

"You know, it's weird, it says five go west but implies six will die." Ethan said thoughtfully.

"Prophecies can be hard to understand and often have double meanings." Chiron said.

"And it would be a shame if all five would die on this quest." Dionysus added, not looking up from his wine magazine.

"One shall be lost in the land without rain," Beckendorf said. "If I were you, I'd stay out of the desert.

We all nodded, Though I knew we could not avoid Talos.

"One string of Fate forever defined, What does this means?" Katie wondered.

Nyx gritted her teeth, "Either someone dying or becoming immortal."

I wanted to ask how she knew it, then I realized that her daughters were the Fates. Maybe they liked to brag about their job and told Nyx a lot.

"Let's hope it's not dying." Thalia said.

"Let's hope it." Chiron agreed.

"One shall be slain by parent's hand," Silena muttered, "What kind of parent would kill their child?"

"A shity one." Nyx concluded.

I noticed that Zoë managed to look even paler then before and she exchanged glanced with Chiron, who looked worried as well.

"One shall defy fate but die in the end What does this mean?" Bianca wondered,"I thought defying fate was impossible."

'Unless your Chaos's champion.' Chaos said grim.

"Who knows." Chiron muttered, "This prophecy is filled with riddles and mysteries."

"Cool, what's the next one?" Nico asked.

"With a final breath one shall betray." Connor said, "One of you is going to betray the others and then die."

We all eyed each other suspiciously. I had no idea who could betray me.

"Maybe it is betraying for the better good?" I suggested, that sounded right.

Zoë nodded, "Let's hope that is the case." though she glared at me, like I was the one who would betray her.

"And a final death to keep the prisoner in stay. How can you trap someone with your dead? And who is the prisoner?" Thera wondered, though I had the idea she already figured out who we had to deal with, she was a titaness after all.

Zoë managed to look even worse, at this point she was almost freaking out.

"It probably means nothing." she said.

We could all sense she knew something, but she kept silent and we dropped the subject."

"So be it," Chiron said. "Thalia, Percy and Nyx will accompany Zoe and Bianca. You shall leave at first light. And may the gods be with you."

"And the force." Nico added seriously.

We all got up from our seats and left the rec room, a few stayed behind to discuss the matter and I wanted to stay inside, maybe convince Zoë I wasn't a bad choice to choose me, all though she had not really chose me.

Katie, however, dragged me outside and around the corner of the big house, out of sight.

"Hey Katie?" I said, "What's wrong?"

She looked around to see if someone was sweat dropping, when she noticed no one was she handed me something engulfed and covered with linen.

It was around the size of a small stick, but I could not see what was inside.

She gave it to me like it was a time bomb, "Percy take it." she demanded when she noticed me confused expression.

"What is it?" I asked.

"It's something I made, it's probably forbidden to even have it at camp." she whispered with a glint of mischief in her eyes.

"What is it?" I tried again.

"An arrow."

I blinked, "An arrow? I suck at Archery."

She shook her head, "It's a magical arrow."

"Aahh...does that make it any better?" I asked.

She rolled her eyes but resumed, "I snug out to the Grove of Dodona." she said.

Then I remembered something Apollo showed me in his past life, "That's an?"

She nodded, "A talking arrow, I managed to craft it from one of the branches."

The Grove of Dodona was a stand of sacred oaks planted by the Titaness, Rhea, in the first days of the world. They are located in Camp Half-Blood Forest and were very hard to reach.

In fact, I wondered if Olympus even knew it was located here.

Probably not.

I scowled, "A talking arrow?"

"Yes." she said, "It's a demeter thing, since you got the blessing of Demeter you can probably understand it too."

"Great." I said cheerfully, "Always wanted to have a chat with an arrow.

She rolled her eyes, "No, it's not good for conversations. But you can ask it a lot things and sometimes it answers your questions. It had something to do with an Oracle or something. I'm not sure."

"And you want to give it to me?" I asked and she nodded.

"Take it, before someone sees it. Try to use it to find Artemis." she said and then she stormed of towards the dinner table.

I looked at the. What I now know is, arrow engulfed in linen.

"Hey feel like talking buddy?" I asked.

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p atreon : Moonhorse

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